Liberals revelling in the glory of choosing a Premier.

    They are happily glowing with the prospect of being the sole party to choose the leader of British Columbia. They are using their own weighted system this time, (you can vote for your first, second, third choices, etc)  and at the end of Saturday, the province will have a Liberal Premier. But how legitimate is this choice?

The open line talk shows have been busy all week with speculations, comments and explanations about the process. The party had to disallow 6000 applications to the party lists. They didn't say what was wrong with them. This follows on the Junior Hockey team sign up and Olivia the cat member. The candidates seem confused. The American company hired to execute the program admits they don't know what is wrong.
And during the week, when the PIN numbers were being mailed to party members, (one PIN one vote) there were many inconsistancies.
One lady called because she didn't get her number, then got two the following day. One guy called both telephone numbers and got a PIN in response to each call. Two PINs. Simi Sara's father got a PIN. He is not a member of the Liberal party. Another woman phoned in saying she got two and her husband one, so she could have three votes. Her husband is also not a member of the Liberal party.
It seems that the process is even a mystery to the organizers.

Regardless how much glee the Liberal party shines on their choice, or how much the media pimps the Party, the spotlight is not bright enough to light the way for the voting public. Whomever is accepting the bows at the end of the day, will remain in a cloud of doubt and not be the elected representative by the people of BC and as a premier, should have no right to make decisions that affect us all.
I'm swaying to Olivia, she purrs and doesn't bad mouth anyone else. How much worse could she be than the Gordon Campbell clones?

Elections BC = BC Liberals?

     Correct me if I am wrong, but this whole idea could be just a little bit important .....
When there was the recent recall effort of an MLA about to begin, Elections BC curtailed the start of the signing period. At that time it seemed to be an attempt to influence the potential signings of the recall petition within that riding.  And you might remember Elections BC’s concerns about 2,200 duplicate signatures out of a total of 710,000 signatures on the Citizen’s Initiative Petition against the HST. 
This was so serious to Elections BC that .... "they ordered an RCMP investigation to look into the problem at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. They did all that three months after the petition was validated, for what amounted to less than .03% of invalid signatures on a non binding petition."   according to Chris Delaney of the BC First Party.

So now we come to the election by only the BC Liberal party members of who will become the next Premier of British Columbia.  With no approval of this person from the taxpaying voters of the province.
Consider this;  It has been revealed that there were 6,000 BC Liberal Party members who cannot be accounted for. These are among Olivia the cat and a BC Junior Hockey League team! None of which signed up to be Liberals. 

“We don’t know which campaigns those memberships were from. We don’t know who signed them. We don’t know who solicited them. We don’t even know if there are thousands more. If this is what the BC Liberals are actually willing to admit to, imagine how much worse the problem could potentially be?” - again from Delaney.
Of course this is a huge problem, yet Elections BC seems to be taking no notice whatsoever of a 10% discrepancy when they sprang upon a .03% difference previously. And the local media will not see the elephant. They simply wait for the inauguration.  
It might be just a little bit important if we have a non elected Premier of our province carrying on the cover-up of the BC Rail scandal, allowing the fish farms to continue the destruction of our wild salmon industry, and encouraging more Run-of-River Private Power Projects to produce electricity for California air conditioners, or selling off other assets belonging to British Columbians.
Shouldn't these 60,000 Liberal members who are about to aggrandize one person to the throne of BC Power have to be validated by an outside agency?  Could anyone have run for this Liberal leadership, submitted thousands of unconfirmed names and become the High Boss of BC?
'But they are confirmed,' you say.
'Who confirms them?'
'The Liberal party.'
'Oh.'
Does Elections BC have some explaining to do to avoid being considered a protective arm of the BC Liberals? 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this could be just a little bit important.

Banks deserve a break?

     This is what Liberals do ...

On February 19, 2008, then BC Liberal finance minister Carole Taylor tabled the province's 2008/09 budget - her last before quitting politics - she wiped out B.C.'s corporation capital tax on banks. Carol, all toothy smiles and new shoes, seemed to think banks needed a break.

Want some info?

Here are some bank profits for only the FIRST QUARTER of 2010 . . .

