GREAT COMMENT

Please check out the contribution from Eric Lee, a local engineer who is actively involved in alternate energy systems, to my blog of Saturday, February 3, 2007 on Global Warming and Climate Change.

Scroll down to the 4th Comment, folks; it's well worth your time.

This is one of the best commentaries we've received to date. Many thanks, Eric.

PRIORITIES

The Sun and the province - that is The Vancouver Sun newspaper and the Province of British Columbia - have like priorities.

Today, The Sun ran a story at the bottom of Page B2 headed, "Cuts will Force Victoria Child Care Program to Close." The gist, quoting directly form the paper, is this: "Less than 3 weeks ago, the Victoria Child Care Resource and Referral Program celebrated the grand opening of its new downtown storefront facility. By September, the program will be closed. Cuts - from the current $14 Million a year to $9 Million starting April 1 and to $3 million by September 1 - mean 46 such programs across B.C. will be shutting down."

While that important story was relatively obscured by its location and short word count, the Front Page trumpeted, with a foto and red headlines, the Olympic Countdown.

On page B2, above the quiet, little piece about $11 Million being cut from Child Care funding - lunch money by Provincial Budget standards - was a double page spread about all the wondrous and sundry Olympic venues and their progress and preparations for the Big Event.

Some examples:

Athletes' Village, Original cost, $167 Million, Update, $315 Million, or double

Vancouver Training Venues, Orig, $5M, update, $27 M, or X 5

Richmond Speedskating Oval, Orig. $60 M, update $200 M +, or X 3.

So, let's make this simple, kids.

Hundreds of millions of taxpayers' hard earned dollars are assigned and re-assigned and re-assessed and increased with nary a blink of the politicians' eye or public's outcry for 2 weeks of sport.

Child Care Funding - pennies compared to the Big Party - is slashed and goes unnoticed.

We are poor little sheep who have lost our way...

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Pow! You're dead.

Mikhail Kalishnikov invented the AK-47 combat submachine gun. In some countries this wonderfully cheap and effective killing machine can be bought for less than the price of a chicken...make that a live chicken.

Mr. Kalishinkov is now 85 years old. In 2002, he told the Guardian newspaper, "I wish I had invented a lawnmower."

GIFTED HEALER: A TESTIMONIAL

Was it 2 or 3 years ago that I first met Dr. Manon Bolliger?

I had walked into her Fourth Avenue offices crying. Sciatic pain, brought on by overly vigorous tennis playing, had kept me from sleep for 3 nights, and the pain, which usually visited most intensely in the wee, small hours, had now lodged permanently through my bum, hip, right leg, knee and foot.

A friend had recommended Dr. Bolliger and her mysterious "Bowen Technique," and I was obviously ready for anything - blood-letting, leeches, voodoo dolls, conga lines.

The first thing to say about the good Doctor is that she is beautiful. It's not just that she is so easy on the eye - which she is - but that she radiates some kind of healthy, positive glow. In a lifetime filled with parades of human beings of every stripe, I have been fortunate to meet a handful of people about whom it can be truly said, "He/she has an aura." Well, Dr. B. has an aura and it's sunlight.

The treatment couldn't have been more simple. Lie on a table, have a few muscles moved about. Not manipulations like a chiropractor, vigorous, sometimes difficult or painful. But quiet, non-invasive, subtle touching. A kind of laying on of hands.

I didn't notice any immediate change. I slept not much better that night.

But the next morning, I was in the kitchen, when I suddenly turned around in shock, as I realized the pain was gone. THE PAIN IS GONE! THE PAIN IS GONE!

I've been back to Dr. Bolliger's practice half a dozen times since that first visit. Each occasion is the same. I walk in hurting, she does her magic, I go home, the next day THE PAIN IS GONE!

This is a bald-faced testimonial. Try it; you'll like it.

Talkin' About...

