Thursday, June 29, 2017

No More Days Of Clarkland...The Deed Is Done!

Here'sToTheEndOfTheGoldenEra
OpenTheBooksVille



Celebratory tunes coming!


________
I spent the evening in the lab scoring freshly stained tissue microarrays....The codswallop in the ledge over the last few days had been making me crazy so I purposely unplugged and didn't pay attention to either news reports or the twittmachine after the non-confidence vote came down this afternoon...Thus, I did not learn of this thing until almost 11:00pm...And it was not the proMedia that told me...Instead it was readers on the comment thread to the last post of the Last Doomed Day...What a way to end it...Thanks everyone!


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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

The Last Doomed Day In Clarkland...The Dean Takes A Stand.

ButWhereWillHeBe
OnFridayVille


Finally.

...The New Democrats and Greens have given serious thought to managing the challenges in the legislature. They have already concluded they can make do without unilateral changes in the standing orders. Perhaps they have other solutions as well.

If sufficiently satisfied by those assurances to call on Horgan to form a government, the Lt.-Gov. could further ask the premier-designate to recall the legislature in short order and demonstrate he has the confidence of the house.

Granted there would be no guarantees that the power-sharing arrangement could be made to work for long. But in my view it would be more prudent to give it a chance, rather than declare it a failure based on self-serving suppositions of a scheming premier.



But here's the thing.

What should we all do if Ms. Guichon does not do the good Mr. Palmer's suggested 'prudent' thing?



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The Last Doomed Day Of Clarkland...100% Dead Wrong One Last Time.

NoteTheLackOfPluralization
InTheHeaderVille


First this, from The Tyee's Andrew MacLeod on the Twittmachine:


Gosh.

Didn't the coalition demonstrably demonstrate, unequivocally, that they can and will collaborate when they voted earlier this week to kibosh the good Ms. Clark's fake (i.e. folks like the great bunch at SNC Lavelin would love it because they would still be able to give the Crony Party of their choice a million bucks whenever they want to) BigMoneyBanBill?

Just sayin'...



______
What it really comes down to in the wake of Craig James' 'speech' to the Ledge last week and Mike de Jong's codswallopanarianism this week re: the speaker is the following....Is the fix already in?
And I'm not talking about constitutionality, or legal standing, or even convention here...Instead, I'm talking about what the wizards are willing to do?...And don't forget that, in the past, they have been willing to do a lot, many times over...
I really do hope that the answer is a resounding 'No'....However, I think it would be foolish not to be prepared for the opposite given the stakes involved and the wizards' past performance.


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The Last Days Of Clarkland...Section 44.

NevermindThoseShillophants
InTheCorner(AndThePublicPrintsAndTheAirwavesAndWhereverTimeAndSpaceCanBeBought)Ville


Straight from British Columbia's 'Constitution Act':

44  If a vote in the Legislative Assembly is tied, the Speaker has a casting vote.



All the rest is prologue.

And nothing more.

OK?



_______
Tip O' The Toque to Jen Stewart on the Twittmachine and Norm Farrell over at his place.


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Saturday, June 24, 2017

The Last Days Of Clarkland...Shillophants On Parade.

WhatIsTheRealEndGameOfAllThis
ProceduralPretzelismVille


With shillophants like this, who needs clowns...

Case in point, it would appear that the good Mr. Coyne is dancing on top of a big deeply purpled NaPo float while wearing the loudest 'Double S' suit of them all:

...It has been argued that, while the Speaker’s impartiality may be the convention at most times, it should not be the convention now; that what is intolerable as the exception, for a bill’s fate to be decided by the vote of the Speaker, should be tolerated as the rule; in short, that convention should be respected so long as it is not inconvenient.

This will appeal to that enduring Canadian constituency for having things both ways. But it would do immense harm to the way we are governed. It is a hard enough job keeping order in the unruly cockpit of partisanship that is a legislature, even with a Speaker who is universally respected for his fairness and impartiality. To expect order to prevail with an unabashedly partisan Speaker, under the government whip, is foolish in the extreme...



Meanwhile...

It would also appear that Marky Mark is now the purple baton twirling drum major for the "No Costs/No Taxes, Bathtub Gin &Toga Parties For All!' brassiest brass-type band...




______
Of course, there is absolutely no truth to the scurrilous and completely unfounded rumour that Mr. Coyne's float was driven by the current clerk of the legislature...None whatsoever!



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Friday, June 23, 2017

The Last Doomed Days Of Clarkland...The Polak Consistency.

TalkingPoints
NonsenseVille


Apparently, the co-optation of all things Leap Manifesto, Marxism (of the non-Groucho kind), the CCF, and the GreenDP Coalition by the Salad Of The Word party is entirely consistent with everything it has ever done.

How do we know this is true?

