All Your Vacations Are Mine

PrivatizeEverything
CheneyNorthVille

This just in......The Premier of British Columbia wants his peasants to spend more of their hard-earned dollars in BC's deteriorating, user-fee dominated, campsites this summer:

Premier Gordon Campbell encouraged British Columbians to travel more within their own province to help double tourism revenues by 2015.

“We do live in the best place on earth and we might as well as take advantage of that,” said Campbell Thursday during his speech to delegates attending the B.C. Tourism Industry Conference at the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre.

Sure.

Does this mean that Mr. Campbell will pass up that trip to Maui next Christmas in favour of, what, Smithers?

.

I See Trees Of Green....

ParadiseAllAround
Lotuslandia

We're having one of those rare nice spells of winter weather here in Vancouver when the Pineapple Express gets pushed up into the Gulf of Alaska leaving things a little frosty at night with bright-light, sun-spackled 10°C (50°F) afternoons.

And yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the bus, one of those hopped-up Express jobs, the #44 B-Line, whose run begins at the very fine still-sorta public institution I work at on the far western edge of town. There will be no link for those real estate moguls; I don't want them putting their stinkin' sniffers on me, because the PR people, who have a direct pipeline to the President's office, are obsessed with monitoring all manner of media coverage - including even F-Trooplist blogs like this one (I know this for a fact because I've had Emails from them in the past when I've written anything even remotely critical of their ongoing efforts to sell off all of the Endowment Lands to developers - but I digress, as usual).

Anyway, the 44-B hightails it from the Point Grey campus all the way into the downtown core, about 12 km in all, in something like six stops. The machine itself is one of those articulated behemoths with a round dish floorplate in the middle between two hunks of busbody that is straddled by a couple of bench seats that was filled to bursting with a bunch of school kids out on a field trip.

As soon as we hit the road the kids were up and surfing the dish. The only other place I've seen this kind of thing is on the Metro in Montreal, and it's fantastic to watch because some of these kids are really good at rolling with each and every exaggerated twist, turn and jump that, taken together, are hugely amplified whipsaw replicas of even tiny movements of the driver's hands on the steering wheel sixty feet in front of them.

But there was more than just that going on with these kids, because they were clearly from two different classes from two very different schools. One class was the host group, all hip and city and urban and cool. The other class was visiting from way out of town in the sticks, maybe Prince George or something. And they were all babbling back and forth to beat the band while they joked around and took turns up on the dish playing it kind of like they were riding bulls at the rodeo.

And one class was teaching the other class how to count in a language they had never heard before. It was mandarin. And the kids doing the teaching were the hosts. The kids from Prince George were all white, and they were lapping up the "eee!..... arrre!!....san!!!.....soooo!!!!" counts and turning them into whooping cheers like they were 'Team Tolerance' at the Calgary Stampede.

Then, suddenly, thirty-two minutes after we got on the bus we were all thrown out onto the shimmering street in front of Waterfront Station. The kids filed off and wandered toward the Five Sails at Canada Place. Me, I slipped my laptop into my pack, strapped it on my back, grabbed my bike from the rack at the front of the 44-B, and headed for the seabus and the ride across the harbour trailing this view.

And all the while I said to myself.....

.......What a Wonderful World.......

.

Divide and Destroy, Wingnut Style

AllTheirWhackosAreUs
SoonVille

Remember Paul Weyrich, the wingnut welfare king who told all the far right fundies down south to keep quiet if they were contacted by Canadian media about the Harpoon and his real intentions prior to the election?


Well, here's an Email that Mr. Weyrich sent out to all the brethren just a few days before the big event.

From: Paul Weyrich
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:38 AM
To: Bob Thompson [a staffer at Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation
Subject: message from Canada
Importance: High

Please get this message to the Stanton, Family Forum and Wednesday lunch groups:

I received a call last night from Gerald Chipeur, an important figure in Canada’s Conservative Party. He told me that Conservatives are with-in striking distance of electing an outright majority in Parliamentary elections Monday.

He said the Canadian media, which is trying to save the current Liberal government, has a strategy of calling conservatives in the USA in the hopes that someone will inadvertently say something that can be hung around the Conservatives.

Canadian voters have been led to believe that American conservatives are scary and if the Conservative party can be linked with us, they perhaps can diminish a Conservative victory. Chipeur asks that if Canadian media calls, please do not be interviewed until Monday evening at which point hopefully there will be reason to celebrate

Many thanks.