Lest we ever be accused of single-mindedness, here is a list, moving chronologically from today back to very first post on December 29, 2006, of subjects considered:

Olympics & The Net
Homosexuality & Tolerance
Garth Turner, Gushy Modern Politician
Needle Exchange Program
Bush’s Budget
Little Mountain Care Home Dinner
Scorsese, The Desperate
Global Warming
Guest Rant: Victor
Michael Jackson
Your Rights, My Rights, Our Rights
Immigrants Obstacles to Jobs
Cheapskates
Hospital Funding
Bank Fees
Corn
Health Care Ailing
Pharmaceuticals Profits
The Federal Liberals
The Premier
Die Mannequin’s New Video
Enabling
The Cellar Jazz Club
Penelope Cruz
Pickton Trial Coverage
Delusional Mayor Sullivan
Brownback Mountain
James Brown
Addictions, Parts I, II & III
Serena Williams
Martin Luther King
Love
Lawrence of Arabia
Separating Elderly Couples
Fox News
Professional Colleges
CEO Theft
Rabbi Kisses The Devil
Michael Richards & Jesse Jackson
Saddam Hanged
Parole Boards

OLYMPICS STUCK

EARTH TO INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE! EARTH CALLING IOC!

The world is not flat, and...wait for it...BLOGGING HAS JUST BEGUN!!!

News emerges today from that centre of all things modern, Lausanne, Switzerland, (Perhaps the mountain trails have been impassable these last several years.), that Olympic athletes may be allowed to blog for the first time at the 2008 summer games to be held in Beijing.

The IOC in their ever-forward momentum is considering this revolution in personal freedoms. At the moment, athletes and others (coaches and similar sweaty riff-raff) are barred from pretending toward journalism. The apparent reasoning - if reasoning is what it can be called - is the protection of "accredited media."

Hello?

As we write, there are approximately 2,000,000 bloggers alive and posting. Those numbers increase geometrically overnight.

Almost everyone I know turns daily to the net for alternates to the abandoned franchises of "accredited media." The mainstream press has by and large lost its way in committees, polls and double entry bookkeeping. Instinct and street smarts are unknown in the boardrooms of CBS and Corus and Time-Warner.

The IOC has offered that athletes might be allowed to blog the 2008 Summer Games as long as they don't use photos, video or audio.

Perhaps the IOC - trapped as they are by the winter snows in the Chocolate and Cuckoo Clock Factory high in the Alps - has failed to notice that Google just bought YouTube for $1.2Billion. YouTube is a kind of visual community blog.

The net and blogging and whatever comes tomorrow morning is The Tsunami of Modern Communications. Get it or fall behind.

The Olympics folk are still hanging about the agora in Athens waiting for the lemon stand to open.

GAY ALERT! SOUND THE HORNS!

More than 17% of 2000 Canadians recently polled "said they would not want a gay person living next door."

Hahahahahahahahahaha...

What exactly is the nature of this fear? Your nose will fall off? The trees will no longer bear...may I say it, fruit? Icicles will become permanent adornments...in colors yet? Your sons and daughters will switch teams? Your husband will? Your husband HAS?

Dear 17 percenters: Try to get a life.

TURNCOAT GUSHES

Garth Turner is a maverick. He was also, until yesterday, an Independent Member of Parliament. He was elected as a Conservative for the district of Halton, Ontario. However, he was thrown out of caucus by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Yesterday, he joined the Liberals. None of this should be of much surprise or even note, especially to those of us here on the Wet Coast, who continue to live with the shame of David Emerson, elected as a Liberal, sitting from Day One as a Conservative.

What makes Mr. Turnercoat's actions so pitiable was this quote, "I have found a home."

How squishy, how yukkie, how terribly 70's sensitive!

Will someone please explain to the modern politician that it is not about YOU, nobody cares about HOW YOU FEEL. It's about the citizens. It's about health care and law and order and immigration and jobs and global warming and the well-being of the community.

You self-centred, self-absorbed, selfish fools - please get day jobs and leave governance to those rare few who might be able to handle it.

** IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH **

HIV incidence was 75 percent higher among daily users of Vancouver’s needle exchange program (NEP) than among drug abusers that did not use the program, according to a new study published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Medicine. Vancouver, Canada boasts the largest NEP in the Western Hemisphere.

Why has this not been reported in the local news?

BUSH-WACKED - AGAIN

The tiny, sneering simulacrum of a circus clown who has been posing, lo these past several years, as the president of what claims to be the largest and most powerful democracy on earth, has done it again.

We posted the other day, Mr. Bush's determination to whack a handsome $70 Billion or so from Medicare and Medicade expenditures. And this in a vast and rich land with 45 million of its imperial subjects without any medical coverage whatsoever.

Now, the Worst Executive America Has Ever Had to Tolerate has released his budget for the coming year. The total near $3 Trillion, if you can get your noodle around that. I can't; why should you?

