Consider the facts not the lies

Re: HST voters should consider facts, not emotion The Province July 29/2011

Mr. Falcons column is a clear reason why everybody should be voting YES on the HST referendum, he has obviously not learned one thing from this whole undemocratic costly nightmare, he continues to lie to our faces
quote "if you are in favour of lower taxes and a 10 percent HST, you should vote “NO’ on your ballot” unquote. 

Even if the HST is reduced to 10 percent in 2014 ( highly unlikely ) you will still be paying 100 percent more taxes on hundreds of everyday big and small goods and services. 

How is it physically possible to double taxes on hundreds of goods and services and yet pay less taxes, is it or is it not a 2 billion dollar tax shift on to consumers, never mind the some $800 million dollars extra that his revenue neutral tax has already managed to suck out of the pockets of BCs workers, families and especially seniors that have been some of the biggest losers with this badly thought out tax grab. 

Mr. Campbell and Mr. Falcon and those like them are quite happy the way BC politics is and has been played for the last decade, or in particular since this crowd got power and literally turned BC into a dictatorship ( 253 consecutive days the legislature did not sit ).

There is a watershed moment in political history available to the voters of BC, we can do as usual and turn the other cheek ensuring that politics in BC will carry on as usual, sleazy unethical, corrupt or we can literally change the way politics is practiced in BC, by setting a new higher standard for public officials, that says yes you shall be accountable for your actions, yes you shall pay a heavy price for lying and stealing. 


We are at a crossroads and it is up to you whether all the effort to get to this crossroad is just a minor blip in same old game, or a new more honest, accountable form of democracy. 


If you want a new era of accountable honest politicians, where elections are more than meaningless wastes of taxpayer money that less than half the voters even exercise their right to participate  because they are seen to be just a sick joke at best.

We need politicians that are expected to be more honest,  ethical and transparent, politicians that as a matter of course know they need to get a mandate from the people for any new polices they want to introduce. 

Vote yes to not only extinguish the HST, but for a whole long overdue new direction for politics and democracy in BC. 

PS Sadly the last illusions of democracy have been crushed, the peoples wish and lawful effort to extinguish the HST has been totally ignored by our government. We will just have to learn that we have to do what the government wants, anything else is just a fanciful  illusion, wishful thinking back to a time when Canada actually was a democracy. The people just have to learn those days are gone, democracy has outlived it's usefulness. 
Welcome to the Oligarchy of Canada.


Will the voters of BC really let this stand.

Wayne Clark

Fantastic snow job

Re: Campbell made BC fantastic The Times July 21/2011

I would describe the people that voted for Mr. Campbell as a ultra- rightwing minority, after all only 48 percent of registered voters even voted and I would remind you that Americans voted for George W. Bush twice.
Maybe you think he made America FANTASTIC also. 

Do you really believe it was only the HST that brought 91 percent of BCers to vehemently disapprove of the man and his ultra-rightwing polices. 

He has single handedly brought the Premiers office into total disrepute with everything from DUIs, lies, sleazy machiavellian dictatorial ( 253 days legislature is out of session ) politics, a total lack of personal ethics and has probably had more corruption on his watch than has happened on any 3 previous premiers combined. 

Maybe you could tell me what Mr. Campbell's positive legacy is other than the fact that he has sold off all the family jewels and tripled the provincial debt all in one decade, 7 deficit budgets, 5 federal transfer payments not counting the 1.6 billion he got for the HST and they still had to raid the coffers of ICBC for another 1 billion and still another deficit and BC once again a have not province. 

How many decades will the taxpayers of BC be paying for the 5th lane on the Port Mann bridge after it is torn down, how much did his flying by the seat of his pants privatization at any cost polices cost the taxpayers of BC. How many jobs did he turn from $14 to $18 dollar an hour meaningful employment jobs to $8 to $10 an hour Macjobs with his illegal contract breaking and union busting agenda. 

