The sad story of Bruce Carson

[Shakeyhands]

This is what it really boils down to:

They crucify a man in public - someone who's supposed to be deemed innocent until proven guilty - just for the sake of giving the Conservatives a "black eye!"

I feel for Carson. With his mental/psychological state...I hope these Opposition Inquisitors do not drive him to commit suicide!

This is the way the Oppostion mete "justice!" This is their "democracy!"

They speak of contempt of parliament....and yet they have this arrogant contempt for the public! They lump everyone like as if everyone is stupid! They treat the public like as if they're all stupid and cannot see past the hypocrisy and lies!

Drama Queen much?

The guy clearly has questionable judgement. Is this is someone you want advising the PM?

[WIP]

What happened to Shwa and WIP? No answer?

What is there to answer? You're playing the violins because you feel Bruce Carson may have emotional or mental problems....which is beside the point as long as conservatives demand retributive justice as evidenced by Harper's plans to build more prisons, instead of more mental health services.

As for the Liberal Party use of the Carson Scandal: what do you expect them to do? They have one more example of Harper keeping smarmy, unethical people inside his inner circle until they are discovered and become a source of embarassment. Carson's lawyer says his client disclosed all of his past activities, while the PMO says they were not aware of all of his criminal activity, or attempts to carve out a piece of the action for his gold-digging prostitute girlfriend. The truth lies somewhere in that void, and attempts to flip the story and turn the criminal into the victim, is a pathetic attempt to bury the scandal during an election campaign.

[YEGmann]

Bullshit. Carson is being investigated by the RCMP for a reason, and it ain't a saintly one. No one - including me nor Ignatieff - has convicted him of anything, but his dealings appear shady enough for Mr. Harper to ask the RCMP to investigate.

Wow! You changed your song! Good!

Just a reminder before you stated affirmatively

A former senior advisor to the ... PM lobbies Indian Affairs for a contract...

Isn't this assigning a guilt to the man before any investigation is finished? Hasn't RCMP investigated Helena Guergis "for a reason"?

[YEGmann]

Foot, meet mouth:

Contrary to you, I do not speculate, I do know that the company dissmissed the APTN claim about the "20% clause". Ms. McPherson contract doesn't contain one. Her compensation is standard, i.e. based on her performance, her contract says.

[betsy]

Perhaps you should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lynch-Staunton

Lynch-Staunton was the very first leader of (drum roll........)

the Conservative Party of Canada!

Yer welcome.

Thank you for clarifying that.

[betsy]

Are you asking a question?

Yes.

name='Shwa' date='16 April 2011 - 04:46 PM' timestamp='1302993989' post='656561']

Oh wait. I guess Harper only shows compassion is alien to him - since he referred everything to be investigated by the RCMP.

Okay, out of curiousity, answer this then:

If someone brings on serious allegations such as those that Bruce Carson is currently being accused of, how do you think Ignatieff should act?

If it was Ignatieff in Harper's shoes, how should he handle Bruce Carson regarding the allegations exposed by APTN?

Edited April 20, 2011 by betsy

[betsy]

As for the Liberal Party use of the Carson Scandal: what do you expect them to do? They have one more example of Harper keeping smarmy, unethical people inside his inner circle until they are discovered and become a source of embarassment.

This is all allegations against bruce Carson at this point. The rest of what you're saying are all based on his past! Past crimes that he'd been convicted of, sentenced and jailed for!

Carson's lawyer says his client disclosed all of his past activities, while the PMO says they were not aware of all of his criminal activity, or attempts to carve out a piece of the action for his gold-digging prostitute girlfriend. The truth lies somewhere in that void, and attempts to flip the story and turn the criminal into the victim, is a pathetic attempt to bury the scandal during an election campaign.

The truth lies in that void.....he can either be guilty or not.

By yuour statement:

attempts to flip the story and turn the criminal into the victim, is a pathetic attempt to bury the scandal during an election campaign

It does seems your mind is already made up about this guy. To you, he's already guilty!

See? See how infleuntial and destructive Ignatieff's exploitation of this man's past crimes is?

The tarring and the feathering!

You bought Ignatieff's implications. How many more people have pre-judged this man based on what they hear from Ignatieff's campaign?

I had a question to you in one of my posts. I guess you've already answered it.

Edited April 20, 2011 by betsy

[Molly]

Here I went and judged him for his past performance and present associations. Silly me.

[betsy]

Drama Queen much?

Is that scenario not possible....especially when you're dealing with someone who has psychological problems, whose personal life is apparently in shambles?

Someone connected with Bill Clinton did commit suicide when there was investigation of fraud dealings.

The guy clearly has questionable judgement. Is this is someone you want advising the PM?