Because Marvelous Mary Polak says it is so:




_____

The thread, with Ms. Polak's Twittmachine intern fighting back with both hands tied behind his or her back is hilarious. 


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The Last Days Of Clarkland: Everything In My Throne Speech Is Dangerous...


...Now Give Me Money!


The following is a fundraising letter recently received by public education advocate Jenn Stewart:




Hypocrisy, thy name is Christy.

(some call it Hypochristy)



_______
What's it really all about this time Alfie?...I have a theory...More on that soon (i.e. sometime this weekend after littler e's graduation events are all done).
Bob Mackin goes a little deeper on the fundraising thing...Here.
Uncle Bob also notes that, in addition to an Oil Refinery Lobbyist, Ms. Clark also had her longtime FedLib rainmaker in the ledge with her yesterday...Imagine that!


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Thursday, June 22, 2017

The Last Days Of Clarkland...What Has The Dean Been Smoking?

TheSnoutsInTheTroughTheyBeFlying
HighTimesVille


Don't worry.

By tomorrow, Saturday at the latest, the buzz will wear off and the good Mr. Palmer will write the next in a never ending series of punch-pulling, hedge-betting columns.

Meanwhile....

Oil Co. Lobbyist Uber Alles!



_____
Update: Looks like the Dean has moved on to the harder stuff...


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The Last Days Of Clarkland....ALL Of Your NDP's 'R Us.

WeWillEvenFloatOnLeadAnchorsMadeOfAluminumToHoldOnto
PowerVille


Mental health, education, welfare rates, transit, bus passes, carbon taxes, campaign finance reform and all that are one thing when it comes to the co-optation of all things Dipper/Green.

But this...

This, if even remotely true, would be unbelievably Clarklandian in more ways than Christy:


Shazam!
(It would appear Mr. Antrim was p'wning us all...But I would take pretty short odds on it having been in at least one draft version or three of the speech somewhere up the line)



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Wednesday, June 21, 2017

TDDIC....When Projection And Paranoia Become One.




Gosh.

Is the Klout Klub now closed?

And I guess media monitors and/or digital influencers were never employed by the BC Liberals.

Of course, it goes out without saying that no local Liberal operative would ever stoop to using the Boyz to get things done.

Right?


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TDDIC...All Your Legislations 'R Us.

BigMoneyKeepOnRollin'
InTheDarkVille


Rob Shaw, writing in the VSun yesterday, made it clear that Andrew Weaver will not support any card check legislation from John Horgan.

Which is all fine as far as it goes, and is not unexpected (although I wonder if there would be a Fac. Ass'n at the fine institution where Mr. Weaver plies his academic trade if a secret ballot only-type certification drive was held today).

But what really caught my eye in the piece was the following from the good Mr. Shaw:

...Weaver said the Greens are interested in co-operating with the Liberals and NDP on other legislation (including potentially voting in favour of a Liberal bill to ban corporate and union donations), but warned he won’t allow any party to unilaterally push bills through the legislature...



Of course, the above passage was neither presaged with nor followed by any mention whatsoever of the fact that the BCNDP has introduced such legislation six times already in legislatures controlled by the BC Liberal Party and, most recently, Ms. Christy Clark.

In addition, there was no mention that Mr. Shaw's employer is one of the current crop of big money proMedia donor's to the BC Liberal Party of Ms. Christy Clark.

Kind of makes you wonder if Postmedia has made any deepest, darkest money-type contributions to Ms. Clark et al. in the past few weeks.

Perhaps Mr. Shaw could report back and let us know if that is or is not the case before we are forced to fork out $350 million to help service the restructured debt of the hedge fund that controls them and/or keep the big bonuses rolling in for the really big Postmedia bosses that are apparently so deserving of them.

OK?


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Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Mr. Ward Finds His Way Home.


HotFoot
This!Ville


Brook Ward who tends to babble like one in the free-formed format that is sports talk radio is a different guy when he's calling a ballgame.

And calling a game is something he did with great regularity back in the days of triple A baseball in Vancouver.

That all ended when the team moved to Sacramento in 2006.

But tonight I got tired of the MoCo and flicked on up the dial to find Mr. Ward calling the opening game at Nat Bailey this evening.

If Moe Drabowsky was still here Mr. Ward's left shoe would be on fire by now and their would be goldfish in his soft drink.

You think I'm joking?



______
Fun little back 'n forth on the Twittmachine about the greatness that was Mr. Drabowsky...Here.

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This Doomed Day In Clarkland...To Hell With The 71%.

ButDimitri
SaidVille


Because...

This:


_____
Subheader?....Well, according to all kinds of wizards in days past....Genius!



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TDDIC...Sometimes The Best Way To Help A Crony Is To Absolutely Nothing At All.

StatueOfLiberated
LimitationsVille


Well, well, well...

Whadd'ya know.

The ability of the provincial government to actually lay Environmental Act-related charges against those finest of the very fine folks for all that stuff went down at Mt. Polley three years ago will soon end.

