WALLY WOBBLE

Poor Wally.

He's overworked.

He wants folks to package their complaints.

Why don't you whiners all get yourselves together before the hearing and bunch up, like, sort of in a group. And that way, I wouldn't have to sit here so long and listen to the same boring story of your sister or your mother or whoever being killed or something.

Here's what the headline says:

COMMISIONER SEEKS TO REDUCE REPITION IN SUBMISSIONS

The commish is Wally Opaque.

The Inquiry is the farce and public show known as the Missing Women's Inquiry.

Wally has already granted "standing" to the usual suspects - the City of vancouver, the RCMP and so on.

But the women, the families, the independent investigators, the social groups - in other words, the riff-raff, well that's another story all together.

Could we please have another hearing?

One led by someone who actually cares.

One that isn't pre-designed as a cover-up and a PR sop.

If it's painful to read about, how deep a turn of the blade must it be for people whose lives have been directly impacted by this nightmare?

The woman in the photo is Helen Hallmark.

BANG

JUST HOLD THAT THOUGHT

Cam Cole, musing in today's Sun about Tiger Woods, has crafted one of the best sports pieces I've read in a long time.

Cole brings forward the elephant that no else dare mention - Tiger may never, yes never, be the golfer we knew (or really didn't know at all) a few years ago. Tiger is basically toast.

He may be right.

On the other hand (to quote a certain Milkman), the ESPN "story line" for the Australian Open tennis was nonsense. "The Changeover."

Needing as we all do these days (governments, real estate sales, quiz shows) a "narrative," the sports broadcaster chose to convince us that Federer and Nadal are basically over and done and that Djokovic and a few others will be the new stars, starting right about...now.

Wrong again, Smartypants.

No question, Djokovic was magnificent in his run to the finals and in his defeat of Andy Murray. He has never played better and he is significantly better than he was even one year ago. He is now truly one of the great contemporary players.

But Federer and Nadal are the two best players I have ever seen play this game. Ever.

And they are not going away. They are hardly finished.

Tiger may be, but they are not.

Stay tuned.

YOU'RE INVITED!

Royal City Musical Theatre Presents “A Night of Twisted Broadway” on February 19th, 2011!

“A Night of Twisted Broadway” is back – on Saturday, February 19th, 2011 at 7:30pm!

Our annual fundraising gala this year is “A Night of Twisted Broadway”, a cabaret revue that spoofs show tunes, characters and plots of contemporary and current Broadway musicals. It mocks and parodies some of your favourite tunes with a hilarious spoof on three great Broadway choreographers – Fosse, Prince, and Bennett. Original conception, direction and choreography by RCMT Artistic Director Valerie Easton and features 18 local musical performers. The evening will include a silent auction, 50/50 draw, and great entertainment! Tickets for our fantastic upcoming production of “The Will Rogers Follies” will be available for purchase. Hosted by Shaw Television host David Berner.

Tickets are $35.00 and are available by phone 604-521-5050 or by ordering securely online at www.masseytheatre.com

Buyers of tickets in December will have their tickets honoured for February 19th.

Buy early for best seats and see you on February 19th!

ANYBODY HOME?

WHO IS THE BEST PERSON TO MANAGE BC?

So asks the headline of a full one-page ad (page A8) in today's Sun.

The answer to this questionable question is supported by the signatures of about a hundred CEO's of local companies, and other luminaries.

The punchline is Kevin Falcon.

Mr. Falcon is apparently the best person to "manage" BC.

And doesn't that little verb, therein, tell us so much about the leadership deficit we face these days.

Mr. Falcon is smart and energetic.

He is also a bull in a china shop, a peson who sees all of a life as a profit-and-loss sheet, and, like all the other candidates in this wishy-washiest candidate contest, yet to tell us what he wants or sees for this province.

He has no vision.

And his supporters don't expect any.

All they ask for is a good manager.

Yawn, goodnight.

