YVR MURDER - and the consequences?

"He had the stapler open ... he was in a combative stance'

Mountie who wielded taser tells inquiry he felt threatened when victim grabbed stapler

The courtroom audience snorted, giggled and shrieked.

As they should.

The RCMP officer who made this comment was not only ridiculous, he was lying.

As Gary Mason reports in a separate column today, the video shows clearly and repeatedly that Mr. Dziekanski did not raise the stapler above his head or anywhere near it and he did not move towards the officers.

And even if he had?

We all know how dangerous and scary a good Bostich stapler can be in the wrong hands!

So the officer zapped Dziekanski once and then, while Dziekanski was writhing in pain (clearly and repeatedly seen on the video), the officer zapped him again 3 times in a matter of seconds.

By the way, the officer had never before in his life used the taser.

Now, what will happen after this inquiry?

These policemen killed an innocent man.

Will they be charged? Will they lose their jobs? Will they suffer anything besides a momentary public embarrassment?

CASH - Commentary from a Friend

Insight on Investing
by Adrian Mastracci,
Fee-Only Portfolio Manager

“A trillion here, another trillion there"

For Immediate Release

Vancouver, BC (March 03, 2009):

The headlines suggest that trillion dollar deficits could be part of the US landscape for years.
The US is developing an insatiable addiction to debt.

Investors and taxpayers are swamped with mind numbing numbers.
A trillion here, another trillion there.

That is a lot of precious cash they don't have to just toss it around very casually.
Investors and taxpayers are not ready for the toxic taste of how to to pay for this.

Imagine someone fessing up to a consultant that his situation is in the deep glue because he borrowed far too much.
Now imagine that consultant telling him that the way out of the sticky glue is to borrow a bunch more he can't afford.

Say that someone is the US Government, now heavily preoccupied with ballooning bailouts and stimulus spending.
Maxing out the government credit cards has many repercussions and consequences down the road.

I thought that one smart way out was to tighten the belt and reduce needless spending.
However, simple logic gets murky awfully fast in the spin of government economics.

And they also hope that cash strapped consumers continue spending even more money they too don't have.
That is a lot of harsh medicine to swallow all at once.

So, let's call the spade what it really is.
The US is mortgaging its precious future, yet again.

I think the US would be better off to stop bailing out everyone.
Let the weak fade away and the strong survive.

The convoluted mess would right itself sooner.
I favour investing in winners, not mediocre picks.

Digging the bigger hole can't continue unchecked.
Unfortunately, government economics follows different scripts.

Adrian Mastracci, Portfolio Manager
KCM Wealth Management Inc.
"Fee-Only" Portfolio Managers & Financial Advisors
Suite 1500, Box 1078, 885 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 3E8
Tel: (604) 739-4500 Fax: (604) 739-0234
Website: www.kcmwealth.com

---

Our speciality is designing and managing long-term investment portfolios. Our advice is objective, unbiased and without conflicts of interest.

Say, Buddy...Can you spare a dime?

You know Money Mart, and similar places?

They are called "the pay-loan industry." They even have associations and no doubt have national conferences.

They are what we used to call loan sharks.

BC's Solicitor-General has capped their loan rates to only 600% per annum.

This is Van Donkey's idea of being a Good Cop.

This is what we used to call USURY.

Here is an industry that takes miserable advantage of the poor (and sometimes ignorant) and it is given license by the government to keep up the good work.

Fixing Whom?

Yesterday, the Globe & Mail continued their series on the DTES called "The Fix."

In what we must suppose is part of their "expert" revelations, the focus was on Jim Green.

The article by Robert Matas gives us a fine mini-biography at the top.

And what do we learn about the Man Who Would Be Mayor - but Wasn't?

We learn that since coming here from New York City, Green has been taking government funds, handouts and employment cheques. As a friend of mine in the development business says, "He's never had a real job." And the fact that Green now lists himself as land development consultant is uproariously funny to my development friend.

What is most amazing about Green's pronouncements about the DTES is that he says that much of the government money spent "has done a fabulous job." "Look at Insite...it is so absolutely successful." Green began Insite.

Later in the piece, Green says that people in the DTES have to get out of chemical dependency.

How, may I ask, will they do that when they are given free needles to shoot up with and a clean well-lit place to shoot up in? How about having a registered nurse doing the injection?

By the time you finish reading this piece, what you are left to understand is that amidst poverty and misery, Mr. Green stands alone in his ability to wear a stylish coat and an adorable fedora.

The poverty and the misery have done Green well.

FOLLOW-UP: Today, the Mayor, talking about his work on homelessness, says, "We're getting a lot of people with addictions and its demonstrating real progress in supporting addicts."

Huh?

Giving people a room is admirable. But giving addicts a room and thinking you are "making real progress" speaks to living in a delusion. What, if anything, does Robertson know about addictions?