Tell me one thing Mr. Campbell did that looks anything like a province building legacy. 

Like say W. C. Bennet who built a legacy that endures to this day despite Mr. Campbell's strenuous efforts to tear it all down. 

We will have nothing to show for Campbell's efforts but poorly constructed P3 projects like the Golden Ears bridge that will be lucky to still be standing in 30 years and will never be paid for, ever. 

He has accomplished nothing other than making a few people at the top of the public gravy train filthy rich while seriously diminishing the middle class and the poor and seniors and that is a whole other ongoing saga of loading on more and more taxes, fees and tolls.

His only real legacy is to see to it that everything more than paid for itself, going to the park, user fees etc. many other new fees (not taxes) gas taxes, electronics taxes, green taxes transit taxes etc., tolls, doubling and tripling of existing fees and inventing dozens of new ones, doubling medical premiums,  tripling of tuition fees, doubling retirement home fees, charging HST on medical procedures, the ongoing process of privatizing public health care and hydro, cutting more and more social programs, giving $400 million to casinos and cutting the social programs that money usually paid for, the list goes on and on. 

Is this a legacy that most people would want to be remembered for, I think not?

Wayne Clark

Who's it hurting

Multi-Millions of public dollars in BC are squandered on everything from fraudulent elections, to coverup trials, to unfair unbalanced referendums where truth, justice, accountability are nothing more than meaningless buzzwords used to placate a cynical, jaundiced, battered electorate. 


In the end after the many millions of dollars of constant brainwashing most of us just hang our heads in submission and if they even bother to vote, just wait for the next inevitable political outrage to show it’s ugly face.


This Greek tragedy always stars the same sad cast of characters that never fails to make a mockery of democracy, justice and the laws of this land and our very trust in those institutions. 
We all know their names and their apologists that claim they only do these evils for our own good, and of coarse the other guys would be worse so quit your whining and just accept the fate they have chosen for us no matter who it hurts. 


Maybe you honestly think the HST will not cost you any money and of coarse Self-interest is a powerful motivation, but think about this even if that were true ( which I don’t believe for a minute) think about this quote from Alex de Tocqueville 
Quote, Self- interest “properly understood” It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone’s self interest, in other words the common welfare is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being.
Basic fact looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul-it’s good for business” Unquote.


Wayne Clark

Where's the democracy

I read the articles and letters in the papers and watch the news and it is all to clear why we have a major credibility and honesty crisis at every level of government. 


Is it any wonder that the 50 percent that bother to vote at all have absolutely no expectations of politicians being honest, accountable to the voters or behave in an legal ethical manner while in office, we quite simply expect them to be unethical or corrupt as a consequence of being a public servant, electing someone to public office under the present system is the equivalent of giving them a licence to lie, steal, with total impunity. 


Sure they promised not to sell BC Rail, but what the hell who is it hurting, the other guys would do worse, sure they ran a election campaign on a absolute lie about not even looking at the HST but we all know they are liars so what if they brought in a major tax policy without any mandate at all, so what did you expect, why are we surprised about anything our elected public servants do, we don’t expect any better of them anyway. 


The voters do not hold them accountable for their lies and illegal actions anyway, somehow many people think that is just the cost of having government. 


This unethical behaviour has become so entrenched in our system that we hardly even protest anymore just roll over and take it as a matter of coarse. 


There is a watershed moment in political history available to the voters of BC, we can do as usual and turn the other cheek ensuring that politics in BC will carry on as usual, sleazy unethical, corrupt or we can literally change the way politics is practiced by setting a new higher standard for public officials, that says yes you shall be accountable for your actions, yes you shall pay a heavy price for lying and stealing. 


We are at a crossroads and it is up to you whether all the effort to get to this crossroad is just a minor blip in same old game, or a new more honest, accountable form of democracy. 


