TheSundayPapersVille
In the wake of the pre-emptive resignation of one of her caucus members and his subsequent arrest, Merv Adey wants to know why the proMedia didn't even bother to try and have our fine Premier answer a question or seven:
A Special Prosecutor has been appointed and we are still in the dark. Christy Clark has been in front of network television cameras and as far as I know, nobody in the Press cabal had the balls to ask the following rational questions:
What is Pat Pimm accused of? Does it relate to his duties as a legislator? Is it a matter of personal behaviour? (“Personal behaviour unbefitting a human” is the most likely answer, but he’s been accused of that before and there was no veil of secrecy. The nature of the allegations in 2013 was made public, though the details were not as he was never charged).
Is there not a public interest when an elected official finds himself under arrest?
Do the citizens of Pat Pimm’s Peace River riding not have a right to know why their elected representative was in police custody, even in the broadest terms?
Premier Clark…How does it reflect on your leadership that you are keeping it all quiet? The people of Peace River elected your man to be a part of your government..now, perhaps for the next 9 months until he retires, he will not be a part of your government. Do they not have a right to know why? How do you feel about it Premier Clark?
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Speaking of hiding matters of the public interest in plain sight, Laila Yuile wonders if BC Hydro is going out of its way to ensure that there will not be a robust public response to its two-tiered billing
...(O)f course BC Hydro would be before the BC Utilities Commission during summer vacation on two tier billing… something that really impacts customers who rely entirely on Hydro for power and heat. A big thank you to Dave for bringing this in the comments section of my last post:
“You only have till Sept. 2 to comment to the BC Utilities Commission on proposed tier 2 electrical rate increases, which in effect shift the burden from industry to residences to pay for needless site c expansion and independent power producers.
There have only been about 200 comments submitted so far from the thousands of customers affected. 30,000 customers per year are disconnected compared to 6,000 a few years ago.
There has been a virtual news blackout on this opportunity to comment on the financial burden this places on middle and low income families.
The only allowable comment form which you are instructed to fill out and submit does not download for the majority of computer users and even after being told about this, still the Commission has not corrected it.
We really should take the time to submit our comments or the Commission will report to their masters that there is really no opposition to the increasing subsidy provided by us, the residential taxpayers, to the Murray Edwards of Mt. Polley Mine Disaster and his ilk, since they can now defer their utility bills, pay very minimal corporate tax and pathetic royalties.”
That this is not front page for people to respond to, with such limited time, is a joke. I strongly urge you to share this with everyone you know who may be impacted,particularly seniors and those on limited incomes who will not be able to bear the burden and may not be able to access or submit comment.
One might actually come to the conclusion they didn’t really want you to comment on something that impacts you greatly, considering the rate increases to come.
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On the BCL crony capitalization front, Dermod Travis of Integrity BC let us know all about one of the fine folks who has been cashing one of those coveted BC Hydro sole sourced contract chips:
...In 2007, former B.C. MLA Jack Weisgerber was on the board of BC Hydro. His fees that year rang in at $37,125.
Then the board itself directly awarded Weisgerber a Site C consultancy contract. Between 2008 and 2014, he billed the utility $917,231.
This is how Weisgerber described the awarding of the contract to the Alaska Highway News: "The initiative came from (then-Minister of Energy and Mines, now Senator) Richard Neufeld and the BC Hydro board."
When the consulting was finished, he retook his chair in the boardroom and pulled in $31,500 in 2014/15...
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And, get this!
For one post at least, Norm Farrell put down his red ink-stained pen that regularly ferrets out the true wretchedness in BC Liberal government accounts to let us in on the secret of why one prominent Lotuslandian proMedia outlet has not be doing much reporting on that big foreign money tax cheatopalooza story:
...On Twitter, Chris Gailus explained why Global TV would not cover what might be one of Vancouver’s most significant news stories this decade:
Interestingly, and perhaps not unexpectedly, a whole lot of backpeddling, including from Global itself, ensued on the Twittmachine...
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So.
Just what will the real legacy of the ten year reign of Stephen Harper be?
Alison of Creekside told us the answer to that question may have been accurately foreshadowed by a GW Bush appointee way back in 2006:
...(When the Harper government was) first elected into office, US Ambassador David Wilkins sent home a diplomatic cable outlining how the US could best support and direct a prime minister whose values were "not in line" with most Canadians.
He recommended Harper would be useful in "advancing the US agenda for Canada" and that giving him " a success story" like the softwood lumber deal would "shore up his credentials" with Canadians without appearing to "sell out to the Americans".
Ambassador Wilkins "transformational agenda" for Harper :
"Cross border law enforcement" "enhanced information sharing", "joint maritime operations", "more robust counter-narcotics efforts", "security perimeter", following the US lead on Haiti, Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, ...
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And, because past is not supposed to be epilogue....
From across the Rockies David Climenhaga had a distinctly non-hagiographic take Stephen Harper's first post-governmental adventure. My favourite part is a wee bit of a digression about the very real potential of a wee bit of a wingnuttian welfare fundraising overlap:
...Just what Canada and the world need! Another right-wing “consulting firm” with a murky mandate...
