Wednesday, February 26, 2014

This Day In Snookland...Where Sparkle Ponies Come From.

WhoNeedsFactsWhenYou'veGot
NothingVille


Well, well, well...

Whaddy'a know.

It would appear those pre-election sparkle ponies, all one trillion of them, according to the Cheerleader-In-Chief, Ms. Pamela Martin at least, likely came from a land called 'Dubious'.

Focus Online's David Broadland has the story.

Below is his lede and a little bit more, but I highly recommend you go read the entire thing (me, I'm combing through the attached FOI material myself at the moment):

Emails between top-level BC civil servants show Premier Clark’s 100,000 LNG jobs were based on dubious assumptions thrown together at the last minute for her 2013 throne speech. Were those civil servants working for the public interest or Clark’s election campaign?...

{snippety doo-dah}

...Were the Prosperity Fund and the job claims (i.e. the sparkle ponies) part of an elaborate election ploy? It wouldn’t be the first time a government made an election promise it didn’t intend to keep. A more troubling possibility, though, is that Provincial public service employees and public funds were used to create that election ploy, contrary to the BC Standards of Conduct that govern what civil servants can do while on the job. Documents recently obtained by Focus through an FOI, and our independent analysis of a consultant’s report done for the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas days before Premier Clark announced the Prosperity Fund in February 2013, suggest that might be the case...

(sparkly stuff in brackets, above, mine)


Which, once again, has me wondering...

Is there anything that these people do and say that is actually on the up-and-up and not just an exercise in political expediency?

Seriously.

Anything at all?


.

19 comments:

Bill said...

Hi Ross

The answer to your question is NO. The "sparkle ponies" were/are just a device a long practised device in deception.

The evidence for this is in all (and do mean ALL) their actions. Not a shred of honesty, real efforts for families, the betterment of BCers, just the betterment of themselves - the Liberal insiders at the cost of the rest of us. Their actions reinforced and supported by the cheerleading sycophant press. How long can they keep getting away with this?

bcwaterboy said...

This certainly comes as no surprise at all but the sad part is how utterly duped the right faction of the province actually is. Once upon a time a great many "liberals" wanted Clark's head on a platter and just like the magical kingdom of the non-existent LNG bonanza she's all of a sudden hip again. Same holds true for this "balanced budget" sham she's currently selling. The story was printed in the local cradle of free enterprise paper without an once of critical thought that maybe the province may have a little debt problem on its hands.

Anonymous said...

RossK:

No.

This:

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/01/18/DontLikeRecall/

Or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CivDfBifsCY

SH

cfvua said...

So little is known about the natural gas industry in this province by voters that the little bit the liberals know can easily be blown completely out of proportion. This FOI obviously shows that as does previous research into vanishing/declining/handed back royalties. And now the producers are whining about a measly 7% that has been deflector spun by Global in their role as sales people of poor policy.

Danneau said...

Listened to Andrew Weaver yesterday morning talk about Liberals' numbers versus reasonable expectations and how he intends go get some straight answers out of them. Do you think? John Twigg left a comment over at PRP wherein he cites Weaver talking about a propensity to do "decision-based evidence making": a fit for CC, RC, PM and that gang as well as any one of the gang that's running the show in Ottawa (I'm looking at the demise of scallop and possibly oyster operations in Georgia Strait and Shea's insistence that herring off VI and Haida Gwaii are OK to plunder, despite evidence to the contrary from her own boffins and the FN folks).

Grant G said...

Fabulous work by Focus Magazine, well written by David Broadband..

LNG job numbers disputed, May 8th/2013.

http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2013/05/christy-clarks-lng-plans-and-job.html

Anonymous said...

"Province proposes four year terms for municipal politicians."

Well, short of a miracle, it looks like the Nocred-Liberals's grasping tentacles will finally gain a strangle-hold on municipal politics. And, it's not surprising, since so many of their hungry spawn emerge from their farm teams. Witness Penticton.

Four year termers will get that extra magical year to machinate unfettered by the shuttered eyes of small town media, for whom ad revenue is King, and the cheque-hand-over photo-op is standard fare.

You can be sure that the long-range gamers and Rotarianites are salivating...as altruistic community leaders with family and income obligations bow-out.

Oh, and that canard about getting up to speed on the job, and nothing getting done until the third term, is pig-slop. Our community said: cronies-r-not-us, and neatly swept away the diabolical-dullards-with-dollars, and ensconced a council whose brain-power and heart is likely unmatched.

SH

http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/province-proposes-four-year-terms-for-municipal-politicians-1.866695

scotty on denman said...

No "up-and-up", seriously, nothing at all---and here's why: every whopper the "Nocred-Liberals" (god! I love that! "Nocred..." har, har,...)...each and every one that isn't immediately refuted by the Opposition is like money in the robbers' sack, such that the bigger the whopper, the more valuable the silent non-response is. The preposterous LNG numbers Christy kept flagrantly inflating actually bought her the election---not on veracity (there plainly was none of that) but on the failure of the NDP to aggressively attack each and every mendacious utterance.

