Corrective Update:
Originally we had the wrong 'Arthur' attributed to the accounting firm now known as 'Accenture'. We apologize for that, and thank 'R.B.' in the comment threads for pointing out our mistake.
AllTheLobbyingThatFits
BestPlaceOnEarthForGood-TimesVille
Last week Sean Holman spilled the beans on the 'Progressive Group's non-lobby lobbying south of the 49th parallel.
It was an interesting and very important story given the extremely close ties between two of Progressive's principals, Mr. Patrick Kinsella and Mr. Mark Jiles, with the current 'built for good-times' government of British Columbia that is being run by Mr. Gordon Campbell.
At the time we noted three things about Progressive's long history of facilitating the fancies of their good friends:
One - Mr. Kinsella has a long history of working with Casinos which have had very, very good times indeed during the reign of Mr. Campbell, so much so that they rarely even bother to report suspicious activity anymore.
Two - Mr. Jiles has had a very up close and personal relationship with Mr. Campbell. After all, Mr. Jiles was the Premier's constituency manager in his home riding of Pt. Grey during the 2005 election cycle. Of course, such local campaigns should be snoozefests for a sitting Premier who is also sitting on a huge pile of good-times green from rising resource revenues. Interestingly, however, Mr. Campbell actually came reasonably close to losing (12,498 total votes), and indeed might of if a cardboard cut-out known as Gordon v2.0 hadn't sucked away the margin of victory vote from the NDP's Mel Lehan (10,248 total) and handed it to greenie Damian Kettlewell (4,111 total).
Three - The Progressive Group also 'helped' really, really, really good-times accounting conglomerate, Arthur Anderson/Accenture take over B.C. Hydro's accounts for a cool $1,450,000,000.00*.
And yes, you read that last number correctly.
That was 1.45 billion with a 'B' given to an American conglomerate to run our utility company, a conglomerate that looked the other way when Enron made up so much stuff that it ruined the lives of thousands of little people beause it made up all sorts of 'good-times' numbers for the fortunate few and their good friends.
Oh, ya, and just so you know, it is also Arthur Anderson/Accenture is also a conglomerate that must conform to the vagararies of US Patriot Act.
****
Anyway, it turns out that that one of the good-times guys from the Progressive Group, Mr. Jiles, also had a hand in helping the 'New Car Dealers Association Of British Columbia' educate the government of his former boss about the importance of putting money into the new 'Scrap-It' fund, proving once again that spending/consuming/buying more cars really is good for the environment (especially, when all those hunks of glass, metal and plastic sit idling their engines on the newly-twinned Port Mann bridge).
How do we know this for sure - about this 'environmental educating' business I mean?
Well, we were originally pointed in the right direction by the Anon-O-Maestro himself, 'Express Collision Shop', over at Mary's place.
Which sent us scurrying to the Provincial Lobbyist's Registry**.
And here is what we found (click on image for a bigger version)......
Which means, of course, that at least this time (ie. as compared to last time), Mr. Jiles registered to help the local good-times boys that sell cars make a whole pile of money***.
OK?
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*This is an aspect of the story that Vancouver Province columnist Mr. Michael Smyth picked up on after the fact (and did a very nice job on), not that we are in any way suggesting that Mr. Smyth is stealing our stuff. After all, that would put him in the company of a very different type of columnist, one of whom was recently fired by the Province for doing just that.
**You know, the registry that another good-times insider, Mr. Kenneth Dobell, originally ignored after he helped set it up until he was convicted of doing so when he shouldn't have because he too was, well, lobbying his former boss, who also just happens to be Mr. Gordon Campbell.
***Which, of course, is ironic in the extreme given that Mr. Campbell's good-times coalition is really nothing more than a cleverly re-packaged version of the old Socred car salesmen's coalition gone wild.
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