Tony Clement is a deeply corrupt Conservative federal government minister. He should be sacked. He should be jailed for fraudulent conversion.

Money earmarked for border security bought cute little municipal projects in his riding instead. $50 million worth. He ran a fixed political lottery: the committee overseeing the allocations of this booty ended up with most of the moolah themselves.

Our tax dollars, in other words, went into a massive political slush fund for this Con minister and his cronies. Senior public officials connived at covering it all up. And the Office of the Auditor General has now formally announced its complicity, by refusing to investigate.

The RCMP is looking into the matter. Don’t hold your breath.

The corporate media and conservative chatterati hardly know what to do, with one or two honourable exceptions. They have for the most part retreated into silence, one hopes an embarrassed one, but with them you can never be sure.

It’s really a case of worlds in collision. Conservative ideology holds that taxes are essentially a kind of legalized theft from wealth-creating individuals. If you have to have them, keep ‘em low and spend them on necessities, like prisons and foreign wars. But what happens when the very purveyors of this coprolitic nonsense are caught with their hand in the cookie jar—and that jar under their arm?

When a veteran artist receives government grants, it’s fodder for vicious calumny by a vapid blonde ex-journalist on that perpetual amateur hour that is SunTV—whose owner has received millions of dollars in government hand-outs himself.

But when a government minister essentially steals $50 million to enhance his stature in his own riding, a curtain of quiet descends.

The sickening stench of Conservative corruption and hypocrisy is overwhelming. And there’s no end in sight.

Left-wing Tea Party, anyone? I think I’ll borrow a pitchfork and light a torch myself.

[H/t dBO]

UPDATE: How Tony Clements bought his seat in the House of Commons with our money.