Kari Simpson of Culture Guard and Mark Hasiuk, columnist with the Vancouver Courier, are the hosts.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
A Word of Explanation
The video posted below - titled ROAD KILL RADIO - is a conversation about Drug Prevention & Treatment and the Supreme Court decision in favour of Insite.
Kari Simpson of Culture Guard and Mark Hasiuk, columnist with the Vancouver Courier, are the hosts.
The piece is lengthy, about 53 minutes, but it is funny and informative and one of the most thorough explanations of the current situation available if you have the time and patience.
Kari Simpson of Culture Guard and Mark Hasiuk, columnist with the Vancouver Courier, are the hosts.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
THE NEW DEMOCRACY
It is curiouser and curiouser.
Both the Vancouver Sun and the Globe & Mail reported on the possible conflict of interest in the case of Liberal adviser lobbying for the sale of government liquor warehouses to private companies.
That’s good.
That’s their job.
But neither story mentioned that Patrick Kinsella was hot in the exact middle of the same position only a few years ago in the matter of the sale of BC Rail - a small issue that got largely buried when Basi and Virk, at the last minute, pled out their corruption charges.
So...let me see if I am understanding any of this.
The man who got Gordon Campbell elected is the same man who got Christy Clark elected and he is the same man who was simultaneously representing private interests in major government sell-offs.
These amusements have led me to a new vision of democracy.
What has taken me so long?
Turns out that democracies are really all about the rich and powerful doing their best to imitate kings and knights errant and tyrants of old, all the while pretending to honor free votes and governments of the people, for the people and by the people, when in fact they despise “the people” and know that they, the elite, must run things so the boobs won’t mess it all up and by the way they can make a fair pile while they’re at it.
Oh.
Both the Vancouver Sun and the Globe & Mail reported on the possible conflict of interest in the case of Liberal adviser lobbying for the sale of government liquor warehouses to private companies.
That’s good.
That’s their job.
But neither story mentioned that Patrick Kinsella was hot in the exact middle of the same position only a few years ago in the matter of the sale of BC Rail - a small issue that got largely buried when Basi and Virk, at the last minute, pled out their corruption charges.
So...let me see if I am understanding any of this.
The man who got Gordon Campbell elected is the same man who got Christy Clark elected and he is the same man who was simultaneously representing private interests in major government sell-offs.
These amusements have led me to a new vision of democracy.
What has taken me so long?
Turns out that democracies are really all about the rich and powerful doing their best to imitate kings and knights errant and tyrants of old, all the while pretending to honor free votes and governments of the people, for the people and by the people, when in fact they despise “the people” and know that they, the elite, must run things so the boobs won’t mess it all up and by the way they can make a fair pile while they’re at it.
Oh.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
CHILDREN AND YOUTH GET SLIM PICKINGS IN BUDGET 2012
People looking for investments in BC’s children and youth were sorely disappointed with BC’s new budget released on February 21st. First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition was looking for the budget to recognize the importance of supporting families raising children, particularly those who are struggling to get by on a low income. The Coalition was also hoping that the budget would address some of the urgent issues affecting the lives of the most vulnerable child and youth populations, and to tackle BC’s growing inequality. However, these are clearly not the priorities reflected in the revenue generation and spending choices of this year’s provincial budget.
Some highlights of First Call’s concerns about the budget include:
· The continued neglect of the need for additional funding for the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) to reduce the caseloads of child protection social workers and adequately support children in the foster care system. A flat-lined budget and rising costs means this ministry will have to make cuts.
· No progress on solving the child care crisis affecting families with young children. No relief from high fees, insufficient spaces and low wages for child care workers. No plans for increasing access to quality early childhood care and learning for preschoolers. Alarmingly, in the Ministry of Education service plan, government’s target for the percentage of children who enter kindergarten developmentally ready to learn has been lowered from the previous 85% by 2015 to 75% by that date. Current data shows we are only at 70%, meaning almost 1 in 3 BC children enter school developmentally vulnerable.
· The increase in regressive taxes like MSP premiums will hit modest income working families hardest, making it even less likely they will have the cash to pay for fitness or arts programs for their children in order to earn the new $25 tax credit. Research on the use of this type of tax credit at the federal level reveals that it is primarily used by more affluent families, and offers little benefit for lower income families.
· Children in families facing hunger and housing insecurity due to already inadequate income assistance rates will be hungrier and in greater danger of becoming homeless as the cost of food and housing continues to rise while rates are frozen.