Gordon Hoekstra of the VSun has the story. Here is his lede:

A deadline looms for provincial charges to be laid in the failure of the tailings dam at Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley mine, but the B.C. Conservation Officer Service says the investigation has not finished.

There is a three-year time limit to lay charges under B.C.’s Environmental Management Act. The deadline is less than two months away, on Aug. 4.

The conservation service has been leading a joint investigation with the federal Environment and Fisheries departments.

Chris Doyle, deputy chief of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, said Tuesday that when the investigation is complete, the findings will be forwarded to Crown counsel for review and to determine what charges will be laid, if any.

Doyle said he could not comment on whether the investigation would be complete before the three-year deadline...



Gosh.

It's not like the proprietor of Imperial Metals and/or various and sundry associates and/or associated companies has given a million dollars to the BC Liberals or anything.

Right?

Hmmmm....

Come to think of it, perhaps we should check to see what Norm Farrell has to say about that....

Hang on a moment...

This will only take a second...

I stand corrected!


_______
And...One can only wonder how much darkest of all the dark money is being showered upon Clarklandia by said proprietor, associations and/or associated Co's as you read this?
Previous 'This Doomed Day In Clarkland' (TDDIC) pieces can be found...Here. 
Many thanks to an Anon-O-Mouse in the comment threads for the heads up on this one.


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Monday, June 19, 2017

This Doomed Day In Clarkland...The Darkest Money Of All.

AllOurCronies'RUs
NowMoreThanEverVille


That was then (i.e. last week):

The BC Liberals have stopped disclosing political donations in “real time,” saying they are instead focusing staff time on preparing for potential new fundraising rules under an NDP government...


This is now (i.e. today):

The BC Liberals say they are listening to the message from voters, but some will interpret it as a desperate bid to hold onto power...

{snip}

...The party plans to announce a $100 a month increase to income assistance, and will also expand LIFT, a program that helps single parents with child care and expenses while they upgrade skills.

Along with those rate increase, the Liberals are promising a new mechanism to increase welfare rates annually and tie disability rates to the rate of inflation.

In addition to the social assistance changes, the BC Liberals will also promise a ban on corporate and union donations....



So.

Where is all that new and now completely dark and unreported crony money coming from and what will it 'pay' for?

Well...

You can be sure of one thing...

If the puffed-up local pundit gentry are fully in compliant hollow back mode (now that they have all taken the bait and written/spoken of the terrible, awful, no good faux speaker crisis), and if the associated wurlitzering has moved the secret poll and focus group numbers enough to trigger the nuclear ranchland option we will know absolutely nothing until after the ensuing snappily popped and cracked election.

If you get my drift.


______
Meanwhile, Alison has a very important product replacement announcement.
Previous TDDIC (This Doomed Day In Clarkland) posts can be found...Here.


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Sunday, June 18, 2017

For My Dad (And My Mom).

DoingItAllOver
AgainVille

For those of you who have been stopping by here for awhile now....

Why this post again?

Because it's a tradition...

That's why!
_________________________________________




My Dad spent his entire adult life working for tow-boat companies hauling all manner of stuff up and down the west coast, from Alaska to California, and sometimes even across the water to Hawaii.

And he was pretty well paid for doing that job, especially once the 1970's arrived.

And while I know that part of the reason for my Dad's increasing salary, which helped make it possible for me to go to college, a first in our family, was the damned good job he did as he began to work on ever bigger boats like, say, this one, I also know that in large part I owe my shot at a higher education to his union.

How do I know this for sure?

Because I also know that my Mom, who was climbing the ladder working in ever bigger branches on ever bigger jobs with ever bigger responsibilities of one of our country's biggest banks at the very same time my Dad was hauling logs, got paid peanuts by comparison for doing her non-union job.

But that does not mean that my Mom's passing down of her ability to be analytical, sometimes in the extreme, did not help me get to college too and, maybe even more importantly, help me become a full-fledged science geek in the end.

My mom passed away awhile back after a long, slow decline that left my Dad doing a whole lot of the work and the worry after his days of working for a living/pay cheque were long done. It was a tough lot that gave him little time or space to do much else. Which is why it was so special when he came over from the Island last weekend to see littler e's last big dance show as a kid*.

Anyway, with all that said, below is my now traditional F-Day post for my Dad....

___________

I really do live a charmed life.

I have a wonderful wife and two great kids.

I also have a job I actually like, where most of the time I get to do what I want while working with people (also mostly kids) to produce stuff that we are all really proud of.

And that job pays me well; not hockey player money well, but I make more than I ever dreamed of. Which, of course, means that I make just enough that we can afford to live in our own house within the Vancouver city limits.