He had a good track record! He'd been advising others before he ended in Harper's office. Besides, it's naive to think he's the only one advising the PM!

So the plot thickens.

First, Ignatieff is saying past crimes do count (even though you've already paid for it in full).

Now you are saying anyone who's seeing a therapist or psychologists shouldn't hold managerial positions or any job that involves use of judgement!

Is this another Liberal hidden agenda? or rather....flip-flop? Golly, no wonder they're pushing out the RESP! There'll be lots of job openings! Replacing probably half the population who had visits with the therapists!

Like Ignatieff, you guys are not being consistent.

Edited April 20, 2011 by betsy

[betsy]

Here I went and judged him for his past performance and present associations. Silly me.

What past performance? Or you meant past crimes?

[Molly]

What past performance? Or you meant past crimes?

Those would be the ones, yes. The ones - the several for which he was convicted. The ones that were *coff, coff* missed by the security checks.

(If I fell off a turnip truck, I'd have wa-ay more bruises.)

[Shwa]

Wow! You changed your song! Good!

Just a reminder before you stated affirmatively

Just a reminder that the story by APTN affirmatively states this:

A former senior advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper was lobbying Indian Affairs to land water contracts potentially worth millions of dollars for an Ottawa-based water company that employed his fiancee who was an escort.

I highlighted the clue part in bold so you might gain some valuable insight. I believe that this "affirmatively" stated passage from APTN is what is key here. Don't you? Or are you receiving transmissions from Rigel IV that state otherwise?

Isn't this assigning a guilt to the man before any investigation is finished? Hasn't RCMP investigated Helena Guergis "for a reason"?

Right. You know because anytime anyone is investigated for anything, they are being assigned guilt. As for Helena Guergis, that was the CPC bus she was thrown under, not Ignatieff's campaign bus. Besides, roadkill doesn't get any deader, but it is still tainted nonetheless.

[Shwa]

Contrary to you, I do not speculate, I do know that the company dissmissed the APTN claim about the "20% clause". Ms. McPherson contract doesn't contain one. Her compensation is standard, i.e. based on her performance, her contract says.

Well "contrary" to Mr. Harper too, because he speculated enough to take arms length and bring in the RCMP to investigate now didn't he? You know, the CPC leader. Speculated?

[Harry]

What is it they say, you can run but you can't hide.

And now apparently another scandal is brewing in relation to being paid in cash work at 24 Sussex Drive.

Shades of Ruby Dhalla perhaps?

What's going on with these holier-than-thou Conservatives who said they were going in to clean up Ottawa?

Lunn dragged into scandal dogging Tories

On Tuesday, a report in the Globe and Mail loosely linked the Ottawa office of Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Gary Lunn to Bruce Carson, who has been accused of unregistered lobbying. Last month, Vancouver Island North MP John Duncan's office was linked to Carson.

Both MPs say they have had no dealings with Carson. However, word of the links come as unwelcome news at election time.

Lunn's office hired Sarifa Khan as a ministerial staffer from March to September of 2008. Khan, in her early 20s, is the niece of Carson's former girlfriend, Barbara Lynn Khan, who was convicted in the United States of money laundering in connection with a North Carolina prostitution ring she helped to run.

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/decision-canada/Lunn+dragged+into+scandal+dogging+Tories/4645663/story.html#ixzz1K4G60c9p'>http://www.timescolonist.com/news/decision-canada/Lunn+dragged+into+scandal+dogging+Tories/4645663/story.html#ixzz1K4G60c9p

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/decision-canada/Lunn+dragged+into+scandal+dogging+Tories/4645663/story.html

[Molly]

Ah, yes. He's the guy who fired Linda Keene for the heinous crime of doing her job.

[WIP]

This is all allegations against bruce Carson at this point. The rest of what you're saying are all based on his past! Past crimes that he'd been convicted of, sentenced and jailed for!

And calling on an RCMP investigation provides an opportunity to bury any further developments on the story during the election. So, the Prime Minister says he never would have hired Carson, if he knew about all five of his previous convictions...one little disturbing factoid that crossed my mind is that Harper met Carson's 22 year old ex-hooker girlfriend, and never suspected anything unethical about the old fart! And he was still seen in 2010 at meetings advising top Government Minsters, and got lucrative contract for water. According to Greenpeace, documents revealed under the Access to Information Act, Carson was the point-man on behalf of a joint Government/oil company effort to expand tar sands development. That would be a more plausible reason why they kept him hanging around than lobbying for water contracts. The only reason why they threw him under the bus is because the scandal was found out, and providing the Opposition ammo to be used during the election.

The truth lies in that void.....he can either be guilty or not.

By yuour statement:

It does seems your mind is already made up about this guy. To you, he's already guilty!

