If you were concerned that our new Prime Minister might not afford us as much rich blogging material as his predecessor, you may be able to rest easy. So far, he seems to be leaving the occasional high fastball out over the plate.
We've already been treated to the story of paulmartintime.ca, the parody web site that got Martin's people upset enough to threaten legal action. That, predictably, had the effect of creating publicity for voices critical of Martin, boosting the site's hit rate substantially and casting the Prime Minister in the role of the enemy of free speech. Now it appears the matter will be allowed to simply fade into oblivion, which is how it should have been handled in the first place. (Hat tips to Blogs Canada and James Bow.)
One of Paul Martin's first acts as Prime Minister was to quietly boost the pay of his new cabinet ministers' senior political staff by more than $32,000 a year.Martin has very publicly 'frozen' the civil service for all who don't fall into the category effected here, saying in effect that they'll be lucky to keep what they have. But the elites, appointed by cabinet to work for cabinet, get a big, fat increase. And this is from the guy who wanted to make government into a more open and horizontal organization. This stuff writes itself.
I've recently finished reading Susan Delacourt's Juggernaut: Paul Martin's Campaign for Chretien's Crown and it certainly seems to confirm some things about our PM. For example, he rarely does anything without talking to at least 57 different people first. And finding 57 people to talk to isn't a problem for Martin because he knows hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. So why wouldn't at least one of them say something about the optics of privately pumping up the elites while quite publicly saying 'tighten your belts and prepare for the worst' to the rank and file?
Instead of looking like the statesman who wants to defeat the democratic deficit, Martin comes off here looking like the corporate 'fixer' who 'turns companies around' for the benefit of the investor class. That can only invite more references to Canada Steamship Lines, which isn't where Martin really wants us to go.
Batter up.
