Breaking news: City hall is corrupt

Corruption central. Photo via Flickr

So, yes, the Charbonneau Commission. It’s almost become banal, hasn’t it? Even our former mayor, Gérald Tremblay — who was put under police protection after, it turned out, he may have been targeted by shady figures — didn’t have that much to say, denied knowing anything in city hall was amiss, a fact he attributed to being preoccupied with shit like the whole 2005 FINA aquatic games debacle.

And then Gilles Cloutier, a 73-year-old former political organizer, took the stand and talked about political vote-buying dating back to the olden days of the ‘50s and ‘60s, when one had only to exchange home appliances or livestock for Liberal votes. Indeed. Cloutier was also a business development dude at an engineering firm from 1995-2005. And now he’s saying a Quebec Superior Court judge, Michel Déziel, was involved in municipal-level political corruption while still a lawyer. Pauline Marois and other Parti Québécois types are now saying the Commission should tread lightly. How ominous.

Richard Henry Bain, the guy charged with the shooting outside Metropolis, which was meant as an attempt on the newly elected premier Pauline Marois’s life, is doing what people who defend themselves in court tend to do: talk crazy shit. Among other things, Bain contends that the PQ is an apartheid government and that he’s some kind of political prisoner.

The spire that will sit atop One World Trade Center, making it the tallest building in the Western hemisphere, recently went up — after the Terrebonne company that made it was essentially accused of holding it for ransom because the Port Authority owed it $6-million for other steel work it did for the project. Per the company’s CEO, from a while back: “I’m not holding it hostage. Pay me and then you get your antenna. Let’s resolve everything, then you get your nice antenna so you can put it up.”

Hey, looking for a job? There’s always this one.

And, finally, in spite of this, today brings good news for those of us who subsist on
junk food. ■