In fact, I guess some might say that I am upwardly mobile enough that I should quit all my complainin' because I'm one of the lucky ones that actually benefits financially from many of the 'well-off folks first!' policies of Mr. Campbell and Ms. Clark et al.

But here's the thing.....

I am most definitely not one of those 'ladder puller-uppers'

You know, somebody who's got theirs, and now says, "Screw you Jack," to everybody else.

Why?

I'll tell you why.

It's because of my Dad.......


My old man was a Union man.

And the folks in the Union fought like bastards...and they fought constantly, usually for the tiniest of things in each successive contract...things like an extra quarter percent on a COLA clause, or one little add-on like an extra free filling per year on the dental plan.

And when I was a kid, especially during that time when I was a barely no-longer-a-teenager-aged kid, I thought the folks from the Union were just a little bit off their nut....all that energy going into what, exactly?

After all, it was the 80's, and Dave Barrett and the Socialist Hordes were long gone, and the Wild Kelowna boys were rolling along, and Unions were bad, and Expo was coming, and Trudeau was going, and John Turner was hiccupping, and Mulroney was lurking, somewhere off in the distance....

....And if you were a half-bright, apolitical science-geek kind of kid like me, breezing your way through college and thinking about graduate school, you laughed when you saw the boy wonder from Burnaby, Michael J. Fox, shirk his Family Ties and ape the young Republicans while making fun of his willfully neutered Leftie of a Dad on the TV screen...

....And if you were that kid, you thought that you were living in a golden age that was tied, not to the social democratic reforms of the past, but to the coming of Free Trade and the promises of the Reaganites from the South...

...And from that perspective you sure as heck didn't always get the irony of Bruce Springsteen singing about the plight of the working class in 'Born in the USA'.

But now that I have spent a good chunk of time in USA where I started a family of my own before coming home, I do get it.

I understand that my Dad spent his entire adult life hauling logs up and down the West Coast, working his guts out to help keep the robber baron families rich because he had to make a living to support his own family....

....And I get the fact that, because of the Unions, my family's standard of living gradually improved, bit by bit, over the years so that by the time I had grown up to be that callow young man described above my parents had saved enough to help me go to University....

....And I get the fact that I was the first one in my family who got to go to University....Ever.....And it wasn't because I was so damned smart....

....And I get the fact that, while my parents' limited financial help and support was important, it would never have been enough to get me into the same good schools if I had arrived on the scene a single generation earlier or, perhaps, later....

....And I get the fact that those Wild Kelowna Boys, and all the other neo-cons that have come since, have been doing their damndest to destroy the dream of a University education for all, and instead have instituted an elitist education for some and one-trick-pony Technical training for everybody else.....

....And I get the fact that, if it wasn't for folks like my Dad and the other lefties of his time, my current world, one in which I make a living with my eyes and my mind wide open, would not be what it is today.....

....And most of all, I now get the fact that my Dad was, and is, my hero.




________
Photo at the top...My Dad and my youngest brother getting ready for a highly ritualized Samuri Fishing Rod Sword Fight (to the death!) up at Spectacle Lake at the top of the Malahat on Vancouver Island in the early/mid-70's.
Photo at the bottom...My Mom with somebody's kid, probably one of my much younger cousins, at the picnic table in our daisy-filled old back yard on Monterey Ave. in Victoria that was the scene of a thousand-and-one-before-and-after-dinner soccer and/or cream-'em games (although the latter were more often in the front yard for some unfathomable reason) also probably from the middish '70's...And if I'm wrong, rest assured that my brothers will be sure to correct me!
*That does not mean that littler e's dancing days are done...In fact, right after graduation she is climbing into a big cigar tube to spend a month in the Big Apple tapping her toes



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Saturday, June 17, 2017

Monday, Monday....


ADifferentHeadland
NotMarinVille


We were a much younger family when we lived in the East Bay.

In a tiny little white house on a cul-de-sac in the Berkeley flats.

Our friends and neighbours the Q's lived just up the street.

And all of the kids from that time are grown up now.

Heckfire.

Bigger E no longer pitches to me.

And even littler e., who was actually born after we moved north, graduates from high school next week.

Anyway...

M. of the Q's is here this weekend.

With his new partner and his new little one.

This morning, Saturday, we were having a hard time explaining how much time and effort would be involved in a trip to Capilano canyon.

And then it just popped into my head...

'It's like driving to the Marin Headlands', I said.

M. got it immediately - the bridges, the traffic, everything.

Might be good thing to try after the weekend, on Monday, we decided.


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TDDIC...Unleash The Bogeymen!

AfterTheBoysOfHochstein
AreGoneVille


Interesting piece, for all kinds of reasons, under Nick Eagland's byline in today's VSun.

Mr. Eagland starts his piece with high level (a.k.a. superficial) reportage of John Horgan's address to the BCGEU yesterday.