If you thought Gordon Campbell or Glen Clark or any other Premier you can think of was a tad autocratic, whoa...stand back, kids, and prepare for the Iron Fist of KF. My way or the Triple P Highway Kev.

Are all these Vancouver CEO's as simple minded and ignorant of history as the Tea Party folks south of the border who think Obama is a (yech) "socialist?"

THANKS TO SUN COLUMNIST

Continued and hearty kudos to Sun editorial writer Daphne Bramham, who has been relentless in her condemnation of the Bountiful polygamists.

As she has chronicled repeatedly, this "community" is the poster child for "religions" shielding detestable and illegal activities.

What is most disturbing is how often this issue has come before the office of the provincial Attorney-General, and how often shoulders were shrugged, excuses and apologies offered.

In today's column, Daphne calls once again for some official action.

SHAKEN

A man (or something disguised and posing in public as a man) shakes an 11-week old baby causing permanent brain damage.

The child - did we mention? - now has permanent and irreversible brain damage.

The man (or some creature asking us to believe he is a man) acknowledges his deed.

The facts are not disputed.

But Judge Adrian Brooks has found this trash not quilty in the charge of aggravated assault.

"I am not persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the force used was excessive,” Brooks said.

Excuse me?

What exactly would have had to have happened to register with the good Justice as "excessive?" Flying body parts?

And speaking of aggravated assault, can we sue the good Judge for aggravated assault against common sense, the basic understanding of justice and Canadian jurisprudence?

Next week, my guest on DAVID BERNER on SHAW TV will be retired Justice Wallace Gilby Craig, who will share with us his inventory on how we are doing on addictions, violence, home and auto invasions, gangs, courts, prosecutors and judges.

I will ask him to explain to us all how such a travesty as this can occur in our courts and how it gets less space in the newspaper than a story about a police dog.

WE ARE NOT ALONE

Often, whilst railing against the persistent stupidities of governments and their agents, we get the feeling that we are a lone voice or two howling from the cliffs into a relentless wind.

How cheering it is then to see that on occasion - as in several Arab countries at the moment - the masses rise from their slumber and "second that emotion."

In this specific case, a petition now demands the removal of His Royal Walliness from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.

Like many of you, we were appalled, nay struck dumb in disbelief, when this never-do-anything, always smile, smooth the duvet political Polonius was appointed to this dire and important task. We knew at once that no result would follow.

Now, native leaders, family members and other concerned citizens have said, "Basta, baby!"

"The petition urges the government to replace Mr. Oppal because he has previously defended the police investigation, argued against establishment of an inquiry and was attorney-general when Crown prosecutors decided not to proceed with 20 outstanding murder charges against Mr. Pickton."

This decorous appointment was one of the last and most cynical acts of Premier Gordon Campbell.

MEA CULPA

I am so embarrassed.

You will quickly spot in the two parts of the Bill Tieleman interview below that I incorrectly, in the excitement of starting the show, said that the raid on the legislature happened on January 28th, 2003.

Of course, I know the date is December 28, 2003.

Then, to make matters even more confusing, after Bill pointed out my error to me during the short break, I came back on camera, apologized and then reiterated January!

A senior moment live and on camera.

Oh well. Forgive me. I am working today on forgiving myself, for, as you, know I prefect and neever gret things wrong.

SHAW TV SHOW # 2 BASI-VIRK/BC RAIL

SHAW TV SHOW #2 BASI-VIRK/BC RAIL

PRAISE THE GUN PEOPLE

It is like clockwork.

The moment you suggest that guns might be a problem in a democratic civilized society, the Riflemen rise to the occasion and hasten to tell you that the American Constitution gives its citizens "the right to bare arms." Spelling is not a long suit for the gun people.

Nor is basic information or knowledge or history.

