Dewey Wins! Dewey Wins! (In Nanaimo?)...

Link

Gosh.

Perhaps Charlie Smith et al. got a little carried away and pushed the button prematurely after the first three of 111 polls had the former (and now present and future?) real estate speculation enthusiast up by a few votes.

Or.

Perhaps, like many a proMedia outlet trumpeter swan, they just put just a little too much stock in that last minute Mainstreet poll that sure seemed like a bit of a push to some in the know:

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Thanks to sometime reader Shushwap Ken for noting the GStraight's embarrasing (temporary) flub.
Best take on all of this was from Tom Hawthorn on the Twittmachine who noted that, in the end, the fine folks from Mainstreet had a margin of error of approximately +/- infinity, give or take eleventy billion.


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How Far The Klout Klub Has Fallen....The Asset And The Ambassador.

SomeWheelsOfInfluenceCannotBe
PeddledVille


Since they and theirs fell from power in May of 2017, the Klout Klub has been backing horses that just can't win.

First it was failed BC Liberal leadership candidate Michael Lee.

And then it was former Darth Vader protege Hector Bremmer who in the end garnered less than 6% of the vote in the most recent Vancouver election.

So what does the Klub have to do with Mr. McCallum's much more recent last stand?

Well.

When the Lotuslandian Star Division's Joanna Chiu was the only local proMedia member to track down then Ambassador McCallum at a downtown 'charity lunch' late last week where she asked him questions that led to answers that resulted in his sacking, it turns out that the then still Ambassador was breaking bread with...

You guessed it.

The Klout Klub's last remaining 'asset'.

To wit, from Ms. Chiu's Twittmachine feed:

Imagine that!



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And do not think for one second that we, and others it would appear, did not notice Ms. Chiu's additional bon mot for members of that other Lotuslandian 'Club' .


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Ledge Splitting (ctd)....The de Jong Insertion.

CookieDoughMike'sBreakfastOf
ChampionsVille


Justine Hunter, writing in the Globe and (No Longer Empire) Mail has given an overview of the profligate ways of the no longer Clerk and Sergeant-At-Arms of the Lotuslandian Legislature.

Not much new or even truly insightful there, in my humble opinion.

I was interested to find two passages in which former longterm BC Liberal Cabinet Minister Mike De Jong is mentioned.

To wit:

...“The knowledge that the details of their expenditures will become public alters behaviour,” said Mike de Jong, a veteran MLA who pushed for that disclosure...

...Mr. de Jong, who championed reforms to bring disclosure to the spending of the elected officials in Victoria, said it is now time to broaden those reforms. “The principle is, everyone involved in public service needs to embrace the notion that it’s not your money, and the public deserves to know how it is being spent,” he said. “The best way to safeguard against abuse is detailed disclosure.”


Gosh.

Perhaps in her next piece Ms. Hunter could tell how and what, exactly, the good Mr. de Jong actually 'championed' back when he and his were actually in a position to do something about all things profligate.

And there is that small matter of how Mr. de Jong and associates came to 'install' the no longer Clerk of the Legislature after doing the same when they made the same fine fellow the boss of Elections B.C.  back in the days of yore.

Charlie Smith, writing with depth and context in the GStraight has those stories.

________________________________________________________

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Stonehenge Revisited - The Roger Chroniclers.

VituperativeFoulMouthedDenizensOfThe
(Former)LeftBlogistanVille


You want facts, details and context on all things Mr. Stone (and more).

Here are my go to places....

Emptywheel - She's been at this since the days of Scooter Libby's leak fest, first on the long gone Firedoglake and now at her own most excellent longform blog...She's got credibility everywhere and these days she's even pushing the envelope back towards reality-based sandwiches quite regularly on and in CorpMedia monkey grinder organs like, say, this one.


Mueller She Wrote - The weekly podcast is free, long, detailed and addictive...It's also made by women and is way more insightful than, dare I suggest it, the boys' club audio offerings from the former denizens of Mr. Obama's West Wing....My favourite MSW regular segment is the 'Fantasy Indictment League'....It hit the jackpot this week.