(This photo, by the way, is built with the pictures of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. Enough said.)

"The President's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality...," says Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota and Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Senator Judd Gregg, the top republican on the Committee, said of the President's budget, "I don't think it has a lot of legs." Or arms or lips.

What is so appalling is that the Pentagon budget now accounts for more than one-fifth of all expenditures! Think about that for a moment. More than twenty per cent of the total federal purse in a nation that is theoretically living in Peace Time is being spent on War.

The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is now tagged at something in the neighbourhood of $150 Billion. How few months ago was it that Donald Rumsfeld promised these excursions would not cost more than $50 Billion? Nice work, boys.

I remember so many years ago watching the Republican National Convention and seeing all those good souls cheering on Richard Nixon. I remember feeling pinned to the sofa in horror and disbelief. Didn't they know this guy was a Major Creep, that he would turn out to be what we all knew him to be, a sleazy crook?

Then I watched the good people rallying for Bush. And my feelings at watching that spectacle made my earlier feelings with Nixon seem like euphoria.

Today, the only people who have clarity are the comedians and the satirists. Somebody please help us all.

ANOUNCEMENTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS!

Please join us in 2 weeks for a great evening to support housing for seniors. I'll be the MC and Auctioneer, the dinner will be great and the auction will be the most fun you can have that's still legal.

Gala Dinner and Auction to Raise Money for Seniors

On Saturday, February 24, 2007, the Little Mountain Residential Care & Housing Society will hold their 2nd Annual Gala Dinner and Auction – The Silver Plate Event at the Law Courts Inn. The fundraising event sold out in its first year and was a tremendous success surpassing all expectations – to raise money to enrich the lives of the elderly!

The event will help to raise needed money to:

Purchasing basic need items for seniors on limited income.
Providing therapeutic programming for elders such as music therapy, art therapy, horticultural therapy and spirituality therapy.
Purchasing new palliative equipment to better meet the needs of elders receiving end-of-life care.
Creating a new therapeutic garden for seniors.

Peter Ladner, Vancouver City Councillor, Vice Chair GVRD & VP of Business in Vancouver Media Group will deliver the keynote address.

Master of Ceremonies and Auctioneer, David Berner, Broadcaster, Actor & Writer will lead the auction of some very unique bid items which include:

A trip for two on Singapore Airlines for a week to exotic Malaysia
A cruise for two on Holland America Line
A trip for two to Palm Springs courtesy of Harmony Airways and Club Intrawest
A Helijet getaway to the Empress in Victoria for two
A Whistler summer golf vacation
An Okanagan vacation at Bella Sera Resort
A private party catered by Joeys Restaurants
A getaway on Allegiant Air to Bally’s Las Vegas
An evening with movie critic Rick Forchuk at the movies
Two nights at the Meadowood Resort in Napa Valley
Two return tickets anywhere in Canada on WestJet
The Ultimate Vancouver Canucks fan package.

Gold Sponsors
Tourism Malaysia

Silver Sponsors
Joeys Restaurants, BC Housing, Dumolin & Boskovich, Creekhouse Gallery, Holland America Line, Meadowood Resort, Singapore Airlines.

Bronze Sponsors
Woodbridge By Robert Mondavi, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, TE Wealth, Helijet, FirePro, Investors Group, KPMG, Bowers Medical, Club Intrawest, Catalyst Healthcare, Heritage Hospitality, Bellstar Hotels and Resorts, Fairmont Empress, Allegiant Air, Vancouver Canucks, BC Lions.

Media Sponsors
The Vancouver Courier, The Vancouver Sun, The Province, Working.Com, CKNW 980
Located in Vancouver, Little Mountain Residential Care & Housing Society serves nearly 300 older adults on two campuses including residential care and independent housing. Within the residential care setting, Gentlecare is the signature style of care which means residents’ needs and wants are the priority. GentleCare is a philosophy supports choice, dignity, respect, recognition of cultural diversity and encourages creative care giving for people living with dementia and their family members.