Jill Lepore, writing in the January 17th edition of the New Yorker, shares this with us:

Consider the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Historical evidence can be marshalled to support different interpretations of these words, and it certainly has been. But the Yale law professor Reva Siegel has argued that, for much of the twentieth century, legal scholars, judges, and politicians, both conservative and liberal, commonly understood the Second Amendment as protecting the right of citizens to form militias—as narrow a right as the protection provided by the Third Amendment against the government’s forcing you to quarter troops in your house. Beginning in the early nineteen-seventies, lawyers for the National Rifle Association, concerned about gun-control laws passed in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, argued that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms—and that this represented not a changing interpretation but a restoration of its original meaning. The N.R.A., which had never before backed a Presidential candidate, backed Ronald Reagan in 1980. As late as 1989, even Bork could argue that the Second Amendment works “to guarantee the right of states to form militias, not for individuals to bear arms.” In an interview in 1991, the former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

WHY NOT THE OFFICIAL BOWLING BALL?

The Americans are mad, quite mad.

They love their guns. They believe in their guns. They worship their guns.

It matters not what mayhem contorts the streets, what horrors are brought to neighbourhoods, how many suicides and murders are added to the rolls, Americans believe in their right to bear arms...at the shopping mall, at the cinema, at the bar, at the school and playground and the beach.

And if your nutty next door neighbour or your corner dope dealer is packing, I guess it's only right that you pack too.

And nobody, nobody from President Obama on down, dare speak of this elephant in the room, because this belief system is so deeply entrenched that one risks not only one's political career, but one's very life to say otherwise.

Well, now it's official.

The sovereign great state of Utah has its state flower and it has its state bird.

Not enough, kids.

Now it is poised to adopt its official state gun.

That would be your Browning M1911 semi-automatic pistol.

It doesn't matter to the legislators in Utah that the sick bastard who shot up Tuscon, Arizona a few weeks ago was using a similar weapon - the Glock version of the semi-automatic pistol.

It doesn't matter to theses august souls that anyone can walk into a store in Georgia and buy 23 pistols and walk out the door, or that you or I can Google "AK-47" and in seconds be put in touch with hundreds of shops in America that will sell us a repeating automatic weapon of destruction for a very reasonable price and even ship it to us.

"Guns don't kill people. People kill people." is the mantra of the NRA.

Yes.

Yet, it's odd how often those people who kill people happen to have smoking guns in their hands when the killing happens.

Canada is not immune to this disease. But to date we are so far less a gun nation than the USA that one can only give thanks.

DIM BULBS

Confession.

I have taken to buying, hoarding and stockpiling incandescent light bulbs.

If I'm in Safeway or London Drugs and I'm basically buying food or computer toys, I now also throw in a few 40, 60 or 100 watters. Soon, I'll have to park on the street to make room for them all in the garage.

I think the new provincial and federal laws, which will soon see these efficient, little beauties disappear in the name of environmentalism, is wrong. Dead wrong.

Check out Craig McInnes' column in today's Sun, in which he presents cogent arguments that the politicians have even managed to get the SCIENCE WRONG.

HISTORY ON THE COURTS

Li Na broke new ground for China on Thursday, fighting back to topple world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki 3-6 7-5 6-3 and become her country’s first grand slam finalist at the Australian Open.

Everybody had picked the entirely dull Dane to win the title.

Which made watching Li Na come back from match points down even more delicious than usual.

With the largest population in the world, China has yet to produce many serious tennis contenders. Peng Shai did very well on the women's side in Melbourne these past two weeks, but I can't think of a male tennis player who has broken through to the top ranks.

It happened in golf and it will no doubt happen soon enough in tennis.

It's hard to bet against the delightful, charming and down-to-earth Kim Clijsters (so many tennis players are certifiable flakes and nut cases, that Clijsters stands out not only for her superior play, but also for her grounded personality), but Li Na is a gutsy and talented player and she has an honest shot at this Slam title on Saturday night.

WE WERE BUSY

The RCMP have absolved themselves of blame in the Pickton case.

They do acknowledge "delays in pursuing Pickton due to other high-profile investigations."

