Readers to the Barricades

I buy most of my books online from Amazon.

One-click checkout.

And - presto!

Five days later, my book is in my mailbox.

Why would I stand in line at Chapters/Indigo to give them 20-50% MORE?

I buy the second most books from Book Warehouse because it is Book Warehouse...i.e., cheaper than Heather and her picks.

I buy finally from those rare and disappearing one-of book stores where people actually know their stock and products and can actually hold a conversation. There is one in Kerrisdale (Hager Books, 2176 West 41st) and actually several in Ganges on Salt Spring Island (Watermark Books is especially good.)

All of this is in aid of agreeing with this morning's editorial in the Globe, which calls for an end to the ludicrous system of book buy in this country that serves only to inflate the price of books for you and me.

The editorial correctly argues that this is an unnecessary and punitive trade barrier.

End it.

At Rest

Ever wonder what your elected government is doing these days?

The answer is simple.

And they even boast about it.

The answer is...nothing.

Case in point.

Ontario police chiefs go en masse to the Ontario legislature to seek a number of changes to the Police Services Act.

The changes are interesting, but not the subject of this item.

The subject is the lovely response from the government.

Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Rick Bartolucci made it clear during a meeting with the chiefs that he has no plans to introduce changes during the remainder of the government’s mandate – the next election is in October, 2011.

In other words - go piss up a rope.

We are using the tried and tested true methodology of Jean Chretien - Do Nothing so no one can ever accuse you of doing anything bad - This is how to get elected and re-elected and then elected again.

So there you have it.

Canadian governance in a nut shell.

Don't ask us who have been elected and are collecting fabulous salaries and expenses and are spending public tax funds at astronomical rates to actually do anything 'cause we are not going to, so there.

Gerry V.

has hit a number of nails on the head with his comment yesterday about the deadly and costly over-prescription of psychotropic pharmaceuticals. In particular is the pronounced use of anti-depressants and other poisons among women. When will some women's groups rise up in united voice to stop this clear enslavement of women? This barbaric attempt by male doctors and by society in general to "calm" women's miseries with happy pills?

Just wait, David. It shouldn't be long before bitterness is declared a disorder if not an outright disease. Thats right. If you get laid off from your job or go through a nasty divorce, you could be suffering from "Post Tramautic Embitterness Disorder". Look for it in the newest DSM.

I personally like the "Intense Explosive Disorder" which explains why some people have hissy fits or fits of rage. Treatment for such a rare condition? Yep, you guessed it. Valium.

By the way, the most commonly prescribed drug in B.C. is Tylenol 3. Lipitor is number two. Seroquel, an anti-psychotic medication, is number 7 on the list.

In North America in 2008 the most commonly prescribed drug was hydrocodone. The number 2 drug was lipitor. Out of the top 50 most commonly prescribed drugs, 10 of those 50 were antidepressants or anti-psychotics. That represents 20% of all prescription drugs prescribed in North America in 2008. That's 20% of a conservatively estimated 65 Billion $ industry. These stats were provided by the AARP.

What's somewhat interesting is that twice as many women are prescribed these drugs compared to men. Now you can draw many conclusions from this statistic, but it makes me wonder if maybe this is why women live 10 years longer than men on average. (That last statement was made with tongue in cheek)

Lena

The news of Lena Horne's death reached me just as I was finishing yesterday's morning blog, so I put in the YouTube video below.

Today, please read the NY Times bio, which, by no means definitive, is pretty good.

Lena has so much more than a singer and a movie star.

She was a one-woman force for good in the world, a dynamo.

She says that she learned everything she ever knew about singing from her great friend, Billy Strayhorn, the genius who wrote and arranged so much of Duke Ellington's signature music.

Lena struggled with and against and broke every color barrier in American life.

She was fearless and emotionally rich and complex and all of that was revealed in every note she sang.

Reconfiguring "Stormy Weather" into the version that she sang much later in life and the one you can see and hear below, she said it took her an entire lifetime to fully occupy and understand the song.

Nobody LIke Her, No One Even Close - R.I.P.

This is your government at work

Drunk driving and selling cocaine have found new friends in B.C.

While the government is churning out press releases about how they are getting tough on impaired drivers, turns out many of these scofflaws are getting off scott free.

As are many coke dealers.

Why?

Because there aren't enough judges to hear their cases.

Why?

Because Gordon Campbell's government is spending half a billion on a new roof for The Playpen, and other Monumental Projects.

What the Gordo Government is not doing is hiring enough judges to hear criminal cases.