Then, with the lede out of the way, the piece veers off into stuff Mr. Horgan did not talk about:

...In May, before the NDP formed an alliance with the B.C. Green party, Horgan told the editorial boards of the Vancouver Sun and The Province that an NDP government would review the labour code, with the intention to remove the current rule that sees employees who want to unionize take a vote by secret ballot.

Employers have said it’s key to preventing workers from being intimidated by co-workers into union certification. Horgan said he prefers a system called card check, in which a union is certified if a majority of members sign union cards.

“I believe that the right to join a union is a fundamental right in Canada and I believe card check is an appropriate way for that happen,” he (Horgan) told the board...



Hmmmmm....

Wonder if Mr. Eagland was actually in the room for Horgan's meeting with the VSun editorial board?

Or.

Did that VSun 'report'  reporting on past goings on at the VSun  instead come from the 'with files from Rob Shaw' tagline?

But I digress....

Because the piece next ignores the history of when and why the card check came into being before it takes a turn down an alley labelled paranoia:

...Horgan wasn’t made available to media following his address Friday. Shane Simpson, the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Hastings who was labour critic before the election, said the party remains “quite supportive” of card-check certification...



And, as for that big, scary, bogeyman?

Well....

Cracks In The Coalition!


...Asked whether he believes the Greens would be on board with a move to card-check certification, Simpson said he believes “they’re happy to be part of the conversation” regarding any changes to the labour code, Workers Compensation Act or Employment Standards Act...


As you might expect the 'reader' reactions in the comment thread attached to the piece are predictable, because....'Democracy'.

Or some such thing.

****

Look.

The upshot here is that, as Lotusland's most experienced labour reporter notes,  a card check system is the best way to remove employer intimidation when it comes to labour organizing.

Which leads to increased rates of unionization.

And that means increased standards of living for everyone.

Not to mention increased public awareness and public education and all that (more on that in tomorrow's post).

All of which are things that all that dark money behind the ICBA, Resource Works, CC4BC, The Fraser Institute and all the other bought-and-paid-for shillophants is really against.

OK?


_______
Previous 'This Doomed Day In Clarkland' (TDDIC) posts are...Here.


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Friday, June 16, 2017

TDDIC...One More Big Money Donor Sees A Full Return On Investment.

PayToPlayAllTheWayToThe
BitterEndVille




What's it all about this time Alfie?

Well...

As is so often the case with Crony Party parties, the song remains the same.

The following is from Nancy Macdonald's Maclean's piece published a few months ago:

 ...British Columbians’ faith in democracy is being undermined by the vast sums flooding the system, and there’s a growing concern that their government is essentially being bought and paid for by a wealthy clique...

{snip}

...Critics similarly point to contributions by large companies like Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service ($115,000 donated to the Liberal party since 2005), Emil Anderson Construction ($50,000), Kinder Morgan and its industry supporters ($719,000) and Imperial Metals and its subsidiaries ($195,000). Those same companies have, respectively, received a 20-year government laundry contract, a $36-million six-lane highway expansion contract, Clark’s approval for a controversial pipeline and a permit to open a new mine. In the case of the mine approval, it came one year after Imperial Metal’s controlling shareholder, N. Murray Edwards, hosted a $1-million fundraiser for Clark in Calgary...




Look.

The people on both sides of these transactions really are shameless.

But why wouldn't they be given that they are covered by a local proMedia that refuses to really and truly connect the dots.

And that includes Mr. Obvious of Chichester....errrrr....the no longer empire Mail.




_______
You can read more of our previous posts on the Ecotex 'deal'.....Here.
Previous 'This Doomed Day In Clarkland' (TDDIC) posts can be found....Here.


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Thursday, June 15, 2017

TDDIC...Stop Treating These People Like They Are Reasonable.

TheGilliard
DoctrineVille


Mr de Jong was the latest codswallopinarian/high ranking member of the BCLiberal party to emerge from the bunker...

Look.

These people are not reasonable.

And it is not just because they have been in too power too long.

The fact is, they have been unreasonable right from the beginning

The following is an illustration of that fact from a piece by Kim Lunman, then writing for the Globe and Mail, back in 2001:


What's left of British Columbia's old NDP government fits into a cramped office on the first floor of the legislature with a view of the building's ventilator.

The door is marked "Opposition MLA Offices." The word "official" has been left out on purpose after much bickering with the new Liberal government.

"The double 'O' scares the heck out of them," says NDP Leader Joy MacPhail, one of only two NDP MLAs re-elected in May.

A few months ago, Ms. MacPhail was the deputy premier, with a spacious office overlooking the capital city's scenic inner harbour.

Today, the 49-year-old Vancouver MLA makes up half the opposition. She and Jenny Kwan, also a former NDP cabinet minister from Vancouver, share tight quarters with a researcher, a receptionist and two aides...