See? See how infleuntial and destructive Ignatieff's exploitation of this man's past crimes is?

The tarring and the feathering!

You bought Ignatieff's implications. How many more people have pre-judged this man based on what they hear from Ignatieff's campaign?

I had a question to you in one of my posts. I guess you've already answered it.

Yes, I wonder where the truth lies? Too bad past conduct can't provide a guide for us!

Spare me the blather about Ignatieff! You know (or should know) that if the sides were reversed, it would be Harper hammering away at the unethical behaviour of the Liberal Government.....which is exactly what he did to win the Office wasn't it? And that's why I pay only glancing attention at political scandals. Governments try to get away with whatever they can, and Opposition Parties do whatever they can to use them for advantage.

[Harry]

One thing I’ll say for Bruce Carson

Unlike some, at least he had the courage to bring the person he was dating to an event at the boss’s house

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/20/one-thing-i%E2%80%99ll-say-for-bruce-carson/

[Harry]

I presume everyone has seen this article released a few minutes ago - sure does not look good for Harper here:

Top Harper aide wrote ethics chief on Carson

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/20/cv-election-carson-ethics-letters.html#

[Bob]

OK I'm gonna get on my soapbox right now because I'm sure you're all dying to know what I think.

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that Harper did a pretty bad job screening this guy to become one of his advisers. According to a CBC article, Harper says all he knew about Carson was that he had been disbarred from practising law because of fraud, and served time in jail. All this happened thirty years ago. If that's not enough in and of itself, here's an excerpt from My link.

In fact, by the time Carson became a senior adviser to Harper in 2006, he had been convicted on another three counts of fraud, had gone bankrupt twice and was repeatedly in arrears on his taxes up to and including the time he was working in the Prime Minister's Office.

You gotta admit, it's kinda funny, at least superficially, that this guy would get vetted out so many simple jobs just based on his record, yet he was able to secure a pretty good and exclusive gig with high-level government. In my view, I would think Harper is, at the very least, a bad judge of character in this regard. It reflects poorly on him any way you slice it. It's almost funny.

More importantly, does this story have the power to push independent voters away from the CPC? I'll still cast my vote Conservative.

As far as Ignatieff is concerned, he's doing what he can by attacking Harper for this. He doesn't have much else to offer Canadians aside from taking advantage of such an opportunity where Harper justifiably looks bad. I think the presence of such a Carson-character would be fair game from the CPC if the tables were turned Liberals formed the current government.

[betsy]

Those would be the ones, yes. The ones - the several for which he was convicted. The ones that were *coff, coff* missed by the security checks.

(If I fell off a turnip truck, I'd have wa-ay more bruises.)

The first conviction, Harper apparently knew about that. That was 30 years ago. Carson worked his way up again, as mentioned in my posted article from McLean's.

His second conviction was not missed by security, that's my understanding. Carson was upfront with his prior convictions. Carson said that it's possible that Harper didn't know since Prime Ministers do not personally check the security clearance of personnel....which is understandable.

Furthermore, his second conviction did not see him being given any jail sentence, but was told to CONTINUE his PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT....which clearly indicate that his transgressions were not deemed that serious (not to mean that I condone them), but that this obviously has something to do with his state of mind or psychological problems.

We know stress or psychological problems can induce someone to commit fraud or theft. Didn't a Liberal MP confess to stealing a jewelry from an auction site? And he cited stress and psychological problems.

Carson's work performance through the years in various offices must've been very impressive....it was mentioned in the article that he attracted the attention of Harper's office.

From what I understand, his forte is in "trouble-shooting." He's regarded as a "Mr Fix-it." So I assume his advisory position seems more focused on fixing problems within the party....or problems that may affect Harper/party.

Edited April 20, 2011 by betsy

[betsy]

But many wonder how the disbarred lawyer who’d served jail time in the ’80s was able to rise to the Prime Minister’s Office and have the ear of the country’s most powerful man. It’s a complicated question, yet the picture emerging of Carson is one of stark contrasts, a one-time Conservative mastermind and a forever smiling man who was as diligent and in control in the latter days of his professional life as he was scattershot in his private life. Only when he met McPherson last spring did these two worlds collide.

In 1981, the Law Society of Upper Canada moved to disbar the then-35-year-old after he misappropriated $23,900 from three clients and forged the signature of two. Even then, Carson had friends in high places: the mayor of Ottawa at the time, Marion Dewar, along with the city’s Catholic archbishop and a host of prominent business and legal leaders, all wrote letters attesting to Carson’s character. Nevertheless, Carson was disbarred and served jail time as a result of the fraud.

