Liberty gin all around

We'll need it.

Many of us warned of this time, shook our heads as journalists went on about how a harper with a majority would be a kinder, more moderate harper once he has what he wants - his precious majority.

We knew this was nonsense because the majority is a means to an end for him, and the end his his mean, colourless, suppressive vision of what he wants Canada to be: a nation of workers/taxpayers/consumers who are incapable of offering any type of resistance to what he wants to do micro-managing how we live, think, and even what we believe.

He wants to create a country where the term human resources is exactly that - just another resource used by him and the real elite he considers as more than mere shadow people, mere props, to be used for the economic gain and power of him and his elite.

A new species of domesticated beast.  Feed us just enough to keep us going, kill off those in the herd who are disruptive or don't produce profits, keep us bovine-like, unimaginative, ignorant, constantly supervised, and restrained.  Then he and the other real people sit back, reap great profits, gaze over the herds, and in the unlikely event that any of the bastards has a twinge on conscience now and then, tell each other that the bovine people would wilt and die without the wise management of the elite.

harper set out years ago to situate himself so that there would be little in place to oppose him.  With a minority, he managed to silence and gut several oversight agencies, make the Senate an extension of his will, cut programs which support creativity and free thought, push us further into poverty and financial insecurity than was necessary due to the recession, and even change what Canada stands for.  He did a lot of this by thumbing his nose at legislation while opposition parties, more interested in their own survival allowed him to commit abuse after abuse on our democracy.

Now that he has a majority, he acts as though he has a clear, undisputed mandate to act without any explanation or need for accountability whatsoever.

Senate reform?  Sure, he'll go through the motions, pretending to be sincere in respecting procedure and democratic will, but only as long as he can bully things in the direction he wants it to go.  If that doesn't work, down comes the boot. 

Jason Kenney is suggesting his boss Stephen Harper could do away with the Senate if his Conservative caucus in the Red Chamber doesn’t play ball and accept his reforms. 

harper doesn't believe the Senate works for us.  That's why he appointed those he did, counting on them to simply rubber stamp whatever he demands. 

At least one senator understands the law of steve (emphasis mine):

“Every senator in this caucus needs to decide where their loyalty should be and must be,” Bert Brown wrote his Senate colleagues Wednesday.  “The answer is simple; our loyalty is to the man who brought us here, the man who has wanted Senate reform since he entered politics, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper.”

From the Parliament site, "What is the Senate?":

Examining and revising legislation, investigating national issues and representing regional, provincial and minority interests — these are important functions in a modern democracy. They are also the duties of Canada's Senate. Senators represent, investigate, deliberate and legislate...The founders knew that Canada's Parliament would need two houses to make sure that legislation received careful consideration. They gave the Senate legislative powers similar to those of the House of Commons, but anticipated a very different role for it. The Senate was to be, in the words of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, a place of “sober second thought.”

steve  has largely changed that role simply by stacking the senate with his self-serving brown-nosers.  Bert Brown certainly is confused about the role of a senator.  And should any other harper appointee dare oppose the megalomaniac steve, well, he'll simply crush them all without amending the constitution.  The constitution is meaningless to him.  Just another bump in the road.  If he can't drive over it, he'll level it and people will forget it was ever there.

Labour rights?  Unions?  He is already well on his way to maligning both, re-educating the public that they are vile things that serve a handful of socialists and lazy people at the expense of hard workin' taxpayers.  So what if workers have the right to strike, the right to negotiate in good faith?  Changing a country is a lot of work, and he has no time for that, so he simply steps in, stomps all over those rights, sends out a bunch of propaganda on how he stopped those damn socialists from harming the economy and those hard workin' taxpayers, and soon people forget it wasn't always that way.  And for the few who remember and want to rebel, all avenues are closed.

Victory gin?  Yeah, steve would love it if we all just got numb and moved according to the cattle prod.  The opposition parties are useless, right now, and not just because steve has a majority.  They are still far more interested in their own welfare than protecting our democracy, our rights.  They should be rousing us, not lulling us with feeble excuses for not opposing such abominations as allowing 270 odd billion in unscrutinized funds, for example.

We have to fight for ourselves, for the things those who came before us fought for.  We have to be more than the opinion elite.  We need to find more effective ways to be heard before all venues are closed tight.