{snip}

...Ms. MacPhail and Ms. Kwan were denied official-opposition status by Speaker Claude Richmond in a ruling last month supported by Premier Gordon Campbell. In his ruling, Mr. Richmond cited an obscure encyclopedia of parliament that states the official opposition must "be prepared to form government."...


****


Truth be told, all of this non-stop codswallopanarianism is starting to remind me of the early days of the Obama administration wherein he tried to work with those very finest of the fine folks on the other side.

But then and there, just like here and now, it very quickly became abundantly clear that you cannot work with people who care more about wielding crony-backed power than improving the common good.

So let's ignore the bleatings of these people, their surrogates, their inspectors and their bought-and-paid-for shillophants.

And lets get on with it.

Because, as the greatest of all the denizens of Left Blogistan, Steve Gilliard, once said about finest of fine people that care only for wielding power and destroying the common good:

" I'm not interested in debating them. I want to stop them."


OK?

(Merv Adey's words work also)



______
And as for all of this speakerized side-dish of hollandaise sauce-obscured codswallop about a 'constitutional crisis'?....Well....Bernard Lord held a one seat majority in New Brunswick for three years between 2003 and 2006 wherein a speaker from his party broke the ties.
Earlier 'This Doomed Day In Clarkland' (TDDIC) posts can be found...Here.


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This Doomed Day In Clarkland...The Polaking.

Where'sClaudeNow
RichmondVille


Not exactly ye ol' turdstormer stuff, but still...




Meanwhile, the VTC brings in the formerly feral one to help close the inspector-inspired circle of beef jerky that has been force-fed into the local proMedia wurlitzer.

Sheesh.



______
Here is how the Times Colonist described the good Mr. (nolongerFerrall) Collins' time in government "Gary Collins was a BC Liberal MLA for 14 years, almost all of it as house leader on both the opposition an government sides of the house"...Gosh...Me thinks there just might be something lupine left out of all that.
Previous 'This Doomed Day In Clarkland'  posts can be found...Here.


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Wednesday, June 14, 2017

TDDIC...The Waiting Is The Hardest Part.

YouTakeItOn
FaithVille


Why is the good Ms. Clark making us wait so long?

Well...

I like Union Will's take on the Twittmachine:




And, right on cue, Bob Mackin provides a little evidence to back up the above:



Imagine that!


_________
Header/SubHeader got your earworm wrigglin'?.....This!
TDDIC?....As always, 'This Doomed Day In Clarkland'...Earlier versions can be found....Here.



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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

TDDIC...Andrew Wilkinson Makes Like LBJ.

Baseless
IsVille


A long, long time ago...

"He was sunk in despair. He was desperate... he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to.....accuse his high-riding opponent (the pig farmer) of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children... His campaign manager was shocked. 'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he said. 'It's not true.' 'Of course it's not,' Johnson barked at him, 'but let's make the bastard deny it.'..."


Hunter Thompson, on Lyndon Johnson's 1948 Congressional Campaign.



And then, today, NL Radio's Shane Woodford fell for the same oft-used BCLiberal strate(r)gy all over again:

The BC Liberals are pouncing over the suggestion the NDP and Green pact was predicated on prying a Liberal MLA away to fill the Speaker role.

New Attorney General Andrew Wilkinson says Green Party leader Andrew Weaver has admitted it was discussed in talks with the NDP but never made it into the final agreement.

"Well it seems that the Greens and the NDP never reached an understanding about who would be the Speaker and where the Speaker would come from. Now it turns out that one of the sides thought it was coming from the Liberal ranks, and that is not going to happen. The other side didn't even turn their mind to it so they are going to have some real tensions between the Greens and the NDP as they figure out where to go next."...

{snip}

...For their part Green Party leader Andrew Weaver and party officials are denying aspects of the story and saying there is no kind of tension or infighting between themselves and NDP.




The question is, who will use Mr. Woodford's cut-out to start the wurlitzer cranking?

My money is on the good Ms. Mills.

Although I would take pretty short odds on Mr. Advantage.


______
Of course, it is entirely possible that Mr. Woodford has some actual verifiable evidence, obtained either from Mr. Wilkinson and/or elsewhere, of all this 'tension' going down...Unfortunately, nothing of that sort made its way into the bit.
TDDIC?....This Day In Doomed Clarkland, as per usual.


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This Doomed Day In Clarkland...Where Have All The Wizards Gone?

AllYeSpinners
AbandonShipVille





Imagine that!



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Update Tuesday Afternoon....But wait!...The Wizard is back!....Although only on the Twittmachine.....Bob Mackin has more.

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Monday, June 12, 2017

This Doomed Day In Clarkland...Abandoning Ship?

SoThereWereNoStrate(r)gySessions
InDunbar?Ville


This just in from the good Mr. Marissen:




Hmmmmm...

Spoken as if is he, himself, is not...

...One of them.

Isn't that special?


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Subheader?.....Via Bob Mackin....This.


