You're Not So Excellent After All

Governments across Canada are cutting scholarship monies previously available to high school graduates.

Never to be outdone, The Education Premier has topped them all.

"British Columbia sent letters to 185 of its leading high school students this month informing them of the cancellation of the Premier's Excellence Awards, which for more than two decades have given thousands of dollars to high-achievers who stayed in the province for their undergraduate education."

This bit of penny-wise, pound-foolish decision making will save the province about $240,000.

In other words, lunch.

The future is in their hands. The future is our children. And so on into the good night.

These are cliches that slip from the lips of political leaders at every foto op and chicken dinner.

But.

Sending thousands of civic employees to the Olympics as "volunteers" at a cost in the many millions, now that's O.K.

But encouraging our students to succeed?

Nah.

Wait until The Games are over.

Are you still not getting the picture?

Its' Me and the Mentally Ill and the Sexually Abused. We Have No Place at the Podium

"The Fraser Health Authority will cut elective surgeries by 10 to 15 per cent, place a cap on MRI procedures and reduce management positions in an effort to meet a budget shortfall of up to $160-million that the opposition alleges was hidden from the public during the last provincial election."

News that managers and adminstration staff may be sent packing is not so dreadful.

But this is:

"Services for seniors and the mentally ill will be cut. They include services for sexual abuse victims and the scuttling of the New Westminster domestic violence response team."

Let's see now.

Seniors, the mentally ill and sexual abuse victims.

No longer priorities for the Olympic Premier.

Are you still not getting the picture?

LES PAUL, MUSICAL WIZARD

IT'S STILL A GOOD DEAL, NO, A TERRIFIC DEAL

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

Yesterday, I wrote in this space about health care in America and Canada.

There were some wonderful responses.

Two of my friends were quick to point out that I pay much more than $168 every three months for my coverage.

Here are their comments:

From David M:

Terrific letter from your friend at Tulane University. I love his analogy to a "shady used-car dealership". Unless the Democrats undertake tort reform, and thereby help constrain the practice of unecessary medical testing, they will not be able to achieve their goals within a reasonable cost structure. Will the Democrats turn their back on the number one source of campaign funding, the trial lawyers? It's called "leadership".

Like you, I'm a supporter of the single-payer, universal access system that we have in this country. However, the cost is a lot more than you imply in today's blog entry. When one factors in the 42% or so of every provincial tax-dollar that goes to health care in this province the cost is huge. Single-payer, universal access is great but we've got to introduce private sector competition and disciplines, inside the system, or we simply will not be able to afford the level of service we have let alone that which we seek to achieve.

From Victor:

david:

You do NOT pay $168 every three months for health care. This is an
illusion born of decades of government propaganda. Here are the actual
numbers.

Health care accounts for 45% of government spending. Therefore, it
sucks up 45% of all government revenue.

So, that means if you buy a microwave oven and pay $15 sales tax, $7
of that goes right into health care. If you pay $2000 in provincial
income tax, $900 goes to health care.

Do we have a single tier cost system. Only if one is math challenged.
Consider this.

In BC, if your salary is $100,000, your provincial income tax is
$8500. About $4000 of that goes directly into health care. That's $333
a month for health care plus the $56 a month for MSP for a total of
$389 a month for health care.

If your salary is $28,000 a year you pay $1000 in provincial income
tax, meaning $450 a year goes into health care. That's $37 a month
plus $56 for MSP for a total of $93 a month for health coverage.

Thus, if these two hypothetical taxpayers are sitting in a doctor's
office awaiting exactly the same procedure, one person is paying 4
times as much as the other for the same service. Whether the rich
should pay more is a whole other debate. But the facts are (a) we have
a multi-tier system regardless of what lying politicians say (b) Our
MSP payments do not remotely cover our total contribution.

GREAT TV

Oxymoronic, I know.

Almost as impossible as happy marriage, Catholic university, military intelligence, liquor control board...

BUT...

In this case, it is true.

Bravo is running the original first year of "Law & Order."

Over the years, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Michael Moriarity - "Ben Stone," Rene Balcer, the show runner and Executive Producer, and the great Stephen Hill - "D.A. Adam Schiff."

They were all marvelous interviews.

The first year or two of this wonderful series was filmed in a gritty, neo-realistic style. One had the sense of being in those stuffy rooms and on those scary streets.

Moriarity, before he succumbed to demon drink and a few other of his unique peculiarities, was one of America's great, great actors.

Hill was a lesson in acting week after week.