Now the office of the chief judge of B.C. Provincial Court has warned that court delays will only worsen unless the provincial government reverses budget cutbacks.

The Provincial Court has 16 fewer judges than it did in 2005.

Nice.

Why not just advertise in the Toronto Star and all the Prairie papers?

Come One, Come All to the Land of the Stupid.

Drink, Drive, Snort, Deal.

No worries, mate!

No judges!

Mental

Between 1988, the year after Prozac was approved by the F.D.A., and 2000, adult use of antidepressants almost tripled.

By 2005, one out of every ten Americans had a prescription for an antidepressant.

IMS Health, a company that gathers data on health care, reports that in the United States in 2008 a hundred and sixty-four million prescriptions were written for antidepressants, and sales totalled $9.6 billion.

The March 1st edition of The New Yorker magazine featured a book review by Louis Menand. The article was called Head Case and the two welcome new books are Gary Greenberg’s “Manufacturing Depression” (Simon & Schuster; $27) and Irving Kirsch’s “The Emperor’s New Drugs” (Basic; $23.95)

I say 'welcome' because, in my opinion, psychiatry and pharmaceuticals are both corrupt and rogue industries.

They are joined at the hip and they cost our health care systems fortunes.

These two new books have a familiar and necessary argument: Psychiatry is guilty of taking ordinary human personality traits or experiences or conditions (sadness, anxiety, stress...) and pathologizing these into a lucrative business for itself and for the drug manufacturers.

The 'discovery' of the 'remedy' creates the disease.

Reading this article may save you or someone close to you a big mess of trouble.

May I Say Again...

On Saturday, I posted an item about the level of corruption abundant in BC political circles these days.

The item is titled "On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever."

The content is all about the consistent information that to get appointed a Special Prosecutor in BC and to be paid considerable legal fees regardless of your successes, you need only have been a Liberal Party contributor.

If you missed this piece, please give it a read this morning.

Master at Work

Behold

May Have Posted This Before...But It Breaks Me Up

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

It is all becoming clear now.

Here is how things work in British Columbia in the 21st Century.

RULE ONE PRIMO ABOVE ALL:

If you or your company/law firm/society/family contribute to the B.C. Liberal party in any way shape or form, then you get special appointments - like say - Special Prosecutor - that are among other things very lucrative.

1) How is this for irony?

Winston Blackmore, the ever-smiling "leader" of the polygamous Bountiful community (You might be smiling too if you could, with impunity, shtup every 15-year old girl who wandered within yodelling distance of your cave and then you could simply declare her to be another of your "wives.") wants to fire his own lawyer.

Why?

Because Blackmore has learned that his government appointed attorney, George K. MacIntosh has donated to the BC Liberal party and that his firm has donated more than $50,000 in recent years to the BC Liberal Party.

Mr. Blackmore, a paragon of civic virtue himself, asks, "How worse could this look?"

Adds Blackmore, “It already smells bad.”

When one of the creepiest guys on town ism pointing the finger at you, how bad is that?

2) Terrance Robertson, the Special Prosecutor, who first cleared Kash Heed of any wrong-doing and then stepped down from his position because of contributions to the BC Liberal party from his firm, is receiving almost $300,000 in fees for his work on the Winston Blackmore file - work, by the way, that resulted in his recommended charges being tossed by the BC Supreme Court.

This is a little akin to those Wall Street executives who bankrupted their own companies and their clients and took massive billion dollar bailouts from the public purse, but nevertheless paid themselves many millions in performance bonuses.

3) One year after taking the case as Special prosecutor in the Basi-Virk unending melodrama, Bill Bernadino donated $500 to Wally Opaque's Liberal election campaign.

But hey! No Problem, Buddy.

Just ask Bernadino his Special Self.

"There's no conflict of interest," he said. "I made a donation and I don't see anything wrong with that at all. I've carried on in my role as a special prosecutor."

I don't see anything wrong with this.

There is no conflict of interest.

Oh yes. We forgot.

During the one 15-minute Ethics lecture they gave at Law School oh those many years ago, Bill had a handball game scheduled.

* * *

For more on these matters, check out BC Mary's blog and BillTieleman's blog.

* * *

So there is the pattern writ large.

Donate and get on the train - The Gravy Train.

No matter what your political stripe - died in the wool Big Business, Free Market Enterpriser or Card-carrying Take to the Barricades Union Man or Woman - do you really want dedicated corruption in your elected government?

For certainly that is what the current administration of public trust is under Gordon Campbell.

