Alex Loves the Carbuncle Tax... NOT!

OPEN LETTER TO PREMIER--FROM A FRIEND

Dear Gordon:

I know what you’re thinking…here’s Alex again trying to tell me how to do my job…

Well, it seems that you’re having some problems, notwithstanding a twelve point lead in the polls that could easily evaporate by next year, so, I thought, being the generous fellow I am, I’d pitch in and offer some advice. After all, you won’t answer specific questions about your pals Ken Dobell, Pat Kinsella and Mark Jiles; and refuse to address easily answerable questions regarding the Basi-Virk trial; dismiss the very serious problems over at the Ministry of Children and Families and largely disregard the press..

Ergo, let’s give you a hand…

I haven’t had to do this since your temporary insanity over giving away the Musqueam Golf Course, but, more to the point…this Carbon Tax of yours is sheer lunacy.

While China and the United States continue to spew unending streams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you, apparently, rather than pushing for real solutions through massive technological advance want, instead, to punish the hardest working British Columbians for the eco-crimes of major world polluters, who hide behind several layers of bureaucrats, and incomprehensible, self-serving rhetoric. It’s similar to the way you have protected larger industrial polluters in this province from environmental accountability.

What you are doing with this ridiculous ‘B.C. Carbon Tax’ is a kin to sending a jaywalker to death row because a given murderer had a magnificent lawyer. Worse yet, it puts you in the company of some of the greatest buffoons and hypocrites in the climate change cauldron of alarmists: Al Gore, Stephane Dion, David Suzuki, Elizabeth May. God help you, Premier!

China, the world’s biggest C02 emitter, builds a coal-burning plant every six days (you should know, BC sells China huge reserves of coal every year) and the Chinese people purchase 20,000 cars per day. The good ‘ole Excited States of Amnesia boasts roughly 5% of the world’s population but consume 30% of the world’s resources. If our entire country adopted the intellectually fraudulent Kyoto Protocol and achieved the fantasy targets, we could only accomplish such a miracle by shutting down every plane, train, automobile, home and office building—for seven years straight, and even then our contribution to reducing global C02 levels would be negligible.

I was astonished to read those nuggets of wisdom two years ago. You might know the columnist. His name is Michael Campbell (he’s always been one of my favorites, but don’t tell anybody).

Forget that crude prices are nudging $150 per barrel, ignore that we are looking as if we will become bridesmaid to America’s-Next-Top-Economic-Crisis, why the hell would you burden the working stiff in this province with yet another tax? We’re taxed to death in this country, having you pile on and mind-numbingly declare revenue neutrality, is, for lack of a better word, nuts. The $100 you sent me went into my gas tank—thanks by the way…would you like to bet that’s the way it was for a majority of BCers?

Up-province, they are already paying as much as 20% more in energy costs than those in the Lower Mainland and travel twice as far to get to work. What do you say, Gord, to the carpenter from Revelstoke, with a wife working a double-shift at a local diner, both of whom pay into a mortgage and car payments, and still find time to raise three kids? They’re lucky to meet each other once a day for half an hour on the downside of a marriage doomed. Believe me, they don’t need the additional hit at the pump, even if it cumulatively amounts to ‘only’ four bags of groceries per year.

But do you remember them?

These are the people that you promised to protect…and those few little words ‘BC Carbon Tax’ keep them awake at night almost as much as the next three words keep me awake at night…

PREMIER CAROLE JAMES.

I bet you’re sleeping just fine though Gord…

For now…

Would all the defenders of the carbon tax please get a life...

Joyce Murray won a by-election in Vancouver-Quadra not too long ago, after Stephen Owen jumped ship for a job at UBC.

She is now the Liberal member of Parliament for the district.

When she was running, she stopped me in the street and asked me if I was aware that there was an election. I told her that I was aware.

She asked if I would be voting Liberal. I said, "Not in this lifetime."

Murray has shown her tru colors by writing a short piece, which mysteriously was published on the op-ed page in the Sun.

She says, "Carbon Tax is Right Move for our Future."

How do people grow up to be such liars, fools and mountebanks?

Take this LIne, Please

Congratulations and full speed ahead to the plucky Tsawwassen residents who are doing everything they can - like parking their cars in the way - to block the construction of high-power lines through their neighbourhood.

The BC Transmission Corp, like most government agencies and offices, believes it has a god-given right to run roughshod over people.

May the good citizens of Tsawwassen show them otherwise.

Starving Your Own

I confess I had no idea how dreadful is the state of ordinary life in Mugabe's Zimbabe.