The show has continued to be pretty darn good, but nothing as superb as those first few seasons.

Bravo, 8pm, Monday to Friday.

NEW FEATURE

Every day for the near foreseeable future, I will share with you the number of actual bicycles I have seen on the Burrard Street Bridge as I drive over it in my car.

The number is just to the right of this column.

The largest number I have ever seen since the One and a Half Million Dollar Ideological Miasm was instituted is 11.

But a friend told me yesterday that he counted 12!

Now, I don't drive over the Burrard Street Bridge every day, but most days. And I don't always drive over at rush hour, but often enough.

An important caveat:

I do not work for the government or Vision Vancouver, so my numbers may not match theirs.

But you knew that, didn't you?

COMING UP

I have been asked by one of our regular readers to talk about solutions for addictions and the DTES.

I will do that in the coming days.

Stay tuned.

MOB RULE

I appreciate that the devil is in the details.

And that President Obama's health care initiatives may be craggy and rife with almost as many problems as the ones he is trying to solve.

But...

He is trying to find health insurance coverage for almost 50 million of his fellow citizens.

And the hysteria and lies and near-violence and death threats against the President himself are astonishing to me.

Hideous and repulsive.

And the fear implied in words like "socialism" speaks so much of rank ignorance, lacking of facts and information.

This simple fact remains.

I pay $168 every three months into my publicly funded health care system.

For a great many years, I have cost that system darn little.

As I age, I cost the system more.

I see my doctor more often in his office.

I have had two heart "procedures" in the last four years.

Nobody asks for my credit card.

No insurance company argues with me about what they feel bound to pay.

Americans and Africans ( South Africa is in the midst of the identical struggle to reform their own system, which is rife with iniquity, based largely on color!) should be looking to Canada as a hopeful role model not as the devil incarnate.

FROM A FRIEND IN AMERICA

I'm afraid you've grossly underestimated the extent of the problem. While the uninsured are, of course, in deep doo doo, those of us 'lucky' enough to have "health insurance" (really just the 'illusion' of health insurance) in the US are, in some respects, even worse off.

My wife and I pay $364 a month for insurance through my job at Tulane university. For this, I receive the dubious privilege of arguing with United Healthcare about which part of which bill they may or may not bestir themselves to pay. The way it works is, I go to the doctor (first, of course, coughing up my $25 "co-pay" in front). He takes a look at me, and if that's all he does that's the end of it. If, however, he actually treats me in any manner, in about three weeks (although I have received them up to six MONTHS) I receive a calculation containing the actual cost of the procedure, minus whatever United has decided to pay. What's left is the "patient responsibility," which is mine to pay.

As near as I can tell, there is no sure way to ever determine what this will be. The insurance contract itself contains pages of meaningless, deliberatly misleading blather, all of it undecipherable, even by colleagues with degrees in higher mathematics. Their website is no help. I've even tried calling their 1-800 number while in the doctors office, only to receive an ultimate accounting wildly different (and always larger) than their representative's 'quote.' Imagine a healthcare system run along the lines of a shady used car dealership and you get the idea.

At a recent 'enrollment meeting" (don't ask) United asserted that they would now pay for a "routine colonoscopy" every five years for men over 50. After a morning spent wasted on the phone with a representative I now understand that the word "routine" means something very different in insurancespeak and that if I want fiber optics technology shoved up my ass this year I'll need to fork over $1800.

Then there's the "lifetime cap" for treatment. On most policies this is about a million dollars, which seems like a lot, until you get a load at what a couple of weeks in the ICU costs. Once you've exceeded that your family has a choice between letting the hospital kick you out on the street to die or bankrupting themselves paying out of pocket.

For a lot of people though, things never get that far due to a nifty process insurers call 'recission.' If you get sick and start costing them money, algorhythms in their computers red-flag your file and their team of adjusters go to work looking for egregious reasons to cancel your coverage; childhood asthma that you forgot to include on your original application, say, or a change in meds your doctor noted on your chart but forgot to inform you of.

Unfortunately even Obama's 'reforms' still leave private insurers in the catbird seat. The uninsured will receive government subsidies to assist them in buying private insurance (talk about "socialized medicine," only in this case the risk is socialized while the profits are privatized). The 'public option,' if it happens at all, will likely be so compromised and ineffectual that only the poorest and most disenfranchised will opt for it, reinforcing the notion that "government" can't do anything right.