• Bank of Nova Scotia                           988 MILLION dollars
• CIBC                                                   652 million
• Bank of Montreal                                657 million
• National Bank                                     215 million
• Royal Bank                                         1.2 BILLION
• TD Bank                                             1.5 billion  

These figures are for a THREE MONTH period! The banks are getting virtually ALL their profits from YOUR bank account. They manufacture nothing. They don't wholesale anything to stores. They have no research and development of a product. Just a new fee here and a higher interest percentage there.

Yet Carole Taylor, in her wisdom and authority, thought that banks needed a break.

Eighteen months later, Taylor joined the TD bank as a director which could pay her up to $350 THOUSAND dollars a year!

If that isn't sleaze I don't know what is.

But this is just what Liberals do.

Steerage.

     Steerage used to be a term about the poorest ship passengers. They had so little money that they could only afford to travel in the bowels of a ship to get to the 'New World.' In steerage. They weren't even allowed out on the decks for fear of contaminating the real class passengers and their tea and crumpets.

Steerage today means an entirely different thing. And it is political. Almost everything you read in the newspapers has a political point of view. The writers and pundits seem to have given up truthful reporting. Instead, they choose their words to seem like they are being objective, yet they want you to think a certain way. They are trying to steer you into a direction of their choice. It used to be called yellow journalism, or slanted writing; interpreting or presenting in line with a special interest.

TV and radio do the same thing. Commentary always has a direction. And often the specific questions put to these pundits by the program hosts are asked in order to set a purposeful, specific direction in the minds of the listeners. And a preconceived answer. How often have you seen an interview where an answer begs a followup question, yet the host ignores the obvious pursuit.

If you watch a sharp lawyer during cross examination, he leaps upon a wayward answer from the witness and suddenly opens up a revelation that may turn the verdict. Not so in  today's media.

Now we have polls. These are the darlings of  'steerage'. Polls can be easily manipulated by the pollsters. Steered. Political polls are particularly suspect. You need to know first of all who paid for them. Which immediately skews results. If the results are against what the sponsor likes, you will likely never even hear of that poll. Many polls show one party so far ahead just before an election that you wonder if it is worth voting at all if you don't like that party. That is exactly how the poll sponsor may want you to react. Polling companies are in business for profit. They give their customers what they want just like your corner grocer. The old saying, 'Figures don't lie but liars can certainly figure.' applies.

As a political event moves closer, especially an election, the polling information develops into a maelstrom of figures and conclusions. All telling YOU what someone wants you to believe. This party is now ahead of that party. This leader is deemed best by the voting public. etc etc ad nauseum.

When they say 9 out of 10 people surveyed agree on something, it only means that the 10 people included in the survey indicated those results. If they eliminated 90 other people from the survey, then what does it actually mean?

This steerage only works if you allow it. Your own independent thoughts and actions can defeat insidious steerage. Go ahead up to the deck and mix with the tea and crumpets set. Sway them. Contaminate them with reality.

Just don't trust polls to be honest.

HST debate?

     Well, everyone seems to be for or against it, don't they? Corporations for, people against. Is it a debate or a concentrated effort on one side?

I have not heard anyone make this point yet: The HST replaces the GST (federal tax) and the PST (provincial tax) and so will be totally controlled by the federal government in Ottawa!

Before the HST we could change our PST as a province before. So in good times, we could lower the PST if we liked. And yes increase it if we needed to build a bridge to Vancouver Island, for instance. PST money goes into provincial coffers.

However, with the HST, it will be taken and administered by Ottawa, and when was the last time you felt that Ottawa gave British Columbia a break, say over Quebec?

With the HST we lose control of a tax of our own people here in BC, and relinquish the ability to look after a huge proportion of tax money that will now go to Ottawa instead of Victoria. Sort of a reverse Robin Hood syndrome, steal from the poor and give to the rich, but then that's what taxing is all about anyway, isn't it.

I suppose if you are in favour of British Columbians paying for Quebec's arena in hopes of getting an NHL franchise that will be okay. But I would rather have the ability to spend BC taxpayers money on things for British Columbians.

