Wednesday, January 23, 2013
AG Firing Fiasco (ctd)....Breaking News...
Twittmachine is humming with news that Ledge committee is 'offering' J Doyle a two year extension...Some concern that he might not take such a measly extension...Now, I think, it is becoming clear where that silly number came from (ie. the Wizards, not she who spoke it)...It appears they may be trying to force a showdown...Wags on the T'machine suggesting the Dippers were pushing for full six yr renewal...
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Mr. Doyle needs more time, lots of time:
BC Rail
Stadium roof
BC Hydro
Pacific Carbon Trust
Not that the libs are worth defending, but there's a side two to this fiasco.
That being the invertebrate silence and submissiveness of the NDP.
On the day John Doyle was axed Alex Tsakumis wrote that the NDP had known for two months what the libs planned. And they did nothing.
Their most publicly advantageous option?
1/ Go public,
2/ Denounce the termination,
3/ Promise voters that Doyle will be reinstated to a FULL six-year term.
4/ Bask in the sunshine.
Instead? Dix pleaded (pretty please!) that the libs should maybe reconsider...
By allowing Doyle to be axed what happens to ALL the inquiries?
BC Rail, Stadium Roof, BC Hydro, BC Ferries, Pacific Carbon Trust, the Regional Health Authorities Care Denial fiasco, MSP, and so on.
Dix's Plan B? Complain that the future premier of a majority government will find his "hands tied." A statement that isn't just insulting, but idiotic.
So someone tell us mere voters, what is Dix and the NDP so afraid of?
Chairman Eric Foster has taken leave of his Senses. He doesn't even Remember the Hon. Mike de Jong's motion on When John Doyle will start work.....
"By leave, the Hon. M. de Jong moved--
That the Legislative Assembly appoint Mr. Errol Price as the Acting Auditor General for the Province of British Columbia pursuant to section 7 of the Auditor General Act, effective from June 2, 2007 until the date when Mr. John Doyle is able to commence his official duties as Auditor General.
Motion agreed to."
I agree with Hugh: the AG will need time to audit BC Rail (the hot one), stadium roof, BC Hydro and the PCT. That amount of time will of course depend on whether auditable documents are produced in a forthright manner or not. Would it be partisan to note that the BC Liberals have never co-operated with the AG, have never presented figures based on accepted accounting principles? I think not, although the statement that the BC Liberals will never provide those figures probably is.
I would like to add another reason to the list: Minister Coleman's absolution of Western Forest Product's obligation to repay the discounted land tax it enjoyed on its private forest lands on SW Van Isle when it was permitted to take said lands out of the tax shelter and begin residential real estate development (the tax shelter is intended to encourage large property owners to keep their lands under continuous forest production; the discount permits paying a small percentage of what typical residential land tax payers pay.) The AG already said this act was "not in the public interest."
It's a matter of opinion whether allowing WFP to opt out of the land tax shelter was a good idea or not. It is quite another thing to favour them by absolving their obligation to repay the discounted tax afterward.
Come to think of it, we'll need AG Doyle to stay on for as long as it takes to integrate current public accounts with the upcoming forensic accounting of the BC Liberal kleptocracy for surely their sins will be visited upon our future prospects.
The rash, ham-handed, self-serving and ultimately futile misappropriations of public money characteristic of doomed regimes will be relatively easy to unravel; the first five BC Liberal semesters will in contrast be much more difficult to discern. Soon after the fates of the FastCat ferries and BC Rail were sealed, Gordon Campbell realized ( by way of Mike Harris' demise over Ontario Hydro) his neo-right ideal could only be achieved by stealth and thenceforward orchestrated a hands-on, byzantine and often disguised integration of of those ideals with cogency, consistency and thoroughness (that would have been admirable if it had served the public interest) throughout the civil service. Cogency and top-down control were key to its temporary success.
Unfortunately for BC, it will be the insidious, pervasive neo-right tendrils infesting the civil service, so characteristic of Gordon Campbell, that will haunt budgets for years to come. The crass and boorish fire-spotting that is supposed to pass for policy, so typical of Christy Clark, is in comparison relatively minor , relatively easy to expose and, happily for BC, much more temporary.
Stealth, cogency and top-down control were essential to Campbell's neo-right agenda. The day he had to go off-script was the day his slide began. Probably relieved in imagining that the BC Rail corruption trial had essentially been put to bed, he was soon confronted with the grim realities that eventually challenge every ideology: the neo-right recipe for broad prosperity was undeniably failing the vast majority, enriching the already-rich, and, worse for the BC Liberals, the forecast deficit of over $2 billion was six times bigger than the figure they'd been campaigning on throughout the 2009 election campaign. Here Campbell's trusty cogency rule was expeditiously ignored; thus top-down and stealth alone were deployed to hide the deficit emergency.
Once voters realized they'd been duped by Campbell's HST 'not-on-the-radar' lie, he now abandoned stealth and played his final card: the peace-offering of an immediate 15% personal tax cut, a completely top-down move that took even his cabinet unawares and in no way showed any policy or fiscal cogency whatsoever. And then he was finished, effectively fired by his own cabinet for the sake of the disgraced party (they said it was because he was a meanie but never acknowledged nor apologized for the deficit and HST campaign lies.)
Campbell was by most accounts an overweening control freak who is probably quite justified in assigning himself full credit for achieving many of the objectives prescribed by neo-right ideology (the beggaring of the public weal and substitution of a profiteering hegemony.) He appeared therefore bitter resigning what in his mind were the fruits of his leadership for his betrayers to enjoy. Having carried the HST can for Prime Minister Harper during his own trip to the polls, Campbell probably employed the meanness reputed to him by caucus to extricate a plum patronage position from the man who never did have to wear the HST lie, even though he was equally culpable. But probably most irksome to the now disgraced ex-Premier was the fact that his caucus never cut him any slack. After all, didn't he cut Rich Coleman some slack when the "Minister of Everything" (then Minister of Forests) brazenly chucked Campbell's essential rules out the window?
Another deja vu.
What made Glen Clark's reign so disastrous was his caucuses abject refusal, not only to tame his excesses, but even to criticize him.
Such candor would be what? - disloyal? And the benefit of that loyalty? Two NDP left standing in the Legislature.
Deja vu? Today the NDP meekly submitted to Doyle's farcical 'reappointment.' For more than two months no one has dared to question or explain why Dix never stood up to fight for Doyle.
This kind of timidity is expected to impress voters? This refusal to see the moral high ground, seize it and hold it, is expected to increase public trust?
It's not just their ideology that has tanked the libs. Knee-jerk partisan solidarity has entirely demolished their credibility. How many libs is it safe to elect? NONE.
That said, the time to shorten the leash on Dix's most cringe-worthy tendencies is NOW. Like it says on the page, "Please prove that you're not a (partisan) robot."
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