I'm sad to say it, but this latest "health care reform" bill is looking more and more like a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic

FROM A FRIEND

There are 2 things that the BC Government is counting on:

1. As British Columbians , we will continue to be apathetic to the proposed HST and although we will bitch about it to our friends and neighbours, we will not do anything to stop the government from implementing this tax.

2. That we will be as stupid as the government considers the voting electorate to be and by the time the next election rolls around, we will have forgotten how the Liberals lied to us (HST was not part of their platform for the May election)

If you do not want this tax implemented in July of 2010...Please contact your MLA and the Premier's office.

SIGNING ON LINE PETITIONS IS NOT ENOUGH They must hear from individuals!

The Premier and MLA's will only take notice if they are inundated with emails, phone calls, faxes, and letters.

Find and email your MLA Http://www.leg.BC.ca/MLA/3-1-1.htm

Premiere's Office - email - premier@gov.BC.ca;

- phone 250 387-1715

- FAX 250 387-0087

- mail PO box 9041, Stn Provincial Gov't, Victoria, BC V8W 9E1

Listed below are a few of the items that you will be paying more for if the Liberals get their way and the HST is passed:

• Cable TV
• Car and home insurance
• Chiropractors, naturopath
• Golf Fees
• Gym Membership
• Gas for your car
• Hydro
• Haircuts
• Heating Fuel
• Internet
• Income Tax Prep.
• Legal Fees: for wills, P.Of A., advice, etc.
• Hockey/Football/Baseball Game Tickets
• Home purchases
• Home heating oil
• Magazine Subscription
• Movie Tickets
• Newspapers Subscription
• Pizza Delivery
• Restaurant Service
• Telephone
• Theatre Tickets
• Used Car purchases
• Vacation Travel: airline ticket and hotels
• Veterinarian
• Vitamins
• Tim Hortons Coffee

Aren't you tired of handing over your hard earned paycheck? Please email/write/fax this government and let them know that we will not be lied to anymore....and keep writing until they start to listen

HEALTH CARE ON THE ROPES

They are cutting funds for libraries.

And they have told every ministry in the government to cut 15% from their spending.

"They" are the minions of Gordon Campbell.

And now we learn the full force of (Or do we? Perhaps much more is to come.) their cuts to health care and medical services.

"The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is planning to shut down nearly one-quarter of its operating rooms and cancel thousands of elective surgeries between Sept. 1 and March 31 in a bid to bridge a $90-million budget gap, NDP health critic Adrian Dix charged yesterday.?

Among the targeted procedures...wait for it...coronary bypasses.

That's right, heart bypasses.

This is "elective" surgery?

Open heart surgery is the same as putting collagen in your lips?

But, wait. This gets better.

Let's make a connection that at first blush seems unlikely, nay, impossible.

"Last month, health authority officials announced plans to save about $600,000 by postponing one-third of scheduled surgeries during the 2010 Olympics and this year's extended two-week spring break.

Likewise, the Fraser Health Authority, facing a $130-million deficit, announced it will “postpone” 2,000 elective surgeries over a four-week period during the Olympics."

Am I understanding this correctly?

We are making medical decisions based on somethingorother about the Olympic Games???

I emphasize the word Games.

A show of some kind is going on downtown so you stop providing health care? Huh?

In the old tradition that "all things are political," we learn as well that "the government ordered health authorities to withhold their 2009-10 service plans until May 13, the day after the provincial election."

Nice.

And yet...and yet...this administration, with its clear and present priorities - Games over Care - this gang was re-elected to office.

Please try to stay awake and pay attention, folks.

It may be you or your mom who needs that coronary bypass during the luge run-offs.

Maybe one of the OR nurses could hold the Flame aloft to shine some light on the matter.

ONLY IN AMERICA

The Excited States of America is in full Gong Show mode.

Night and day people are attending "town hall" meetings and behaving very badly.

The subject appears simple enough.

Close to 50 million U.S. citizens have NO health care coverage. They hover one sneeze away from financial calamity. They lose their homes paying for their child's operation. This is not a fantasy or a fable. It is the ugly reality of Life min the Greatest Snow on Earth.

President Barack Obama is trying, like many presidents before him, to right this ship, to end this inequity. He is trying to get passed into legislation some form of health care reform.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

Apparently almost everything.

Sarah Palin has talked about Obama's "death squads." She is both completely nuts and downright destructive, not to mention being a bald-faced liar.

But Palin has nothing on America's most Evil Bastard, the radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh.

"Shock jock Rush Limbaugh compares the White House's health office logo to a swastika and President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler."