In my mind, the HST represents a huge tax windfall for those forlorn foghorns in parliament to use. They get enough GST now. And remember way back when and Jean Chretien saying he would cancel the GST? Like you can believe any of these bleating tricksters?

The last anti-HST spike in my mind is because so many big corporations are now telling us, the people paying this tax, how good it is for us. Whenever big business works that hard to tell you something is good for you, beware!

I am against the HST and will vote that way if given the chance. I will always put British Columbians first.

Here's a start - - - BC Rail scandal

     No one in the Vancouver media seems savvy enough to even speculate on this one: the newspapers ignore the news, the local TV stations concentrate on little lost dog stories. It is like they are actually afraid to report political news. Just like in Libya or Bahrain. Or else they have another motive for their non performance for the people of BC. Look at what happened and ask yourself why? 

The trial of the two perps who were involved in the illegal sell off of OUR railroad lagged out the criminal trial with the help of their lawyers, for six YEARS! Then suddenly, out of nowhere, they reverse themselves and plead guilty, get their lawyers expenses paid to the tune of 6 MILLION dollars, and walk away free and easy without any punishment for their admitted crime. 
So what did happen?


They won't tell us so in my not so humble opinion, this is what I think happened:
Gary Collins was about to testify the very next day! 
Remember he resigned from the Liberal caucus just after the RCMP raided his office and carted off all those boxes. We had no idea why he left at that time, except to suppose that perhaps he was guilty of something. But my own speculation as to why he wasn't allowed to testify is that Gordon Campbell and his back room henchmen, couldn't trust what Collins was about to say through cross examination. Maybe they asked Collins what he was going to say to certain queries they knew would come up. Maybe he told them he would not lie under oath for them. Maybe he said he wouldn't lie for the Liberal party, specifically Gordon Campbell, and perhaps Christy Clark and others? They could not be sure of the continuing cover-up So they hastily ended the trial by having Basi and Virk suddenly plead guilty.


These Liberal henchmen, whoever they are over there in the shadows, approached the Basi Virk team who had worked so diligently for them in steering the railroad sale, (even criminals can be diligent) and told the two who had been fighting for seven years to now plead guilty in order to end the whole trial. The coincidence of Collins' testimony being the next day cements my speculation. The Liberals feared that Gary Collins was too honest. He might have told them that he would tell the truth if sworn under oath. And what he might have said could be explosive. Maybe even ruin the Liberal party for decades. 
Which gave Basi and Virk a 6 million dollar bargaining card.


The Liberals had already sent their spin doctors in the forms of Keith Baldrey and Vaughn Palmer out into media land with the seeds of a concept that it was all over anyway, too long in the making, and way too costly to even think of inquiring any more about anything related to BC Rail. No consideration about justice being served of course. BC Rail is now way too old to talk about but fast ferries are not?
So with the aid of Bill Good's popular talk show, they all three scoff away any idea by irate callers to negate the sale entirely because it was conducted fraudulently in the first place, much less anyone actually doing a public inquiry on WHO authorized the sweet deal to free Basi and Virk!

No names. No places. No shadowy smoking man to expose. No nuthin!

So the Liberals are forced to offer to Basi and Virk, the SIX MILLION dollar package of hush money and no loss of their homes (in spite of liens) in return for ending the trial with a sudden guilty plea! Team Basi Virk realized their strong position to negotiate the deal. 


The Liberal sleight-of-hand shell game is being played all over again to retain power over the so called bad guys, the NDP.
And our naive media won't touch this idea, wanting proof, facts, notes, names, dates, places. 
But isn't that exactly what an investigative reporter is supposed to be doing?There is a trail here, and several bloggers, even with their restricted access, are following it.
Don't count on revelations though. Power trumps truth in British Columbia. So the people of BC lose one of their prime assets because of whatever greed was going on about money. No recourse?
So many questions still out there hanging on those rusting rails. No answers.
But the problem with secretive governments, is that if they won`t tell us anything, the people will continue to speculate and make up their own scenarios even as these new Liberals ask for our vote. And every one of them supported Gordon Campbell through this travesty without a whimper of protest.
We know now that there is no pea under any of their shells.