The Black Rod

An election financing scandal with the potential of disqualifying all NDP-endorsed candidates in the Winnipeg civic election has erupted in Mynarski ward. Comments made by NDP candidate Ross Eadie at an all-candidates forum on Monday have prompted a formal complaint to Elections Manitoba. The charges involve such a serious breach of election laws that any investigation must also include everyone running under the NDP banner in the election. It will be the first test of Elections Manitoba since the retirement last April of former chief electoral officer Richard Balasko who helped the NDP cover up a scheme by the party during the provincial election of 1999 to file phony candidate expense forms and fraudulently collect rebates from the public purse. During the all-candidates' forum at the Norquay Community Centre, Eadie...well, why don't we let an eyewitness tell the story. AlexLV, as he calls himself, posted this play by play on the Winnipeg Free Press website W...

It had to be the most cringeworthy political appearance in the current civic election. Mayor Sam Katz and his challenger Judy Wasylycia-Leis were asked to attend a candlelight vigil last night for Darren Walsh, the 24-year-old North End resident who was shot to death on a quiet Sunday afternoon while minding his own business waiting for a bus on Main Street just off Euclid. Both attended, but Judy Alphabet (as she's known in media circles) must have chewed her lips raw at what she heard from Walsh's grief-stricken mother. “Repeat offenders need to be kept behind bars longer and we need to get hold of the drug problem,” mother Nancy Goulet said. Balderdash, thought Judy Wasylycia-Leis. As an NDP Member of Parliament, Judy Alphabet fought against keeping criminals in prison. She fought to release as many as possible on house arrest, so they could stay home and watch television all day, and go out at night to roam with their criminal friends. The NDP applauded the Yo...

What a golden opportunity. After the last civic election, politicians and pundits moaned and groaned over the low voter turnout, 38.2 percent, the worst in 20 years. While it was more a reflection of the unelectibility of the challengers to Mayor Sam Katz---a man-hating feminist and a man-loving homosexual activist---it also demonstrated how little engagement there was between the citizens of the city and their alleged political representatives. Barely more than one in three thought it worthwhile to vote. It sent a bad signal to city hall. Over the next four years city councillors pretty much ignored the wishes of Winnipeg taxpayers to do whatever they wanted, comfortable in the thought they would never be held to account. Of course they paid lip service to "public consultations", holding sham surveys of public opinion which they then used as an excuse to ram their own pet projects through. And all the while they cried crocodile tears at t...

Surprise. Surprise. The NDP candidate for mayor of Winnipeg wants to raise taxes. Now that's a shocker. NOT. Judy Wasylycia-Leis, aka Judy Alphabet (as media people call her) , aka JustJudy (as she wants to be called) announced last week she thinks taxes are too low in Winnipeg. She wants to raise them at least 8 percent (two percent a year for four years). By declaring her lust for higher taxes, JustJudy managed to demonstrate: A - her ignorance about how the city raises and spends tax dollars. B - her slavish adherence to the NDP party line, and C - how, despite both the above, she's still managing to score points against incumbent Sam Katz. JustJudy just won't let the facts get in her way. If she had bothered to do any research, such as speaking with Councillor Gord Steeves she would know: * Winnipeg's operating budget is growing by 4 percent this year, eight times the rate of inflation (0.5 percent). That's EIGHT times inflation. * Winnipeg's...

What's going on? First, Winnipeg's top bureaucrat announces he is leaving the big city to go back to Hooterville. Then, yesterday, the head of the Winnipeg Parking Authority took time from polishing the award he got in May, for doing such a bang-up job here, to deliver his resignation. It was Biebermania for big folks when Glen Laubenstein was hired in 2008 to be Winnipeg's Chief Administrative Officer, the man responsible for turning the levers that make the city run. Councillors swooned in his presence. They wrote poetry over his plans to rewrite the book on running a city. And then ....poof . Gone. From reading multi-million dollar contracts he's reading the bus schedule to Wood Buffalo (nee Fort McMurray), Alberta, population 64,000 counting coyotes. And what about the parking authority's Dave Hill. Four months ago he was collecting the award for "Parking Professional of the Year," at the International Parking Institute Convention & Expo in Las Veg...

By now the Left knows its losing the election for mayor of Winnipeg--- bigtime. There were two ways for the election campaign to go. For the anointed candidate of the Left, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, to win, the election had to be focused on incumbent Sam Katz, his record of secret backroom deals, and his grandiose plans to spend half a billion dollars on a legacy project to use electric trains as public transit. Instead, JustJudy (as she wants to be known) is fighting Sam Katz's fight over the #1 issue in Winnipeg, crime and public safety. It's a fight JustJudy can't win. She spent 11 years as an NDP member of Parliament during which she worked against the interests of Winnipeg when voting on every crime bill presented by the Conservative government. She opposed every effort to keep criminals behind bars and supported every move to let criminals on the streets earlier. When the government tried to make criminals convicted of major crimes ineligible for ho...

The wheels have fallen off the bus. The biggest shills for the un-built Canadian Museum for Human Rights tried singing a lusty chorus of "Don't Worry, Be Happy" to overwhelm the grisly facts Tuesday, but it was no use. What we know, courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press and their echo, the CBC: * Gail Asper, the prime mover of the museum, is abandoning the sinking ship. She's leaving her role as chief fundraiser for the CMHR to, ahem, concentrate on other projects. * She and museum CEO Stu Murray, who was hired explicitly for his expertise in fundraising, have failed to raise a dime towards the $45 million cost overruns on the museum in over a year. You know, the overruns the private sector pledged to cover and which they then tried to renege on last year. * Not only is there no money to pay for the construction of the CMHR, there's no money to bring the thousands of students who were supposed to make up the bulk of the attendance at the museum...

Maybe, if we can associate failed businessman David Asper with an attraction to large, naked black men, we can generate some news coverage of the biggest story in Winnipeg. This week the city's news outlets rushed to follow CBC's masturbatory interracial sex fantasy story (black man claims he was recruited to have sex with white wife) w hile ignoring the true news scoop by Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck involving a threesome of Winnipeg's most influential men---Asper, Mayor Sam Katz and unelected Premier Greg Selinger. Oh, not that kind of threesome. Sorry. We meant a business arrangement involving the three men, as in getting into bed together to announce a new stadium for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and in the process screwing the taxpayer. As in the CBC sex "scandal", there is no sex. But there is plenty of scandal in Brodbeck's exclusive story. "But Asper says the initial agreement that requires him to cover all cost overruns in the stadium deal ...