Driftglass - He is a dinosaur of the longform, left-leaning linear typestries that emerged during the early Bush years who got his start as a five-tooled commenter at the house that the late, great Steve Gilliard built....Unlike Marcy (Empty) Wheeler, Driftglass doesn't even bother to push CorpMedia envelopes....Instead, he tears them to shreds, salts them, deep fries them in rancid lard scooped from the troughs of wingnut welfare supported Schlachthof-fünfian mass-distraction factories and feeds them to the likes of Bobo Brooks, whole, for breakfast...

Enjoy.

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Recognize, perchance,  those three fine fellows in the image at the top of the post from the days of pre-Willie Horton yore?

Speaking of the politics of the distraction-based deflector smear...I'll have something to say about the latest (alleged) OpEd on Mr. Eby in the PostMedia prints...Later.


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The Keef Report....A Tempest In A Keef Pot.

Link

The public doesn't differentiate?

Gosh.

Who, exactly, is paid the big bucks to (allegedly) help them do just that?

Differentiate, I mean.

Sheesh.


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Previous Keef Reports can be found...Here.



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RailGate Revisited....Responding to Our Friend Bob.

Imdemnify
ThisVille


After he read Rod Nickel's recent Reuter's story that starts like this...

Canada‘s two major railways are rationing space on trains traveling to the country’s biggest port and recently prioritized some commodities over others to deal with congestion, the latest indication of their struggle to meet demand from new trade deals.

That move prompted Canada‘s transport regulator last week to start an investigation into rail services around Port Metro Vancouver, after shippers complained of “discriminatory treatment of certain commodities” by Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP)....


Friend of the blog Bob Fedderly posited the following  on his Twittmachine feed:

"Its almost like we could do better if we had something like BC Rail to move our resources more effectively. What was that reasoning behind dumping that asset again?"

Well, while we don't know the exact 'reasoning', we do happen to recall approximately 500,000 reasons that may or may not have helped Mr. Gordon Campbell decide dump said asset.

The following is from a post from the spring of 2010, which was still a few months before the six million dollar deal that stopped Railgate, cold:

In recent posts we have established that two of British Columbia's private Railway Tycoons, David McLean of CN Railand Peter Armstrong of Rocky Mountaineer Railtours each gave, either personally, or through their companies, at least $250,000, each, to the BC Liberal Party of Mr. Gordon Campbell since the latter became leader way, way, way back in 1993.

And, on the flipside, both private Rail Tycoons have done very well, indeed, in the wake of Gordon Campbell promise-busting dismantling of a very public Railway soon after he became the Premier of British Columbia in 2001.

Specifically, with the destruction of a 90 year-old statute that required BC Rail to run a public passenger service, followed shortly thereafter by the tainted/not tainted/sale/not sale of BC Rail to CN Rail, Mess'rs McLean and Armstrong ultimately came up aces by any and all financial measures one could choose to use and/or trumpet...
Imagine that!


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Is The Dipperian Position On A Money Laundering Inquiry Softening?

AllYourWhalingIndustries
AreBelongToUsVille


We first noticed it in a tweet from AG David Eby followed by his Fed-blaming press conference last week.

Now, tucked into a report from Global's Sam Cooper about the BCGEU's call for a corruption inquiry, there is this:

...(W)hile the B.C. NDP government has been resisting demands for such an inquiry, party leaders including Attorney General David Eby and solicitor general Mike Farnworth have started to make behind-the-scenes arguments in favour of an inquiry, according to Global News sources...


Shades of FDR and that 'I want to do it, no go out and make me do it' mythology from days of yore?



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For those interested...This week's Sunday Set auditory bonanza, sans Lorne Greene is....Here.
And, just in case you missed it....Laila has a very solid take on the Wood Splitter that has swallowed Lotusland's pundit class whole....Also, Jody Paterson explains why she returning to the long(er) form Bloggodome to tackle the Climate Change issue.


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Sunday Set....Mumble Tracking.

GiveMeAn
EHarmonicaVille


In the old days, I used to put these together, ostensibly for old-timey Kings Road bunk bed lullaby tunes for Bigger E. when she was away at school.

Now it's littler e.'s turn.

This one includes covers of....

• Jeff Tweedy's (almost) mumble-free 'Misunderstood'.

• Townes Van Zandt's medley of his hit (singular on purpose) 'Pancho and Lefty'.

• The Felice Brothers' 'Mercy' from when they were young.