· No relief for post-secondary students facing high tuition fees and high interest rates on their student loans when they graduate, despite the recommendations from the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services to lower interest rates and restore a needs-based grant program.
· The cumulative funding deficit in public education continues to grow with this budget, depriving students with extra challenges of the supports they need while school boards struggle to decide what to cut even to pay their share of the MSP premium increases.
“The Finance Minister talks of fiscal prudence, but this budget’s failure to invest in the well-being of all children and youth will cost us dearly as inequities grow bigger and more children lack the supports they need to reach their full potential,” said Adrienne Montani, First Call’s Provincial Coordinator. “It’s a false economy to ignore the costs of undermining children’s healthy development through maintaining a high poverty rate and withholding needed support.”
- 30 -
For interviews please contact:
Adrienne Montani, Provincial Coordinator, First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition
Saturday, February 18, 2012
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
Chronic alcoholics get free booze in Vancouver
Early results promising: Better health and behaviour
It's all in the headline and the sub-header. You don't really even have to read the article on page 3.
There's the professional photo of the sincere and completely deranged, deluded "helper," measuring out this hour's poison for her "clients."
She believes that she is doing something.
Hahahahaha...
I laugh to stop myself from crying so early in the day.
On Wednesday, I spent a few hours visiting one of the houses run by Turning Point, a residential treatment centre, operating in Vancouver and in Richmond for 30 years now. Addicts of every kind are arriving every day and leaving a month or so later clean and sober citizens. Brenda Plant and her team are tireless, knowledgeable and committed.
Cost?
$25,000/bed per year.
On Tuesdays, I do a little work each week on Bowen Island at a private clinic, The Orchard, where - guess what - addicts if every kind arrive and leave a while later clean and sober. Lorinda Strang and her staff are relentless and focused and funny and inspired.
Regularly, I am in touch with dozens of similar agencies, large and small, each doing beautiful human work aimed at helping people escape the nightmares, indignities and suffering of addictions.
Last night, I spoke for half an hour with a wonderful woman in Nanaimo - France Tellier of the John Howard Society - who has been building residential community treatment facilities for ages.
You will rarely hear or read about these good people.
But Little Miss Booze Dispenser is pictured on page 3, and, in the Courier you can read about the increase in overdoses at Insite. Of course, the lunatics who run this obscenity - completely missing or obscuring the point as usual - will tell you that they are saving lives.
Let's just say it out loud, together.
THE WORLD IS COMPLETELY MAD.
Life is upside down.
It's Cheshire Cat time.
The program of free Ford autos for car thieves starts next Thursday.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
WORST DRUG STORY EVER
Today, the Vancouver Sun is chock-full of stories about the shortfall of funding for senior's health and housing concerns.
In recent weeks, similar stories have been presented about overcrowded ER facilities in our largest regional hospitals.
We continue to have the worst record in the country in dealing with child poverty.
AND YET...
And yet, only the fearless Mark Hasiuk of the Vancouver Courier has written in plain English the obscenity of funding that continues to flown into a rogue group whose basic platform is this:
"We are drug addicts and we like to be drug addicts and we have the right to be drug addicts and you the taxpayer should pay us to be drug addicts."
This group never explains how its "members" get the money to shoot heroin or use other illegal substances.
But hey - when the Provincial government si giving you $250,000/year and the City of Vancouver is giving you $20,000/year, why worry?
Please read Mark's article below and then email your MLA and demand that this money be returned and that this kind of funding is never repeated.
Vancouver pro-drug lobby doesn’t deserve taxpayer dollars
VANDU gets $250,000 from province, $20,000 from city hall
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
That’s how much Vancouver Coastal Health, your public health authority, gave VANDU, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, last year. This year, according to VCH officials, VANDU will receive another $250,000 from taxpayers, continuing a provincial funding scheme established in 1999.
Most Vancouverites don’t know VANDU. Headquartered in a brick building at 380 East Hastings in the Downtown Eastside, it’s a non-profit hangout conforming to neighbourhood drug culture. Folks gather outside on the sidewalk and inside the lobby. Traffic seems to have increased since December when VANDU began distributing free crack pipes to addicts, part of a VCH crack pipe giveaway. But mainly, thanks to longtime leader Ann Livingston, VANDU exists for activism.
