Is Big Rich's Wurlitzer Crank Broken?

Don'tKnowMuchAboutStenography
WhatAWonderfulVSunWorldVille


First there was the stenography report by the Postmedia's number two man in sick society town that was apparently based on the highly prized and completely unbiased notes of one Ms. Mary Polak...

Speaker Darryl Plecas called an investigation conducted by the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada “pathetic” and said she was “stupid” for having listened to the accused men, according to the Opposition Liberal house leader who was in the room at the time and took notes of the conversation.

Liberal house leader Mary Polak released 16 pages of detailed notes she took during a Wednesday meeting with Plecas, Green house leader Sonia Furstenau and NDP MLA Gary Begg.

In them, Plecas railed against the report by former chief justice Beverley McLachlin and promised to use B.C.’s police act to conduct his own probe into alleged wrongdoing involving officials in the building...


Then came Big Rich's attempt to turn the wurlitzer's crank...

Based on the comments, Mr. Coleman's gambit did not work.

How sad for the former Minister of Everything.



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Getting ready to climb back into the cigar tube for the final cross country sardining of the season...That plan to save 'Bohemian Rhapsody' for last on the monopoly mongers' AV feed is looking pretty good right about now...
Update: Here is a decidedly non-stenographic account from Jon Woodward of CTV in which he actually uses independent facts to fisk the notes of the good Ms. Polak....And, yes, the #@*$in' plane is late!


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Public Inquiry Preview...The Friendly Disappears The Lede.

WhenInDoubt
LubeAllTruthsVille


Black Press' very fine legislative columnist Mr. Fletcher of Tom's Harbour recently told us all that GordCo Inc's former Minister of Everything is happy that the public inquiry on all that he and his did to facilitate the exponential growth of 'Hockey Bags Full Of Dusted Cash, Llc.'

But why, we couldn't help wonder, would the former Minister of Everything be happy?

Because, according to the good Mr. Fletcher, this:

...(Rich) Coleman was minister in charge of the B.C. Lottery Corporation in 2009 when a dedicated illegal gambling enforcement team was disbanded. A new dedicated team was set up in 2016 as large casinos were operating in Metro Vancouver...


Except...

Didn't the former Minister of Everything tell Sean Holman in 2010 that he dismantled  the IGET team back in 2009 because he had something else better to go right then and there (i.e. seven years BEFORE he and Cookie Dough Mike pretended to actually do something)?

Why, yes, he did!

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Lotuslandian Real Estate Correction: Nevermind The Soft Landing...

...Bring On The Developer Party-Friendly Disaster Scenarios!

Courtesy, of course, those fine folks at Postmedia;

After all, how else are you going to bamboozle the citizenry into voting against their own self interest down the road if you don't start the boozlement right this instant.

Or some such thing.



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When In Doubt, Always Thank Your Own Personal Flack Hackery First....

Link

Do you see what I see?

****

Now.

You would think that the shame, it would burn.

But, when you and yours are working the refs, hard, in an effort to have them recognize a phantom political reincarnation worthy of a pre-public inquiry Senate seat, perhaps not.



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And as for that 'Strategies Of The Inlet' hashtag thingy?....Well...You know


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Awaiting The Celebratory VSun Headline In 144pt Type...

Reverse
SchadenfeudeVille

Link

Or.

Perhaps not.

After all, the fine folks over at Postmedia's pacific division can always start fussing about...

....This.



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Wither The Inquiry, Public Or Otherwise.

AllYourConsequences'RBelongTo
UsVille


I'm just about to climb into the goddamned cigar tube and then will be forced to endure 48 hours in the windowless science geek dungeon with little to no natural light and bad coffee for the duration.

Which means I'll probably not hear about whether or not we'll get a public inquiry into the Whaling Industry and all that entails until well after the fact.

But, before I go, I feel compelled to say something about the Dean's missive wherein he concludes the following, in his kicker, sans, you know, actual...

Evidence:

...(W)hen cabinet meets next Wednesday, I expect the New Democrats will brush past any last-minute reservations and get on with a public inquiry whose main purpose is political...


Sure, Mr. Palmer does quote David Eby saying this:

...Eby would like everything wrapped up in two years. He sees an inquiry as an exercise in “political accountability … who made the decisions, who benefited, why did they make those decisions?”...


Which isn't the same thing.

As the Dean's kicker, I mean.

But here's the thing...

I don't give a hoot-in-heckfire if there are no convictions, or even additional blockbuster-type evidence.

Because, at the very least, I want the perpetrators (starting with Vader, Darth) to be publicly shamed by their words, actions and deeds that facilitated the flow of corrupted billions into the province that is killing our kids' dreams, not to mention our body politic.

OK?


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Would You Find Me?

PuttingThePedalDown
ToPutTheWheelsInMotionVille


This is a special apology for that tiny percentage of you who stop by here occasionalaly looking for a new Sunday Set.

Just so you know, I've got the tune list for the next edition all ready to go. Furthermore, the Whackadoodle and I have been diligently working on the playing and the singing during our evening walks down the alley and around the corner, not to mention during our weekly strolls along the sandy strip where the north arm of the big muddy meets the sea.

But I'm just too slammed with science geek stuff at the moment to get things recorded this weekend.

Anyway.

When I have to go to work on a Sunday, in this case to finish reading and ranking the latest batch of my colleagues' grant applications, I often like to let the musical algorithms run.

