{"id":40466,"date":"2017-10-14T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T09:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40466"},"modified":"2017-10-13T19:15:14","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T23:15:14","slug":"its-not-the-actual-dollar-amount-wasted-its-what-it-reveals-about-the-federal-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/10\/14\/its-not-the-actual-dollar-amount-wasted-its-what-it-reveals-about-the-federal-government\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s not the actual dollar amount wasted, it&#8217;s what it reveals about the federal government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nationalpost.com\/opinion\/colby-cosh-200000-on-a-budget-cover-thats-exclusively-liberal-tomfoolery\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Colby Cosh<\/a>, giving full credit for the scoop to Tom Korski, on the minor-but-revealing way the federal government treats taxpayer money:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even as I summarize this news, I can see the potential for various kinds of carping from ad men or illustrators who don\u2019t want their oxen gored. \u201cSigh, this is just business as usual.\u201d Like hell it is: under the Conservatives the finance department used plain covers or inexpensive stock photos for the budget. This is exclusively Liberal tomfoolery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, but the cost is perfectly reasonable for what we got!\u201d Two hundred thou for one document, huh? Try that one out on a newspaper art director. Try it out on anyone who ever worked for a magazine, particularly one with newsstand sales that actually depended on a fancy cover.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe you\u2019re thinking, \u201cEven if it\u2019s a bit ridiculous, it\u2019s ONLY $200,000 against a background of billions.\u201d But is it? To me this is the most intriguing part of all. Blacklock\u2019s quotes an e-mail (\u201cIt\u2019s fresh. I love where this is going\u201d) from someone who has the title \u201csenior marketing advisor for the finance department\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Am I the only one left asking, \u201cWhy the hell does the federal finance department need a marketing advisor?\u201d The \u201csenior\u201d part denotes a six-figure salary, none of which is included in the cheque that was written to the nice creatives at McCann. Is the finance department a business whose revenues depend on effective advertising? Does Canada\u2019s federal government have several finance departments contending with each other for market share?<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>This is the sort of use of public funds for essentially partisan purposes that we can\u2019t throw anybody in jail for, except in my daydreams. Blacklock\u2019s uncovered e-mails make this positively explicit: in arguing over the 2016 budget cover someone observed that, \u201cJustin Trudeau\u2019s election mantra was all about positivity, change, and optimism for the future. We want this budget cover to illustrate that feeling.\u201d I would say this utterance is not quite in the tradition of our public service, except for my fear that it is a perfect expression of the real tradition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colby Cosh, giving full credit for the scoop to Tom Korski, on the minor-but-revealing way the federal government treats taxpayer money: Even as I summarize this news, I can see the potential for various kinds of carping from ad men or illustrators who don\u2019t want their oxen gored. \u201cSigh, this is just business as usual.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84],"tags":[697,887,428],"class_list":["post-40466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","tag-budget","tag-justintrudeau","tag-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-awG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40467,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40466\/revisions\/40467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}