Thursday, November 22, 2012

SmearSiteGate, ctd...Was The Premier Involved?

DirtyTricksAreNotJustFor
TrickyDickAnymoreVille


While he reckons she sets the tone for her party's political bullying, Les Leyne of the VT-C thinks Ms. Clark was probably not directly involved:

...Clark has shown a penchant since winning the B.C. Liberal leadership for going negative in a big way on opponents like Dix and B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins. She wasn't likely directly involved in the (smear) websites.

But she set the tone, which encouraged the party to ignore the line that used to divide caucus work from partisan hackery...


But.

Here's the thing...

To the best of our knowledge no one in the proMedia has asked her, or members of her office, if they were involved.

In fact, they have refused to speak to the matter.

And no one in proMedia is banging down the door demanding an answer, one way or the other, for the record.

Which makes no sense at all based on Cassidy Olivier's original report in The Province that made it clear that people very, very close indeed to Ms. Clark were involved.

Essentially, right from the very beginning:

A Liberal Party attack website aimed at NDP leader Adrian Dix was crafted by government employees at the B.C. legislature under the watchful eye of the Premier’s Office and a Christy Clark loyalist, a series of government emails obtained by The Province reveal...

{snippety doo-dah}

...The recipients included two caucus research staff, a senior issues management co-ordinator with the Premier’s Office, and Don Millar, a close friend of Christy Clark who served as communications chair for her successful leadership campaign...

{snippety doodle dandy}

Hours after the initial Aug. 23, 2011, email was sent, Millar — who currently holds a lucrative contract with Government Communications and Public Engagement allowing him to bill up to $10,000 a month for advisory services — added Mike Wilson to the correspondence chain.

A former vice-president of the communications firm that helped Clark win the party’s leadership, Wilson was at the time on contract with the B.C. Liberal Party for “various” communications duties.

“This is good, adding Mike Wilson so he can get the domain in order,” Millar wrote. “Thomas, maybe you can develop a schedule for this project.”...

{snippety doodle-dandiest}

...On Aug. 31, 2011, Marshall sent out an email at 4:58 p.m. from his work account to the “team” under the subject heading “CantAffordDix” advising them that design on the site had been completed.

By this time, Shane Mills, director of issues management in the Premier’s Office, had been added to the thread. The message was sent to his private Gmail account, the documents show....


Millar.

Wilson.

Mills.


Again...

Rather than just assuming, as Mr. Leyne has has done, that Ms. Clark was not involved when members of her office and inner circle clearly were, why isn't the proMedia demanding that Ms. Clark answer, for the record, what she knew and when she knew it?

After all, when Woodward and Bernstein found out that Liddy, Haldeman and Mitchell were involved in Mistah Nixon's dirty tricks that was NOT the time that they walked away from the story.

OK?


________
Meanwhile, it would appear that the Wild Progressive Boys are up to their old tricks again, too....Bob Mackin has the definitive, back-story laden take on that one....

.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kazuko Komatsu gave thousands of dollars to the BC Liberals.

Is it legal for foreigners to interfere in our elections?

Ron S. said...

Your talking about MSM ethics and morals? There aren't any, just like the LIbERal party.

G West said...

Umm!

There is a principle of parliamentary democracy which, like the laws of gravity, has not yet been repealed.

It's a pretty simple thing really and it states that each minister is responsible for the actions of his or her subordinates. Another way of stating it is that what's done in the 'name' of a minister is done by the minister him or herself. Another name for this principle is "Ministerial Responsibility".

Since this little club was created by folks who are appointed, paid and directed by people from the Office of the Premier and since they were busy advertising that the production of this effort (an attack website) was crafted by ...government employees at the B.C. legislature under the watchful eye of the Premier’s Office and a Christy Clark loyalist...it's pretty hard to maintain that under the doctrine of ministerial responsibility Ms Clark ought to take the lumps for another royal screw up.

In fact, although we know she won't do anything of the sort now, it will - in the fullness of time (next May) become clear that Ms Clark is going to be fired for her repeated failure to accept that the utterly incompetent way she's handled her job is her RESPONSIBILITY....

Anonymous said...

It is clear that there no checks and balances protecting the electorate from government up to its' eyeballs in malfeasance of all sorts. Why do we have to wait for an election to throw these people out onto the street? There should be police in there or something.