• Mr. Springsteen's Steinbeckian lifter puller (with the ladder down) 'The Ghost of Tom Joad'.

And, just to be clear, there's also a wee bit of talking in between the tunes for those who like that sort of thing.

Here's the link to the entire Sunday Set (~20min)....Embed is below.






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What Mr. Eby Was Trying To Tell Us The Other Day...

AllYourWhalingIndustries
AreBelongToUsVille


Given the Dipperians' previous decision to not go all Charbonneau on the money launderingapalooza that may or may not have our fair Lotusland in a financial vice, I was having a hard time deciphering David Eby's recent tweet in which he upped the ante on the magnitude of the problem.

Well.

It turns out Mr. Eby is upset that the Feds have shut he and his out.

Sam Cooper of the Global Postal Media Service, who unearthed some data compiled by the Horsemen that helped raise Mr. Eby's ire, has the story.

Here is Mr. Cooper's lede:

B.C. Attorney General David Eby says he’s frustrated Canada’s federal government hasn’t shared a police intelligence study that showed organized crime groups are suspected of laundering billions of dollars in B.C. real estate.

At a press conference on Thursday, Eby referred to a confidential RCMP intelligence study obtained and investigated by Global News, which showed police found crime networks tied to China had laundered over $1 billion in Vancouver luxury real estate in 2016...

Hmmmmm....

Liberal (as in slightly differing flavours of a political brand) wheels within protective wheels perhaps?


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As for that bit of babbling wordplay in the sub-header....AOC!


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The Keef Report....Green Trashing (Again)

Link

Gosh.

You'd almost think that the Keef has gone and lost his (insider access) religion.

Then again, maybe it's just another one of those post 9:00 pm 'the schwag is over the yard arm'-type deals.

Or some such thing.


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Previous Keef Reports can be found...Here.


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What, Exactly, Is Mr. Eby Trying To Tell Us?

(Follow-up post is....Here.)

Link

Look.

I realize that I haven't been paying really close attention the last 12 weeks or so.

But I'm really starting to get confused about how the current government plans to deal with a Whaling Industry that was, in my opinion, incubated by the previous government and its deal breaker partners who helped breech birth the local Lotuslandian Casino Industrial Complex from the get go.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks.


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The link to the watchdog's whaling report referred to by Mr. Eby is....Here.
Update: Laila weighs in...


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Railgate Revisited v2 - The Charges.

IsThereAPiratePilot
InTheHouseVille


As we noted yesterday, the Railgate saga 'officially' began on December 28, 2003, the day the British Columbia legislature was raided by the RCMP.

The charges, such as they were, did not come out until a full year later in December of 2004, which some cynics said conveniently ensured no trial before the following spring's provincial election.

Mark Hume had the story of the charges in the Globe and (nolongerEmpire) Mail:

One year after police raided offices in the British Columbia Legislature, two former ministerial aides and a third person connected to the government have been charged with multiple counts in a breach-of-trust investigation.

Former aides David Basi and Robert Virk are charged with three counts of fraud on the government, two counts of fraud and one count of breach of trust by a public officer, the B.C. criminal justice branch announced yesterday.

Aneal Basi, a public affairs officer in the B.C. Ministry of Transportation for the past three years, has been charged with one count of fraud on the government and one count of breach of trust by a public officer...

{snip}

...A summary of the case against David Basi and Mr. Virk that was released in September alleged the two men had been trading in stolen government documents related to B.C. government plans to sell BC. Rail and Roberts Bank, a bulk coal-loading facility connected to the railway.

The case summary alleged that David Basi and Mr. Virk delivered confidential documents to a third party, apparently in the hopes of furthering their aspirations to win chief-of-staff positions with the Liberal government in Ottawa.

Police executed nine search warrants at the time they raided the legislature, including offices of public-relations experts and key Liberal officials in British Columbia. But in court documents subsequently released, police stated that only David Basi and Mr. Virk were the subjects of the breach-of-trust investigation...


Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk were the only subjects of the breech-of-trust investigation?

Sure thing.

