Charlie Sheen

Born into wealth to a famous (and talented) dad, Martin, Charlie has had to endure a life of privilege and riches without doing much to earn it. Sure, he starred in the 1986 Oscar-winner Platoon and is today the highest paid star on TV, but he's also a freelance girl-beater, public drunk and, more recently, blathering idiot.

The past two weeks have seen a very public meltdown by Mr. Sheen that vies with the Libyan civil war headlines: lawsuits, a million followers on Twitter, losing his job on the show Two A Half Men, accusations of anti-Semitism, and threats of lawsuits. Did I miss anything?

I admire Martin Sheet. I love Platoon. Hell, I even like Emilio Estevez, but Charlie keeps letting me down. Chuck, you have everything in the world, so why do you insist on being a complete asshole?

Maybe that's the problem: he has everything in the world.

However, there's another dimension to all this: Charlie is on every American news channel, not to mention countless hits on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. All this media attention reminds me of the grotesque ending of Billy Wilder's savage, yet brilliant take on Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard:

Sure, Charlie is a screwed-up mess of a human being, but what about the rest of us who are witnessing his dissolution on our TVs and iPads like spectators at a car crash? Are we culpable?

The Toronto Community Housing Corporation

Toronto Community Housing Corporation CEO Keiko Nakamura, left,
and tight-lipped chair David Mitchell, right

These days in Toronto "TCHC" isn't a misspelling of the chemical in grass that gets you stoned. It's the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, the folks who run public housing, who were recently lacerated in an audit that uncovered interesting receipts such as:

* $40,000 on a staff Christmas party in 2009 plus $53,000 in 2008 -- the years of The Great Recession

* $3 million worth of bathroom and lighting fixtures from a single China-based supplier, Well Group Enterprises Ltd., made using 37 separate orders

* $5 million in purchases from that supplier since 2006, approved by then chief financial officer Gordon Chu, were inadequately documented, with no proof that the supplier was selected based on open and competitive bidding from local suppliers

You get the picture (read more at The Toronto Star). Contrast these shopping sprees to a huge waiting list of repairs that tenants are waiting for the TCHC to fix: bedbugs, water leaks, cockroaches, no heating. You know, little stuff like that that effects some of the 164,000 tenants who live Toronto's public housing. Take a look at one unit:

It's front page news all over Toronto, a city where people sleep on the streets in sub-zero temperatures. Like every Torontonian, Mayor Rob Ford is calling for heads to roll, and within days of the release of the audit the civilian board has resigned.

However, CEO Keiko Nakamura is hanging on, and at a public hearing this week some TCHC tenants actually applauded her. Perhaps she's a scapegoat since she's the new boss and a lot of these excesses were spent under the former CEO Derek Ballantyne who isn't saying a hell of a lot.

Whatever the outcome, Ford is going to far by threatening to privatize the TCHC. Do we need public housing to be profit-driven, where cut-backs in quality (i.e. repairs) generates profits? I mean, don't we suffer that already?

Christiane Ouimet

It's been two years since I wrote an entry in this blog, which I launched in the wake of several Wall Street scandals which plunged the world (not just the U.S.) into The Deep Recession. The lack of shame, in the form of greed and arrogance, led to a mountain of toxic mortgages and inflated housing prices which ruined economies in America, Ireland, Spain and too many other places.

The two-year absence wasn't a result of laziness on my part, but to a general backlash against these offenders. Wall Street crooks were hauled before Congress, newspaper editorials raged, angry documentaries hit the screens. The world was becoming sane again.

Suddenly, we're hit with a rash of SHAMELESS actions by various people around the world. Maybe the old axiom is right: when it rain it pours. This rainstorm is enough to piss me off and nominate some new faces to The Hall of SHAMEless. Believe me, I wish I didn't have to do this, but I got the vent somehow. Let's start with someone close to home:

CHRISTIANE OUIMET

Christiane Ouimet was Canada's former public sector integrity commissioner in Ottawa. That means she was in charge of the agency that hears complaints from public-sector whistleblowers tattling on their bosses for doing corrupt things. Guess what? During her tenure:

* she received 228 disclosures of wrongdoing
* seven were investigated
* five were closed with no finding of wrongdoing
* two remained under investigation when Ouimet herself was being audited
* Ouimet harassed and berated her employees
* she sought reprisals against those she suspected of trying to undermine her

Add to this some serious allegations (actually the Canadian Press is reporting them as fact) that she tried to meet with the very folks she was supposed to investigate, even though her agency was supposed to be arm's length.

Well, Ouimet eventually lost her job, but walked with a golden gag order worth $407,000. That includes 18 months of regular salary plus foregone benefits worth $53,100. God knows where she's spending the taxpayers' hard-earned money? Ironic that the integrity commissioner is now hiding. No wonder kids today are cynical towards government.

Ms. Ouimet, you're not only Shameless, but Gutless.

More sordid details found here...and here.