"In what may mark a new low in political discourse, conservatives leaders, including some Republicans, are urging voters to pack town halls to show their displeasure with the Democrats' plan to reform America's broken health care-system. Others are spamming the Internet with distortions and outright lies.

In the process, they may have successfully wrested control of the debate over health care away from the Democrats, turning a narrative about expanding coverage while controlling costs into one about a socialistic undermining of core American values."

Those quotes are from John Ibbitson's piece in the morning Globe.

But wait.

You don't have to actually read anything to get the full aroma of this heap.

Turn on CNN right now.

You'll be treated to live coverage of alleged citizens completely out of control, yelling and screaming at public meetings that are supposed to be venues for reasonable discussions about an important matter of public policy. You can follow the frazzled eyes of the constabulary trying to decide whom to shove first.

Let's help our fellow Americans have health care coverage.

Sounds simple enough.

But no.

Let's call anyone who supports this outrageous notion a Hitler.

And the Republican view of Canadian health care is truly hysterical. We are, of course, communists, socialists and murderers.

Did I leave out fornicators?

Obama believes that, in the fall, tempers, along with temperatures, will cool and he will pass his legislation.

I hope he is right.

Run of River Games

When the government holds a small public meeting in the tiny Kootenay village of Kaslo and 1200 very vocal people show up, you know something is afoot.

The something is Campbell's determination to sell off B.C. rivers to private power and buy back those unneeded kilowatt hours.

This 3P fiasco is known as the "run-of-river" issue.

It is but a tiny sliver in the over-all Campbell agenda of turning government resources repeatedly into private free enterprise profit centres.

It is of a piece with BC Rail and toll roads and toll bridges and twinned highways and who knows how many other initiatives and deals are being dreamed and made while we slumber.

Mark Hume has written an excellent column in today's Globe, in which he says, among many other things, "A lot of IPPs are running into opposition in the province. People don't seem to much like the idea of a lot of small rivers being dammed by private developers, who will then sell the power to BC Hydro."

For his efforts, Hume has been called by one commentator that horror of horrors "a disingenuous romantic."

Well, add to the list of disingenuous romantics me and about 100,000 other local citizens who see clearly through the transparency of this agenda and do not like it and will continue to oppose it.

Why is this Ignorant Harridan/Virago/Scold in Public Life?

It has always been astonishing to me that a single creature posing as a human being could find the slightest shard of interest in Sarah Palin.

Of course, I always felt that way about George W. Bush and Richard Nixon.

Recently I managed to sit through a few minutes of the real Frost-Nixon interviews. The President simply sat there and lied and lied and lied and it was self-evident that he has a lying crook and a measly s.o.b. and yet millions still revered him.

For me the sight of American citizens waving placards emblazoned "NIXON!" and cheering this creep's name at the Republican convention lay somewhere between a Saturday Night Live sketch and science fiction.

I mention all of this by way of encouraging you to read Timothy Egan's short blog piece in yesterday's NY Times. It's called "Palin's Poison," and its a goodie.

FEELING GOOD, PART ONE

Ah.

Feeling good.

Know why?

I just learned that England has spent $150 Billion - yes, BILLION - on a "New Deal" for disengaged, disenchanted, disconnected youth over the past 12 years.

Further, that the entire cornucopia of programs has been a complete and utter failure, producing no more employment or education or even clean shirts.

But why should that make me feel so good?

Because it makes our own miserly local failure seem like a benign gift in comparison.

I speak of the Downtown East Side, the infamous smelly DTES, which absorbs $1 Million of your tax dollars every day.

Over 100 social service agencies and $1 Million a day.

Things have improved?

No.

"Things" are self-evidently, noticeably worse.

Oh, yes, there are regular spewings of reports from the various social agencies that thrive down there, claiming successes. And the ever-compliant media, desperate and lazy, publish these fables unquestioned.

But any fool who dares risk life and limb by venturing into "da dark side" sees at a glance the degradation and misery flourishing unabated.

I resent the waste of governments spending my tax money on things that don't work and, worse, things that re-enforce the problem.

Here is some radical surgery.

Just a question now, but consider it.

What if all the grant money for all of the programs in that 4 square block of madness simply stopped?

What if, on the morning of Tuesday, August 11th, the gravy train ground to a halt?

Would anything really change? Would disaster unfold before our eyes?

Probably not.

Life, as it is played out out so dreadfully amongst the drunk and the drug-addicted, would most likely carry on much the same as yesterday.