****

At the time the charges came down in late 2004 the story was being covered pretty much exclusively*, by the proMedia and, as Barbara McLintock noted in the Tyee, their coverage, and the response it engendered in the general public was underwhelming to say the least:

...(W)hen three political appointees are faced with criminal charges pretty well unheard of in the province, the reaction should still perhaps be more than a polite yawn. The lack of outrage, both in the media and, it would seem in the B.C. public, over the accusations against Dave Basi, Bobby Virk and Aneal Basi is somewhat remarkable.

One can only hope that the disinterested shrugs from the citizenry do not mean that a significant number of British Columbians have come to accept that bribery, corruption and money-laundering are just part of the way business is too-often carried out in British Columbia – as if we were some third-rate banana republic somewhere...


So.

What were the few outraged Lotuslandians to do when nothing happened for years and proMedia outlet editors sent them letters like the following one that BC Mary received when she had the temerity to raise the lack of coverage with an esteemed editor:

Dear Ms. Mary:

There was indeed a pretrial appearance by Basi, Virk et al yesterday. Our reporter staffed the appearance, and nothing of note happened. As is the case in such instances, the reporter consulted with his editor and did not write a story. When there is news, we plan to report it.

Sincerely,
Lucinda Chodan
Editor-in-Chief
Victoria Times Colonist
2621 Douglas St.
Victoria, B.C. V8T 4M2

Why, according to the Glimmer Twins, Messers Baldrey and Palmer...

Form a cult!


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*Except of course for Bill Tieleman, the left-sided prop man who pretty much played this one straight-up, initially in the GStraight  before he set up his own shop/blog...And then there was Sean Holman, whose PublicEye Online was just starting to build when the charges arrived (and were noted by him for posterity). 
We were extremely saddened to hear that Ms. McLintock passed away this week after 14 years with the provincial coroners' office.



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Railgate Revisited v1 - The Trigger.

TheBonfireOfThe
IndemnitiesVille


When the BC Legislature was raided 15 years ago today rumours of 'why' were already lifting off before the 37th document-stuffed cardboard box was hauled out of the infamous rockpile that a then very young 'A.B.C. Architect' (whose real name was Rattenbury) finished building in 1898.

And, as intrepid online Railgate chronicler-in-chief 'BC Mary' noted sometime later, the Horseman were quick to fan the rumour-mills flames:

When police entered the B.C. Legislature with Search Warrants on a quiet Sunday morning, 28 December 2003, they made history. Never before in Canada had police breached the sanctity of the people's parliament.

Public shock deepened over 6 days. TV News cameras had shown the 20 uniformed sergeants carrying 32 boxes of confidential cabinet documents away from the B.C. Ministries of Finance and Transportation. But no premier, no prime minister stepped forward to explain the meaning of this shocking event. Both Premier Gordon Campbell and Prime Minister Paul Martin simply said, "I know nothing."

Had it not been for RCMP Sergeant John Ward, the public would have been adrift. But Ward spoke directly to the people of British Columbia, recognizing the public's need to know. As if he knew nobody else would tell us much.

He said a drug probe had triggered the raid on the legislature. He said that the suspects are alleged to have been involved in an organized crime network exchanging BC marijuana for U.S. cocaine which was then sold throughout Canada. The public later learned that cocaine profits buy guns - guns for the international arms trade selling into Afghanistan for example.

Sgt Ward estimates $6 billion a year is sucked out of British Columbia in marijuana traffic alone. Organized crime has so much cash, it's weighed, not counted; money-laundering is a major concern for the criminals.

Sgt. Ward added "... the spread of organized crime in the past 2 years has been like a cancer on the social and economic wellbeing of all British Columbians ... it has reached critical mass." There's so much more to this story...


Interestingly, however, it turns out that a special prosecutor's office had apparently been working behind the scenes to sever the organized crime wing from the Horsemen-piloted flying rumour monger factory before it even took flight.

Bizarrely, that story came out almost five years after the fact, as noted at the time by the newly-crowned PropRep dragon slayer who has been known to pity any and all fools who rush in, Mr. Bill  (with a 'T') Tieleman:

The RCMP was directly instructed by a Special Prosecutor that “organized crime” had “not penetrated the B.C. Legislature” but used the phrase anyway to justify a December 28, 2003 raid there to seize documents, it was alleged in B.C. Supreme Court Thursday.

Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough, representing one of three former B.C. government aides facing corruption charges, read from a recently disclosed document that indicated David Harris, a member of the Special Prosecutor team, told the RCMP their planned news release was wrong two days before the raid...