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Sunday, June 11, 2017

The Long, Long Tail Of The Crony Party's Original Pay-To-Play Gambit.

990YearsIsALongLongTime
SaleNotSaleVille


As Bob Mackin notes, the citizens of British Columbia may never stop paying the cronies that made the BC Liberal govetnment's very first pay-to-play deal:


****

What's that, you may be asking.....

Railgate was a pre-Clarklandian, made man-assisted pay-to-play too?

Darn tootin'!



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Meanwhile, over at In-Sights, Norm Farrell is firing on all cylinders.


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Friday, June 09, 2017

This Doomed Day In Clarkland... The Upshot.

AllYourCrownJewels
AreTurnedToDustVille


A fellow named David Bond, who is a retired bank economist, has written a most interesting column in the Kelowna Courier about the state of play at BC Hydro.

After a detailed preamble about the Crony Party's nefarious accounting practices, Mr. Bond gets straight to the heart of the matter:

...The upshot is that BC Hydro’s pension account is $1.2 billion below what is required for actuarial solvency, the deferral accounts have grown to several billion, and the total debt is over $20 billion. About $2 billion of that will have to be paid down in the next fiscal year. BC Hydro has asked the BC Utilities Commission for an unprecedented 12 years to catch up on its pension liability...



So.

How to deal with this?

Well, Mr. Bond has a four point plan:

First, immediately shutting down the unnecessary Site C would stop much future bleeding.

Second, BC Hydro’s capital expenditures include about a billion a year for new power, over and above the amount needed to sustain existing facilities. Stop that.

Third, many agreements with Independent Power Producers that forced Hydro to pay non-market prices for power are in default. Cancelling these contracts would yield substantial savings.

Fourth, allow Hydro to charge rates equal to their costs and if the rate shock is unbearable, transfer some of the debt to the province.



****

Look.

Cleaning up the mess created by sixteen years of BC Liberal rule is going to be painful.

And, clearly, it is going to be the job of the coalition to start the cleaning and cauterizing.

All of which will lead to howls of derision from the cronies, the quislings, and the bought-and-paid-for sycophants.

But...

The fact of the matter is, as anyone who has been paying attention throughout the length and breadth of the Golden Era knows, sooner or later the citizenry was going to have to pay for the budgetary malfeasance and chicanery that stretches back through de Jong, Falcon, the second coming of the Hansen advantage, Taylor, and the Hansen advantage (the first!).....All the way to he who never testified about the wolfening, Mr. Farrell-Collins.

OK?


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Mr. Bond also explains how ICBC has been systematically looted in his piece....The entire thing is most certainly worth a read.
Of course, this is not something you will read about in local Lotusland-central proMedia print organs...However, if you want more, and more specifically on the folly that is Site C, Norm Farrell delves into the informed commentary of Harry Swain and Emma Gilchrist....Here...Norm also has Erik Andersen explain the original grift that forces Hydro to keep overestimating demand year after year after year after year despite actual evidence/reality to the contrary.


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Thursday, June 08, 2017

This Doomed Day In Clarkland...The Fourth Delete?

TakeItDeeDee
One!Two!Three!Four!Ville


First, CKNW's lede from Liza Yuzda on yesterday's presser from the Clarklandian CEO of Hydro:

On the heels of Tuesday’s series of letters between B.C.’s political leaders about the future of Site C, BC Hydro’s CEO met with reporters to give their position on the scheduling and cost of delaying the project.

By her team’s calculation, Jessica McDonald says it could cost $630-million to put off moving two homes in the path of the project’s work. The Premier estimated it at $600-million.

McDonald – who would not go on tape – says there are no other options than for the move to happen next month as scheduled or the river diversion set for 2019 would be delayed...



****


Did you see what I saw?

...McDonald - who would not go on tape...


Gosh.

Do you even have to delete a statement that is not backed with credible documentary evidence if said statement was never recorded for replay and/or posterity?

Hmmmmmmm....

Is it possible that this is all some kind of cronified zen grift from the wizardry?



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This Doomed Day In Clarkland...After The Boys Of Hochstein Are Gone.

Where'sThe
TurfVille


My, my, my...

Look what those fine folks at the ICBA are up to now:



Gosh.

Does this mean that the group's newly minted spokesthingy is going to call for a referendum in support of a massive waste of the citizenry's money?

Because throwing massive, treasure-filled concrete blocks into the water after (alleged) sunk costs is a good thing.

Right?



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Update: Now we see where their chance to grandstand a referendum will come from....PropRep!


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Wednesday, June 07, 2017

This Doomed Day In Clarkland....The Comeuppance.

Prop-FreeGovernanceComingDown
Evidence-A-Go-GoVille


We noted yesterday that our fine premier's letter about Site C contained the usual codswallop.