The headline in today's Sun business section trumpets $58 Billion for a Coke. And it is not a misprint.

The story is astonishing.

In the news section, the dance between the African Union, the UN and Mugabe continues at a very slow trot.

When will the UN become something true and real?

Go Cambie, Go!

The Cambie Village Business Association will officially launnch their lawsuit against Transclunk for the will ful and thoughtless damage done to their livelihoods.

I hope they succeed.

Welcome to Vancouver, Mr. Know-it-all, Never-been-here-before Plunderbus.

That only Looks LIke Heroin, Officer.

The Justice Train Wreck continues on its merry path here in La-la-land.

A mother and son, both with priors, both get off being caught red-handed with a lot of drugs at YVR.

The mother, blames the son for wrapping the presents and claiming she had no idea.

Then, the crown drops the proceedings against the son.

Read the entire comic book story in this morning's Province here.

Glenn Gould - Bach

Robert's City

From Robert's blog: http://pelalusa.blogspot.com/

A Few Thoughts on Illegal Drug Policy

I responded at length to this posting by Los Angeles based columnist, Amy Alkon. I thought it worthy to repost here.

Illegal drug use is the #1 issue in Vancouver, BC where I live. A major swath of the city has been infested with lost souls who are high on one or more of: Heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth, and a variety of others.

The consumption of these drugs costs money. It is estimated that 80% of all property crime (cars, homes, businesses) is directly related to drug use. With a 10:1 ratio of selling stolen property, $10,000 worth of stuff is stolen for every $1,000 worth of drugs. Not only has this driven insurance rates sky high, but it has also resulted in disruptions of phone and electrical service, as the drug addicts have ripped out wires in search of copper to sell for scrap metal.

Metro Vancouver was recently named as the organized crime capital of the world, with literally tens of thousands of homes being converted over to drug growing dens or drug manufacturing labs. Just the other week, an apartment complex in the supposedly good neighbourhood where I live (Kitsilano) had to be evacuated for a few days because some nutbar decided to turn his apartment into a crystal meth manufacturing facility. He killed himself with the fumes and potentially risked the lives of everyone else in the building from exposure to the fumes or an explosion.

From time to time we have gangstas (generally Asian or South Asian) roaming around the streets, firing automatic weapons into the cars & homes of their enemies. However, their bullets don't suddenly fall to the ground before hitting innocent people.

"BC Bud" is the high potency marijuana that others have mentioned. It is primarily shipped down to the U.S. in exchange for guns, cocaine, and heroin coming up here. Those items coming to us are not blessings on our society in any way, shape, or form.

The police have pretty much given up on arresting drug addicts and often drug dealers because our over lenient judges have continuously released these people back onto the street before the arresting cop starts his next shift.

Over in Switzerland, where they've had a pretty open "live and let live" policy about drug use, even they are rethinking it because of what it is doing to their society.

I don't precisely know what the ultimate solution to this Modern Day Plague is but its presence in my community has turned me from a pure Libertarian into a Pragmatic Libertarian.

One proposed policy I'm in growing support of is to forcibly incarcerate drug addicts into treatment facilities far away from the source of their misery. Many recovered drug addicts agree with this approach, saying that until a person hits rock bottom, they'll never go willingly. But it often takes many years of misery to reach that point. By then, many are dead.

Of course, there are significant forces against such a policy. They speak of "human rights" but I strongly believe what's really at the heart of their objections is that many, many people are now gainfully employed by the Poverty Industry. These are the folks who are supposedly employed to help these lost souls. They're very adept at applying band-aids but actually curing the drug addictions doesn't seem to be of much interest to them.

Am I cynical? I prefer the term "realistic and saddened observer"!

I WANT, ergo I MUST

An academic wants to witness assisted suicide. A fight is brewing over his right to do that.

So goes the front page headline.

The key words here are "want" and "right."

As we have all learned by repeated lashes on irrationality, "want" and "right" have now become equivalents in Canadian culture.

I want to bash people's heads in; therefor I must have that right.

I want to kick or shoot or main Jews, blacks, Scots, dogs or sales clerks; therefore I must have the right.

I want to talk loudly on my cell phone during violin concertos, libraries, restaurants, buses; therefore I have the right.

So...

I want to see people end their lives. This will make a good paper.

Therefore...

Now, don't leap to misunderstand me.

Academic research and academic freedoms are important. They are often frivolous, ridiculous, entirely self-serving, a complete waste of taxpayers money and human energy, but they must be maintained and upheld because one of those investigations out of a thousand might actually yield some shard of information that will actually be of some use to humankind sooner or later.

