BC Media RIGHTWING BIAS

The right wing bias in BCs media is sickening and a clear and present danger to the little democracy we have left when it comes to a fair provincial election for instance. Check out the articles and letters to the editor, rightwing scare tactics and lies, every edition filled with the same tired rightwing apologists, the left and centre almost totally excluded. 

It is not hard to find the reason for this rightwing bias the Vancouver Sun and Province and all their associated local papers are owned by Paul Godfrey of the National Post which is well known for singing the praises of neoconservatism and obviously wants the same rightwing crowd kept in to fleece the Citizens further, so they can pick up another BC Crown corporation for pennies on the dollar at the ongoing corrupt fire sale of all BC assets to the fat cat chosen few, still up for sale Crown Corporation cash cow jewels, like BC Hydro, LCB, to name a couple, you can be sure the LCB will be gone within days of the election if the BC Liberals retain rule. 

Then you have David Black another media magnate who has some of the most rightwing nut-balls in print today in his publications and has a direct interest in returning the BC Liberals to power as they have already pretty well rubber-stamped before any studies or anything resembling an environmental study for his Kitimat vision of the largest gas refinery on earth complete with pipelines, supertankers and cheap asian equipment, how about cheap foreign labour, not to far a stretch when looking at what goes on in the rest of the resource extraction in BC under BC Liberal policy.

PS This letter has been sent to all the papers noted but I have no illusions that it will be printed as none of my letters have been printed since the writ was dropped except some are put on line and the PittMeadowsToday an online paper prints most of my work.
Foreign workers in BC 74,000 and counting. Yes that is thousands.

Silver Tongued Devil

A friend commented to me what a great talker Christy Clark was the other day and I reminded him that being a smooth talker was not a good reason to vote for a candidate for political office, as any police officer will tell you that is a prerequisite for any successful CON man or CON women, you should be listening to what they say not how they say it and even more importantly does what they are saying make any sense and how many of the promises they have made in the past have they acted on, or to put it more simply do they have a long history of lies and broken promises BC Rail, BC Gas, HST, and literally hundreds of lies and broken promises. 

Here is a well researched article about the hundreds of lies, broken promises and failed destructive policies of the last 12 years of BC Liberal rule. http://www.pittmeadowstoday.ca/100reasons-the-bc-liberals-must-go/ 

check it out and pass it on you and your children's future depends on it.

Had Her Chance

Christy Clark stated in this election campaign we have a choice - a stark choice - that is nothing less than a battle for the values that we hold dear as a society. 

I could not agree more with the ideal but would seriously doubt that it would be Clark and her BC Liberals that would be the ones to deliver the values the people of BC hold dear as a society.

As far as I know the people of BC still want to live in a democracy where the MLA they elect goes to Victoria and vigorously participates in the democratic process that is supposed to keep this province running smoothly and efficiently, that happened less than 4 weeks last year and has been the way this BC Liberal government has governed for the last 12 years.

A legitimate democratic government get’s a mandate from the voters they do not tell people what they want to hear and literally the day after the election do the exact opposite, for example BC Rail, BC Hydro, HST, etc etc.

The peoples business should be carried out in an open, transparent democratic fashion , not in dark secret rooms with shadowy unelected people with vested interests and come up with agreements that the government has no mandate or even any input into such as TILMA, NERT, EPIC and many other shady sweetheart deals to do with Crown corporations such as BC Hydro which have drastic consequences for the people of BC.

Selling off Crown corporations is a serious act and should be something a government definitely has a mandate for as these entities belong to the people of BC not the government of the day. 

Christy Clark has had plenty of time to show the people of BC how a government with her as leader would perform and as far as we have seen it is just more of the same basically a dictatorship with none of the signs of a healthy democracy, the same old back room deals, privatizing Crown corporations for pennies on the dollar without a mandate (LCB) which without a doubt will be privatized within days of a new BC Liberal government, the further bankrupting of BC Hydro, costly overruns on every project the Liberals attempt from the Convention centre , BC Place, bridges etc etc.  Apparently BC has the second most corrupt construction industry in Canada, no wonder with the government one of the biggest villains in this public fleecing.

The biggest lie of all that we have low taxes in BC, since the BC Liberals have come in our taxes have skyrocketed I pay $1600.00 for MSP alone a TAX that only BC and Alberta pay, I pay $50 to $60 dollars a month on bridge toll (TAX), the people of BC have been paying over $2 billion a year more for the HST (TAX), gas TAX, environmental TAX and literally dozens of new fees and taxes, not to mention the doubling and tripling of existing fees, (drivers licences, passports etc).