The NDP has long pretended to be above such sticks-and-stones engagement, a strategy that's failed consistently enough. Must be some kind of smugness gene that the NDP's brain-rust shows no contrition about the fact the Joy & Jenny show was more tenaciously critical of BC Liberal policy than fifteen times their number seem to be.

The "Nocreds" (heh, heh) appear proud of their whopper tactics; they certainly rely on it a lot---almost totally, as far as I can see---in fact, the bigger the whopper, the bigger their shit-eating-hound grins. And, by golly (or is that, by Machiavelli?...), they're going to use it for as long as it works.

the salamander said...

in what way does the C Clark fantasy and fallacy taking place in BC differ from that being perpetrated in Albertawa by S Harper ?

e.a.f. said...

yes, the sparkle ponies. that is all it is, make believe sparkle ponies. Bill Tielman's column was funny with the LSD/LNG things, so lets see, perhaps we can now refer to Christie Clark as the acid queen., they way she goes on about LNG and trillions of dollars and a 100K jobs, ya, she's on some sort of acid trip, complete with sparkle ponies. Now when her supporters figure it out, its going to be a very bad LNG/ACID trip for them. no jobs and over $60 billion in debt. You gotta love it. B.C. will simply become Detroit North

Anonymous said...

Be prepared for some PAB spin:

Phil Edmondston of Lemon Aid fame, on CBC Almanac yesterday, stated that electric cars are not the way of the future: expensive batteries, few regional dealerships with the capacity to repair etc.

I truly don't think it's political with him--he also warned someone off purchasing a new VW Camper because of a poor dealership/repair network, and the possible scenario of being up sh**t-creek-without a paddle, which btw, we experienced in deepest central redneck Wash.--the inception of my Westphalia phobia...

Too bad BC Almanac has no podcast of Phil's interview, I can't find current info re his claims...however, Almanac has a link to lots of stunning BC listener photos to make us feel even worse about what we stand to lose...

Anonymous said...

SH needs to adjust meds, that's me...Be prepared...

Glen Clark said...

One other piece of the LNG puzzle that rarely gets discussed is the fact that, to date, NO ONE has built an LNG facility on the basis of shale gas/fracking. So the risk to the proponents is the cost of drilling hundreds of wells constantly, rather than accessing conventional natural gas deposits. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but it will have higher operational costs than anything built in the past. Given that this appears to be almost the only economic initiative of the current provincial government, surely one might expect fulsome and 'critical' analysis in the major media.

Anonymous said...

I asked Bob Makin during the election if "anything and I mean ANYTHING that Christy Clark has been saying during the election can be considered truthful" and his response was " that's a good question"

Anonymous said...

Anon 9:50 am Feb. 26

Also witness Hunt, Surrey.

Anonymous said...

Power and influence deficit?

This is how the big boys do it:
SH

http://gawker.com/5826645/most-of-newt-gingrichs-twitter-followers-are-fake

Hugh said...

Max and Stacy talk about fracking:

Starts at 5:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3OnfPQEH0o#t=306

Sounds applicable to BC.

RossK said...

Thanks all--

Following up on a lot of it.

_____

Twitter followers--

Hmmmm...Didn't a member of the puffed-up Lotuslandian pro-punditry recently diss somebody about their lack of same (while, of course, simultaneously pointing to their allegedly massive number).

.

.

Grant G said...

Yes, I recall that Ross K..It was about the majot backlash when Global BC was promoting Enbridge through a bogus poll, Global`s Facebook page lit up..

_______



Grant G said...
Funny stuff indeed..

I hardly ever tweet on twitter, however, I did tweet Keith Baldrey, I told him to check out Global facebook page..I told Keith Baldrey that their own viewers are calling the poll and Enbridge support bullshit..

And guess what, Keith Baldrey had no courage to tweet me back publically, no, he`s a coward, he sent me two private messges..

Here they are..

____________



Keith Baldrey Keith Baldrey
@keithbaldrey
You have three whole followers! Wow!
09:46 PM - 21 Nov 13

________

And this one, after he insulted me with the three whole follower bulshit, I tweeted him back that I have thousands of blog followers and I don`t use twitter, my account is always shut, he sent me another private message..

__________
Keith Baldrey
@keithbaldrey
Off your meds again?
10:06 PM - 21 Nov 13

____

Keith Baldrey calls himself a pro, he couldn`t debate facts so he lashes out and brags about his twitter followers and then throws in a drug insult based on ...Well, based on the fact he had nothing else in his arsenal.

Cheers


http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2013/11/global-bc-facebook-comments-on-enbridge.html