To Have and Have Not

The local government has no shame.

And no sense of sweet reason or equity or simple good judgement.

By now, you all know about The Deal.

The B.C. government is under fire for giving out an untendered $500,000 contract to Vancouver's elite Terminal City Club to host private soirees during the 2010 Olympics.

This is the same august body that is cutting mental health, addictions and senior's services in every sector.

Iain Black, minister of small business, technology and economic development, repeatedly stated the contract is about doing business.

"Our job is to host this $4-billion revenue-generating spectacular event, and that means we will host international dignitaries," Black told the house.

"It means we will host community and national leaders," he went on to say. "It means we will host international investors and leading academics from around the world. This is our opportunity. We have a job to do."

But Mr. Black knows not whereof he speaks.

Does he naively believe that these freeloaders will jump about and immediately bring business to Pender and Hornby?

No.

These guests are career leeches. They make a life of travel and expense accounts.

And most of them have no power. They are merely the advanced guard for people who are too busy to bother with such bosch.

The division in the sovereign state between the rich and poor, the touched and the untouchables has never been clearer.

Or more repugnant.

The Secret Democrat

A fascinating little fight is brewing just a few miles south of us in Washington State.

On Tuesday, voters will have the opportunity to vote for or against a ballot that will extend gay rights in many aways other than a full declaration of marriage.

At issue is who gets to see the names of the people who have signed petitions.

One would think at first blush that anyone who signs a petition of almost any kind should have the fibre to stand up and be counted.

But the Law of Unintended Consequences has come into play in the shape of the Internet.

Suddenly, in a country where referenda and open ballots often change laws faster than legislative bodies, some people want to know how you voted.

Why?

So they can harass you, because you didn't agree with their group.

This would be a clear invasion of privacy.

We may not have the urgency of such a dilemma here in Canada, but the question is still a good one.

Should your vote or signature on a ballot be made public?

Not Much of a Muchness

On the one hand, I read three newspapers this morning and found exactly nothing. Zilch, kaduches, gornischt, zero...

On the other hand (to quote a certain milkman), there is this great doumentary on Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis that follows below.

I'll try again tomorrow.

Cheers, Mates!

Music History

The Justice File, Part 9,217

The headline is misleading:

Three teens sentenced as adults for killing 14-year-old boy in Surrey

While that may be literally true, the sentences hardly reflected the callous brutality of the crime.

For beating and stabbing to death a 14-year old boy in Surrey in 2008, two teens were given 5 year sentences.

Another, 4 1/2 years.

All three dangerous scum were given two years "credit" for time already served while in custody.

Please understand that there are crooks and there are crooks.

Fully 90% of the people in Canadian prisons are silly goofs who are more of a danger to themselves than to anyone else.

They are good candidates for rehab and half-way houses in communities.

Then there are Clifford Olson and Robert Picton.

These are the handful of truly dangerous lunatic psychopaths who must never be released to anyone anywhere.

Just below them are the slightly larger number of violent, out-of-control murderous s.o.b.'s who kill 'cause it's Wednesday.

Like these three fine upstanding citizens who will now do about two years for murdering a young boy.

Why not 25 years? Why not little chance of parole?

Is the community never to be considered again in a Canadian court room?

Career Changes

Wonderland

Alice asked, "Is I mean what I say the same as I say what I mean?"

Lewis Carrol might have been dreaming into the future and imagining British Columbia where on any given street corner you can always buy a bite of mushroom where 'one side will make you tall, one side will make you small.'

We have, after all, a Premier who speaks out of both sides of his square head.

Well, judos to the Se't A'newey Performance Choir who have said, "Fuggetit, man."

Believing they were invited by Head Honcho Numero Uno to sing in the Opening Ceremonies, then de-invited, then offered a consolation prize, these kids unanimously opted for goin' fishin'.

Good on them.

To add insult to grievous injury, the little so-and-sos want an apology.

Why am I seeing a striped cat with a grin wider than his face?

Karzai Kapers

Here was Tuesday's little explosion in the N.Y. Times:

"KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials."

Translation: SNAFU

The brother of the Afghan president is both a major drug dealer and a paid CIA informant.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regularly refers to the embattled country as a "narco-state."

The Taliban is happily blowing up everything and everybody it can in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I don't know what we or anyone else is doing there.

I also don't know how we can sit back and watch the region collapse.

I'm stymied. This is a full-blown disaster and no one has shown me that they are less confused than I am.

Appointments

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto has published in this morning's papers an appointment announcement.

Dr. Catherine Zahn is the new CAMH President and CEO.

I don't know Dr. Zahn and I am sure she is a smart and accomplished and lovely person.

The CAMH is another cookie altogether.

It is a monolith formed some years back by the amalgamation of the Clarke Institute and the Addiction Research Foundation.

Here is how they describe themselves:

"Canada's leading mental health and addiction teaching hospita and research centre...committed to transforming lives..."

I cannot speak about their track record with people suffering from mental problems.

But I can tell you loud and clear that I know of NOT ONE addict who has walked away from CAMH as a clean and sober citizen.