Anyway, that was then and this is now.

Because Mr. Weyrich can't keep his mouth shut these days.

And what he has to say about Mr. Harper's true intentions is pretty darned interesting:

After Harper's victory in an election that Weyrich found "exciting to watch," he penned a story for his organization's website that described both pessimistic and optimistic scenarios that could result from the election's outcome.

According to Weyrich, conservative pessimists told him that since they lack a parliamentary majority, the best Harper can do is to "adopt a more reasonable view of the United States and to correct some premises of Cultural Marxism, which Canadians have espoused, such as same-sex marriage and abortion-on-demand."

Harper, however, can do much more than that, Weyrich asserts: "Harper is pleased that the media and many in his own party are nay-saying," Weyrich argues, "think[ing] that such pessimism would lower expectations and give him additional latitude to accomplish his agenda. Harper's game plan apparently is to pit the federalist Liberals against the Bloc Quebecois and the decentralizing Bloc against big-government Liberals."

Sheesh.

If this is really true (and why should we doubt Mr. Weyrich's ability to read a fellow traveller) no wonder Mr. Harper is in hiding.

_____
Thanks to: South of 49th friend, and wildflower photographer extraordinare, Prairie Weather for the tip.
And if Mr. Weyrich can call me and mine 'Cultural Marxists' for being tolerant and believing that helping out our fellow citizens is actually a worthy goal, well, I think that gives me carte blanche to call him and his 'Fearful Fascists'. After all, it's all just a 'framing' game, right?

Striking A Blow For Freedom

DoingTheRightThing
UNVille

Hooray for Canadian Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who today called for the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay to be shut down.

Of course, the little scottie poodle did not agree:

The US has rejected the closure call, with White House spokesman Scott McClellan saying that the facility houses "dangerous terrorists".

To which we say - prove it. In other words, either give these people a fair trial in an international court of law or release them.

Now.

And now is also the time for friends of the American people and, dare we say it, of the American Dream of freedom, equality and justice for all, to help make this happen.

And that includes ambassadors of foreign nations in Washington.

Because now is the time for soft power to stand up and be counted while the whole world is watching.

In that spirit we page Mr. Wilson.

And that would be Michael, of course.

Not Woodrow.

Although resurrecting the latter Wilson right about now wouldn't be such a bad thing either.

.

Losing More Friends And......

WhoLetTheFlogsOut?
GordCoVille

........Only Influencing His Crazy Uncles

When last we paid him any attention whatsoever, British Columbia's Minister of Something-Or-Other Mike De Jong was doing his best to bust the Teachers Union.

Tonight he was back, acting as the designated GordCo Flogger on the healthcare privatization issue that was raised in the throne speech earlier today.

Of course, despite the fact that Mike Smythe called a spade a spade while he was on his show, de Jong refused to come right out and say it. Instead, he said we must have a discussion about the mechanisms of healthcare delivery because if we don't it is just going to cost us too darn much.

So, here is a request for Mr. de Jong and all the other GordCo dissemblers out there.....Give us some examples of how private delivery has saved any publically-funded system significant dollars over the long haul without large scale rationing and/or massive centralization of services and/or reliance on huge capital infusions/subsidies for bricks and mortar, equipment and training of personnel.

And give us specifics, not pablum - please.

____
Schreck (not Shrek) has some specifics but it is likely they won't make the Donald Copeman jump for joy the way the Throne Speech likely did.

.

B.C. Throne Speech Frames Healthcare

SoftPrivatization
KillBillVille

Update: Sat Feb 18/06 - This post has been editted from it's original form in which I suggested that the sitting Lt. Governor tacitly agreed with the concepts, if not the words, she must, as part of her job, read from the throne speech. That was inappropriate, especially without supporting evidence, and for that I apologize and have made the appropriate changes. I'll write about the importance of the mea culpa in blogging in more depth, in an upcoming piece.
_______

The following is from yesterday's provincial throne speech:

"Does it really matter to patients where or how they obtain their surgical treatment if it is paid for with public funds?" asks the speech, which was read by Lt.-Gov. Iona Campagnolo on behalf of Premier Gordon Campbell's Liberal government.

"Why are we so afraid to look at mixed health care delivery models," when they work in Europe?

"Why are we so quick to condemn any consideration of other systems as a slippery slope to an American-style system that none of us wants?"

And now the herd press is falling all over themselves to tell us how GordCo is working hard to protect our healthcare system.

