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Why are the MLA’s not being charged with theft? Where I work if you take money that doesn’t belong to you it’s considered theft…one MLA claimed the same thing 10 times…like I say that’s theft..if it were the average Joe we would be in jail.
—proudcanadianmyass
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2010.
25 Comments
Can’t argue that…
thats cause being part of government you get privileges that the average Joe doesn’t get. The ability to slim out of trouble, get away with theft and charges, ability to change their wages when they want at OUR expense… fuck the government.
Waaaah! They were improperly spending! Waaah!
Let’s move on, please. This isn’t anything new, and we nobody but ourselves to blame. Fuck off.
Also love how RH is still going to get a $41,000 salary after said theft AND resigning …. WTF
it’s actually a pension… but yeah.
All I want to see out of it all is more transparency and hard and fast rules for what constitutes ‘acceptable’. when the rules are vague and no-one is auditing regularly, of course they are going to take advantage….
once they are crystal, then we have no argument against charging them…
proud, i think you answered your question with the first part of the bitch. because they ARE m.l.a.’s.being elected into office gives you the right to rip off your friends and neighbors. or so one would think. but let joe or jane normal try that shit. can you say locked up in a second?
Naw… the average joe would NOT be in jail cause:
– When civil servants, teachers etc use sick days as vacation days, they are not charged with theft (despite stealing from the tax payer).
– When people cheat on their taxes, they are not charged with theft (despite stealing from the tax payer).
It’s okay if we’re critical of MLAs – they deserve it – but most of the criticism is coming from people who have stolen from tax payers themselves! It’s amazing how much scorn politicans get. The average Joe gets essentially none.
I agree with what zZz said, the amount MLA’s are entitled to spend without receipts is ridiculous and I think that more financial information should definitely be made public.
In the U.K., MPs are facing jail time for unnecessary spendings. So, MLAs here should face jail time also.
I should also mention that some of the MPs in the U.K. were using that money to buy pornography.
Pornography gets written of as professional research on “how to screw the public”
well the simpson’s movie is pornography there….
can’t have that animated child exploitation!
that’s just lewd.
If all offenders went to jail, who would be left to manage the province? The aides, I guess…which is okay with me…when I call the province with an issue, I ask to speak with the politician’s personal secretary/aide (rather than the big (?) man/woman themselves.)..because I want someone who will take immediate action.
Are you kidding HKM? We’ll run the place. There’s all kinds of great ideas being tossed around the LTWWB brain trust.
Yeah, I guess we will have to suck it up and take care of it ourselves. It’s just such a pisser…I mean, not only did we pay them upfront to take care of things, so we can’t get our money back, but they robbed us on the way out. Do you think the HRM police will confiscate their possessions like they do with drug dealers so we can get some of our money back? Shit…now between dishes and laundry, I’m going to have to work on the fucking NS budget!
It’s really really hard to sympathize with these people. They are well off, have good paying jobs, they can afford these things without using our tax dollars. The majority of people paying into those tax dollars can’t afford a big screen TV or custom made furniture.
I don’t get why some people on here are going on about how they rules aren’t clear. How clear does the phrase “disallowed by regulations” have to be? Regular auditing I get though. But seriously, nobody uses tax payers money to buy MP3 players, trips for their kids, and espresso machines and wonders if it’s allowed by regulations or not… if they did they are too stupid to hold that position in the first place. They knew that what they were doing was wrong, they should all apologize, pay up, and face criminal charges.
“”There’s all kinds of great ideas being tossed around the LTWWB brain trust.””
Well, I for one would like to argue at that.
Other than “eat my knees” and we need more support for the Halifax puppet scene, there hasn’t been mauch progress lately..
the brain trust will always exist and us fools will prattle on hoping for those small moments of genius
Those puppets are exactly the kind of forward thinking that is going to save this province.
Let’s give puppets to all the homeless panhandlers and squeegee kids so they can ‘earn’ the pennies from our pockets.
Don’t believe everything you read in the Herald’s comment pages. One MLA did NOT claim the same thing 10 times. Michele Raymond made 10 different duplicate expense claims for 10 different things. She is saying that she is not certain what is being alleged since the Speakers Office and the AG have not been able to show her the details. So put away the pitchforks until there is more detail forthcoming.
As for the theft argument — there were no rules. They were entitled to expense anything. The only thing they could be nailed on was outright fraud, if for example there were falsified receipts or whatever. Yes, what they did was morally wrong, but it was not criminal, because the rules allowed them to do it.
“nobody uses tax payers money to buy MP3 players, trips for their kids, and espresso machines and wonders if it’s allowed by regulations or not”
Regulations or not, politicians know we vote them in because, at the very least, we hope they have solid ethics and a genuine concern for us and our province. That they work to portray themselves in this light, regardless of whether it is true of them or not, shows that they are totally aware of the kind of behaviour that is expected of them. They know, without consulting the rulebook, that what they were doing was wrong…and they did it anyway.
