Saturday, September 13, 2014

Quick Wins Resurrection Shuffle (ctd)...The Dean Buries The Lede With A Backhoe.

Email?
WhatEmail?Ville


Vaughn Palmer's latest column in the VSun revels in the minutiae of the Bonney-Robertson Quick Wins-related Election Act charges.

With stuff like this:

...Dubbed “quick wins” because of the suggestion that the Liberals could reap a political gain from a government apology to the Chinese community for historic wrongs, the scandal dominated the news in the weeks before the election call. It did not prove to be a decisive issue in the campaign itself....

{snip}

...The specific allegation, set out in the charges, is that the two accused and their company paid an employee, Sepideh Sarrafpour, to work on the byelection without disclosing the amount ($2,240) as a political contribution.

Not a decisive amount for a campaign where the Liberals spent almost $100,000 trying to win the byelection and still lost. But as required under the Election Act, the charges were approved by Chief Electoral Officer Keith Archer, the independent watchdog on the integrity of the electoral process...



So.

We thank Mr. Palmer for 'informing' of the details of what Tom Hawthorne has dubbed the 'Hanky Panky'.

But...

Nowhere in is entire column does Mr. Palmer specifically mention a certain Email that was written by the good Mr. Bonney BEFORE the last general election.

That particular Email was only revealed by a massive BCLiberal government document dump that occurred AFTER the last general election.

Of course, that dump, and that election, were both preceeded by an internal 'investigation' by the BC Liberal government that very finest of the fine members of the Lotuslandian proPundits Club accepted, pretty much unquestioned, without demanding the actual documents it was based on at the time (i.e. BEFORE the last general election).

The Email concerned contained the following passage:

..."Have [MLA] Harry Bloy meet with her and explain how doing anything would damage the Premier and the party. Have him say how he will try to find her work and get her back involved... If need be, offer x dollars per month to do non public work up to election [developing her database of potential supporters]."...


And who was the former staffer, now Whistleblower, that was supposed to receive this 'work' and those 'x dollars' per month, if the Email written by the good Mr. Bonney was acted upon, in the wake of explaining to her how 'doing anything would damage the Premier and the party'?

Why, that would be the Ms. Serrafpour mentioned in Mr. Palmer's minutiae, above.

Now.

Let's revisit the sentence bolded, also above, from Mr. Palmer's latest that goes like this:

"...It (Quick Wins) did not prove to be a decisive issue in the campaign itself..."


Established and credible my derriere.


______
It would appear that the good Mr. Palmer buried the lede even further in his latest column when he mentioned that, because of Quick Wins, the Premier of this province, for whom Mr. Bonney worked, IN HER ACTUAL OFFICE, at the time the scandal broke, was required to apologize twice...However, Mr. Palmer gave his readers no specifics regarding the details of said apologies...We can only assume that one of the apologies that Mr. Palmer was referring to went like....This.


.

5 comments:

Norm Farrell said...

Friends and potential business associates are attacked by by a quiet foam hand, encased in a fluffy velvet glove.

Lew said...

Let’s say I committed a serious offence while driving the company car (without even a license to drive to start with). And let’s say my boss called a public press conference after conducting a thorough investigation, and announced that I had not in fact driven the car.

If it is later discovered that I had actually driven the car and I was therefore charged with the offence, and if it was further discovered that the evidence leading to my charges was contained in my boss’ investigation, would my boss be investigated for obstruction of justice?

And would the credible promedia folks give it as least as much attention as say, someone forgetting to buy a SkyTrain ticket?

RossK said...

Norm--

Fluffy wet foam...Ya...That sounds about right.


________

Lew--

In Lotusland?

You're joking, right?

.

Norm Farrell said...

In a column linked elsewhere and here,
Two sides good, one side bad Ian Reid wrote about how he gave important evidence of BC Rail wrongdoing to a reporter covering the affair,
"[The story] was shared with editors, who shared it with their bosses. And the bosses killed it."

I saw some of the evidence and it was powerful stuff. But, it was never reported and that silence justified later silences. People in media like Palmer would say something like this,

"Look, the BC Rail story never gained the public's attention. The only people concerned were a few cultists."

As he is doing with Quick Wins, Palmer said,

"...It (BC Rail) did not prove to be a decisive issue in the campaign itself..."

Quelle surprise!

Imagine. Media reports little or nothing about an issue and that very issue fails to become decisive.

Lew said...

I like Yogi Berra's quote better than Palmer's.

"It ain't over 'til it's over."

And it ain't over.