Quick Facts
· Each year in BC, 13,640 people develop Alzheimer Type Dementia
· Senior (Age 65 and over) make up 13.3 percent of the population in BC
· It is estimated that in 2031 seniors will make up 24 percent of the population of BC
· People age 65, face at least a 40 percent lifetime risk of entering a nursing home and a 60 percent chance of needing long term care sometime in their life.
· Operational funding does not cover therapeutic programs in nursing homes such as horticultural therapy, music therapy, art therapy, and spirituality therapy.
For More Information or to purchase tickets ($75) contact
Cindy Koch, Little Mountain Residential Care & Housing Society 604-325-2298 (306) ckoch@littlemountaincare.org - www.littlemountaincare.org.

Baaad movie, Baaad director. Awards are next

"The Departed" is well-named. I left the theatre about three quarters of the way through.

"So who kills whom?" I asked movie maven friends a month later. "Everybody," was the simple answer. Sort of 'splains why I left.

What can't be explained is why anyone in his right mind continues to think of the film's director, Martin Scorsese, as anything more than a very good craftsman of very bad junk.

A few months ago, I rented "The Aviator," Scorsese's 2004 biopic of Howard Hughes. Like "The Departed," I left it before it left me. Marvelous, spectacular, beautifully managed, boring pointless drek.

There is no question that Mr. Scorsese can set up a shot, make a cut, blow up a building, cut off a guy's hand or head. He just has trouble telling a story about people we can care about for longer than 40 minutes.

"Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" were two of the director's very best films, both early and both starring Robert De Niro. Yes, both had the director's signature violence. But Taxi Driver was almost iconic in its presentation of the monstrously disaffected Travis Bickle. "You talkin' to me?" And Mr. De Niro's fat and skinny pugilist, stand-up comedian, Jake laMotta was an unforgettable sad thug.

Similarly, "The King of Comedy," again with De Niro, this time as the hapless would-be comedian utterly devoid of talent and social skills, Rupert Pupkin, has become an all-time cult favorite - as it should be.

But the string of ultra-violent Tarantino-esque freak shows that include "Goodfellas," "Casino," and "Gangs of New York" is a hideous testament to a talent gone mad, a talent gone astray and how much money Hollywood can happily spend on nothing.

"The Departed," like so many of Martin Scorsese's movies is all about "Mine is bigger than yours, and if I can't win, I'll just cut yours off - as graphically as possible, of course." Please tell me which character you could possible fret about in this film. There isn't one. After they've all taken turns screaming "Fuck you," and shooting each other, you realize the carousel is simply coming round again.

The Associated press release this morning described him as "the self-deprecating Scorsese." Huh? Have you ever seen a man more desperate to win the prize? Well, he can stop worrying. He will win the Oscar this year, when Stephen Frears should win it for "The Queen" and when Afonso Cuaron wasn't even nominated for "Children of Men."

Heck, maybe there will be some small Hollywood delight and Clint will win it for "Letters from Iwo Jima." Let's keep our pistols crossed.

GLOBAL WARMING? CLIMATE CHANGE?

How prescient is this photo immediately above? What unintended dark comedy from Madison Avenue! The first foto is, of course, the way to go.

Unless you've been stuffed in your cookie jar again, you will know by now that a major meeting of scientists and political leaders met in Paris yesterday and issued an unprecedented warning to the world about the destructive path we have trod all too well in recent years.

The Good News is that the meeting has occurred and the warnings have been heard. The Bad News is that what we have already done in the manner of shitting in our own nest cannot be readily undone. If every automobile on earth were junk piled today, poor Mother Earth and Sky would need about 50 years to clear her throat!

As everything starts at home, herewith is my own tragic little scorecard in the Global warming Shootout:

Good

I walk a lot. I rarely drive the car to pick up groceries, mail a letter or read a book in a coffee shop. (By the way, very few people read books in coffee shops these days. They are on their computers or on their cell phones or chatting with friends or all of the foregoing at once. Although we are told that book sales and library usage is up, there is little public evidence of this. People must be reading under the bed covers at night with a flashlight.)

My car is tiny, fuel efficient, old and well-maintained - a 1993 Mazda 323.

I'd like to own one day a Smart Car. I'd like you to own a Smart Car. I'd like the world to own a Smart Car.