Wherever police move against drugs, VANDU is there. Whenever Insite stages a street-level show of support, VANDU, which according to the city’s website offers cash “stipends” for "VANDU work," shows up. Livingston and company crash city hall, chiding council for police sins like the ticketing of illegal street vendors. Last week, following a four-year legal battle, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal dismissed a complaint from VANDU and the Pivot Legal Society who claimed the Downtown Ambassadors, a private security firm, discriminated against the homeless. Not even the tribunal, which relies on frivolous cases and flimsy evidence, could justify VANDU’s complaints.
Under the radar, VANDU provides “public speakers” and “research and consultation” to anyone interested in the VANDU point of view. Before booking a VANDU expert, you must call for a “free consultation.” Any additional fees are unknown. Livingston did not return calls for this column. But in 2009, she told the Courier that VANDU employs three paid staff members who help organize group meetings and “counselling” sessions at 380 East Hastings.
Of course, counselling is subjective, depending largely on the goal. According to VANDU’s “manifesto for a Drug User Liberation Movement” available on its website, folks have the “right to obtain, prepare, and ingest drugs, and to be intoxicated on drugs.” It continues: “We might take drugs to deal with psychological trauma or physical pain, or for pleasure or fun… our drug use is a response to our experiences of poverty, inequality, colonization, forced migration, workplace injury and inadequate access to pain relief.”
This is the VANDU gospel. Enablement on steroids. Victimization, stamped and validated. Music to the ears of the addict who organizes life around shunned responsibility. Every school of addiction treatment recognizes past trauma and the desire to self-medicate. That’s what addiction is. While sober minds can debate drug policy and decriminalization, the realities of addiction remain constant. Addicts want more. In response, VANDU celebrates drug abuse. Its 1,089-word manifesto excludes the words “addiction” and “addict,” calling drug abusers “oppressed people.”
Here’s why. According to the VANDU website, only “a person who has formerly, or is presently using illicit drugs” can become a voting member of the organization. To be clear. Addicts are people. Our friends, our family, our brothers and sisters. They deserve love and respect among, what Christ called, the “weary and burdened.” But until they recover, addicts place their addictions first. Any edict born from a group of addicts, under the influence of radical ideologues, will promote more enablement, more denial. Yet in a neighbourhood steeped in addiction, where treatment and prevention remains an afterthought, our provincial government funds this madness.
Why? Where’s the benefit? VANDU’s message helps fuel drug culture in the Downtown Eastside and a never-ending bill of housing, welfare, medical, policing and court costs.
But that’s not all. In addition to cash from Victoria, VANDU received $20,000 from city hall last year and will receive another $20,000 in 2012. Moreover, since 2006, VANDU headquarters has operated without a development permit. Back in 2009, Livingston said she was “negotiating” with the city. Apparently, negotiations have stalled.
VANDU is a cancer in a neighbourhood struggling to breathe. Its public funding is obscene. No government, at any level, has received a mandate from voters to prop up a pro-dope lobby.
mhasiuk@vancourier.com
Twitter: @MarkHasiuk
That’s how much Vancouver Coastal Health, your public health authority, gave VANDU, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, last year. This year, according to VCH officials, VANDU will receive another $250,000 from taxpayers, continuing a provincial funding scheme established in 1999.
Most Vancouverites don’t know VANDU. Headquartered in a brick building at 380 East Hastings in the Downtown Eastside, it’s a non-profit hangout conforming to neighbourhood drug culture. Folks gather outside on the sidewalk and inside the lobby. Traffic seems to have increased since December when VANDU began distributing free crack pipes to addicts, part of a VCH crack pipe giveaway. But mainly, thanks to longtime leader Ann Livingston, VANDU exists for activism.
Wherever police move against drugs, VANDU is there. Whenever Insite stages a street-level show of support, VANDU, which according to the city’s website offers cash “stipends” for "VANDU work," shows up. Livingston and company crash city hall, chiding council for police sins like the ticketing of illegal street vendors. Last week, following a four-year legal battle, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal dismissed a complaint from VANDU and the Pivot Legal Society who claimed the Downtown Ambassadors, a private security firm, discriminated against the homeless. Not even the tribunal, which relies on frivolous cases and flimsy evidence, could justify VANDU’s complaints.
Under the radar, VANDU provides “public speakers” and “research and consultation” to anyone interested in the VANDU point of view. Before booking a VANDU expert, you must call for a “free consultation.” Any additional fees are unknown. Livingston did not return calls for this column. But in 2009, she told the Courier that VANDU employs three paid staff members who help organize group meetings and “counselling” sessions at 380 East Hastings.
