[LINK] "Kakistocracy"

[rfmcdonald]

James Bow's post says what I'd like to say.

While playing [Balderdash clone Slang Teasers], I discovered a word within the dictionary: kakistocracy. The word is defined as a system of government by the worst or least competent individuals possible. Better yet, the youngest member of our group who played the game — I believe he was eight at the time — defined the term as “government by people whose minds are filled with kaka.”

Sound familiar? Here’s a hint: look at Parliament Hill today.

Writing this post, I’m forced to pull myself back from expressing myself too intemperately. Whatever favour I’ve felt towards Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have been whittled away by the man’s arrogance, his government’s incompetence, and his party’s depraved cynicism. Elected under a mandate to punish the Liberals’ arrogance and sense of entitlement, his government has become the very thing they campaigned against. Their promise for more open and accountable government remains unfulfilled, largely as a result of Harper’s own intransigence.

We still have no public appointments commission thanks to Harper’s four-year-old fit of pique, incompetent partisans have been appointed to senior positions of government, the public budget office remains woefully underfunded, and the government supplies basic information about its financial plans only when it suits them — only after they’re found in contempt of parliament. Bev Oda is found to have lied to parliament, and she’s still in Harper’s caucus, still taking a limousine from one end of Parliament Hill to another. And Harper cares so little about the tradition of parliament as a place for democratic debate, he prorogues the House whenever working with it gets seriously inconvenient. And a party that was elected to, among other things, punish a government with a defence minister who gave a consulting contract to his ex-girlfriend now has an ex-advisor from the PMO who may have lobbied cabinet on behalf of his girlfriend’s company.

I’ve grown sick of this government — as sick of them as I was of the Liberals after their thirteen years in power. I want to see them defeated in the next election.

Bow's point about the lack of appeal of the Liberals also bears repeating.

It gives me no end of frustration to think that the main alternative to the Conservatives seem equally unpalatable. Maybe the Liberals have learned their lesson after five years in the wilderness, but I’m not entirely sure. There are some bright spots in the caucus, but the overall complexion of the party gives me little to be enthusiastic about. And, note that the Conservatives campaigned for good things back in 2006: that all public appointments be reviewed by an all-party committee of parliament, that the budget office be independent, serving the public before the government. All Ignatieff has to do to secure my vote, in my opinion, is to campaign on the promises that the Conservatives made back in 2006 — promises the Conservatives have yet to fulfill. The Liberals have given no indication that they’re willing to beat that drum.

Go, read.