I hate SUV's. Come visit the private school near my house some day. I call it "Our Lady of Perpetual SUV's." Tiny little mother with tiny little kid in giant claymation gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing Monster Truck. Hundreds of them every morning and every afternoon. These are the New Bourgeoisie, suffering as they always have from the disease of the middle class - "STRIVING." What did the Edward G. Robinson character in Key Largo want? As Humphrey Bogart teased him. "Rocko wants more! More of everything." And that is the pathetic, anxious middle class screeching for the latest shoes, stove, HDTV, hideaway. Nowhere is this obsession to climb the imaginary, illusory, unattainable social ladder more evident or more pathetic or more destructive than in the race for a bigger Dumb Car. Get some self respect, you fools and Go Small!

BAD

Most of my negative footprint in the race to destroy the planet comes with my home.

I live alone in a big house. No excuse.

My house is badly insulated and my heating bill in the winter is much too big. The house is heated by baseboard oil pipes, which are run by electricity. I don't often leave lights on needlessly, but I do run this computer all day and I have 3 sound systems and TV.

That's the gist of my score card. What's yours? And what can Industry and government do, or better yet, what might industry and government be willing to do, about this most urgent of problems?

VICTOR RANTS...BLESS YOU, BROTHER

Hey mensch:I'm on a Mac and it won't let me return emails to your GREAT!!! blog. Thank you Steve Jobs. Steve, get over your pissy-fit with Bill Gates.My thoughts of the day.I feel like I'm in a turkey barn.Global warming. Global Terrorism. Global economies. Global, global, global. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Catch the hair-sprayed turkey doing his/her gobble on the 6 o'clock news.Health care?We used to shoot the messenger. In BC, we just fire the messenger.Drugs?This morning, I was listening to Bill Goo. He suggested turning empty schools into detox centres. He knows the science, right?Tow Trucks?Yeah, I'm pissed off about the 85 year old lady who passed out in her old Toyota and sat in her freezing car for 21 hours in a tow lot. First her car was ticketed by a bylaw officer. He didn't look in the frosted windows. Then he called the tow truck driver. He didn't look in the frosted windows.Then the VPD media-slut cop came on the air and said it was a "routine ticket and tow". And the feckless News Director of CKNW agreed with him.Sorry, this is not fucking routine. An old lady is dying. Her last hours were spent in a freezing car because Vancouver parking officers needed to make their quota and a tow truck driver, paid by the tow, dragged her car away without looking into it. If my dog died like that, I would feel that my country had let me down. Imagine if it were your Mum.The shortest chapter in the New Testament has 2 words. "Jesus wept".Hey! He was a Jew. So He knew, although He was eloquent, sometimes there was nothing to say .OK, I still use the capital H. I'm getting older and I don't have good health. So I'm doing what I know best. Covering my bets. Call me a Holy Hedge Fund investor.cheersvictor

JACKO GOIN' 'SLAM

Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert eat your ironic little hearts out! You or anyone else cannot write satire this good.

"...they were violating our little girl."

The clash of Human Rights is front and centre today. In two separate - but equal? - fronts, my rights vs. your rights vs. the rights of the community are in combat, thus raising questions as old as human history.

Let's get to the second story first.

In Regina, "the rights of a same-sex couple to marry faced off Wednesday against the rights of a Saskatchewan marriage commissioner who said he couldn't perform the service because of his religious beliefs." (The Vancouver Sun.)

Orville Nichols, the marriage commissioner, is a 70-year old Baptist who said that "performing same-sex marriages goes directly against all he knows."

While we all have a right to our opinions, there is something that Mr. Nichols apparently does not know. He is an officer of the law; and the law, in this case tells us, and him, that men can marry men and women can marry women in the sovereign state of Saskatchewan, whether some of us like it or not. Now, you and I may agree or disagree with this law, but that is at best idle popcorn chatter. We are not, most of us, officers of the law, or, except in our desire to be exemplary citizens, representatives of the state. Mr. Nichols is different. As are M.J. and B.R., the two gay men in search of a compliant marriage commissioner.

Mr. Nichols has a dreadful choice. He can offend his own, most deeply held, beliefs and do his job...or he can resign his duties and seek employment elsewhere. A friend of mine failed first year University because the crucial exam he needed to write and pass was scheduled for a Saturday morning, the Jewish Sabbath. We might question the practical wisdom of this decision, but we certainly cannot fault my friend for loyalty and observance.

The complexities and the stakes of the first story make it by far the more difficult to embrace.

A local couple are the proud and anxious parents of sextuplets. Two babies have already died.
A third child was seized by the provincial authorities on Monday evening to be given what the doctors believed to be an essential, life-saving blood transfusion. The parents are Jehovah's Witnesses, who deeply and utterly believe that the Bible in several declarations states that Christians must "abstain from blood."

