Blogspot | 25Mar2011 | blackrod
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/03/gail-asper-hits-up-sam-katz-for-your.html
Gail Asper hits up Sam Katz for
your tax money. Will he say No means No?
Told ya.
No sooner does Mayor Sam Katz raise your property taxes (you say levy,
we say lie), than the usual panhandlers come crawling out of their
holes.
Did someone say Asper? Oh. We did.
Yep, millionaire moocher Gail Asper has been circling City Hall for
weeks, waiting for the trough to be refilled so that she can be first
in line---- with Mayor Sam's help.
Katz intends to raise $14 million from a hike in frontage levy, the
most regressive property tax possible. He blubbers that the money will
be dedicated to street repairs. Except for the fact that the amount the
city spends on street repairs won't be going up by $14 million. In
fact, it won't be going up at all.
The higher levy will only
replace money which will now be spent elsewhere---like the pet projects
of millionaires.
Aka the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
Gail Asper has her eyes
set on at least half of the money you'll be paying for the increase in
your frontage levy.
She desperately needs it -- to pay the taxes on the CMHR.
Remember, the CMHR stiffed the city on its tax bill last June--- until
they were shamed into paying it by The Black Rod. With tax time just
around the corner, they've got no money again.
So Gail has gone running to her new sugar daddies, Sam Katz and Greg
Selinger.
She spilled the beans in an interview with Maclean's magazine released
Wednesday:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/03/23/on-overcoming-indifference-why-it-isn%E2%80%99t-a-museum-of-genocide-and-winnipeg%E2%80%99s-windfall/
Q: There
are some concerns about the museum’s ability to pay millions in
property tax to Winnipeg each year. Ottawa is providing $21.7 million
annually in operating expenses, but said it won’t pay more. Who’ll
cover the gap?
A: ...Museum management
is in positive discussions with the city and the province for
additional funding...
We'll just have to wait to see how positive.
Sam Katz went through weeks of an election campaign pretending
ignorance about funding a new football stadium. No sooner was the
campaign over than he announced he had made a backroom deal to pay
David Asper, Gail's older brother, four million dollars to reward him
for his failure to build the stadium privately.
At the same time, to win the election Katz repeatedly said he was
against increasing property taxes because it would affect the poorest
homeowners the worst. Then, after the election, he mocked the voting
public by raising another property levy, a tax which will hit the
poorest homeowners even worse.
Watch him pretend he knows nothing about the "positive discussions" to
forgive the taxes on a millionaire's pet project while sticking it to
the homeowners who have no choice but to pay for her, ahem, "vision."
As for Greg Selinger... the dirtiest politician in Manitoba. He will
say and do anything to win an election. So borrowing more money to give
to a millionaire is exactly what he will do if he thinks it will help
him on the campaign trail.
Deceit has been the central theme of the CMHR project.
They lied to the Senate when they promised that private donors would
cover the cost of all construction overruns. (Hey, that's the same lie
spun by David Asper when he was soaking us for the stadium.)
They kept saying they were on target with private fundraising for
construction until The Black Rod exposed that they were $50 million in
the glue.
Here's just the latest whopper from Gail Asper in the Maclean's
interview.
"The idea wasn’t that we
were going to impose a human rights museum on Canada. The idea was that we were going
to listen to what Canadians wanted and work with them to
deliver something that everyone could embrace."
Say what?
The public was NEVER asked if they wanted to fund Izzy Asper's $300
million-plus human rights museum. It was sold as a private project with
some financing from the public purse. And suddenly, with no discussion,
presto change-o,
it was a public project with some financing from private donors.
When long-gone NDP Premier Gary Doer doubled the provincial
contribution to $40 million, there was no public discussion, no
"listening" to the taxpayers. It was inserted in the budget and, poof,
the money was in Gail Asper's lap.
Every shred of evidence is that the CMHR was indeed "imposed" on
Canada. Nobody knows that better now than the Ukrainian community which
was tricked by Izzy Asper into supporting his museum by a bogus promise
to treat the killing of Ukrainians by communists (the Holodomor)
equally with the killing of Jews by Nazis (the Holocaust).
With the building well under construction, the Ukrainians discovered
the design approved by the proponents of Izzy Asper's museum called for
a stand-alone gallery to discuss the Holocaust, while the other mass
murders of ethnic groups throughout history would be lumped together in
something called a Mass Atrocity zone.
