Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- As I'd suspected, the Cons are making clear that the kind of behaviour that would get any mere civil servant fired on the spot will be treated as entirely unobjectionable in a parliamentary secretary like Bob Dechert.

- Meanwhile, it shouldn't come as much surprise that the massive cost of losing access to Camp Mirage was obvious long before the story reached the public. Nor that the Cons will keep pretending they never could have foreseen the result no matter how clear the paper trail to the contrary.

- Frances Woolley points out the moral hazards involved in pension funding - while also recognizing that the dangers are lower in publicly-administered plans than in schemes which count on individuals to monitor exactly the advisers they've hired for their greater expertise.

- Finally, as BigCityLib points out, both Karen Kleiss and Geoff Dembicki have started to dig into the Ethical Oil Institute. But I'd think the most interesting part of the astroturfing effort is the belief that it can be turned into something more:

Velshi has since staunchly maintained his independence, telling the Globe and Mail he "won't take money from any foreign corporations, any governments." (Though he did admit in the same interview he wouldn't refuse money from a Canadian company).

At the same time, he's pleaded with ordinary Canadians to donate to his cause.

"We rely on small donors like you to sustain our grassroots advocacy," reads the EthicalOil.org website. "Please consider making a $5, $10, or $15 donation."

That's right: well-connected political insiders are asking for grassroots donations to fund PR for an industry that's already making billions on its own. Which figures to be at most a drop in the bucket for the money that will be spent promoting the tar sands - but figures to be more useful to getting donors to think they've done something socially useful while actually helping the same multinationals who profit from exactly the same human rights abuses presented by the Cons' allies as demanding action.