Lotuslandia
Here in Beautiful British Columbia, SouthWest Division, we apparently love Viacom's ubiquitous Bus Stop Porn, but we hate Side-Of-The-Bus 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns.
Especially, as noted by local neandercon watchdog site 'Have You Had Enough Yet', if it comes from politically active students.
"Uppity college students are out there again creating trouble. Not only are they running a campaign to organize young people to come out and vote on May 17, but they're out there trying to place ads in Translink's buses and ALRT."
I heard resident TransLink hackflack Ken Hardie try to defend the indefensible on this issue after the public Transit Corporation refused to run the ads.
It was laughable.
When pressed, Hardie admitted that there was nothing politically partisan or party-specific whatsoever in the ads.
So why did TransLink suppress them?
Well, seems Hardies' little flock-'o'-minions went searching the Internet and discovered 'gasp!' stuff from one of the sponsoring groups, the Canadian Federation of Students, that excoriated the current Provincial Government for their punitive tuition hikes that have continued unabated since they came to power four years ago.
Perhaps if said students would stop trying to make a difference and instead spent more time participating in socially useless hijinks they could get their message across if it was something more neanderconically palatatable like, say, frat-house panty raids to raise donations for tsunami condo-owners who have been forced to move their offshore real-estate resort investments to Mazatlan and Maui.
But seriously, regardless how or why it was done, voter suppression is voter suppression and those responsible must be exposed and held accountable.
Trouble is, we don't know who really did the deed because TransLink, a public agency that we, the people, apparently own is hiding behind flacks like Mr. Hardie.
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Update: All this got us to wondering.....just how many folks who pay his salary has Ken Hardie helped to get on a bus or train anyway? Certainly not these ones:
"The municipally-controlled transit provider (TransLink) will also no longer operate buses out of the downtown core after 1:50 a.m. Bus service from downtown has been available until 3 a.m. for the past 30 years. Ken Hardie, TransLink spokesman, said people like Larson and downtown club-goers and nightclub workers will simply have to make alternative arrangements.
"TransLink is becoming weary of taking shots from both sides. We have people who don't want to pay more through a vehicle levy and on the other side, people complaining about the cuts," said Hardie, adding Larson should try and convince people that a vehicle levy is a good thing.
Hardie blamed unionized bus drivers in part for the cancellation of late-night service downtown, because they're not prepared to work only on busy nights. "The union contract forbids us from doing that. If we have a service it must be up all the time."
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