Oh, yes, the social workers and activists would have to load up their wagons with their magic elixirs and move on to the next unsuspecting territories.

At present I see no real movement on this "file."

Neither his Goodness, the Happy Mayor, nor his Flameness, the Omniscient Premier, have made a single move to improve this disgrace.

Nor will they.

The solutions needed are too bold, too rife with political noise.

Olympics or not, the DTES will continue as is.

The Vampires of Misery will sleep well in their beds. The rest of us will avoid the place like the plague that it is.

Feeling good...

FEELING GOOD, PART TWO

BC RAIL & Basi-Virk

Just a reminder that, while the Basi-Virk trial is on a summer break, this critical case has hardly left the public conscience.

Two of our regular links, The Legislature Raids and Bill Tieleman, both of which can be found in the column to the right of this posting, are keeping the flames fanned.

And the Basi-Virk defense commissioned a poll the other day that reported an overwhelming majority of voters want answers from Campbell and Company on the missing e-mails.

This matter will not disappear into the mist.

The Wrong Model, Thanks

Finally someone has written about it.

Turns out many someones have written about it.

The latest is by Susan Krashinsky in yesterday's Globe & Mail.

Why men in ads are dumb, goofy or completely inept

For years, I have watched these assaults on men, women, families and humankind and squirmed.

In TV ad after TV ad, men, especially fathers, are just straight ahead idiots and losers.

That is a) supposed to be amusing, and b) supposed to appeal to women who as we know control household buying and who apparently are desperate to feel superior - NOT!

The simple fact is this.

If you portrayed women on TV as this stupid this often, there would be riots in the streets.

Fortunately there are many women who are as insulted by these ads as I am. They appreciate that an ad that says that they married a fool is not very salutary to them. Diss my hubby, you're dissing me, Bunky.

THE NEW CIVILITY

Something happened.

On Tuesday morning, shortly after nine, I was driving north on the causeway through Stanley Park.

An ambulance suddenly appeared travelling from the North Shore into town, sirens going, lights flashing.

What did I do?

I did what is required by law, what is common sense and common courtesy. What is the only reasonable thing. What you would do.

I pulled over onto the shoulder, putting on my right turn signal, and I stopped.

In under two seconds, the car behind me began furiously to honk its little horn.

Why do I say "furiously?"

Because I looked in my rear view mirror and saw three people in the car behind me, one of whom was a young woman of about 28 or 30 wildly, madly gesticulating at me with rage.

Her gesticulations translated as something like,

YOU STUPID BASTARD, WHAT ARE YOU PULLING OVER AND STOPPING FOR, THE AMBULANCE IS GOING PAST YOU. THIS IS A FREEWAY.

All of this happened in less than five seconds.

This passenger, this woman, this citizen, this human being is so important, so self-involved, so wound up for her day that someone impeding her progress sends her into The Red Zone in a flash.

How dare an ambulance interfere with her personal movie?

How dare I obey the law and pull over for a moment?

I was a terrible awful person who must be yelled at and called names because she had to pause for a few seconds.

Was she going to a conference on nuclear isotopes?

As George Constanza says in an early Seinfeld episode, "This is supposed to be a society here!"

I am obsessing on this incident, I know.

It speaks to me of the End of Decent Public Behaviour, which of course appears a hundred times a day in a thousand guises, each more offensive than the last.

I shared this little tale with a B.C. Ferries employing in the cafeteria of the boat about half an hour after it happened.

He said these acts of rudeness and indifference and boorishness and total self-interest occur so many times a day on his watch that he couldn't even start to list them.

I have a question.

How can you resent an ambulance?

JUSTICE! THE MUSICAL!

“I've turned over files to the RCMP and nothing happens,” laments Al Rosen, the forensic accountant. “We just don't have people who are trained in what to look for. We have bad securities acts. We have bad sentencing guidelines. We've had some bad court decisions. We're 80 years behind the U.S. If you're a crook, this is the best place to be.”
The above is taken from Margaret Wente's column in this morning's Globe & Mail.

I don't much care what happens to Garth Dabrinsky.

He's a crook and a miserable s.o.b. who made a substantial career yelling at people and trying to tell us he was God's great gift to show business.

A couple of good shows do not make you a saint, boobelah.

What I do continue to care about is the wammy-shammy we call criminal justice here in Canada.

May the appeals fall on their faces and may Garth & Myron spend some real time in jail, which is where people who steal money aught to go for a while.