This is hardly the first time the rights of believers and the rights of communities to protect children have collided. Such encounters appear with frightening regularity world-wide each year.

What makes this conflict all the more salient and compelling in February 2007 is the large context created by terrorism, civil wars, and the struggles of societies made newly "diverse" by large waves of immigration.

In France, the controversy rages over whether girls may wear head scarves to school, highlighting the clash in values between secular Europeans and fundamentalist Muslim immigrants.

In Holland, immigration officials are showing films and brochures that promote "European" values including equality of the sexes and tolerance of homosexuality, the clear suggestion being that if you want to live in our country, you have to accept these ideas.

Riots in Paris suburbs and arrests of London bombers and beheaders add to the flames.

Here, in a small town in Quebec, signs have gone up spelling out the do's and don'ts of local life - no concealing masks or scarves, for example.

In a country which prides itself on multiculturalism and diversity to the extent that we Canadians think we've practically invented these notions and that we are the strongest guards at the gate, in such a country, many thousands are still enraged that Mounties and motorcyclists can wear turbans rather than caps and helmets, and that children can wear ceremonial daggers to school.

Each of us, I believe, is tested daily in our ability to absorb and accommodate the unfamiliar. We are especially challenged to resist labelling, banishing and punishing that which we do not know.
Like many Western people, I do not like to see people in front of me in public wearing "masks," even if these shields have some religious significance. I want to see the person to whom I am speaking. I also don't want to see women subjugated to roles of lesser status, even if that is the tradition of a particular religion.

So you might rightly say, "Well, David, that's just too bad for you. That's your problem."

And you would be right. it's my problem that I have these reactions. But it is also your problem and yours and yours and yours and ours.

My own perception is that Jehovah's Witnesses have fundamentally misunderstood the directive they always quote in the Bible, which says, "abstain from blood."

I further believe that blood transfusion is a standard practice of modern medicine that not only makes sense, but saves lives both directly and in allowing complex procedures like heart surgery.

But I cannot tell you what to believe.

Where is Solomon when we really need him?

WE TOLD YOU SO

Three stories in the local paper are echoes of articles we have posted here in the past month. In two cases, they are subjects about which we have ranted in public for years. It's gratifying to see that the Official Word is catching on.

1. "Jobs prove elusive: Foreign trained professionals often find government regulations and powerful professional associations make it tough to become accredited."

2. "Councillors seek way to save Cheapskates."

3. "Hospital funding system blamed for waiting lists. Pay for each procedure rather than grant bulk budget, medical association head says. This is all about measuring outcomes."

Our blog is now 7 unwieldy pages long and counting. However, all 3 of our original posts on these subjects are linked below.

WE ONLY GET WHAT WE DESERVE OR WANT?

A guest editorial from The Ottawa Citizen reprinted in today's Vancouver Sun is one of the most peculiar in recent memory.

It is essentially a fantasy based on a fallacy.

The headline hollars, "Banks aren't committing highway robbery."

And the author (unrevealed) argues that NDP leader Jack Layton is full of it because he wants the banks to stop charging their $1.50 "convenience fee" every time you withdraw $40 at the ATM. The author (unrevealed) sinks immediately to argumentum ad hominum (calling people names instead of presenting compelling reasoning) and describes Mr. Layton's behaviour as, "playing his customary role as faux populist." The cat is immediately out of the bag. The editorial author (Did I mention that he or she is unrevealed?) clearly has some Jack Problem and he's determined to let us know it.

The argument then is that the banks charge this fee because we want them to charge this fee. This solipsism is axiomatic to the writer (whoever he or she may be) because if we really didn't want to pay this fee we could hide our cash under the mattress. HUH?

Here's a mysterious quote: "Are gas prices fair? They must be, or else people would change their habits so as to not pay them." DOUBLE HUH?

With logic like this, the Titanic, it could be argued, is resting comfortably in the eye of the moon.

The banks, the author states, are convenient targets. We are crying for them already, are we not?

Clearly, in this writer's universe, we all watch the unwatchable drek that passes for entertainment on TV because we adore it, we all listen to the uniformly dull that passes for radio because we can't have enough of it, and we are not searching the internet daily for alternates to the local rag because the rag sates our need for information and debate. Right.