The Ukrainians got their hands on tender documents and, to their
dismay, learned the extent to which they have been lied to.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress issued a news release Feb. 8, 2011.
(You know, the one the Winnipeg Free Press NEVER reported.)
"UCC has obtained tendering documents from the Government of Canada’s
MERX system which demonstrate that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
has no intention of including permanent or prominent displays of the
Holodomor or of Canada’s First National Internment Operations. They
provide further evidence that the Museum’s content is set in stone and
that it will proceed on the basis of the discredited Content Advisory
Committee Report."
snip
"The tender documents indicate that
there will only be a single photo of the Holodomor in its
electronic displays. A clarification issued to bidders illustrates that no floor space is being
allocated to the Holodomor or to Canada’s First National Internment
Operations, in stark comparison to other permanent
galleries."
A shocked UCC President Paul Grod said,"They say that a picture is
worth a thousand words, but in this case, the museum would like
Canadians to believe that a single photo adequately represents the
suffering of millions of victims and survivors of the Holodomor, some
of whom are still living in Canada”.
One picture, eh. Well, it's better than a sign over a box of Kraft
dinner and a Ukrainian Easter egg.
But the foundation of the CMHR is beginning to crack (metaphorically
speaking.)
Step
One:
The federal government has appointed a Uke to the board of
trustees of the CMHR. (What? You didn't read about this in the Winnipeg
Free Press? That's funny.)
New board member Dr. Lindy Ledohowski, is an Assistant Professor in the
Department of English at St. Jerome's University in the University of
Waterloo. She's also described as a communications consultant. Dum de dum dum.
Dr. Ledohowski sports a B.A. (Honours) from the University of Manitoba,
a B.Ed. in Secondary English and History from the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of
Toronto.
As far back as December the UCC had asked the federal government to
reconstitute the museum's board of trustees to make it "more reflective
of Canadian society.” Now there's somebody who can read the internal
documentation with fresh eyes. Could that be a reason for...
Step Two: Two
of the four top executives at the CMHR have hightailed it out with
scarcely time for a buh-bye.
Victoria Dickenson was the "chief knowledge officer", a fancy name for
curator. It's hard to describe her job, since nothing written about her
actually spells it out.
The Winnipeg Free Press said she "headed up a team of researchers and
exhibit designers who were working on programming for the CMHR." She
was big on new media, we gather.
Angela Cassie, director of communications for the CMHR, told the FP
that Dickenson left after "laying a museological foundation upon which
we can grow and further develop our inaugural exhibits."
You read that right. The "director of communications" said the
dear-departed curator "laid a museological foundation."
Can someone define 'communication' to Ms. Cassie.
Still, Dickenson thought it was a good time to leave the "iconic"
museum that going to electrify the world to take a job at an art
gallery in Kleinberg, Ont. No, we don't know where that is, either.
Dickenson disappeared swiftly and quietly only 3 weeks after the
mysterious departure of Chief Operating Officer Patrick O'Reilly.
O'Reilly had been a very public face of the CMHR for more than two
years. He was a spirited liason between the gay community and the
museum.
Representing the Canadian Museum for Human Rights at the inaugural
Queer Hall of Fame Awards in Vancouver in 2009 he broke the ice with a
riff on gay rights. (emphasis
his)
"On that note, let me just say a word about “GAY RIGHTS.” Honestly, I’m
not sure what a gay right is. I suppose if I were to joke it might be
the right to be FABULOUS. Perhaps it’s the right to be butch, or the
right to accessorize?"
He popped up this week on a panel at the University of Manitoba on
creating safe workplaces and protecting the rights of lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgendered workers.
As for why he left the CMHR so abruptly? Nada. But does it have
anything to do with....
Step
Three: March 31 is fiscal year end. The museum has to
provide a financial accounting.
How ugly is it going to be, you ask? Well, there's....
Step
Four: As we reported earlier this month, the federal
government is cutting about $1 million from the museum's budget to trim
spending and fight the federal deficit.
Which brings us to...where we started, at the top.
Earlier articles on
the CMHR by Black Rod are archived at:
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/03/gail-asper-hits-up-sam-katz-for-your.html
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/03/ethnic-division-over-cmhr-is-shaping-up.html
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/02/asper-curse-begins-eating-away-at-cmhr.html
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/01/gail-asper-to-ukrainians-shut-up.html
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2010/12/some-victims-are-more-equal-than-others.html