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.