Uh-huh.

This is interesting.

And odd, because, unlike their own investigation of themselves, the Lepard review done by Vancouver police cited "jurisdictional issues, poor management and shoddy analysis of the evidence [which] derailed the probe and allowed Pickton to go on killing for another 2 1/2 years."

In other words, thanks to the rather incomplete work done by our national police force, about a dozen more women died.

Oops.

Now to make matters even more Alice in Wonderland, an inquiry is underway. And which of the Queen's cards is at the head of the picnic table?

Why Wally Opaque, that's who.

Oh, yes. Walter to to the rescue. Here's the guy to ferret out the truth and help the grieving families of human beings who have mysteriously disappeared.

This will be real helpful, yessir.

$ame old, $ame old

We are giving $4.5 Million to Simon Fraser University to study youth violence. And another half million to...uh...study youth violence.

Many wonderful people are involved and several levels of government.

Among other things, these studies promise to "develop more effective prevention and treatment strategies."

I have been observing these marvelous announcements for 45 years now.

And I have yet to see any results.

This is what governments like to do. They like to give money to intellectuals to do studies. They would rather do that than give money to the front line workers who are striving every day - usually without adequate resources - to PROVIDE prevention and treatment programs.

You know why governments like to waste your tax dollars this way?

Because paying for studies is safe. Politically safe.

If you pay for an actual program and something goes wrong, goes wrong, goes, then your political ass is in a sling.

Of course, it rarely occurs to these cowards that doing nothing - and paying for studies is the same as doing nothing - allows everything to continue to go wrong.

Who's MInding the Store?

Dirty drinking water, filthy limited toilet facilities, tea and bread for breakfast, rotten apples, little dinner, no vegetables.

Not bad enough?

On top of that the workers are then charged $25 for their meals and accomodation - taken, of course, directly from their measly paycheques.

Ah well.

What concern is this of ours?

This must be some gulag or other in Mongolia, the Punjab, darkest Africa.

Wrong again, Bunky.

This is a reforestation camp in Golden, B.C. and a few other local sites.

Many of the workers are from Africa. Most have no idea about their "rights." Most have been lied to about opportunities.

The company in this case is Khaira Enterprises, its owners are Khaid Mahmood Bajwa and Hardilpreet Singh Sidhu.

But they are far from alone in their evils. Their kind are thriving in B.C.

And now, thanks to the work of the BC Federation of Labour in exposing these crimes, the owners must pay $229,000 in back wages to 57 workers - not very much per person for this level of mistreatment and disrespect.

Adding insult to injury, Sishu and Bajwa, the owners, have been fined $3,500 for seven violations of the Employment Standards Act.

Seven violations. $3,500.

BC Fed President, Jim Sinclair, has rightly declared this finding "a joke."

It's worse than a joke.

It's a nightmare.

It speaks to a government that will not spend the money to employ enough inspectors to enforce the rules of the land.

Think back to the women killed and injured riding that panel van in the valley a few years ago. Sitting on apple crates. No seat belts.

What has changed?

When I was a child, 60 years ago in Winnipeg, my mother worked as a bookkeeper for clothing companies and candy makers who had better working conditions than this. Let me repeat - 60 years ago.

It's all smiles and handshakes now that the egos are running for the leadership of their parties. But ask them at the next rally where they were when these workers were trying to work for six hours without a break on food rations that you might find in prisoner of war camps. Ask them what kind of province we are living in, what kind of province we would like to live in.

Crime FIghters

'We took back the city': How Williams Lake saved itself from being a crime capital

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/took+back+city+Williams+Lake+saved+itself+from+being+crime+capital/4151187/story.html#ixzz1BtAetCLH

Kent Spencer, writing in this morning's Province, has given us a terrific study of how a community said, "Enough is enough," and reclaimed their citizenship.

Now, can some of these same tactics pay off in Vancouver and Victoria? I think they could and it would be encouraging to learn that some of the comatose officials in town are listening and even learning.