...Preston Manning, that tingling you feel in your spine may be related to the fact Mr. Harper is on the loose again, right in your own neighbourhood. He’ll be going to the same generous funders, too, as your eponymous Manning Centre. Heaven only knows what he’s going to be saying about your service to the conservative cause if he encounters a tapped-out donor...
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And finally, the following by our friend Danneau, mostly because his thoughful take is the only one I've read anywhere that took any issue with our collective Canuckistanian response to last Saturday night's really big show:
...Whether or not I like the music of the Hip is somewhat irrelevant to the fact that this event has been blown all out of its proportionate importance as a unifier of Canadians and as representative of all that’s good in Canadian culture. I get it that lots of people really like this band and its music, and that there is an outpouring of empathy for a group of people handling a difficult situation with grace and aplomb, but the transmogrification of that grace and aplomb into our own Velvet Revolution is, as the French say, “de trop”. The two really fine items springing from this event have gotten some attention: Gord Downie apparently having called out Justin Trudeau on his ongoing lack of progress on improving lives, specifically First Nations’, in the North, and a comment I saw echoed on Facebook this morning about a broadcaster that puts up an event on national television with no ad breaks, no ticker ads and extends the broadcast when it goes beyond its allotted time, demonstrating the value of a publicly funded, owned and directed national broadcast system...
I'm not sure I agree with Danneau entirely, mostly because I can't think of anybody, and that included Lightfoot, who so consistently put a geographical mind-stamp on lyric poems of the universal than did Mr. Downie. Still, I did have to explain to an American colleague what all the fuss was about (and point her to a few videos of GD in his prime for good measure).
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11 comments:
Stompin Tom Connors was pretty good at geography, too.
A fine review of the gloom, glam and glum, Ross.
A generous recap of contributions made by numerous people in the blogodome. It wouldn't bother me if Postmedia and Shaw Family media properties disappeared but it sure would if we lost the dynamic interactions between blog writers and readers. Thanks.
Scotty--
Jeebuz!
You're right about Mr. Connors. Something happened to my brain there.
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Norm--
I don't want the proMedia outlets to disappear. I just want them to get better.
(and that's not to say there are not still pockets of great stuff being done).
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Jack Weisgerber's biography since 2001 reads like something about a person who's being paid to stay out of provincial politiks so he doesn't split the right wing vote again.
And don't forget who, precisely, Mr. W's protege was in the Golden Era administration...
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Hmmmm......not happy that GD is ill, but, I still consider them the tragically boring.
The do called pro media stenographers could disappear any time with my blessing. They can shut down the Canuck, Olympic, best place on earth garbage any time, too.
It's all becoming white noise with occasional irritation.
Propaganda should at least be semi-entertaining.
I sometimes forget that someone might actually read the brainfarts that I post, and, all things (re)considered, a lot of the hoopla surrounding the HIP Endtimes has to do with perception, and I completely missed that point: if TH is seen by fans as a unifying force, does that not make it so? By way of apology to Hip fans, especially my stepson, I have to cop a plea of ignorance based on old age. I drank the music Kool-Aid before I hit ten years of age, and wore down some musical ruts in whose track I am most comfortable. None of those ruts ever led to the TH. I don't think I've totally closed off the roster (had a back and forth with my godson last eve over a piece on FB with tables and electric bass), but there are whole Jeopardy categories on the musical lexicon where I would fail miserably.
Ross, those are all great current events that should be repeated daily by main stream media. Oh, and I'm sure that old Socred, Mr. Weisgerber, is a bit conflicted by the flooding of land in the Site C development. It will hinder his hunting deer from his pick-up truck. RG
Nice work. I agree that our paid news gatherers need to be better. With some doing well, very well some days. Unfortunately they are overshadowed by apologists and shills. I certainly hope that The Handsomely Rewarded Jack Weisgerber of deer hunting fame has some tricks up his sleeve to pass onto the engineering folks that are working on keeping the North Bank of the site C dam project from washing into the river with the recent heavy rains. 60 mm with more forecast this week. The view from above yesterday morning shows some serious pooling with some containment dikes that could easily fail and create a huge wash down to the river. The slope stabilization that has taken place so far looks to be a large scale mess. The problems in that area showed up last heavy rains in June. Repairs not complete and the situation appears to be worsening. It would be great to get an independent engineering report to see if ratepayers are receiving value for money.
SH:
A great untangling RossK!
hmmm…tuned in late to CBC's Daybreak South (Kelowna), to hear Chris Walker offer a disclaimer, that he had hosted guest students following a story about same...Earlier this summer, after a story about Airbnb, Chris provided a similar disclaimer, sharing that he had occasional guests...
Got me thinking, I've never heard such a disclosure from any journalist, anywhere, anytime. I'm wondering: was this from On High (post Smart defection), or self-directed...
I was listening to Jon McComb on CKNW two mornings ago...honest, the station is not on much....Michael Smyth was on talking about the Surrey school overcrowding crisis.....Smyth's first words were, paraphrasing...."there are a lot of blogs and websites that have a lot of information and figures on this problem and just how upset a lot of people are about it".....what?.....did he just say bloggers were credible sources of information? Not a word about underpants.
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