What Is Commander Campbell Afraid Of?

Vancouver, B.C.
49°15'N; 123°08'W

He says nothing:

"The House Leader will determine how the Throne Speech and the legislative agenda . . . will take place, but there will be full budget debate," he (Premier Campbell) said.

If that truly is the case, why then did the Shrieker from the Bridge, I Claudius Richmond, go berserk recently and ridiculously limit debate during question period in the Legislature?

"Richmond told the house on Thursday that MLAs must follow strict time lines in posing questions, so more than three people can ask questions during the 15-minute question period. He said members must take no longer than a minute to pose their first question, 30 seconds for the supplementary and 20 seconds for the second supplementary question."

Which, of course, sounds kind of like the rapid fire round on the new and improved 'Twenty-Five Billion Dollar Pyramid Scheme!'

Except I-Claudius is no Dick Clark and those crippling user fees, tuition fees, transit fees, and health insurance premiums, not to mention those 5000 missing longterm beds that Joy McPhail brought up in the house just before his Richness started scribbling out the new Q.P. rules on the back of an envelope containing a memo from Steve Puhallo, sure are lousy consolation prizes for the Province's 750,000 low income wage earners to take home along with their shiny new $34 dollar a year tax cut.

Which is not say that there aren't a few real winners in the We've-Got-All-The-Pie Scheme. Like, say, those 11,000 super rich, super natural British Columbians that have already raked in $60,000 in tax cuts in the last three years and who will now get even more.

Once again, Commander Campbell from the Bridge:

"We are on the edge of a truly exceptional time. The golden decade that lies ahead of us is yours."

El Capitan Gordo said that to a cheering, breast-beating, overflow crowd of 500 at the Vancouver Board of Trade the other day. By our own 'back of the envelope' estimate we figure that 437 of those folks already had their tickets to the luxury cabins in the pockets of their Armanis.

And the remaining 73?

Well, they were down on bended knee attempting to still their beating hearts so that they could catch wind of the magic words that would make it possible for them too to screw the rest of us (ie. 3 million or so and counting) on their way to the promised Land-Ho!

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Update: Correction about that Twenty-Five Billion Dollar Pyramid Scheme. Listening to David Schreck destroy neoRovian (export edition), John Eisenstadt, on Rafe Mair today we learned that it is closer to $30 billion.