And like you, I am breathless from running to my ATM to happily surrender my $1.50 to the shareholders of MegaImpersonalMarbleFloored Bank because that's absolutely the best use of my resources today. Amen.

AUTO FUELS CORN WAR$

Corn.

Perhaps even more than rice, corn is one of the most abundant, grown, used and abused agri-products on earth today.

It is estimated that an average so-called "meal" of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke accounts for an acre or more of corn growth and processing. The cow is fed corn and corn derivatives, the potatoes are fried in corn oil and the soft drink is largely corn syrup. Without corn, MacDonald's doesn't exist.

Now, in our continued obsession with the privacy and primacy of our SUV's and roadsters, with our terror of being beholden to the sheiks of Eastern Oil, we turn to "alternate fuels." High on the list is ethanol.

So far, so good. Very Suziki.

But then, enter the tortilla.

Today, we learn that the lowly tortilla, a staple of the Mexican diet for millions of people for lord knows how many hundreds or thoursands of years is under seige. This might be the stuff of sketch comedy were it not true and a disaster.

The price of tortillas in Mexico has doubled in less than a year. Try to imagine the price of our bread or milk or eggs taking the same leap. But even that analogy is not strong enough. Because, the minimum wage in Mexico is in the range of $5/day! Half the population of Mexico has never been accounted for as they are various ancient Indian tribes living in the mountains. Poverty, untabulated in rural areas and in your face in the cities, is commonplace.

Will the new administration of Mr. Calderon cap the price of corn? Will auto makers turn more boldly to alternate power that depends less on natural resources, whether found or grown? Will you and I step ever so unwillingly from our seperate music studios hurtling through space to more communal modes of transportation? Will local governments ever meet that need?

HEALTH CARE AILING

One firing, two resignations. And that's just in the past 3 weeks.

Make no mistake about it - British Columbia's Health Care, which accounts for half of all provincial spending, is in crisis. Even the near-Billion Dollar top-up from Finance Minister Carole Taylor won't do the trick.

First it was the Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Penny Ballem who walked. She warned Premier Campbell that his plans for rejuvenating the system were unsound.

Then, last Wednesday, Health Minister George Abbott, back from a vacation barely long enough to put away the paba oil for another year, fired Trevor Johnstone, the chairman of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

And last night, Keith Purchase, the chairman of the Fraser Health Authority, walked out.

All three of these people were recruited by the Premier. All are seasoned professionals, and in the case of Johnstone and Purchase, business executives with winning track records in the private sector.

All three have said there is not enough money in the system.

That may, indeed, be so.

But are there not some other core issues that neither the Premier nor the Health Minister have the wit or courage to address?

The first problem is the 5 regional Health Authorities and one provincial authority themselves. Are they not yet another needless, expensive, meddling level of bureaucracy needed by absolutely no one? This current obsession in government local, provincial and federal, with "an integrated approach" is getting us all nowhere at lightening speed.

Hospitals are big enough and stiff enough with paper that grouping 4 or 5 hospitals in a locale together under a centralized authority only adds to the waste of essential resources - money, people and time. Let hospitals be responsible. Let them be answerable. If they're not doing the job or over-spending or buying the wrong stents, then let the province deal with them.

The Regional Health Authorities do for the Provincial Governments exactly what School Boards do. They provide a Fall Guy when the stuff hits the fan.

The second problem is that nobody - and that includes doctors, hospitals, health boards, or the provincial or federal governments - is willing to eyeball the costs of service.

At Jiffy Lube, the operator knows how much a gasket costs him and he knows how much it costs him to install one in your car. If he didn't, he'd have to close his bay doors.

But we are absolutely unwilling to assess the cost of an angioplasty or hip replacement. We know how many surgeons, nurses, orderlies, and cleaners we'll need. We know the cost of the equipment used and the equipment installed and the equipment discarded, the costs of the tubes, gasses, cylinders, etc.

Why then the reluctance to say an open heart procedure will cost the commonweal $6,718.43 or whatever the amount truly is? When Ujjal Dosanj was the Federal Health Minister, he said openly on the radio with me that this kind of accounting was impossible.

I would say it is impossible if you want it to be!

We may in fact need to transfuse our health care system with more green. But we might start with a little grey matter and a lot of vigorous red-blooded honesty.

YOUR COMMENTS, PLEASE.