Following his release in 1983, Carson took up a position at the Library of Parliament, where, as the Toronto Star recently reported, he wrote a synopsis of prime minister Brian Mulroney’s lobbyist legislation. He didn’t have much influence within Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party.

Yet Carson moved up the Tory ranks, first as a contract worker for a number of senators and, soon enough, as a policy adviser for Senate Opposition leader John Lynch-Staunton.

Carson also worked for former Ontario premier Mike Harris’s office in the 1990s; coupled with his work with the federal Tories, he made enough of an impression as a policy wonk to catch the eye of Philip Murphy, Harper’s chief of staff, in 2003. Murphy tapped Carson to advise Harper following the merger of the PC and Reform parties, which had left a bitter taste in the mouths of many old-school PC types. Carson was charged with smoothing out relations between the old guard and the Reformers. “He came highly recommended by people in the PC party at the time,” Murphy said.

Others concur. “Bruce quickly proved himself to be very capable, and Harper started to rely on him more and more,” Flanagan told Maclean’s. “There’s not really anything odd about it. Bruce had been around politics for a long time, working for both the federal and Ontario PCs.” Also key to Carson’s success in the PMO was his soft touch, some say. “In his professional life he’s always been part of the solution, and one of the grown-ups in the room,” says writer and former Mulroney speechwriter L. Ian MacDonald. “In a PMO that had too many zealots, he was one of the cooler heads.” “He’s a very smart guy, he has a good EQ and he never had to have the biggest dick in the room,” says one of Carson’s long-time friends.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/03/28/the-carson-show-2/

[betsy]

And calling on an RCMP investigation provides an opportunity to bury any further developments on the story during the election. So, the Prime Minister says he never would have hired Carson, if he knew about all five of his previous convictions...one little disturbing factoid that crossed my mind is that Harper met Carson's 22 year old ex-hooker girlfriend, and never suspected anything unethical about the old fart! And he was still seen in 2010 at meetings advising top Government Minsters, and got lucrative contract for water. According to Greenpeace, documents revealed under the Access to Information Act, Carson was the point-man on behalf of a joint Government/oil company effort to expand tar sands development. That would be a more plausible reason why they kept him hanging around than lobbying for water contracts. The only reason why they threw him under the bus is because the scandal was found out, and providing the Opposition ammo to be used during the election.

Yes, I wonder where the truth lies? Too bad past conduct can't provide a guide for us!

Spare me the blather about Ignatieff! You know (or should know) that if the sides were reversed, it would be Harper hammering away at the unethical behaviour of the Liberal Government.....which is exactly what he did to win the Office wasn't it? And that's why I pay only glancing attention at political scandals. Governments try to get away with whatever they can, and Opposition Parties do whatever they can to use them for advantage.

You and Ignatieff can speculate to your hearts' content. That's the good thing about democracy. But lest ye forget, democracy in our society also dictates: Carson is deemed innocent until proven guilty.

No kangaroo courts are recognized in a democracy. Unless it's the same shade of "democracy" places like Zimbabwe, Iran or Libya etc., adheres to.

[Molly]

The first conviction, Harper apparently knew about that. That was 30 years ago. Carson worked his way up again, as mentioned in my posted article from McLean's. .......

From what I understand, his forte is in "trouble-shooting." He's regarded as a "Mr Fix-it." So I assume his advisory position seems more focused on fixing problems within the party....or problems that may affect Harper/party.

The label you are looking for is "fixer".

[cybercoma]

betsy

Psychiatric problems in criminal convictions is a big deal. To say that he was advised to continue psychiatric treatment, so it mustn't have been a big deal is completely false. If you plead insanity in a criminal trial, for instance, you can rest assured that the amount of time you'll spend in a mental health facility will be much longer than if you had plead guilty to the crime. If he has a particular "problem" that makes him incapable of being ethical, then he should not be given responsibilities or put into a position that requires the greatest amount of ethics imaginable. That you justfiy his behaviour, which Tories themselves found completely unethical, makes me question your own compass. Which is funny, considering you parade your moral authority in other parts of this forum.

Edited April 20, 2011 by cybercoma

[Tilter]

[/sychiatric problems in criminal convictions is a big deal.quote]

Yeah--- Big Deal--- especially when you kill your kids and are judged to be insane at the time. Just 2 years later he's out on an escorted day pass, walking the streets of Port Quoquitlam (sp). WOW--- those prison psychiatrists are GOOD. 2 years & he ascends from a crazed insane multiple murderer to a guy who can get out of the criminal loony bin to walk escorted around town.

Those psychs should go to Hollywood--- there are a lot of nut actors-- say Cage, could make him a few hundred thou in a week curing him--- or take Cat Jones-- Bipolar is nothing compared to Homicidal Maniac.

He'd have her straightened out in a couple of days.

WTF