If you want a new era of accountable honest politicians, where elections are more than meaningless wastes of taxpayer money, politicians that are forced to be more honest  ethical and transparent, politicians that as a matter of course know they need to get a mandate from the people for any new polices they want to introduce. 


Vote yes to not only extinguish the HST, but for a whole long overdue new direction for politics and democracy in BC. 


Wayne Clark

More lies and wishful thinking

Re: HST is a more fair, equitable tax The News July 15/2011

More of the same the HST is a regressive tax bla bla bla, same old spin different messenger, then we get to the biggest lie of them all Quote "The input HST tax credits have allowed BC businesses to expand, hire more people and recover from the economic downturn” unquote. 

Do you people actually believe this crap or are you just rehashing BC Liberal talking points or do they actually pay you? 

Show me the stats

Businesses have not and do not hire people just because they are making more money, be it the HST or any other economic windfall,  they either put it in their pockets as bonuses or they give it to shareholders as increased dividends, successful businesses hire people when they have to, because of increases in business where the employes they already have can no longer handle the work load. 

Unfortunately that is not likely to happen anytime soon as the consumers of BC have 2 billion dollars less disposable income to spend in business establishments around the province of BC, as a matter of fact more and more take their spending out of country to avoid the HST. 

As it turns out our supposedly revenue neutral HST was hardly that and there has inadvertently been an extra 800 million sucked out of BC consumers pockets. 

To put it as simply as I can, I believe 80 percent of BCs GDP  is generated within BC itself and there is now about 2.8 billion less to stimulate that domestic economy, but hey the big exporters are happy so what the hell. 

Time to put an end to this voodoo economics, vote yes to extinguish the HST.  

Wayne Clark

Democracy lost

Egypt can tell you that freedom and Democracy are never given, they must be taken and nurtured each and every day thereafter. 

BC can show you what happens if you do not nurture that freedom and democracy. 

Democratic elections are supposed to work like this, a particular party puts together a platform probably largely based on their ideology or what they think the voters want, the voters chose the platform that they would like to see implemented and a government is elected with the authority or mandate to implement it’s platform. 

The sham we call democracy works like this the parties poll the populace and find out what they want or don’t want, lower taxes, HST, higher taxes to pay for a particular item that they are willing to pay a little more for, better health care, shorter waiting lists, strengthening the social safety net, cutting the social safety net, better roads, etc.. 

The BC Liberal have a better system, devise a platform that leaves out all the things people don’t want and run on the items that polled well, now comes the most important part of modern campaigning you make up the oppositions platform for them using all the items that did not poll well with millions of dollars of lies and negative propaganda {Truth in advertising does not apply to politics anymore} The results of this strategy is directly proportional to the money spent, the more times people see something the easier it is to believe it is true. 

We have watched the next step unfold many times over the last few years, we definitely will not sell BC Rail, we will lower your taxes, we will not bring in the HST,  etc. etc. then once they are elected and have the power they turn around and do exactly what they planed all along and the lies just keep coming (we will have a fair and balanced referendum). 

This is not democracy, elections like the last one are worse than no elections at all, at least if we didn’t have these undemocratic shams everyone would know exactly what political system we are really living under, a dictatorship, and there are those that would be fine with that to, and you know who you are. 

It is time to take back the democratic heritage that our fathers fought and died for, vote yes and show these people that we will not play this sick undemocratic game of theirs anymore, it stops here.

Wayne Clark

Let them eat cake

Thank you Mr. Verwoerd I have often wondered how the HST came about, one scenario pictured Mr. Campbell sitting on a toilet 3 days after the election, having a sudden epiphany and shouting EUREKA I have the answer and thats what came out of it the HST. 


The second involvers a phone call and the conversation goes something like this “Hi Gordon it’s Steven, I know your Premier days are coming to an end anyway so how would you like to end your political life with the best job the Canadian government can offer, it comes complete with Rolls and driver and every perk you can imagine, all you have to do is wait a few days after the BC election and bring in a HST tax, it’s not as though you will ever be running for Premier again anyway, Gord I can guaranty this will be a lot better than one of those boring corporate jobs you have been promised, so what do you think. 