At the same time the BC Liberals have been cutting all our benefits such as medical benefits and at the same time increasing costs such as MSP, I now have $500 total medical benefits a year which doesn’t get me through January.

So far the liberals greatest accomplishments have been having a huge fire sale on the people of BCs assets and hatching flash projects that end up costing twice as much as promised and bankrolling casinos to the detriment of the charities that would normally receive these funds,  I wonder if the highest child poverty rate in Canada is also part of those values that are so dear to us as a society.

B.S.

They are at it again telling us what we want to hear Mark Dalton and Doug Bing spinning a wondrous tale about what them and their glorious leader are going to do for all of us if we are foolish enough to give them another 4 years in charge of the public Kitty. 

Well I have heard it all before Gordon Campbell's deceitful promises to help seniors then shifting 2.1 billion in new taxes on us not only once but twice, then comes Christy with her false promises to help seniors and families first. 

What a sick joke that is, this BC Liberal government has affected my life all-right, let me count the ways.

In 1999 I had to take a medical severance due to severe fibromyalgia from BC Transit, I was to receive a small pension, just enough to get by and paid medical and dental and MSP for the rest of my life, that lasted till 2001 when Gordon Campbell gained power he immediately started screwing with the medical, cutting benefits, increasing cost’s, increasing deductibles then they cut the free dental the next few years was a steady assault on my medical and dental plans until my medical was so diminished that we had to get my wife's medical also to help pay the costs of dealing with my fibromyalgia, they also tried to take the transit pass I had received upon taking my severance package, not that I ever used it but I thought it might come in handy if I was unable to drive at some point in life. At this point my medical plan from transit is not even worth having as it is a maximum of $500 dollars a year and that unfortunately doesn’t get me through January. This treachery was pushed through the courts but apparently unless you are some rich CEO with an iron clad golden parachute these union pension agreements are about as water tight as toilet paper. 

Then surprise, surprise all of us get another 2 billion plus tax hike, the HST that especially targeted seniors and the sick hard, I paid over $1000 in HST just on my RMT treatments alone, then came another blow to the kidneys part of that medical severance was they would pay my MSP another better BC Liberal idea to fleece the citizens of BC of yet more tax's and now I had to pay that also. 

I have just waited 76 weeks to have a hernia operation and I was bumped once because the BC Liberal's have basically run the whole Medical system into the ground, the end result giving BC some of the worst hospitals in Canada probably just one more phoney ploy to justify privatizing the whole health care system.

Then I hear people like Mark Dalton and Doug Bing tell me that they are going to make things better for you and me, I say where have you been for the last dozen years, this government has never ceased wringing every last penny I have to finance their corporate masters.

P.S. 

Fool me once shame on you.

Fool me twice shame on me.

Fool me three times and who is the FOOL.

Fool me four times, time for a brain transplant.

Red Herring

Re: Unions made world a better place MR Times April 18/2013

Paddy you are right on the money, Mr. Robson claims that “Unions could soon bankrupt BC”, god what a crock, it is unions that have given Canadian workers all the benefit's union and non-union workers take for granted, or to be more correct what we used to take for granted, the unions were even responsible for all the highly skilled apprentice and journeyman trades people Canada used to be blessed with, unlike the present situation where they have to bring in foreign workers because we supposedly do not have qualified people to do them, yes unions fought for those benefits and skills and a living wage but everyone ended up benefiting from and getting them in the end, now that the unions have been systematically busted and marginalized by the Federal and Provincial governments those hard fought benefits and wages are rapidly disappearing. 

Unions are a necessary advocate or lobby if you will, for the worker’s, the very entity that attempts to ensure labour gets it’s fair share of the GDP or meaningful employment, they quite simply make Capitalism work for the workers. 

But enough about something that unless you live in a cave thousands of miles from civilization everybody should already know, the reality as Mr. Robson well knows is it is not the unions bringing the world including BC to it’s knees it is to big to fail corporations, bank’s and CEO’s who make more by lunch on January 1 than most workers make all year, the insatiable greed of the one percent who are literally sucking the well dry, killing the golden goose. 

The citizens of BC now pay more for just MSP than all the corporations that use our infrastructure, roads, bridges all the services and utilities our taxes pay for, for literally nothing, not to mention the depletion of our rich renewable and non-renuable resources they get for a pittance, well below world market prices. 