And this afternoon this, from the bastard who set me and my kids to 'forcing-our-music-on-strangers' thing off in the first place, popped up.

Watch for the foot stomp-induced pedal break at the 4:20 mark.

And what comes after, of course...

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And if you want to hear Mr. Hansard wax on, in that most Irish way of his, about all things musical, including why Van Morrison songs work for busking, give this a listen.


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How The BCL's Wild West Donor Deluge Worked...

YouPay
YouGetToPlay(WithRealMoney)Ville


Cause*:

Effect:

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*Courtesy Norm Farrell via his Twittmachine feed.


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Was There A Method Behind Rich Coleman's (Most Recent) Madness?

DeflectorSpikeSpin
UberAllesVille



At the very least you've seen the headline...

Which is that Rich Coleman, to quote Andrew Wilkinson, drew 'parallels' between the holocaust and Dipperian legislation designed to protect the ALR that Mess'rs Coleman and Wilkinson, together with their best friends and influential donors, errrrr, uncles, did their best to dismantle.

However, given the way the proMedia works it's more likely you've heard/read/seen much more about the (mostly righteous) furor that followed.

And then, of course, there is the blanket coverage of the full apology that only came after Mr. Coleman first tried floating a non-apology apology that was savaged by pretty much everyone.

But, here's the thing...

How many proMedia stories have you seen since Thursday, when this all began on the floor of the Ledge, that are focussed on the recent re-kindling of the Casino-Industrial-Complex scandal in the wake of recent revelations regarding the coddling of the high rolling offshore whales?

If you get my drift.


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Of course, as you might expect, the good Mr. Wilkinson didn't bother to mention that it was Mr. Coleman that generated this ridiculously non-parallel parallelogrammatic upside down cake..




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What's NOT The Matter With Kansas?

AllYourBestInterestsCanBecome
OursAgainVille


Gosh.

Is it possible that Thomas Frank's thesis is no longer entirely correct?

From Reis Tebault of the WaPo...

Julie Burkhart was in her early 20s when she responded to the person yelling at her as she walked into work. How could she ever take a job at a place like that? the woman wanted to know. Burkhart didn’t realize it then, but she’d have that same argument for decades.

It was 1991, and Burkhart had returned from college to discover that her hometown of Wichita had become the front line of the religious right’s battle against abortion. She went straight into the trenches.

At a local clinic, she took calls from women who wanted abortions and scheduled their appointments. That’s where she met the protesters, and there were a lot of them that year.

Those sweltering months would come to be known as the Summer of Mercy, when members of the bellicose antiabortion group Operation Rescue traveled to the Midwestern city in droves and swarmed abortion clinics. The next month and a half radically changed the politics of abortion in Kansas...

{snip}

...Nearly three decades later, Burkhart sat down at her desk in a women’s clinic not far from the place where she first encountered the antiabortion activists. On Friday, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state’s constitution fundamentally protects abortion rights.

The news flashed across her screen, and her staff rushed in to read it with her.

Kansans have “the ability to control one’s own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination. This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life — decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.”... 

{snip}

...“I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet,” she said Friday evening. “It means, for me … this has been worth the fight."

And there were times, over the past 20-some years, when she wondered whether it would be worth it — like in 2009, when an antiabortion extremist murdered her mentor, physician George Tiller, who also ran a clinic in Wichita...



All of which just goes to show that, maybe, just maybe, it is still possible for folks to understand what is actually best for them and theirs, especially if the fox-flung sand can be washed from their eyes and the hate radio prop-goop can be drained from their ears.


OK?




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Coddling All Whales.

AllYourHighRollers'RUs
HockeyBagsFullofTwentiesVille


The Dipper-mandated investigation of staff harassment at that casino with its own Canada Line station down at the edge of the Big Muddy is out and Bob Mackin has the fully story over at the Breaker.

Here are a few pull quotes from Uncle Bob's very thorough report:

...The Project Guardian report by Paladin Security senior investigator Jared Brin, commissioned by B.C. Lottery Corporation in November 2017, was published May 1 with the names of complainants redacted. The report said those who gambled with more money at the Great Canadian Gaming-owned casino were cut slack, even when those high-rollers misbehaved and harmed staff...

{snip}

...“Two individuals told us that a manager or supervisor explicitly told them that they are to acknowledge and actively facilitate a different standard of behaviour for VIP patrons as compared to non-VIP patrons. According to several dealers and supervisors, verbal abuse bordering on uttering threats occurs daily, if not hourly,” said the 37-page report...

{snip}

...Paladin was originally hired to examine complaints of sexual harassment by high rollers against staff, but it found problems much worse: at least 18 instances of documented physical assaults and at least seven instances of assault with weapons, at least four reported patron-on-staff instances of sexual harassment, and at least four unreported staff-on-staff instances of sexual harassment.

Paladin found one case of a table games dealer who had been threatened with death by a player, but the suspect was given only a 24-hour ban. Respondents said managers discouraged table games dealers from reporting assaults with unspecified weapons to the Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch and RCMP...


Gosh.

It really is beginning to look like Big Rich and his very Fine Friends in High Rolling Places built the local Lotuslandian Whaling Tank Laundry Industry by completely dismantling oversight at the front end, the back end and all points in between.

And, of course, damn the consequences.

Imagine that!



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In case anyone interested missed it...




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