It would seem both of those were wrong, it was your idea, I am so glad we cleared that up. 

I love your “ LET THEM EAT CAKE ANALOGY, in my case I should just eat more pain killers I guess, and tough it out ( at least pain killers is one medication that medicare pays for )  and keep an eye out for a good deal on a used wheelchair, and as far as my absurd comment about people being put out in the street I wouldn’t want to burst your little bubble of complacency by suggesting you actually read about the sad state of many of the citizens of BC. BC has one of the highest numbers of mortgages in arrears in Canada, the highest debt service ratio, paying 9.4 percent of disposable income to service debt interest payments, and the highest  consumer insolvency rate in Canada. 

This is not my opinion but facts put out by DBRS. 

Oh I am forgetting the Conservative mantra Believe the unbelievable, deny the undeniable.

Wayne Clark

How low can you go

Re: Consumption is a fair tax The News July 5/2011

Ann Rostvic asks the question "Ask yourself if it’s reasonable for someone to claim he spends $1,000 in HST on massage therapy " that equates to more than $8,000 in fees in one year”?. 

Well Ann it actually works out to $9,318 a year including the $1000 HST. 

Lets see if the rest of you people think it is a reasonable expense or even a necessity. I suffer from Fibromyalgia and if you know anyone that has it, it has been described as a full body migraine your body  literally turns to stone,  in my case I was told by a Rheumatologist that I should have been in a wheelchair in 1996 but by experimenting with different medications, and  treatments costing tens of thousands of dollars of my own money, for example chelation therapy $260 dollars a treatment, or IMS which  I credit for bringing me back from the edge and keeping me from sitting in that wheelchair $150 a treatment  for many years and IMS is unfortunately not covered by medical, and literally hundreds of other dead ends which I just paid for and moved on in my search. 

I was off work for 2-2 year periods and then had to take a medical severance from my job in 1999. To make a long story short I have found a few things that actually work for my condition and enable me to control my Fibromyalgia for the most part, as it is an incurable  disease at this time but it can be controlled. When I first started IMS my body was hard as a rock I was literally turning to stone but I finally got to the point that that my flesh was soft enough that registered massage therapy could keep me mobile. It has been a long expensive struggle but I have been my own advocate and have this condition under control for the most part, I still get flair-up’s if I get run down or do something stupid, it is all about doing a lot of things right and not doing the things that don’t agree with my condition. 

I wonder Miss Rostvig do you have any idea how much money it takes to look after someone in a wheelchair, well I can tell you it is a lot more than $9000 dollars a year.

 As far as the governments help besides the $1000 in HST not only does medicare not pay for any of the medications or most of the treatments I have used to get back to the state of health that I enjoy today, in fact I can not even claim them on my income taxes, as they are things like injectable vitamin B6-B12, Guaifenesin, and a few other non-prescription costs such as the swimming I have to do regularly to keep mobile and in shape. 

I have actually written a book about my success with treating Fibromyalgia.

I have beaten Fibromyalgia, do you think anything someone like you could say about me, lies, discrediting, demonizing, however far you are willing to go, I have been through far worse that you can dish out, and really it says more about you than it does me. 

I am sure none of this means a thing to you and the other pro-HST advocates as they will say or do anything to achieve Mr Campbell’s dream and you obviously only think of yourself at the best of times.  

PS see Wayne on Fibromyalgia blog ( not the book)

Wayne Clark

Consumption tax could be fair

Re: Consumption is a fair tax

Consumption could be a fair tax, but this particular HST consumption tax the people of BC are voting on is anything but. 

I have been called a lot of names over the years but I have to admit I was shocked when I saw the name at the bottom of the letter, Marco Terwiel, as I have always admired him as an outspoken doctor whose heart always seemed to be in the right place. 

