Columnist Has a Revelation - Discovers What Everyone Else Has known for Years

Some people are just a little slow.

Ah well, better late than never.

Sun columnist Pete McMartin has figured out what you and I have been screaming from rooftops for years now - the Downtown East Side is a cesspool of social agencies sucking up money and producing absolutely zero.

Hello!!!!!

The funniest example he gives - if you have the strength to laugh at this robbery - is something called BOB - the Building Opportunities with Business Inner City Society.

This fiasco has well over $5 Million from various helpful governments.

Its net product is roughly 15 people got jobs.

The CEO of BOB is none other than Shirley Chan, who has been sucking government money her entire working life.

She failed to get elected to Parliament a few years ago when she launched a vicious personal attack on Libby Davies' personal life - not her policies or platforms - and the public saw clearly the stuff of which Ms. Chan was made.

Of course, that has hardly stopped her from drawing good money after bad for herself and her staff on the backs of the poor and hopeless.

How do these people who are making major salaries in the DES look at themselves in the mirror?

Canadian Coprorate Welfare is Collosal

The most important story was buried on page C7 of the Business section this morning.

The Headline is "Taxpayers' Bill for Corporate Welfare Soars." The report comes from a Fraser Institute study called "Corporate Welfare: A $144 Billion Addiction," and it includes these gems:

"There is no concrete evidence showing that government subsidies to business provide any net benefit to Canada's economy."

"The top 50 business subsidy recipients include Ford Motor, Rolls-Royce, Noranda, IBM...and so on."

What this timely study does is two things:

It reveals the truth of David Lewis' famous catch phrase of 30 years ago - "Corporate Welfare Bums."

And it exposes the utter duplicity of the so-called "free enterprise system" that we have been led to believe in by endless myth making from the captains of industry.

The shoddy truth is that these Barons of Bumph have been sucking on the Public Teat with greater vigor and success all along than any unemployed dishwasher.

You, the taxpayer, are working so that General Dynamics can have leather seats in their board rooms.

Fred & Ginger & George & Ira

"Can't really sing. Dances a little."

That was the original assessment of Fred Astaire's talents.

Within a few years, writers like George & Ira Gershwin were creating songs just for him.

Watch the masterful, real responses from Ginger Rogers, who, in addition to being a great dancer, won an Oscar as Best Actress.

Pam's School Rant Sets off a Small Firestorm

Pam's ramble about the school system posted here yesterday has clearly touched a nerve or twenty.

We have had a wide range of comments from the helpful and anecdotal to the downright enraged and rude.

Have a look.

Apologies

My apologies. I have found myself running way behind the clock this morning.

So for the stories on the federal Government's new crime bill, hydro rates, Mulroney finally figuring out that taking $100,000 in cash wasn't a great idea, weapons routinely seized at the Air India trial and Warren Jeffs about to become some biker's bitch...you'll have to write your own jokes.

Have a swellegant day!

Stem Cell Breakthrough

Much of what is taken for granted as routine in medicine these days is truly the stuff of 20th Century science fiction.

Regeneration of human organs from stem cells will change human life at astonishing, now unimaginable ways.

Yesterday's announcement is historic.

Just stand back and shake your head in wonder.

Monsieur Flip Flop, John Really Lessssss

B.C. Solicitor-General, John Les-is-Even-Less, is now officially Senor Flip Flop.

First he rags on West Vancouver Chief of Police Kash Heed for suggesting we might begin a conversation about a regional police force. FF goes so far as to call Heed's boss, the Mayor of West Van and register an official kvetch and whine.

Which he swiftly reverses and opines that maybe a regional police force is not a bad idea after all.

Did he ever apologize to Kash Heed? Not that we know.

Now he refuses to apologize for the deadly bad behaviour of 4 rookie thug cops who murder a man at YVR, and then - presto chango! - he apologizes after all...or after about ten minutes.

It's amazing that Mr. Les can change his mind so readily, because that assumes one has a mind to change.

And this says WHAT about our Premier and his wise choices in personnel or his concern about matters of the law?

Pam's Ramble About the School System

I am frustrated that we have to pay so much to send our boys to private school in order to get the education that we feel they deserve.

These children are our future.

We are all paying our tax dollars for a system that has slowly declined and deteriorated. Just one item that bothers me - Why is Queen Elizabeth annex still open when the local school Southlands has seen declining enrollment over the last few years? Are the School Board Trustees afraid to deal with parents who like their sons/daughters attending a small school?

I think that when teachers became unionized they did themselves a great disservice. I was part of a union for many years and in the airline industry it was absolutely essential that we have a union.

A good friend of mine does nothing but complain about being a teacher. Yet she enjoys all

the holidays and the summers off. Her days are not even close to being as long as people Iknow who work in the private sector.

I agree with you regarding the teachers.

My younger son was in Grade 7 when I exchanged harsh words with his teacher outside the classroom. I insistedthat she stop yelling at the kids and that I would see to it that she never yelled at my son again.

Three boys, age 12, heard her say the f wordwhen she came back into the classroom. Great role model!

My older son had the same teacher when he was in Grade 7 and he was a nervous wreck. She approached us at sports day and asked us why we wereforcing him to attend a private school the following year. She informed us that he was very stressed out. It was about a year later that our son told us that the only reason he was stressed was because she yelled at the kids all the time.