Of course, counselling is subjective, depending largely on the goal. According to VANDU’s “manifesto for a Drug User Liberation Movement” available on its website, folks have the “right to obtain, prepare, and ingest drugs, and to be intoxicated on drugs.” It continues: “We might take drugs to deal with psychological trauma or physical pain, or for pleasure or fun… our drug use is a response to our experiences of poverty, inequality, colonization, forced migration, workplace injury and inadequate access to pain relief.”
This is the VANDU gospel. Enablement on steroids. Victimization, stamped and validated. Music to the ears of the addict who organizes life around shunned responsibility. Every school of addiction treatment recognizes past trauma and the desire to self-medicate. That’s what addiction is. While sober minds can debate drug policy and decriminalization, the realities of addiction remain constant. Addicts want more. In response, VANDU celebrates drug abuse. Its 1,089-word manifesto excludes the words “addiction” and “addict,” calling drug abusers “oppressed people.”
Here’s why. According to the VANDU website, only “a person who has formerly, or is presently using illicit drugs” can become a voting member of the organization. To be clear. Addicts are people. Our friends, our family, our brothers and sisters. They deserve love and respect among, what Christ called, the “weary and burdened.” But until they recover, addicts place their addictions first. Any edict born from a group of addicts, under the influence of radical ideologues, will promote more enablement, more denial. Yet in a neighbourhood steeped in addiction, where treatment and prevention remains an afterthought, our provincial government funds this madness.
Why? Where’s the benefit? VANDU’s message helps fuel drug culture in the Downtown Eastside and a never-ending bill of housing, welfare, medical, policing and court costs.
But that’s not all. In addition to cash from Victoria, VANDU received $20,000 from city hall last year and will receive another $20,000 in 2012. Moreover, since 2006, VANDU headquarters has operated without a development permit. Back in 2009, Livingston said she was “negotiating” with the city. Apparently, negotiations have stalled.
VANDU is a cancer in a neighbourhood struggling to breathe. Its public funding is obscene. No government, at any level, has received a mandate from voters to prop up a pro-dope lobby.
mhasiuk@vancourier.com
Twitter: @MarkHasiuk
© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier
LIFE IS COMPLICATED
Here are three people well known to the public and how I feel about them.
Bill O'Reilly - A television host whom I generally can't stand and never watch.
Whitney Houston - A talented singer and drug abuser who died at the age of 48. I was never a particular fan, I hated some of her biggest hits, and I was disgusted that she threww away the gifts she had been given.
Tony Bennett - The greatest saloon singer of all time and one of my personal heroes.
YET...
Watch the video below.
I am disappointed by Tony's mistaken message on legalizing drugs.
I am in complete agreement with O'Reilly on the same subject and on the real tragedy of Ms. Houston's death.
Life is complicated.
Bill O'Reilly - A television host whom I generally can't stand and never watch.
Whitney Houston - A talented singer and drug abuser who died at the age of 48. I was never a particular fan, I hated some of her biggest hits, and I was disgusted that she threww away the gifts she had been given.
Tony Bennett - The greatest saloon singer of all time and one of my personal heroes.
YET...
Watch the video below.
I am disappointed by Tony's mistaken message on legalizing drugs.
I am in complete agreement with O'Reilly on the same subject and on the real tragedy of Ms. Houston's death.
Life is complicated.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
OPEN LETTER TO 2 ERRANT MP's
Dear Randall Garrison, NDP MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca and Peter Stoffer, NDP MP for Sackville-Eastern Shore,
Gentlemen,
What are your values?
The recent story in the national press that you both are lobbying to convince the government that golf games are a valid business expense, worthy of a 50-per-cent tax deduction, indicates clearly it is time for a serious gut check.
Your All Party Golf Caucus is an obscenity.
I had to check the date on the paper to make sure this wasn't April 1st.
Grace MacInnis was a valued friend. I have voted NDP consistently for many years. Not because I ever expected to see an NDP government ever replace either of the two Natural Ruling Parties. Rather, I have been encouraged that there were some in Canadian public life who were still remembering the little guy and the average person and the worker, as distinct from the owner.
Now, you two, wearing NDP colors, emerge from the sludge and try to convince us that playing golf is worthy of a tax deduction.