Still, that leaves many questions.

I want to witness the raping of babies for my academic research and therefore I should be allowed to stage such and watch and take notes?

This is not as outrageous and far-fetched as you may think.

In the 70's, a husband and wife team of psychologists, called the Sobels, actually had a bar built in a classroom at the U of T so that they could teach drunks to sip.

I am not making that up.

Several years later, they made the cover of Time magazine, by confessing that they finally realized that what they were doing (trying to teach drunks to "manage" alcohol) was destructive and immoral.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has formed a brassy committee to investigate the death-watcher's concerns. Perhaps CAUT should be CAUGHT.

The committee is a panel of blue ribbon...wait for it...academics.

This is akin to the police investigating themselves, and we all know how well that works.

If CAUGHT really wants to study this issue - and it should because it is a deeply moral and philosophical matter - it should add to the committee housewives, house husbands, doctors, rabbis, priests, CEOs and school children, among others.

Excuse me, I have to go watch a gang of teens swarm a harmless old man at a bus stop and kick him to death. We're set to go at eleven.

Quote of the Week

" I doubt that many people in Metro Vancouver of aware of Translink's wordwide reputation."

Hahahaha...

I doubt that Thomas Prendergast, the new CEO of Transclunk, recently imported from NYC, has ever waited 20 minutes for the #20 bus at the Broadway station at 8 pm, surrounded by drug deals.

I doubt that Mr. P. is aware of how arrogantly he has begun his reign telling us poor little Metro Vancouverites how little is our awareness.

I doubt P. has taken his communications and diplomacy pills this week.

Ca-ching! That Hosannah will be a Buck and a Quarter

Hertz is deducting 20 minutes pay per week from en employee for his time spent praying.

This is the poster boy action for stupid, counter-productive and old-fashioned management.

In today's marketplace, any employer who time cards his wage earners is working backwards.

The name of the game is responsibility. Get the job done, whether it takes 5 minutes or 9 hours.

And praying?

They should be happy they have an employee with some values.

What'$ in a Name? Lot$

War fraud - badly made and faulty equipment, overbilling - is costing the American taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars today.

Unfortunately, or cleverly, depending on how you vote, there is nothing to be done, to be done, because neither the Iraq nor Afghanistan missions was declared "a war."

Read the NY Times editorial here, and remember, for truth in journalism, always follow the money.

Andy Bey

Victor on Lib-Speak

Hey mensche:

In a world of much larger problems, I manage to fret about the tiniest things. It keeps me healthy.

This week's annoyance concerns two language conceits of Gordon Campbell (Gordo Carbo) that have been picked up by the tiny portion of his Cabinet Ministers who are allowed to address the media. Here they are with headlines:

#1 THE TOOTHLESS RABBI MUMBLE

Gordo Carbo refers to British Columbia as BRISHHH Clumbia. There used to be a "t" in the middle of British. Columbia had an "o". But Carbo pronounces it like a toothless Rabbi, as in " Are you here for the brishhh." Or maybe a drunk who wondered into a circumcision rite and asked, " Wasss a brisshh anyway? burp!"

If you listen to Carbo's designated hit men ( Kevin Flopman, Wally Opaque etc.) they all raise a glass to Brishh Clumbia.

#2: MUMMY SAYS I CAN TALK

This refers to Carbo's tendency to start every third sentence with " I can tell you." What the bleeding hell does that mean? Has his grandmother finally released him from a vow and allowed him to tell us some long dead secret? Has he finally learned to pronounce the two syllable words in the proclamation he is about to orate? Flopman loves this one. He uses it without any accompanying sentence. Opaque uses it, but then again, Opaque proves that in order to be a Stepford wife, you do not have to be a wife, white, or stupid.

Stupid is enough.

So, I can tell you that here in Brishhhh Clumbia, ish a bewfull day.

I'm on m way to a brisssh and I have the rabbi's teeth in my pocket. Somewhere. Ouch!!!!!

v

Frances Bula Moving On

Frances Bula, for many years Vancouver Sun's City Hall senior reporter, is departing the Sun to work as Contributing Editor at Vancouver Magazine. She will also be a key member of Langara College's Journalism Faculty.

Here is her last entry on her Sun's "City States" blog from this morning:

A short goodbye

Dear all of my blog-readers,

This will be my last post on this Vancouver Sun blog, as I have resigned from the paper.