Mr. Weaver, he of the coalition, has since called Ms. Clark on it:




Of course, as you might have predicted, all of this means that the prop-offensive has been shifted into high gear by the wizards of Clarklandia.

Weirdly (and/or tellingly), they've been forced to go to the bottom of the Lotuslandian proMedia cut-out barrel this time around.

More on that later....


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Tuesday, June 06, 2017

These Doomed Days Of The Golden Era....The Clarkening.

Let'sGetMikey
He'llTryAnythingVille


Well, well, well...

The behindest-of-behind-the-scene scenesters of all times has written a letter, not to the BCUC, but instead to Mr. Horgan.

And Club members like this one are lapping it up:




Of course, hidden inside the so-called 'bluff calling' instrument (i.e. Ms. Clark's letter) is an actual bluff:




Which leads citizens who pay attention, folks like Lew Edwardson for example, to ask the following of the good Mr. Smyth and his ilk:





Meanwhile...

When, exactly, is our legislature, where such things can be openly discussed and debated, opening again?


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Monday, June 05, 2017

And So It Begins...

ThePriceOfClubMembershipIs
NotCheapVille


Last week we noted a bit of pithy anti-Club reality uttered by retired proMedia member Rod Mickleburgh:



And then, by week's end we got a piece in the Financial Post under Jesse Snyder's byline overtop a headline that said:

"It's Going To Cost A Fortune': Cancellation Of $8.8B Site C Dam Would Scrap Billions Of Dollars In Contract Work.




Now.

I just have have to ask, before I even begin to untie the pretzel of the logic of the header and/or the piece itself...

Are these people insane?



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Sunday, June 04, 2017

They Were Somewhere Around Langley When...

SomeDesertsAreGreener
ThanOthersVille


Mr. Beer 'N Hockey and the gang went to the drive-in last night.

The movie was not to their liking.

But, in the end, the evening's cinematic shortcomings did not matter because:

...The night was still marvellous... Half moon. Bright stars. Bats hoovering the buggy suburban sky.


Imagine that.

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What's it all about Alfie?....Why, the good Docktor and his attorney, who was most definitely not Samoan.., Of course.


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Saturday, June 03, 2017

The Big Pretzel In The Globe And (No Longer Empire) Mail's Logic.

TheSmartestBoysClub
InTheRoomVille


The Globe has some advice for the current premier of British Columbia:

...The NDP and Greens are promising to ban corporate and union donations, cap individual donations – ideally, Quebec’s $100 per person limit should be the model – and review the entire system of electoral finance. It’s about time.

If Ms. Clark is wise, she will embrace campaign finance reform in her throne speech. Get ahead of public opinion, or, in this case, just catch up with it...



Weirdly, however, that very advice came immediately after the following paragraph:

...Ms. Clark and her party should have followed the lead of the federal government and other provinces, and banned union and corporate donations, while capping the maximum individual donation. They did not because, however bad it looked and however cynical it made voters, it allowed the party to be so much better funded than its rivals. For example, the B.C. Liberals raised nearly $1-million in the three days after the May 9 election. Several donors wrote cheques for $25,000 or more – amounts way too large to be legal federally or in many provinces...


Hmmmm....

Do you see what the finest of the fine fine folks at the Globe and Mail washed away there?


****


Of course, it won't be long before the Ledgie Boys and the Inspector start blaming the new and improved, not to mention massive, Crony Party Party war chest on John Horgan and Andrew Weaver.

As for Ron Obvious?

Well...

We await his 'source-driven' whacking of the coalition's true colours and/or motives with bated breath.

Or some such thing.

OK?


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Friday, June 02, 2017

Former Member of Lotuslandian ProMedia Club Burns Membership Card.

ThereIsAClub
AndYouAreNotInItVille






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There really is a club?...Darn tootin'.



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Thursday, June 01, 2017

These Doomed Days In Clarkland...The Cronification Of Everything Is NOT Over.

AllYourPostElectionDonations
'RUsVille


This just in from Sam Cooper of Postmedia:

The last two open lots on a prime False Creek Flats development site owned by four B.C. universities have been offered in a confidential untendered sale to several Vancouver developers, in a deal that must be approved by the B.C. government.

According to information reviewed by Postmedia News, the confidential sale proposal by the Great Northern Way Trust — a land-development group involving BCIT, SFU, UBC and Emily Carr University — came together in May. Circumstances of the deal, which must be approved by the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Advanced Education, seem to underline the high stakes at play in B.C.’s new uncertain political terrain...

{snip}

...A person with knowledge of the deal said the four universities that are shareholders of GNW must approve the deal before June 15 so that it can be put forward for government approval...



Gosh.

Is it possible we now know the real reason that our current fine premier is willing herself to be humble through June?


****


I highly recommend that you go and read Mr. Cooper's entire piece.

However, you may wish to slip into an ice water bath first to keep your blood from boiling over.

Especially when you recall...

...This.


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