One of the reasons I was surprised was his criticisms of my massage treatments and their cost, they have even been reported in the MR News right back to Oct 7/2009, this is hardly a secret.

I have been complaining about GST on massage treatments and the associated costs even before the HST which just makes it worse. If you had read my letter I actually said I would be paying more than $1000 HST on massage therapy next year, which is absolutely true, do the math I need two hours a week to control my Fibromyalgia and as a doctor I would think you would understand that. As far as the rest of it I am certainly not happy about the money spent on renovations but after 21 years what am I to do. 

All I hear from you pro-HSTers is wishful thinking, fear mongering, some are afraid the sky will fall, others think that the government will punish us if we do not give them what they want and Mr. Terwiel is rightly afraid that the government will cut even more from the health care and hospitals, I can certainly appreciate that as I have been going to Surrey Memorial hospital emergency room over the last week and it looks like something out of the third world. 

What makes any of you believe they will not take even more money away anyway, I will never bye the pyg in the poke, especially knowing who the salespeople are.

If Gordon Campbell's HST is such a great deal why is there not one even one of it’s champions willing to debate the bloody thing?

Wayne Clark

Government position is the sham

Re: Anti-case built on sham The Times July 5 2011

Mr. Zigante I will not bore you quoting a bunch of talking heads or flaky economists or even the Fraser institute which  are all filled with half-truths, outright lies and just plain ignorance.  First Mr. Thomson is a law student and we all know how good they are in proving black is white or white is really black. This video is nothing more than a resume for a cushy government job if and when Mr. Thompson ever finishes law school.

How about just going by everyday experience, the first colossal lie I see in Mr. Thomson’s job resume is the the statement that “The fact is that only the top 1/3 of wealthy BCers will pay more as a result of the HST” The real facts are that I am living on a small fixed pension that puts me in the very bottom of the middle income group and the HST has taken 1/20th more of my income than I paid with GST and PST or $2000.00 extra that I would not have paid under the GST-PST, as I said I am not in the high income bracket or BC is in a whole lot more trouble than I ever imagined. 

It is incredibly simple, forget all the spin and BS from the government hacks and the so called experts that are well paid for their expert opinions to say what the government wants them to say, ( they are all for sale and ten to twenty million dollars can buy you a lot of favourable propaganda) the fact is this tax hits different groups harder than others Seniors or sick or handicapped people or anyone that for one reason or another can not do all the labour jobs associated with owning and running a home will get hammered with a 140 percent tax increase on labour which just cost me over $800 extra for home renovations. Families with children in school or sports have been hit hard and apparently farmers have been another group that has been hit hard. As I have said before just HST on the Registered Massage Therapy I use to control my Fibromyalgia condition is over $1000.00 per year and will only increase as treatment fees go up in the future. 

The simple irrefutable fact is no matter how you spin it, the $2 billion dollar tax shift shall be paid by the 4,510,858 men, women, children, babies that inhabit BC or at least the actual wage earners that pay for each family unit or single worker. 
Let's not forget the $800 million extra dollars that our revenue neutral HST has collected in less than a year, bringing a $2.8 billion hole in consumer spending for the province of BC. 


Great economic strategy to get BC out of a recession, NOT.

I happen to be in two groups that are being unjustly treated with this poorly thought out tax grab. And as it always seems I just missed getting that piddly HST rebate by that much.  

In defence of Mr. Vanderzalm it is hard to hit any target when it is constantly morphing and moving and changing literally by the day, when you consider the amount of lies, and misinformation and propaganda the citizens of BC are subjected to 24/7-365 days of the year I find it hard to fault anyone for reading a wrong number or quoting yesterdays story about the HST.  

The citizens of BC had better stop thinking with their guts and get their brain in gear because you and your children are going to live with the results of this tax for a long time to come.

Wayne Clark