So.

What was it really about Alfie?

Stay tuned....


______
And, whatever you do ('every which way'-assisted or not)....Do not skip ahead and have a peek under 'The Big W'....OK?
Full Disclosure...The proprietor of this wee little F-Troop-listed (and always fully/overly hyphenated) blog was once featured (or, at the very least 'listed') in Mr. T's then definitive alphabetized compendium of all the Railgate players that then fit...Said compendium was published in the Tyee in on the fifth anniversary of the Ledge Raids....Which, of course, was still more than a full year before the actual trial began for real (allegedly).....


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The Quid Pro Whaling Quo

Ahab'sLegIsStillPegged
ToRetailPoliticsVille


A former local anti-whaling crusader is claiming victory in the fact that Japan is pulling out of the International Whaling Commission.

Charlie Smith has the story in the GStraight:

Former Vancouver resident Paul Watson says it's good news that Japan will withdraw from an international body that regulates whale hunting.

The government led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says it is pulling out of the International Whaling Commission and will cease killing these animals in the Antarctic.

Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has been confronting Japanese whaling ships since 2002.

“We are delighted to see the end of whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary," Watson said in a society news release. "We are delighted that we will soon have a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary and we look forward to continuing to oppose the three remaining pirate whaling nations of Norway, Japan, and Iceland.

"Whaling as a ‘legal’ industry has ended," Watson continued. "All that remains is to mop up the pirates.”...


But the bigger picture of those 'pirates' mentioned by Mr. Watson suggests that the news is not actually all good at all:

The following is from Linda Sieg and Kiyoshi Takenaka writing for Reuters:

...The decision, some experts said, allows Japan to save the money it spends to support Antarctic whaling while taking a tough pro-whaling stance - a matter of national pride for some conservatives.

{snip}

...Japan, which says most whale species are not endangered and that eating whale is part of its culture, has long campaigned without success for the IWC to allow commercial whaling.

Some influential lawmakers’ constituencies include whaling communities, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s election district is home to the whaling port of Shimonoseki.

The decision to withdraw from the IWC followed its latest rejection of Japan’s bid to resume commercial whaling at a September meeting, which Suga said showed it was impossible to bridge the gap between whaling advocates and anti-whaling members...


Either way, whales will continue to die.

Which is not a good thing.

OK?


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Just to be clear it just the good Mr. Watson who is cheering on this crass quid pro quo....Apparently, Australia and New Zealand are happy with Japan's decision as well...Then again, they have a pretty good regional reason for cheering the quidding of the pros and quos.
Update: It now appears that Mr. Watson realizes that he and his have been spun as he re-spins...This kind of stuff, in my opinion is why PR and Prop, in all of its forms, is what is really killing public discourse...On a whole lotta levels.


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Beautiful Music Is Where You Find It.

SomeOfThe
KharmaVille


While the worst of Hell Fall by Hellfall ended with classes a couple of weeks ago, our last final exam of the season was first thing yesterday morning in a windowless, bunker-type room on the other side of the hospital-industrial complex.

Once we had the exams all out and the kids all in I headed over to the cafeteria to get the TA's morning coffee.

It's a cafeteria I used to spend a lot of time in. In fact, once-upon-a-long-long-time-ago we even held lab meetings there.

But then, in the darkest days of GordCo, Inc. the sub-contracting began in earnest and I avoided the place like the plague.

However, thanks in large part to the persistence of the workers, a lot of what went wrong appears to be fixed now* so I have started to stop by occasionally once again.

Anyway...

Yesterday morning the place was pretty much deserted given that most of the students have already headed home for the holidays.

Which meant that it was just me, the lady at the till, and canned carols on the sound system as I added all the creams and sugars and honeys that gradual students everywhere demand in their coffee.

The whole scene was making me feel a little melancholy until I heard this beautiful sound.

It was coming from the lady at the till who was simultaneously counting her change, and she was amazing.

On my way out I told her that she was in the wrong business.

She just laughed and said she loves to sing.

The music was still in my head three hours later when we released the kids from exile and they headed out into their holiday hooting and hollering completely melancholy-free.

Kids today!



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*Labour-expertish folks, please correct me if I'm wrong about this.


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