They got balls/brass ovaries though…imagine pointing a finger at the homeless/impoverished people on the streets and scorning them for their need while at the same time helping yourself to public funds so you won’t have to dip into your own ample income to furnish yourself with luxuries.
Idealistically, regulations have been put into place to curb the greed/selfishness/unethical behaviour of the few politicians who might slip beneath our radar or the borderline politicians who might give into temptation–that few politicians are exempt from blame in this matter is shameful and disgusting…and we have only ourselves to blame.
We have been warned over and over again about the dangers of letting politicians work behind closed doors and denying us access to documents that will force them to be accountable to us for all their decisions, but we just bitch, maybe attend a meeting or rally or two, and then shrug it off as it takes time and energy and commitment. The politicians know they can and will ride this storm out. Unlike us, they have the time and money to weather this storm out in comparative ease–we provide them with means to do so. Unless we are determined to punish them with more then shouts (which they are fairly immune to), nothing will change.
I say they be forced to pay for their ‘extras’, take a pay cut, go on probation and do community service (preferably working directly with the people who were lucky to have a blanket this winter). Or, even better, I say the unblemished politicians of one party decide on the punishment of the guilty ones in the other parties…that could be fun to watch.
Miles…oddly in Guatemala a few years back, the Japanese embassy decided that far too many little homeless kids were catching themselves on fire at the traffic lights with their fire-breathing tricks and the like…so they donated hundreds of little juggler/clown suits and balls and stuff for the little buggers to use.
Worked great for a while: little clowns everywhere you looked….many of them of course dropping their juggling balls to roll under your car, but there was usually a game little sister to scoot under and fetch it….
…….but just before I moved I noticed that the little urchins had discovered that torn into strips, the polyester suits made great flaming torches to juggle with…oh well…
What’s sad is now all MLAs are being painted as thieves when in reality, there are a few that didn’t claim inappropriate expenses. I feel bad for those MLAs, honestly. I read the PDF the CH had on their site with the expense reports and while some MLAs had over $40k in expenses, some had $4-6k and those were all expenses related to computers, filing cabinets, etc… — things they obviously used to set up their offices.
Honestly, I think it’s the entitlement of people like Len Goucher who thinks the taxpayers owe him two HD tvs, or the other MLAs who think they need custom furniture to furnish their offices that really frosts my cupcakes…all you really NEED to operate a constituency office is a couple desks, a few chairs, maybe a coffee machine and a water cooler, a couple of computers and some phones with a photocopier/printer/fax machine…I don’t see why it’s NECESSARY to get a chair from Lane furniture to sit your decently paid ass on….especially when there are many people in this province who are underemployed yet still pay their fair share in taxes.
Maybe its just me…but is this really a case of misdirection ? Afterall while us being ripped off by our wonderful politicians for the piddly amount of 45-50 thousand dollars has got people fuming. I have yet to see anyone bother to mention that, it is these same Political Parties & the members of these Parties who have us in debt 12 BILLION dollars.
Now you might understand why I called 50 grand piddely !
Come on SHEEPLE wake the fuck up. IF your all freaking & pissed off (& IMO rightly so, I might add) about a couple of generators, a half dozen camera’s & let us not forget the computers & printers plus the double ,triple dipping. Why hasn’t a lynch mob formed to take all these bastards to some of those nice big trees in Point Pleasant Park & hang the Bastards (& the Bitches too) They are responsible for putting us in debt for 500+ million this year, that’s right you, me & everyone else here is paying interest on a 12 Billion dollar debt that these same bozo’s have run up….& we the tax payers, not they the ripoff artists, are responsible for this !
So if your going to be walking & talking in meat space & cyber space about how we’re being scammed, let us not forget it would take 266,666.6666 years for our wonderful Politicians to rip us off 12 Billion dollars if they were only stealing or wasting 45,000 dollars a year.
266,666 years !?! BUT we’ve only been lucky enough to have a democratic system in Nova Scotia for 252 years this year, so you want to be angry, here’s a much better reason that being pissed about a piddely 45 grand folks !
My calculator says that if we were ripped off equally every year since 1758 (our democratic start date) These political clowns we call our MLA’s have been ripping us to the tune of 47 Million,619 Thousand,47 dollars & 61 cents each & every year ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe for a second the founding ripoff artis…I mean MLA’s were wasting our tax dollars on such a huge scale, but someone certainly has been, & most of them are still alive, collecting huge pensions they do not deserve & running around now pretending they’re something they really are not….responsible…
Someone give me a time & place & I’ll bring some rope.
Bo Gus,
Answer me this, why is the phrase “disallowed by regulations” preceding each listed item if there were no regulations in the first place?
And as HKM says, even if there were no rules, that does not excuse their despicable behavior.