Sent by a Friend

Article in the “” Washington Times”” January 4th/11

Canada is quietly surpassing the U.S. as the land of opportunity

By James A. Bacon

The Washington Times

6:29 p.m., Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Illustration: Canada and freedom

Unless the Winter Olympics are on television or someone is clubbing baby seals, Americans don't pay much attention to what's happening in Canada. It's as if we live in a house with a set of quiet, orderly neighbors on one side and a bachelor pad with drunken parties, girls in the hot tub and occasional gunshot eruptions on the other. To whom would you pay more attention?

I dare say Americans could correctly name the president of Mexico (Filipe Calderon) over the prime minister of Canada (Stephen Harper) by a margin of 5-to-1. That's too bad. While we have every reason to fear the disorder spilling over from our increasingly lawless neighbor to the south, our well-mannered Canadian neighbors have pulled their act together. We could learn a lot from them.

Look what's not happening in Canada. There is no real estate crisis. There is no banking crisis. There is no unemployment crisis. There is no sovereign debt crisis. Recent reports suggest that consumers are loading up too much debt, but Canada shares that problem with nearly every other country in the industrialized world.

Among the Group of Seven nations, which also include the United States, France, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy, Canada's economic activity has come the closest to returning to the pre-recession peak. The country has recovered three-quarters of all jobs it lost. TheInternational Monetary Fund estimates that Canada will be the only country among the G-7 to have achieved a balanced budget by 2015.

Now, instead of expanding Canada's welfare state, the conservative government led by Mr. Harper is intent upon building the nation's global competitiveness. Our friends in the Great White North cut their corporate tax rate to 16.5 percent on Jan. 1 and will see it drop to 15 percent next year. That compares to the current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent. That will give Canada the lowest corporate tax rate among the G-7 nations and an eye-popping advantage for businesses wondering whether to locate on theU.S. or Canadian side of the border.

The last time Canadians really caught Americans' eyes was when prime ministers such as Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, both leaders of the Liberal Party, were proving uncooperative in the realm of foreign policy. American media played up disagreements over the invasion of Iraq and Canadian participation in the American National Missile Defense Program, which made President George W. Bush look bad and confirmed the narrative that his cowboy foreign policy had alienated old friends around the world. By contrast, when Canadian soldiers under the conservative government became active combatants in Afghan-istan, the American media showed little interest.

But that's nothing new. Except to note how well or how poorly Canada's national health care system was working, Americans have paid little heed to news coming out of Ottawa. The titanic effort of both Canada's liberal and conservative parties in the 1990s and 2000s to rein in government spending largely escaped our notice. Nor did it ever occur to anyone to wonder why, with our economies so closely entwined, U.S. housing *****s were busting through the roof while Canadian houses remained so sensible.

It turns out that Ottawa's housing policies and banking regulations tempered the boom in real estate *****s. No tax deductions for mortgage interest payments. And get this: Buyers actually had to make down payments on their houses. Because there was no real estate bust, there was no banking crisis. (Indeed, healthy Canadian banks are snapping up U.S. financial assets.) Despite the lack of public policies geared toward stimulating homeownership, Canadian homeownership was 68.4 percent in 2008. That would be a higher number than in the United States, which was 67.4 percent in 2009.

Lesson to Americans: If you want affordable housing, stop promoting policies to make it more "affordable."

Meanwhile, Canada has many of the same assets that Americans like to brag about, such as an immigrant tradition that invites foreigners to live and work in the country. On a per-capita basis, the rate of legal immigration to Canada is comparable to that to the U.S. Settling in world-class, creative cities like Toronto and Vancouver, foreigners add immeasurably to the nation's wealth-creating capacity

Talented Canadians have long regarded the United States as the land of opportunity. It may not be long before Americans see our northern neighbor as the land of the future.

James A. Bacon is author of the book "Boomergeddon" (Oaklea Press, 2010) and publisher of the blog by the same name