In this issue:

Gaffe of the month
No, Mr. Klein, "profit" is not a dirty word. But "gouging" is.

Fat, greedy and proud of it
What does GM's ad for the new Canyon say about us?

The White House fakes it
The Medicare prescription drug bill needed lots of support to get Congress to pass it - like propaganda, lies and cover-up.

What conclusion can we draw?

The hottest new current affairs game show
on the Web

Gaffe of the month:

No, Mr. Klein, "profit" is not
a dirty word

"Is 'profit' a dirty word?", Alberta Premier Ralph Klein demanded of the province's official Loyal Opposition. The question betrays either a complete misunderstanding of the reaction to the news that Canadian insurance companies made record profits last year, or a callous misdirection of attention.

No, Mr. Klein, people are not objecting to profits. Most Canadians believe that businesses should make profits. After all, that's what they're for, and most Canadians agree that businesses have to remain profitable so that people can have jobs as well as the goods and services we all want and need.

But people are objecting to the news that insurance companies made record profits last year - 700 percent of the previous year, after charging huge increases in automotive as well as home insurance rates, while crying that they wouldn't make any profits.

Remember that the announcement comes after a year of news stories about people who couldn't get home insurance anymore. A year of political debates about insurance rates, a year in which insurance rates played important roles in several provincial elections.

"We can't make money at current rates," said the insurance companies. So Canadians grudgingly accepted the increase in their rates. Now we find that these same companies have not only raised rates, but made their highest profits in years!

The Insurance Bureau of Canada, however, says these record returns are still lower than their targets. That's obvious misdirection. Their spin doctors knew that this announcement would generate outrage, so they try to say right from the start that it's really not big, it's quite small - lower than targets, lower than profitability rates for other financial services. Still, it's a record - the highest profits the industry has ever had. The next closest came in 1997 - boom time - at $2 billion.

Insurance companies are complaining that their costs are higher, citing higher "re-insurance" costs and increasing fraudulent claims for home and automotive insurance. And don't forget, they're also trying to recoup their losses following September 11 and the stock market downturn.

In other words, they're making their customers pay for their mistakes, all while telling customers they're lucky to be getting insurance at all.

Profits aren't dirty. But maybe the insurance industry is playing dirty: by crying poverty when their projections point to record profits, by making up for their investment mistakes by charging higher prices to their customers, by pressuring governments to maintain their inflated bank accounts, and most of all by blaming the victims - we consumers who have to pay the home, auto life and other premiums.

Interestingly, this is happening when the number of insurance carriers - the companies who actually make the money - has shrunk through mergers and acquisitions. Maybe the real cause of rising prices is not external factors, but declining competition.

What really aggravates most of us, though, is the knowledge that we absolutely need insurance - in fact, we're required by legislation to buy auto insurance from private companies in most provinces, and we all pay steep increases every year.

It's time for the insurance industry to change its tune a little bit. Stop treating us like we're stupid: you can't claim poverty and record profits in the same twelve-month period. If you're going to lie, then come up with a better story. So, Mr. Klein, we don't mind profits. We mind being gouged.

We can always count on Ralph Klein for a memorable statement.

Bad ad

GM Canyon: a paean to
gasoline gluttony

GM has brought out a lot of new models this year, and is advertising them heavily. The TV ad for the new GMC Canyon truck shows it on the highway scale among 18-wheel heavy rigs. Then it shows the truck in action, pulling a big stump and in the process toppling a county water tower.

Who is this appealing to? Only the person whose attitude runs something like "My truck is so needlessly heavy, it has to be weighed along with Freightliners! Not only that, I'm so irresponsible that I destroy essential public infrastructure while despoiling the natural environment! What? That doesn't qualify me as over-wealthy barbarian with more money than brains? How about this: I'll never need this much power in a vehicle! I live in a suburb with a gentle climate, and the most strenuous thing this truck will ever do is hauling drywall to finish my rec room!"

Hey, GM, if this works for you, great. Readers, if this commercial appeals to you, let me know.