An honest government - if somewhere on earth there is such a thing - would go, for example, out of province when,looking for Special Prosecutors.

An honest government would vet such appointments with a tooth pick and dental floss.

No payments, no contributions, no ties - OK.

But that is not the BC Way.

Not until the next election.

Everything in Life is a Song Cue

Demand Value

I had a haircut yesterday.

In a conversation about the price of haircuts, my barber, who charges me $14, told me that in the coming few years we will see no barbershops on the west side of town.

Can't afford the rent.

At 14 bucks, it's plain and simple.

The beauty shops/salons/stylists charge $40 or $50 for the same haircut, with a bit more fuss and bother. Maybe a shampoo and a bit of a head tickle, thank you very much.

Rents for small shops on West 10th Avenue are astronomical.

There is no help from City Hall.

All of which leads to the article below, focusing on the future of the Broadway corridor.

The only reasonable plan is above ground Light Rail Transit, already proven around the world.

But as we seem to be married and attached at the hip to Bombastier and its cement pylon loving partners, we can probably expect a Cambie Street repeat destroying one Mom 'n Pop Shop after another through the Greek neighbourhood and up the hill to the UBC gates.

Read the following and weep.

And then bombard your city councillors and Transclunk with demanding emails.

Demanding above ground LRT and protections for ongoing businesses.


Were City of Vancouver employees asleep during the construction of the Canada Line megaproject?

They say lessons learned from the Canada Line are important as they start working with TransLink on plans for the transit line along the Broadway corridor from Commercial Drive to the University of B.C.

But the principles put together by city staff for this process, recently approved by council, show that the main lesson to be learned has escaped them.

Construction of the Canada Line destroyed many established small businesses and gutted others. It was an unprecedented fiasco. Shockingly, only one of the city's 10 draft principles speaks to the issues that most concern small businesses.

It is vaguely and weakly worded as "minimize and mitigate construction and operation impacts." Wasn't this the same promise made to merchants along the Canada Line? We are not off to a good start.

If Vancouver wants to have the trust of its businesses, it is going to have to do much better than that.

The construction-related noise, dust, lane closures and traffic rerouting along the Canada Line were far more severe and lasted much longer than promised. Many customers avoided the area completely.

As a result, small-business owners along the construction corridor suffered sales losses averaging more than $100,000.

Efforts to stay in business went far beyond the ordinary and included taking out second mortgages, using retirement savings, laying off long-term staff and relocating.

The emotional stress defied quantification. As one longtime owner, who renewed her lease under the assurance that construction-related disruption would be minimal, put it: "This [my business] was supposed to be my legacy for my daughter. It was supposed to be my retirement. They are taking everything."

Did all of this hardship escape the notice of city staff? We know it didn't escape the notice of Vancouver's current mayor. He was an MLA at the time the Canada Line was being built and the most vocal politician championing the cause of affected businesses.

Where is he now?

The Broadway corridor project could affect hundreds of businesses as well as their families, staff and communities. Protecting the viability of businesses along Broadway corridor should be among the city's highest priorities and principles for the project.

The hardworking individuals who support families and communities in Vancouver deserve nothing less.

The way small businesses were treated around Canada Line construction remains a black mark on the reputations of all governments involved in the project, including Vancouver.

Broadway is an opportunity to do things differently. This starts by acknowledging that the costs to businesses along the Canada Line were unacceptably high.

TransLink is now starting its consultation around the Broadway Line. Any hope they will hear small business? If past experience is any indication, we better get ready to shout.

Laura Jones can be reached at laura.jones@cfib.ca.

INTRODUCING . . .

Laura Jones, of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, makes her debut today as a regular columnist for The Province. Jones's column on issues affecting small businesses in B.C. will run in the Money section every second Thursday.

© Copyright (c) The Province

A Fair Comeuppance

"The Lancet" is considered the world's leading English language medical journal.

Here is it's pronouncement on Stephen Harper.

"The Canadian government does not deprive women living in Canada from access to safe abortions. It is therefore hypocritical and unjust that it tries to do so abroad."

The numbers:

70,000 women die from unsafe abortions worldwide every year.

350,000 women die during childbirth each year.

9,000,000 children under the age of 5 die each year.

Mr. Harper has put together a summit focusing on women's health.

He should stick to his agenda and keep his personal backwoodsie philosophies out of the picture.

Watchdogs with No Bite

It is supposed to be re-assuring that Environment Minister Jim Prentice says there is no need for a moratorium on future offshore drilling in Canadian waters while the world tries to figure out what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico.

