Archive for April 2011
When will enough be enough for habitual criminals?
Last week infamous thief Tracy Lloyd Caza was breached by his parole officer and will likely serve the rest of his sentence. The warrant holding him in custody will expire in the days before Christmas.
He will be deemed to have paid his debt to society for brazenly stealing jewelry from the fingers of elderly patients in hospitals when they are most vulnerable. Whatever conditions still remain that were court imposed, he will inevitably ignore. He will then be free to wreak whatever havoc he will upon seniors in Vancouver until he is caught and a judge puts him back in jail. Again.
And it will happen again. Just as sure as God makes little green apples. He’s got nearly 60 convictions dating back to 1977 and dozens more arrests where charges were bargained away in a guilty plea deal. He has no trade, craft or other marketable skill, save and except being a thief, robber and a con man who preys on those most unable to help themselves.
No matter what, neither provincial nor federal corrections services have been able to alter Caza’s criminal ways despite more attempts than Carter has little liver pills. At what point should we say enough?
And Caza isn’t the worst. A few years ago I wrote a piece about Kevin Wayne Morgan. He had a remarkable 188 criminal convictions when I learned about him from business owners on Commercial Drive in speaking with them during a security seminar. It turned out there would have been no need for the seminar, were it not for Morgan.
One guy, terrorizing a whole community and he keeps being allowed out to continue the crime spree virtually uninterrupted save and except his frequent arrests by the police who dutifully place him, yet again, before the courts to get, yet again, another couple of weeks in jail to clean up and get released for another crime spree.
It’s unbelievable really. Morgan has amassed in his life in the vicinity of 200 criminal convictions. One of the tenets of sentencing guidelines is that judges must consider the protection of the public. As near as I can tell, in Morgan’s criminal career this consideration has been totally ignored. How else can you explain when I was watching his 189th conviction that he was given a sentence of 14 days for a crime that had a maximum penalty of ten years in the Criminal Code?
When is enough, really enough?
Leo Knight
primetimecrime@gmail.com
Political subsidies drive electoral zeal
While sitting on a plane to the Centre of the Universe, I found myself reading The Reagan Diaries, meticulously kept by Ronald Reagan throughout his presidency. As I was reading words written nearly 30 years ago by the 40th President of the United States and reflecting on this federal election campaign, I was struck by how little had changed in the politics of the liberal left in the intervening years.
On February 27, 1982 Reagan wrote: “A half dozen Dem. Gov’s. Kept sounding off on how our programs we unfair and favoured the rich – paralyzed the poor. Their answer? Cut defense spending.”
He continued, “Food stamps are budgeted at $4 billion than 1980 and 3 million more people are getting them. As for taxes favouring the rich – they are already 25% across the board and indexing the tax brackets does nothing for the rich – they are already in the top tax bracket.”
Sound familiar? Change the dollar values and percentages around a little and this could be the Canadian federal election campaign of 2011. (Wouldn’t you like to have only to pay 25% income tax?)
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is still banging on the tax the banks and oil companies nonsense and NDP leader Jack Layton is still harping on his tax the rich refrain. The rhetoric is as predictable as an early start to golf season for the Leafs.
They both want to kill the F-35 contract without offering even a suggestion of what else they would do. And we know how well that worked when Jean Chretien killed the Mulroney government’s contract to replace the aging, and now decrepit, Sea King helicopters described by the pilots who fly them as “10,000 nuts and bolts flying in loose formation.”
I expect the man behind the mustache to thump his socialist drum ad infinitum. But one would think that the Harvard professor would be smart enough to understand that any increase in corporate taxes affects all business and is a job killer at a time when the economy is showing signs of life. Or that any increase in cost to any business is added to the price of whatever goods or service they offer and is passed on to the consumer. Surely he should realize this fundamental aspect of business. Surely?
Iggy is trying to frame this as an election of ethics and who you would trust. Then he promptly trots out former PM’s Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. Yikes! Chretien oversaw the most corrupt government this country has ever seen and Martin was the finance minister when all those billions were getting sucked out of the public purse in what was dubbed Shovelgate and the Billion Dollar Boondoggle. And then there’s Adscam. Ethics? Not in evidence of late in the Liberal Party of Canada.
Proven again with the two teens who claimed they were tossed from a rally for Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Vancouver Saturday night. They weren’t. Once they were identified as Liberal supporters, they were twice asked if they wanted to go in and listen it was fine, as long as they weren’t disruptive. They declined because that scenario wouldn’t fit the script that Iggy was about to deliver in Edmonton with Paul Martin by his side. Iggy was actually quoted by the pliant media lapping the milk from the saucer he was holding, saying that the actions of the Conservatives were “grotesque.”
No over-reaching hyperbole there even were it not a blatant set-up.
May 2nd can’t come fast enough for me. It feels as though we have been in election mode ever since Harper tried to get rid of vote subsidies for political parties back in Dec. 2008 while in a minority parliament. That attempt, I might add was the impetus for the opposition parties to try and form Coalition #1. Iggy has been trying to take over the government ever since.