When communication gets scary

It made for a funny bit on The Daily Show and other late-night comedy monologues, but the Dubya administration's latest communications coup is really frightening. Even the New York Times described the story as having an "Orwellian taint."

The new Medicare prescription drug bill, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush last December, had a tough time getting passed by a Congress that was told the total cost would be $400 billion over 10 years. However, it now appears that the cost will be more than $530 billion - a 32.5% difference. Senior health bureaucrats in the U.S. say that the administration knew that before the bill was passed but withheld that information from Congress. The chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Rick Foster, said that his calculations showed the cost would be $551 billion, but that the head of the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to fire him if he told Congress anything but $400 billion. This allegation has led to a formal investigation by the department. After the bill was passed into law, the White House admitted the cost could go as high as $534 billion.

Once the law was passed, the White House then promoted the program by producing its own news reports. The administration hired actors to portray real TV news reporters and sent tapes to stations across the country - many were aired, such as one purportedly by TV journalist Karen Ryan. The trouble is, there is no such TV journalist as Karen Ryan - or if there is, she's not the one who made the report.

From a communications point of view, what does all this mean? That the White House has found new forms of propaganda, that it has lied to Congress, and that it's spending more than anyone could ever imagine on one program that limited to seniors? There's nothing new in that. But what is new is this form of propaganda - as The Daily Show's comedy writers called it, "info-ganda."

It shows the depth of contempt the current American administration seems to hold for the media and the American public in general. "Don't tell Congress how much something will cost until it's too late," and "Don't trust the real news media to report the benefits of the drug plan" seem to be the philosophies at work here.

But what else can you expect from a President that wasn't elected by a majority of voters?

Bush beats Clinton in the lying department hands-down.
(Photo source: ABC News)

What conclusion can we draw?

Round One:

RCMP raids Ottawa Citizen reporter Jennifer O'Neill's house and office, seizes documents related to her Maher Arar exposé

And

PMO, Cabinet squirm and try to shift blame over Auditor-General's report on sponsorship in Quebec

What conclusion can we draw?

That our current federal government doesn't believe in open and honest communication.

The Auditor-General's report has implicated not only senior bureaucrats, but also the most senior political ranks in the country - up to the Prime Ministerial level. Their reactions have bordered on panic. Current ministers and the Prime Minister have blamed the previous government, each other and, naturally, bureaucrats.

It's interesting, though, that the actions of supposedly non-political managers and civil servants could have such politically-tinged results: paying off politically-connected communications companies.

It's one thing when the Auditor-General exercises her mandate and uncovers wrong-doing. This is what we have an Auditor-General for, after all. It's far worse, though, when a media organization like the Ottawa Citizen can gather enough information to publish embarrassing and damaging stories about their mistakes or intentional wrong-doing - as Jennifer O'Neill did about the Maher Arar case. What was the government's response in that case? They sent in their senior police force to confiscate the journalist's notes and research materials. It's an action the Canadian government would protest if it happened in another country.

When people protested that this was going too far, the government simply fell back on the strategy they employed in the sponsorship scandal: they blamed unnamed officials. Any organization that goes to these lengths to get in the way of investigations obviously has a lot to hide. The information that has come out so far is only, as the cliché goes, the tip of the iceberg. Trying to hide these problems, any government should realize by now, is useless. The attempts to ship the blame are so obviously lies that they only confirm the public's suspicions.

What conclusion can we draw? The current Canadian government (at least) doesn't believe in open, honest communication or in "transparency" of its operations - no matter what it says.

Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill's files were raided by the RCMP because she reported the truth about Maher Arar.

(Photo source: Ottawa Citizen)

Embarrassed by the sponsorship scandal:

Alfonso Gagliano, former Minister of Public Works

Jean Pelletier, former Chair of Via Rail

Michel Vennat, former chairman of the Business Development Bank of Canada

and especially

Paul Martin, new Prime Minister

(all photos in this section from CBC Online)

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