And what's more amazing? It takes a Conservative Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, to tell you where to stuff this very bad idea.
A tale right out of Alice in Wonderland.
And so, dear NDP MP's...what about my tennis racquets? My jogging shoes? The kids' soccer and hockey equipment? The skis, the hoops, the Speedos?
Also worthy tax write-offs?
Shame on you both. Shake your heads. Read the history of your own party.
Then, if you still in the light of day want to pursue this selfish, thoughtless idiocy, please cross the floor and join one of the other teams.
Not that they'd have you.
TO THE READER:
Here are the email addresses for these two scoundrels:
randall.garrison@parl.gc.ca
WRITE THEM A QUICK NOTE AND EXPLAIN TO THEM HOW THEY ARE POOING IN THEIR OWN NEST.
Gentlemen,
What are your values?
The recent story in the national press that you both are lobbying to convince the government that golf games are a valid business expense, worthy of a 50-per-cent tax deduction, indicates clearly it is time for a serious gut check.
Your All Party Golf Caucus is an obscenity.
I had to check the date on the paper to make sure this wasn't April 1st.
Grace MacInnis was a valued friend. I have voted NDP consistently for many years. Not because I ever expected to see an NDP government ever replace either of the two Natural Ruling Parties. Rather, I have been encouraged that there were some in Canadian public life who were still remembering the little guy and the average person and the worker, as distinct from the owner.
Now, you two, wearing NDP colors, emerge from the sludge and try to convince us that playing golf is worthy of a tax deduction.
And what's more amazing? It takes a Conservative Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, to tell you where to stuff this very bad idea.
A tale right out of Alice in Wonderland.
And so, dear NDP MP's...what about my tennis racquets? My jogging shoes? The kids' soccer and hockey equipment? The skis, the hoops, the Speedos?
Also worthy tax write-offs?
Shame on you both. Shake your heads. Read the history of your own party.
Then, if you still in the light of day want to pursue this selfish, thoughtless idiocy, please cross the floor and join one of the other teams.
Not that they'd have you.
TO THE READER:
Here are the email addresses for these two scoundrels:
randall.garrison@parl.gc.ca
Saturday, February 4, 2012
KEEP THESE OUT
Religion is a private affair.
Yours, mine and the strange guy sitting right behind the bus driver.
Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, a rabbit's foot, tigers - worship whom or what you choose or choose not.
But in a democratic society, do any or all or none of that in your heart or in your home or in your synagogue, cathedral, mosque, shanty or bomb shelter.
We human critters all long to find some grand explanation for the Great Unknowable Mysteries.
Fine.
Just don't tell me about it.
Don't lecture or proselytize or preach at me.
It's really unbearable and it's against the grain.
Which brings us to the lovely story in today's Vancouver Sun about Evangelicals roaming the halls of local schools.
Make no mistake.
These good folk are exactly that. They seem kind and beneficent. They are involved with kids in sports and drama projects.
But they have one singular and completely inappropriate purpose - to persuade children of an especially vulnerable age that their chosen religious path is the One and Only, etc.
What baffles me about this story is how school and school board administrators allow this to continue.
Perhaps you can explain.
And if you are tragically lacking in understanding, you may think that I am saying something dreadful and blasphemous about Christianity or any other religious belief system.
I am not.
These beliefs are private and personal and they have no business being "taught" in our public schools - no matter under what apparently benign guise.
Yours, mine and the strange guy sitting right behind the bus driver.
Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, a rabbit's foot, tigers - worship whom or what you choose or choose not.
But in a democratic society, do any or all or none of that in your heart or in your home or in your synagogue, cathedral, mosque, shanty or bomb shelter.
We human critters all long to find some grand explanation for the Great Unknowable Mysteries.
Fine.
Just don't tell me about it.
Don't lecture or proselytize or preach at me.
It's really unbearable and it's against the grain.
Which brings us to the lovely story in today's Vancouver Sun about Evangelicals roaming the halls of local schools.
Make no mistake.
These good folk are exactly that. They seem kind and beneficent. They are involved with kids in sports and drama projects.
But they have one singular and completely inappropriate purpose - to persuade children of an especially vulnerable age that their chosen religious path is the One and Only, etc.
What baffles me about this story is how school and school board administrators allow this to continue.
Perhaps you can explain.
And if you are tragically lacking in understanding, you may think that I am saying something dreadful and blasphemous about Christianity or any other religious belief system.
I am not.