STATEMENT?

Yes, that's Barack in Ottawa. And that's Old Whatshisface.

Pickle

The Blogger rests...Sunday and Monday.

See you back here on Tuesday morning.

SPEAK - ON YOUR OWN DIME

The Canadian Arab Federation gets public money to call public officials, like Immigration Minister Jason Kenny, whores.

They have called Harper and Ignatieff whores and accused Bob Rae of being a racist Zionist, pointing out that Rae's wife is, hold your nose, a Jew.

Here are some of the details taken directly from Margaret Wente's Saturday Globe column:

With a budget of more than $1-million a year, the Canadian Arab Federation depends heavily for its existence on taxpayers' money. It claims this funding is used entirely for programs that help newcomers adjust to Canadian society, and to fight racism and Islamophobia. "Our activity as an advocacy group has nothing to do with our political activity," Mr. Boudjenane says.

But the CAF's website tells another story. The home page urges people to join protests against the "massacre on Gaza." It links to dozens of anti-Israel articles, and gives prominent play to the winners of a recent essay contest on "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine." The website was developed with a grant of $60,000 from the federal Department of Heritage.

The CAF is a prominent sponsor of anti-Israel demonstrations, which feature people waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and people calling for the state of Israel to be wiped off the planet. One video shows a woman pointing toward the camera and declaring: "Jewish child, you're going to f------ die. Hamas is coming for you."

For the record, the Muslim Canadian Congress doesn't get any public money. Neither does the Canadian Jewish Congress, the country's largest Jewish advocacy group.

Wente's argument is in the title of the piece:

Say what you want - just don't expect taxpayers to pay

And she is right.

We are a nation that prizes freedom of speech.

But where is it written that taxpayers ought to pay for hateful or incendiary commentary?

Keep in mind that every level of government puts tax dollars into this particular silo, as well as into the cigar boxes of a thousand and one aggrieved and entitled groups across the nation.

Welcome to Canada - Bite the Hand That Feeds You!

TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVES IMPEDE POLICING

Eleven municipal forces and 126 RCMP detachments.

This is the single glaring reason that Pickton avoided even the most cursory attention while he was busy killing women.

This is the single glaring reason that Olson was able to continue killing young girls and boys for so long.

And it is the single glaring reason that criminal subcultures called gangs are able to flourish here in the greatest place on earth (unless you get hit with a stray bullet.)

Yet, the mayors of every little burg and whistle stop in the region firmly and stubbornly resist the idea that Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu and former Chief Bob Stewart all champion - One Metro Police Force.

The argument from the Village Idiots is that they will lose that homey hoody personal touch that folks in Tsawwassen and Port Moody now currently enjoy. Or so we are told by the officials.

Maybe.

Former Vancouver Police Chief asks in this morning's Globe, "Can you think of any private business that would embrace such a self-evident dysfunctional structure?"

Here, for the record, are the sticks-in-the-mud on this issue: the mayors of Delta (Lois Jackson), Port Moody (Joe Trasolini) ans Surrey (Dianne Watts) to name just a few.

It's good to cover your ass...until it gets shot off while you're hunting for better yogurt.

Pay To Pee

Even Scare Canada hasn't sunk this low.

Yet.

Ryanair, Britain's lo lo lo cost flyer, is now talking publicly about charging passengers a one pound coin to get into and use the on board in flight bathrooms.

Ryanair's irrepressible CEO Michael O'Leary is known for getting lots of free publicity by airing these kinds of ideas, so we can't really be sure if he's serious.

But I have a better idea.

For every man and woman who has dreamed of in air assignations, how about a coin operated boudoir?

And in keeping with the rising sales of hand held video recorders, for an extra coin get the video memento of your moment over France.

"Fly me to the moon,
And let me live beneath the stars..."

The Comforts of B&B - From her "One Voice" Video

Not One Dime

Barack Obama's stimulus budget may or may not be the answers to the world's ills.

Who, beside the Republicans, are smart enough to say?

But his speech to Congress the other night was once again magnificent and inspiring. It was so refreshing to see a North American leader encourage citizens to do well and to be well and to aspire to something useful. Some serious and welcome change from the previous eight years.

Now, some of you may be right. Obama may turn out in the long run to be merely a great speaker. We shall see.

But Bobby Jindal as the Republican's best hope for the Presidency?

You must be joking.

It is a sign of how lost and foresaken the party is that it would take seriously Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal.

CBC Ya

The CBC is crying the blues again.

Now, in the face of low cash reserves (What world did it think it was living in?) it threatens to buy and show even more American programming.

Brilliant.

The CBC has long been a corrupt and rudderless organization.

When I worked in the building on West Georgia in the late '70s, the place was hopping.

Music, variety, comedy, drama and news were employing thousands of people and every part of the building was busy. Even so, management was a dick less disaster.