I wanted to tell all of you, as I go, how much I have enjoyed this new form of telling you the news and how great it has been to interact in a completely different way with a crowd of intelligent, engaged and well-informed people. I don’t want to say “readers,” because that implies you are passive and the thing I love about the blog is that you’re not – you post comments and email and phone and let me know in person about other information I should have or your critiques of what I’ve written – so it’s more like a conversation where you learn from me and I learn from you.

What this blog has really proven to me, as well, is that there is a significant group of people out there who really care about content and about issues beyond the boundaries of your house and yard. That’s something that we in the newspaper business are frequently told is not the case. But the growth of this blog, which went from 1,000 to 30,000 page views a month in the course of only six months, tells me people are hungry for information.

That’s encouraging to me and to everyone who works in this funny business of scooping up and distributing words and facts and observations for a living. It makes me feel good about the future of journalism, which is a cause I really believe in. In spite of all the many criticisms we can all make about objectivity and corporate ownership and bias and sensationalism and all the other terrible faults of contemporary media, there is still something exciting about the fundamental concept of having people whose “work” is to go out and ask weird questions, dig up strange and unknown stuff from files, or hang out and observe the doings of everyone from street people to premiers – all on behalf of the public.

People often talk about the new power of “citizen journalism,” seeming to forget that the thing about paid journalists is that they are the original form of citizen journalism. Journalists, through their professional organizations, have always rejected the idea that anyone should have to be certified or have to have a required level of education to work in the business. That’s because of a fundamental belief that all citizens have the capacity to observe and report on the world, not just some elite class. So I encourage all of you to support the good parts of the mainstream media that’s produced by us citizen journalists who happen to be paid.

As for me, I will be continuing with other forms of journalism, including blogging, but, unless there’s an unforeseeable turn in my life in the next few years, I won’t be embedded in a daily-news operation any more as I have been for the last 25 years of my life.

Thank you so much for being a great audience and I’ll see you elsewhere.

Frances

Awards

Philip Owen has been named to the Order of Canada.

No, that's debasement. Or...de basement.

Because he has travelled the world promoting the Four Pillars Delusion?

It's never been about four programs. It's always been about Harm Seduction, which has caused more harm than good.

On the other hand...

Dr. Henry Morgentaler was also named to the order and that has brought out the religious leaders in outrage.

I applaud Morgentaler and his courage and his belief in women.

Doctor Shortage Before Our Noses

We've got good news and we've got bad news.

The good news: 12 new doctors from 10 countries were made Canadian citizens yesterday.

The bad: there are somewhere between 400 and 800 foreign-trained doctors living in B.C. who would like to work as doctors, but have yet to be licensed to practice.

Will any government ever act on this continuing scandal?

NIMBYISM at its Worst

Turning Point Recovery Society has had to abandon its plans for another facility in Richmond to help addicts. The Society has been quietly and effectively doing its job for 25 years.

We can expect ignorance and fear mongering from neighbours. That's a given.

But where has Richmond City Council been through all of this? Where is their vision and courage?

I'll tell you where.

It's been in the laminated wood panels on the roof of the Olympic Skating Oval, an ego project never discussed with the citizens.

Do they actually think that they have no addicts in their jurisdiction?

Do they actually think?

A classic case of fiddling while Rome burns.

Canadiana Sweet

Arar Abandoned by US Court in Absurd Technicality

Court Dismisses Rendition Suit

By ALAN FEUER

Published: July 1, 2008

A federal appeals court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Syrian-born Canadian man who had accused the United States of violating the law and his civil rights after he was detained at Kennedy Airport and sent to Syria under what he claims was an act of “extraordinary rendition.”

The man, Maher Arar, tried to win civil damages from United States officials in his suit, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled that because he was never technically inside the United States, his claims could not be heard in the federal courts.

While stating that “threats to the nation’s security do not allow us to jettison principles of ‘simple justice and fair dealing,’ ” the majority opinion ruled nonetheless that Mr. Arar, who had been seized as he tried to change planes at Kennedy Airport while flying back to Canada from Switzerland, had no federal standing in his case and that the government did not violate the Torture Victim Protection Act by sending him abroad.

Mr. Arar, a telecommunications engineer, was detained at the airport in September 2002 when immigration officers found his name on a terrorist watch list. After being held for several days in New York, he was sent to Jordan by immigration officers and turned over to Syrian intelligence, which, he claims, tortured him.

In an occasionally scathing dissent, one judge, Robert D. Sack, said Mr. Arar’s suit should have been able to proceed because the argument that he was never really in the United States was “a legal fiction.”

“Arar was, in effect, abducted while attempting to transit at J.F.K. Airport,” Judge Sack wrote.