We, however, figure we're actually being set up for a coming bill that will begin the death of universal healthcare by the thousand cuts due to a mandated explosion of private everything (and that banging you hear is Donald Copeman's head repeatedly hitting the ceiling as he floats euphorically above the crowd a la Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins - just a spoonful of sugar and a fistful of dollars and all that, what?).

It's like deja-vu all over again, Edwardian England/Gilded Age style*.

_____
*Or, despite the throne speech's words to the contrary, maybe we should call it "Love, American Style!" After all, it is Valentine's Day, and we are looking rearward towards the bad old days.

.

Fencing Out The Rabble

LetThemEatSoftwood
LedgeVille

The BC LINO's* will get their ya-ya's out with their third Throne Speech in a year later today.

And despite Ms. Campagnolo's apparent fetish for the finery, Mr. Campbell has seen the light and is now using BushCo vernacular to fire-up the Whirlitzer.

"We're gonna talk about our long term objectives for British Columbia."

Like how were all gonna learn to speak faux-Texan to prepare us for the coming of the KinderMorgan-led "Invasion of The Haida Gwaii Rapers", perhaps?

Anyway, an interesting sidenote is the fact that the Ledge itself is behind a fence today.

More of the BushCo-type paranoid coralling of the huddled masses?

Will we soon get 'Free Speech Zones' tucked away behind the Beacon Hill Park Zoo where only the chickens and goats need be pestered with the bleating voices of an angry citizenry?

Never say never with this bunch.


_______
*Liberal In Name Only
Update: This, from Public Eye poster Heaney, is likely the more innocent reason (or is that excuse?) for the fence: "the fence has been there for every throne speech since the Clayoquot decision (in about 1994?) when protesters' successful attempts to storm the main door (only ever unlocked and used when the L-G enters the building) put a 60+ year old sgt-at-arms in the hospital."
btw: The linked post from Mr. Holman at PE is great news about the resignation of LINO partisan Louise Burgart from the provincial Electoral Boundary (ie. not to be confused with 'The Gerrymanderer') Commission.
VideoLink To ThroneSpeechifyin' here.

.

.

Why Does David Hahn Hate WAC Bennett So Much?

DefyingHistory
PrivatizationVille

Despite the fact that he was a noted free-enterpriser, union-hater and socialist-thwarter, WAC Bennett knew the value of solid public enterprises regardless.

For it was he who took the unreliable, and patchwork, BC Ferry system out of private hands and made it a toll authority in 1960.

And I know it really happened that way because it says so on David Hahn's own website:

I was born in 1959 so I don't remember the vagaries of the CP or the Blackball-operated runs between Vancouver Island and the Mainland, but my Dad has told me plenty. And even he, a union hand from way back, gives Mr. Bennett his due on this one.

And so do I.

Because while I may have cursed the indigestion of the sunshine breakfast or the outright gastric discomfort of the chili, until recently BC Ferries rarely let me down.

But all that has changed with privatization as the catastrophes have mounted in lock-step with the prices.

One of the recent catastrophes was a fire aboard the Queen of Surrey in which there is plenty of blame to go around for everyone, both at Mr. Hahn's Ferry Corp and at Transport Canada, as was reported by Shannon Kari in last Friday's Globe and Mail.

But the man who got all of our boats for a song will have none of it. Ignoring history completely, Mr. Hahn had this to say:

"The problem was government. We should never be part of government again," he said. B.C. Ferries was made an independent commercial company in the spring of 2003.


Sheesh.

Has this man not heard that old adage about the linkage between a willfull ignorance of history and doom?

.

What Else Could You Possibly Ask For?

AllMyBackPages
AreHersVille


I've talked a lot about my obsessions for the writings of Hunter Thompson before.

And I've told lots of people that the lark that made Thompson famous, writing about his fear and loathing, is not my favorite bit.

On the other hand, I have also told the remaining few that will listen about the king-hell time I had reading 'The Lark' for the first time, all at once, purely for the adrenaline rush of the language, while holed up a tiny woodstove-heated cabin located high in the Sooke Hills in the early 1980's.

But I don't think I've ever told anybody about my reaction to the dedication at the front end the thing in which Thompson thanked Bob Dylan.

For Mr. Tambourine Man.

Back then I was a much, much younger man but Dylan was already old, as were his best songs.

And both were already washed up in my estimation.

That, of course, was the hubris of youth at work, but I quit that job some time ago.