Now, the building is empty. What used to be a vibrant cafeteria had many times over been remade into a news room even though there are enormous now empty studio spaces underground that were perfectly good news rooms for decades.

The CBC should NOT be disbanded, but it should be fiscally responsible (It is NOT.) and it should cut at least half its administrative staff and it should be exclusively in the business of Canadian programming.

CBC Newsworld is very often excellent, first-rate. Give us more of that and no Jeopardy and Wheel.

FASHION

The current vogue in campuses across Canada is pro-Palestinian rallies.

Signs proclaiming the "Israeli Apartheid" are as commonplace as bank machines and Tim Hortons. The virus of anti-Israel sentiment is very much alive and well in our halls.

Of course, I hate these signs and I cry for the sheer blind stupidity of decent young people who want to show their concern for the world by hitching their outrage to a wildly mistaken and misinformed ideal.

However...

Until they yell at me something hateful - and they haven't yet, even though I have argued with them at the college where I work - I support, through gritteed teeth, their right to free expression.

How to get it done

On the other hand...

If you want to read a really positive story about reducing crime, read Jeffrey Simpson in today's Globe about the Winnipeg community of Point Douglas.

Here's a community that turned itself around from drug dealers and crack houses and street violence by the courage of first one man, then others, and a zero tolerance for bad behaviour.

Imagine such a thing in the DTES.

No News at all

Many years ago, I worked for CBC-TV News.

One morning, I was assigned to go to the Hotel Vancouver to cover some announcement by the Minister of Cups & Saucers, or was it the Minister of Bacon 'n Eggs?

I refused. My boss was aghast.

"That isn't news. It's a ritual, and our job isn't to be an arm of the government."

Of course, they put up with me for the rest of the year and mysteriously didn't renew my contract.

I haven't changed.

Nor have governments.

The press is all abuzz with Harper's public declarations of getting tough on crime.

Wake me when it's over.

And careful stepping over the bodies.

Heavier sentences for various ugly crimes may or may not stop bad guys in their tracks (NOT), but that's the least of our concerns.

Until police and prosecutors have real teeth in their powers to investigate and make airtight cases that will stand-up in court, and until judges are prepared to put the bad guys away without thousands of silly concessions for "time spent" and auto-parole and the like, business will continue as usual.

These photo ops are a big yawn. Too little, too late and without serious backup.

Tell me. Does one of you now feel safer?

Y & B - Good Combo

PECKING ORDER

In the past three years, 200,000 foul have been killed in the Fraser
Valley because of bird flu.

Vancouver City Council is proposing chickens in Vancouver's back
yards, It all fits, don't you see. Junkies on the way home from the
safe injection site to their free bachelor apartment can swipe a
chicken for dinner.

Victor Godin

Easy, Now

A proposed law that would formally recognize aboriginal rights and title in B.C. is also expected to set in motion dramatic changes to the structure of native governments in the province.

British Columbia's top native leaders are meeting for a special assembly in Nanaimo this week to debate the principles of the proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act. The law would not only turn back the clock on the Crown's 150-year-old claim to the province's land and resources, but also would set up a commission with the goal of reconstituting the existing 203 native bands in B.C. into 30 indigenous governments.

Premier Campbell is trying to get this into law in the next four weeks.

In theory, this is a wonderful thing.

Recognize native rights and claims and give natives the opportunities to control industries and resources.

In theory.

In practice? In recent history?

Just what we all need, 30 new governments.

And what will that cost all of us, including aboriginals?

And what corruption, pettiness and favoritism - which have been the watchwords of so much native governance in recent past decades - will those new bureaucracies bring?

Be careful what you wish for.

In his strange and mysterious desire to be the best friend B.C. aboriginals ever had, Gordon Campbell may just set in motion one of the worst boondoggles this boon-prone territory has ever experienced.

How Government Works

Indian Affairs is criticized.

So? Business as usual.

Indian Affairs deserves to be criticized. Heck, it barely deserves to exist.

So what does the federal government do?

Do they try to correct the problems.

Of course not.

They pay taxpayers dollars t hire Hill & Knowlton, Canada's largest and priciest PR firm to manage the spin.

This is how government works.

MINDING THE STORE - N OT

Nobody's home.

At least that's what federal auditors have found when it comes to their own government and the 2010 Olympics.

The auditors pointed out that the Winter Games face a range of potential risks, from funding to security to natural hazards, but a committee of deputy ministers struck to provide leadership on such matters in the run-up to the Olympics hasn't met since March, 2005.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

That is priceless. It is perfect.

And, of course, it is more than a blessing in disguise. It's an outright gift.

No doubt VANOC and Gord and everyone else couldn't be more pleased.

Just what they all need is some snoopy, loopy group of underemployed Ottawa mandarins to ask embarrassing questions.

So what if that's their job description?

Luge on!