He says we will rely on Canada’s ‘strong regulatory environment’ to ensure disaster in the Gulf is not repeated here.

Truly?

Well, what does he have to say about this?

It has been revealed in recent days that the U.S. government has its share of watchdogs allegedly being paid to oversee all safety concerns for their off-shore drilling operations.

The only problem with that program is called Corruption.

Investigations have revealed that many of these "overseers" have been bribed with money and sexual favours to turn a blind eye to procedures that are speedy, convenient and one step away from disaster.

Will the Canadian watchdogs have teeth?

Or just deep pockets?

Keep Your Skillet Good and Greasy

An enterprising woman in Toronto has hired several female mechanics to join her in her new business.

The shop is called "Ms. Lube."

Of course, the folks who own the better-known Mr. Lube are not amused and they are suing.

If only they had a sense of humour and a little grace and the good sense to know that this can only help their business in the long run.

If only they could keep their oil rags from getting in a knot.

No doubt it will only be a matter of days before some yutz will come along looking for employment and claim discrimination before a human rights tribunal because he is a man looking to get dirty amongst the women mechanics.

Lawyers and tribunals should all be given tickets to comedy shows. They could pass them out to many potential clients with the advice, "Go find your ability to laugh again, you goofball."

Sublime

Happy Trails To You

The Premier is a renowned C.F.

Control freak.

Nothing gets past him and nobody says or does anything without his Holy Blessing.

Independent Operators in the BC Liberal government - not there are any or have ever been any or ever will be any - go straight to the back of the bus.

They get dropped off at Palookaville toot sweet.

How then is is possible that:

- a law firm that makes regular contributions to The Party gets to have one of their own as a Special prosecutor? Try about $50,000 in recent years.

- one Solicitor-General, John van Dongen, has to resign because, although he is the region's Top Cop, he has lost his driver's license to speed? 2009.

- another S-G, John Les, hs to resign because of possible shady land deals? 2008.

- a third S-G, Kash Heed, has to resign twice in three weeks, because of possible election campaign irregularities? 2010.

How are these things possible, we find ourselves musing over the back porch at twilight, with a man Who Knows Everything, Who Sees Everything?

So far the only answers that emerge are these:

1. His Granite Face doesn't really know everything and see everything.

2. He does know everything and he does see everything and he just doesn't give a damn, Scarlett.

3. He has pre-scripted all of the above a) to keep everybody on the edge of their cheap seats and b) in the most recent fiasco, to get all the original charges against Kash Heed's gang of ethnic-baiting rabble-rousers thrown out.

Diabolical.

No.

Even Gordon Campbell is not this clever.

The truth may be something closer to this.

Conflicts of interest and rules of behaviour simply don't impress the Premier very much.

If I want to appoint a Special Prosecutor, frankly I don't waste much time worrying about how many dollars that guy's firm may have given me over the years for my own election war chests.

If I want Kash Heed or anyone else that I favour this week as my Minister of Cups and Saucers, well then I will bloody well appoint him.

Everything is Vanity and Vexation of Spirit.

The truth is closer to this.

Gordon Campbell's run as Premier of the Province of British Columbia is coming to an end.

His tattered skirts are showing and in the not too distant future someone else will have the opportunity to mismanage our affairs on a grand scale.

Falcon? Vulture? And the Difference Is?

That Prince of Warm Heartedness, that purveyor of Public Kindnesses, Kevin Falcon, the man posing as the Provincial Health Minister - I say, posing, because an actual real human person occupying that title would demonstrate some actual interest in HEALTH - has hit rock bottom with his latest profundity.

"B.C. instituting fees for convalescent care

Charges will fill gap between palliative and respite care, minister says"

You have to read this announcement and then think seriously about the implications.

These are fees for the dying and the elderly and their families.

We out here in the thoughtless boonies who clearly are too stupid to understand the good and mysterious workings of our glorious government have a small appreciation that governments are always on the lookout for more revenue.

Fair enough.

I guess.

But the elderly, the dying, the barely recovering and their families?

Perhaps Mr. Falcon knows no people over the age of 40.

Perhaps his parents and grandparents have long since thrown off this flimsy veil for a far, far better world elsewhere.

If we may be so bold...

Old people don't make a lot of money.

The elderly and the dying are not raking it in, folks.

So it is to these vulnerable, weakened people that we turn for more loot?

This administration is finished.

No one with any conscience could possibly vote to stomach another season of these ghouls.