****

Anyway.

Tonight was a night like a thousand others at our house (which is one of those half-million dollar working-class bungalows in David Emerson's Vancouver-Kingsway riding).

And it ended with me playing my very bad guitar for my youngest kid, who is now six, at bedtime.

She likes what she calls 'story songs' in which I make up a dumber-than-dumb, almost rhyming couplet-type lyric about the day gone by that is laid over a bit of two chord chicanery that sounds vaguely reminscent of the pseudo-talking blues line that runs under the verses of Lou Reed's 'Take A Walk On The Wild Side'.

Anyway tonight she was still awake when I finished my drone, and as I got up to go she whispered, 'You're not leaving, are you? Dad?'

How could I possibly go?

So I stayed.

And I played Mr. Tambourine Man.

She fell asleep half-way through the second verse; I could tell by her breathing.

But I kept going anyway.

Often as I move through it, and especially if I know nobody's listening, I'll try to switch from Zimmerman's nasal to McGuinn's falsetto in the last half.

I honestly don't remember what voice I was affecting tonight.

But I do remember the last few lines of the very last verse.

"Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

And so I ask you.

What else could a Dad possibly ask for his kid?

.

The Write Stuff

Ink-Stained
ButNotWretchedVille


By day Irwin Loy covers the City and writes for 24 hours, presumably for a living.

The rest of the time he writes on his blog.

Here's an example, wherein he lays waste to the puffed-up puffery of the newly re-minted NPA councillor, cum quisling, Peter Ladner.

And in the 'Ironic Exaggeration' category, Ladner says in his e-mail:

"If I could get $10 for every mis-statement, exaggeration and uninformed accusation about the new council’s changes to the Southeast False Creek plan, I’d have enough to buy every low income person in Vancouver a waterfront suite."

If, like me, you're curious as to how many misstatements, exaggerations and/or uninformed accusations a city can hurl upon its esteemed councillors, here are a few quick calculations.

• Assuming a low-income rate in Vancouver of 19.1 per cent, as it was in 2000 according to Statscan (incidentally, a 3.3 percentage point increase since 1990)...
  
• ... and assuming a population of 560,000, according to the City of Vancouver website...
  
• ... there are 106,960 people in the city who qualify as low-income.
  
• Multiply that by $299,999, the price of the cheapest online MLS listing for a waterfront condo...
  
• ... and you get some $32 billion (rounded down $88 million or so).

And it only gets better from there.

I, for one, am looking forward to reading much more from the intrepid Mr. Loy.

.

Potterville, British Columbia?

LandlordLollapalooza
CronyVille


"Just remember this, Mr. Potter: that this rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this town. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?"

George Bailey, Bedford Falls NY, 1947

And is it too much to ask in the Land-O-Plenty that British Columbia has become in the here and now?

Well, with average costs for a bungalow in Mr. Emerson's 'working class' riding of Vancouver Kingsway running around $500K it probably is.

But if Sean Holman is correct it looks like former Real Estate management consultant and current Minister of Forest and Range* also responsible for Housing Rich Coleman just might be doing his best to make sure it never happens.

Now, how could he do a thing like that you might be asking?

Well, he could make sure that no more low income housing is built in B.C. while he simultaneously starts handing out Landlord Welfare in perpetuity (warning:pdf).

______
*What the heck is a "Range" minister anyway, somebody who watches old Bonanza re-runs so that they can master the stern and fatherly voice of Lorne Greene?
Of course, Smilin' Sammy Sullivan, destroyer of our last, best chance of achieving a true mixed income ownership community in the City of Vancouver just loves the 'Potterville in Perpetuity' concept.


.

No Fun Samcouver

Where'sTheGreen
DeveloperVille

Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is backpedalling again on his and his minions decision to pull $50K from the upcoming World Peace Forum.

Jeff, brother of not-so crappy Joe, Keighley says it's all about partisan, crush-the-COPE-stuff politics.

Smilin' Sammy says it ain't so. Instead, he says the real problem is that it is not enough money (how's that for pretzel logic?). Thus, he says, Vancouver could be embarrassed by not having enough limos and such for the dignitaries.

To his credit, CBC's Stephen Quinn even pulled out the old Suzanne Anton quote about 'what are we going to do, have them eat at McDonalds?'

Which got us wondering.......does that mean that if and when Sullivan and Anton announce their unqualified support for the upcoming 'World Developers and Landlords Lollapalooza' that we won't be able say:

"Let them eat Big Macs!"