Harper has made it clear that if he gets a majority government he will turn off the spigot to political parties. Make no mistake, that is the life’s blood for the Libs, the NDP and most especially, the Bloc Quebecois. They will do whatever they have to do to try and stop Harper from doing this. No matter what Iggy says about not being a part of a coalition. A coalition by any other name is the same thing. Not necessarily a coalition, but a coalition if necessary.
They can spout all the empty rhetoric they want, but don’t be fooled. This unnecessary election is only about political subsidies. It’s been coming since Dec. 2008. And Iggy, Jack & Gilles will do anything to stop Harper from keeping his promise.
Leo Knight
Awish Aslam redux
It’s been three days since I wrote a brief piece about Awish Aslam, the girl who got herself tossed from a Stephen Harper rally in southwestern Ontario and promptly became a media darling and there has been virtually nothing written about her since, despite an orgy of stories in the few days from the incident until I published that piece of reality for the MSM to consider.
I say virtually, because there was one exception that appeared today in the London Free Press by Warren Kinsella, former War Room guru of the election machine of Jean Chretien and author of books like: Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics. A book, I should add, that I bought, read and enjoyed thoroughly.
Now, I should also add that Kinsella and I do have some history. I took him on in an email exchange that I published in a column way back when Chretien was the Prime Minister and he was engaged in his “kicking ass” politics. Since then, he and I have established something of a détente. I admire what and how he does things and he no longer calls me names. Politically, we can agree to disagree. When his dad died a few years back I sent him a heartfelt message and he replied graciously.
Having said that, I can’t understand his position in this piece. Aslam has been outed as an NDP party insider. This whole thing stinks of set-up. She may try and minimize her role, but reverting back to my high school Latin, res ipsa loquitor. She is not what she tried to portray herself as being in those hundreds of news stories written by the MSM in the days after her ejection from the Harper rally. Fortunately for the rest of us, her 15 minutes of fame are up. Or at least they should be, were it not for Kinsella’s attempt to prolong them.
But the salient issue here is that campaign events are private events. Those who stage a private event get to choose who can attend. While there is no doubt the RCMP ejected Aslam, from what I can tell from the media reports, they did so at the behest of local party organizers. And that is very normal. It happens at every campaign event at which a leader appears, regardless of party. Albeit, it is usually a party volunteer or contracted security that performs the deed, but the end result is the same.
Campaign events are staged not spontaneous. At every one, and I have overseen security at a great many, party insiders from the local riding staging the event scrutinize those attending and identify anyone who is an outsider. Whatever the parties say to the contrary, that is the way it happens.
The reasons are simple. The leader is coming to deliver a message that will hopefully gain some traction with the media. But, the other salient purpose of these events is to pump up the volunteers, campaign workers and folks who slog in the trenches to dig in and work harder to get out the vote. They are not staged to allow undecided voters to hear the message and hopefully decide to vote for their guy. That may be the stated illusion, but it isn’t the case. And the last thing the local riding associations want is a heckler or someone who will embarrass their leader on what is likely their only shot at hosting the party leader.
Should the RCMP have been involved in tossing Aslam? Decidedly not. And they have apologized for that. The local riding association should have arranged for their own volunteer or contracted security force. But Aslam had no “right” to be at that meeting and the party organizer was quite within their right to ask that she be removed. The same happens at Liberal events and even NDP events.
On that, I can guarantee I am correct. I have been there.
Leo Knight
primetimecrime@gmail.com
As always, there’s more to the story
It is getting a little tiring watching all the mainstream media drinking each other’s bathwater on the story of the poor teen 19 yr. old “student,” Awish Aslam, turfed from a Tory election rally in Guelph. A google search of her name reveals more than 30 pages of stories written about her and the incident in the past five days. Dish up the pablum and a pliant media lap it up.
But clicking a couple of more pages reveal this link. It might look like a bunch of gobbledy-gook but it is actually HTML script of an email written on Dec. 2, 2008.
When you look at the script in an HTML viewer, you can see the entire email. Here it is. I enlisted the support of Pierre Bourque of Bourque.com fame to help me identify the people the email was sent to and as I thought, they are mostly all NDP MPs, party staff or other insiders. You will notice the supposed “victim” of Harper’s “goons” as some media and Michael Ignatieff have taken to calling the RCMP who were doing security for the Prime Minister, is one of the recipients.
The email refers the reader to Bourque’s website and a poll he was running. Well, on that date, Bourque tells me he ran two polls. This one and this one.
You will notice the polls were all about what was going on in Ottawa on that day which, of course all about the coalition the opposition were trying to form to usurp the government.
So, it would certainly appear that the poor 19 yr. old second year poli-sci student is really an NDP insider. This whole thing smells like a set up and the mainstream media have been played like a fiddle by the NDP.
But, of course, there could be something I’m missing.
Leo Knight
primetimecrime
Crime & Punishment 