Tuesday, November 11, 2008

From Victor - We are Not Alone


For those who wonder how bad it can get for cities under the thrall of incompetent politicians who think the can play with the Wall St. boys, here's a quick tale of Birmingham Alabama. It is bankrupt to the tune of $3.2 billion, for a new sewer system,designed to serve a mere 146,000 people. It was initially estimated to cost $250 million. It bumped to $1.2 billion. Then the geniuses who run the city council went to Wall St. hedge fund firms. The debt soon ballooned to $3.2 billion, for a sewer system intended to serve a city the size of Victoria.


But Alabama doesn't brush over these things. So far there are 21 convictions for this scam. More to come. The whole story is in the October 27th issue of Fortune magazine, which is probably read by 4 people in left wing Vancouver. Worth a read. It could happen to us, unless of course we think we're smarter than the folks in Birmingham. That would be a tad elitist, wouldn't it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

To bad we don't go after crooked politicians here, we just promote them to the senate!

Anonymous said...

Gosh.....sounds like Cambie Canyon to me.

Or BC Rail and Basi/Virk.

Remember.

VOTE.

Anonymous said...

our boondoggle will be the $600 million water filtration project on the north shore, which has been sitting idle since the beginning of this year.

Light Rail Guy said...

David, remember a certain letter that I posted from an American transit expert? To 'cut to the chase', he is saying that TransLink's business case isn't worth the paper that it's printed on. Now in the real world, a business case that has been tampered or designed to promote a certain project, is I believe illegal.

I know it's good old VSE stuff that the Liberal boys & girls love, but really it's a scam worthy of an investigation because it is tantamount to f****!

(The dictionary defines f**** as an attempt to deceive for profit)

Would Wally Awful do anything? Not a chance! The RCMP? Nope, unless they could tazer someone? The Auditor General? Nope again, he hasn't the funding for such an exercise. Who in hell watches out for the taxpayer? In BC, NO ONE!