No?

Darn.

.

Whose Spine Has Been Tapped Anyway?

SmellTheGloveTour
CPCVille

Seems that a whole bunch of folks on the way right side of the aisle are pretty upset about this crazed pinko-commie David Emerson crossing the floor to join their pure of heart and mind brigade.

In fact, it's turning into a bit of a self-flagellation frenzy.

A good round-up of all these self-inflicted lumbar punctures can be found here.

The thing is, anybody who has been paying attention knows that Mr. Emerson is no liberal.

In fact, if you need convincing all you have to do is read the bio on his (soon to be extinct) Martini-assisted website.

"While completing his doctorate in 1972, David got his first taste of public service working as a researcher for the Economic Council of Canada in Ottawa. In 1975, David's passion for public service brought him to British Columbia, where he quickly rose through the ranks to become the province's Deputy Minister of Finance in 1984.

In 1986, he left government to become President and CEO of the Western and Pacific Bank of Canada in Vancouver. He transformed the bank into the Canadian Western Bank-the only regional bank to survive and prosper."


In other words, scratch the surface of a BC Liberal and what do you smell?

Socred.

Which, of course, fits the CPC like a glove*


______
*All parallels to Spinal Tap are entirely intended because, to quote noted brainiac Nigel Tufnel, "It's a thin line betweeen clever and stupid", which we figure isn't far off the mark on this latest move by the Harpoon.

.

Whose Backing This Bid?

LowBallin'WasTheirGame
VANOC IsTheirNameVille


Surprise, surpise.

The cost of hosting the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver has shot up by a whopping 23 per cent.

John Furlong, Chief Executive Officer of the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), revealed a revised venue budget for the 2010 Games on Friday, one that has ballooned to $580 million from the original $470 million estimate.

Rising construction costs and a shortage of skilled workers in Vancouver's competitive building industry led to the new budget figure.

"We will stop at nothing to responsibly manage the risk of cost increases through rigorous venue planning and design, negotiations and cost controls," said Furlong.


Very bold rhetoric from Mr. Furlong, indeed.

But let's parse that last statement (ie. try and figure out what it really means).

"We will stop at nothing to responsibly MANAGE the RISK of cost increases....."

He didn't say he would 'halt' the cost increases....he didn't say he would 'control' cost increases....he did say he would 'manage' the 'risk' of them.

In other words, he said absolutely nothing.

But GordCo's Minister of Service Cuts and Surpluses did:

B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor says she's not at all surprised about the 23-percent Olympic cost increase.

“Anyone who's been out there in construction in anyway whether it's your own home renovations or if you're in the business knows what's happened to prices, they've gone up hugely,” Taylor said.

Taylor says this is exactly why the government built a 139-million dollar contingency into its Olympic funding commitment.

“We recognize that when you price something in 2002 it's very likely to be a different price when you get to the end game so we feel comfortable that we've got enough in there to cover our part of what this increase will mean,” added Taylor.


So, let's check our addition here.....2002 + 4 years = 2006 = $110 million extra.

Which means how much more in the next 4 years to 2010?

Another $100 million?

Another $500 million?

Another $1 billion?

Oh well, who really cares anyway, as long as it's 'responsibly managed'.

_____
In the meantime the mean-spirited cuts continue. Here's a recent one brought to our attention by reader lenny....." I thought you might be interested in what BC ferries is up to with the Quadra Island ferry. They've removed a disabled/elderly shelter from the deck of the boat, amongst other things." .......Sounds fair, huh?.... no shelter for the disabled on ferries that we built for everyone with our money, but buckets of cash for a two week party which is making the chosen few stinking rich(er).

.

No Fun All Over Again?

MaybeJamesGreen
CanSaveUsVille

Smilin' Sammy and the npaVandellas seem to be doing their best to make sure there is no "Dancin' in the Streets" of Vancouver.

Or real mixed income housing.

Or peace conferences*

Or neighbourhood block parties.

Or citizen forums.

It's like deja vu all over again.

How long before they start closing libraries this time around?

_____
*Best quote from a Vandella this week: Suzanne Anton saying they had to pull the rug out from under the Peace Conference/Summit because it was underfunded, embarassing, and they didn't want to have visiting dignitaries eating at "McDonalds, or something."
Update: The I-Ching King (aka Ian), who is no longer writing for free (we assume) lays out the entire scenario regarding Smilin' Sammy's whinin' here.

.