“Don't
hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.”
The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed
that greedy thought in his novel The
Brothers Karamazov 125 years ago.
Dostoyevsky’s
words have become a mantra for politicians and others who consider themselves important
enough to suck up entitlements as thoroughly as a sewer vacuums. Examples of
demanding more and taking more stretch from sea to shining sea, notably in government
and politics.
There is the
Canadian Senate expense account scandal, of course, and the outrage about
Alberta Premier Aliston Redford’s air travel expenses. The Commissioner of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police apologized and had to pay back the cost of using
on-duty RCMP officers as an honour guard for his marriage to a senior Ottawa
bureaucrat.
A fresh
example is found at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Its president Hubert
Lacroix has apologized for claiming $30,000 in expenses to which he
wasn’t entitled. He says it was a careless error. If you can’t figure out your
expense account, what are you doing running the CBC?
Also, it’s
been revealed that the CBC’s millionaire news reader Peter Mansbridge took big
bucks to speak to petroleum producers. The Toronto Sun said the speaking fee
was $28,000. In my journalistic world the only people you take money from are your employers. Mansbridge said it’s OK because all his paid speaking engagements
are cleared by CBC senior management, which includes the president who can’t figure
out his own expenses correctly.
We live in a
country where the elite and people in power have become so blinded by entitlement that they
have difficulty seeing the difference between right and wrong.
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