Now, if one tenth of this vulnerable institution's multi-multi-multi-million dollar budget was passed on to the handful of real treatment programs scattered across the Canadian wilderness, we might be doing something useful.

But this is the way of the world, isn't it?

Governments, politicians, bureaucrats, doctors build big bold buildings and put stuff in them. They huff and puff and congratulate themselves silly.

Meanwhile on the other side of town, real people with real understanding of the issues work under strained conditions begging always for money.

Interview

Immediately below you will find a link to Joseph Planta's website, The Commentary.

Click in and you'll hear, if you like, an interview he did with me the other day about my recent re-acquaintance with real and effective drug treatment.

David Berner | thecommentary.ca

David Berner thecommentary.ca

Tiny Minds

The City of Vancouver, apparently with mot much else to do on a Tuesday, has come up with a new by-law.

If you run a restaurant here, your daily take must now include more than 50 per cent in food sold, rather than wine and other intoxicating beverages.

This is to discourage places from selling chips and BLT's while pouring out the booze in barrels.

This is to discourage so-called restaurants from acting like bars.

But lurking behind this idiocy is the simple fact that bar and pub licenses are made almost impossible to get.

This is a problem created by the very fools who are now rendering an even dumber answer to the problem they created in the first place.

Vancouver Councillor Raymond Louie has publicly defended this new nonsense.

Ray, you gotta know when to keep the head low and keep very still.

I'll have the Pasta Bullshetta and a small house red, please.

Mass Confusion?

A choir full of kids and parents and choir masters and the Premier of Newfoundland all seem to have heard someone invite the choir to sing in the opening ceremonies in a certain little hoe-down planned for next February.

The someone who it is alleged by all of these people who are apparently suffering some mass delusional experience was Gordon Campbell, the Premier of British Columbia.

Mr. Campbell remembers it differently. “I said to the choir: ‘You know, wouldn't it be great if you could sing at the Olympics?' Not the opening ceremonies; I never had any control over the opening ceremonies.”

Hm...

Now, the offer is coming in not from Campbell, but from George Abbott t sing at a smaller less visible venue.

Problem is half the kids have stopped going to practice after two years of dreaming is down the drain.

Nice.

Wouldn't it be fun to be a cabinet member in a local government.

"Hey, Wooden Head. Go clean up my mess, will ya?"

Headlines We Can't Resist

Bacon mom tells court cops treated her sons like criminals

Amazing...

Bargains! Hurry While They Last!

Here's watcha get:

Four tix to all events

Opening & Closing ceremonies

Gold Medal Men's hockey final (even if it's between Uruguay and Bosnia)

Spot in the torch relay

Supplied car and driver for all 17 days of event.

Cost?

A BARGOON!

Only $285,000.

When calling, ask for the Club 2010 packages.

Cautionary note: Bleeeeep! ( a B-flat, I believe)

Careful to avoid giving out your home or office street address.

Big men in little white coats may soon arrive.

This is, remember, The People's Event.

It is bringing people together.

People with deeeeeeeeep pockets, that is.

Slow Gnus Day

Talk about a non-story.

B.C. inmates to receive flu vaccine before prison staff

I spoke to the warden of a major institution about half an hour ago. We were talking about something else entirely, but when this idiocy turned up we both laughed.

The truth is that the inmates will get their shots about 22 seconds before the staff.

Who(m) Can You Trust?

Juanita Castro, Fidel's baby sis, has revealed after 48 years that she was a CIA spy.

Gee whiz.

If you can't trust your kid sister...

Boring and Irresponsible

There is only one thing of interest in the front section of today's Globe and Mail.

It is this.

Not one, not two, but three whole pages of ads from the CBC.

How much did that cost?

Of taxpayers money.

To let us know that Peter Mansbridge had a poo. That Peter Mansbridge popped a pelican. That Peter Mansbridge played the piano in pindergarten.

Has anyone noticed?

The CBC is a corrupt organization.

It is valuable and necessary, but it is a mess and it spends our money in the worst ways unimaginable.

I'm Not Paying...So There!

Catalyst Paper Corp has withheld about $17-million in taxes from four B.C. town's where its mills are located: Powell River, Campbell River, Port Alberni and North Cowichan.

Another company, Celgar, refused to pay its $3.6 million in property taxes this year and instead filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court asking for a judicial review of the town's tax rates, where it operates in Castlegar.

Pretty cheeky for a company that has just been given...wait for it...$57.7 million in bail-out money from the federal government.

Now...

A) I don't get federal bail-out money. Do you?

B) If I refused to pay my taxes, RevCan would first seize my home and car and first born and then throw me in jail.

Double standard to go with your double-double this morning?

Lovely

So you won a gold medal for your country way back when.

Big deal.

Get lost, Sister!

Last week we saw John Furlong crying croc tears on the front pages about how the Olympics was helping humanity.

???

Well, he's not helping athletes who competed and triumphed for Canada.

No invites, no tix.

Read it and kack.

Then send Mr. F. a friendly little note at info@vancouver2010.com