He wanted to attend X School and he loved it there.I knew that nothing would be done so we chose to send our boys to private school where we can have a say in their education.What I saw over the 12 years of being affiliated with that school was pathetic. We lost the music program, the Christmas concert and by the time I left, the parents were running all but one of the sports programs and doing all the fundraising

Afghanistan War is About Quebec Votes

The only thing you need to know about SNC Lavalin, the company that holds the HALF BILLION contract with your government for services in Afghanistan - is that it comes from Montreal.

So - follow the money - we are wasting Canadian lives and tax dollars in a hopeless campaign to buy votes in French Canada.

Taser Murder - Chapter 4

Politicians - yech!

You think they called for the inquiry into the Taser Murder because they wanted to or because it was the right thing to do or because they thought of it first?

It was only yesterday that we called for the inquiry right here on these pages.

Not that they responded to these pages.

They responded - the damn phony fools - to the WORLD WIDE OUTRAGE.

And as recently as Friday, John Les said there was no need to apologize. Now he's sorry.

Do people who go into politics self-select as phony mindless dorks, or do they just become that way after 2 weeks in office?

Here's a Gold Shovel. So Dig Already

So the prison guard who earns $15/hr. - maybe - and has a job more boring than dentistry - takes a major league bribe to let Mr. Dangerous Criminal escape from the like most secure jail in the world, or BC or Fernie or wherever.

We are...like, amazed, right?

Win Medals, Earn $$$

Huh?

Stones!

Stones, Again!!

More Banking Humour

British Banking Humour

Investigate the RCMP Taser Death NOW

"You expect something like that in America, but not in Canada."

This is a man in Poland speaking of the sickening murder of Robert Dziekanski by the RCMP at YVR.

Equally sickening is the denial by the police and the refusal of either federal or provincial attorneys-general or solicitors-general to demand at once what every reasonable Canadian knows is due - an impartial, citizen panel to investigate this disgrace.

One taser is bad enough; two is more than questionable. But jumping on a man in distress???

These thugs must be out of uniform as fast as possible.

That must be followed immediately by the panel that will ask all the unhappy but necessary questions.

Like many of you, I have always been a supporter of the police in general and the RCMP in particular. Like many of you, my support is like the Force's reputation - in tatters.

He Said, She Said

I saw something strange and disturbing on TV a few nights ago.

That could be practically anything, of course, from "Deal or No Deal" to the NBC News with Brian Williams.

But this was just a moment or two that I could bear of a Muslim man trying to interview a woman who claimed to be a Buddhist.

The woman, in her '60s I would guess, had an almost shaved head of grey stubble. She was wearing the familiar burgundy and orange robes we associate with the Dalai.

As I clicked my way through the channels and landed on this gem, the woman was talking about "males."

She was talking about "males" as she might about rats, vermin, root canal, rapists and radio station managers. What was so shriekingly evident was her total abhorrence of the "man" side of any equations.

But the Muslim man, bent on being "the interviewer," was doing a classic Bill Good and not listening to a word she was saying, intent on his next scripted question. He must have been a graduate of Bill's popular workshop, "How to Never Interact With Your Guests, but Still be a Local Media Star."

The - shriek! - man, asked the woman Buddhist about how she actually practiced her religion. He was very specific. How do you begin your day? What prayers or meditation do you choose? And so on.

Her answer was, "Well, that's a very general question."

His question was extremely specifically specific.

But you see she hates men and therefore whatever he might ask or say will be wrong.

What was so interesting and horrifying was that he didn't notice any of this and she didn't acknowledge anything coming from him.

So here were two people utterly NOT communicating, but doing so on television.

I lasted less than a minute and settled on Bruce Willis shooting everyone is sight.

YOUR GOOD MONEY GOING TO HELL IN AFGHANISTAN

The Vancouver Sun's coverage of the secret and even simply unknown and untalked about sides of the war in Afghanistan is most welcome.

We have known for some time now the hideous corruption and overspending by America in their desperate disaster in Iraq - cement, bullets, oil, rebars, name it - so many overcharged, double-billed and worse.

Now we are seeing the identical story for the Canadian government in Afghanistan.

"There is nothing more Canadian than sipping a double double in Kandahar Airfield while watching a hockey game," says General Rick Hillier by way of explaining how he has spent $4MILLION of your tax money on a Tim Horton's franchise in Afghanistan.

Well, I've got news for the good general and for Mr. Harper.

When I want a dose of really bad amateurish sociology, I don't turn to Mr. Khaki, thanks very much.

And I don't drink double doubles or anything else at Tim Horton's and I don't give a flying frittata about hockey.

And, yes, oddly, enough I am still a Canadian. Is that OK?

And I am not encouraged to learn that SNC Lavalin, the folks who are doing such a good job on the ram-it-down-your-throats-and-to-hell-with-your-mom-&-pop-shops Canada Line, have contracts of over $700 MILLION for various make-do projects in Afghanistan.

Will anybody ever investigate Lavalin's relationship with generations of Ottawa mandarins and parliamentarians?

JACK JONES

Jack Jones, one of the great saloon singers with George Shearing...this is such wonderful stuff...