Canadian's then get to watch these robber baron companies bring cheap wage foreign national workers in to even do the labour to extract these precious resources or simply outsource those Canadian jobs, they then take their ill gotten tax free gains and put them in a offshore tax shelter out of reach of Canadians never to be seen again, therefore also depriving Canada of any multiplier affect from the exploitation of our valuable resources, and of course the wages are all sent home to China. 

After the resources are all gone what will Canadians and their children have to show for this obscene orgy of destructive exploitation, nothing but a environmental nightmare a Canada stripped of it’s natural resources and an environmental nightmare that we will have to clean up at our expense or more likely just try to live amongst the toxic devastation this insanity has produced and our children will wonder what were we thinking, and how did we let it go so wrong. 

The powers that be have refined the exploitation process to the point that they have even figured out how to take the trickle out of the mythical trickle down affect.

If Mr. Robson and the rest of the chosen few get their way Canada and the whole rest of the world will be nothing more than a giant third world with the chosen few filthy rich and the filthy poor with no middle class to speak of,

Mr. Robson’s Brave New World really does not look so much new but more 18th century.

Quote We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories. 

Cecil Rhodes 

Slippery slope

So Mr. Kamp and his master once again is riding to the rescue of the Canadian people and protecting our hard earned savings. He claims Canadian banks are the strongest in the world, which from what I have witnessed over the last few years is not saying a hell of a lot even if it were true, hard to tell what is true with this crowd. Canadians were told that Canadian banks were not bailed out in 2008-9 but it would seem CMHC which last time I looked was a government funded entity had bought $114 billion of Canadian banks tainted if not toxic mortgage debt which translates to $3,400 for every Canadian man, woman, child, but apparently is not a bailout. 

The Conservatives unashamedly take credit for Canadian banks not taking as big a hit as other world banks but the fact is that even as a minority government Harper pressed mostly unsuccessfully to deregulate Canadian banks but after getting their majority, succeeded in deregulating much of banking, in his first budget Harper’s finance minister, Jim Flaherty invited NEW PLAYER'S that is, U.S. financial corporations (unregulated) into Canada’s mortgage insurance market and doubled the amount of government money available to back up private insurers from $100 billion to $200 billion. Harper has also asked that companies be given WTO enforceable right to trade in derivatives or what Warren Buffet called “financial weapons of mass destruction”. The CONservatives are fervent champions of “financial innovation" and those are two words that according to Paul Krugman "should henceforth strike terror into the hearts of investors". 
In spite of the obvious direction these disastrous polices were taking America and the rest of the world Harper doggedly continued to push the envelope on deregulation both domestically and internationally, despite the catastrophic cautionary tales that were unfolding around the world.

Once again Mr. Kamps apparent argument is, I know that you believe you understand what you think you read but I’m not sure you realize that what you read is not what we mean. 

The fact is that at the very least this legislation will mean that the banks shall if the same ongoing gambling habit that caused the 2008 and Cypress crashes causes yet another banking crisis, Canadian bank’s will be legally able to turn your precious saving, bonds, stocks, whatever into what are basically bank shares or what amount to worthless derivatives or bank shares with no apparent assets other than your confiscated moneys.

Maybe it would be a good idea to stop this destructive ride down this slippery slope to financial ruin, instead of the further enabling of a bad behaviour due to bad policy.

Medical Conundrum

I just received an E-mail from Mr. Doug Bing the BC Liberal candidate for Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows that claims, Quote “ you don’t know what you are talking about, we have one of the best health care systems in the entire world” unquote, well Mr. Bing either you are a victim of actually believing the multi-millions of dollars of lies and propaganda we are bombarded with everyday paid for by our hard earned tax money by your BC Liberal comrades or your idea of what we should be receiving from our MSP and health care dollars is a lot different than mine.

Did you ever wonder how the BC Medical system arrived at this present sorry state, for example I have waited for 76 weeks for a hernia operation, many people wait up to 3 years, how is this possible don’t we pay enough for adequate heath care in BC the figures say otherwise Canadians pay $3895 for MSP coverage and according to the World Health Organization Canada is ranked #30th in the world as far as quality of health care, France pays $3601and has literally no wait times for surgery and is ranked # one in the world, how is that possible the average age of the French is 39.4 years old to Canada’s 39.9 which is comparable but even though Canadian's pay more for heath care France has 3.5 doctors per 1000 people compared to Canada’s 2.1 per 1000, which put’s France at #25 in the world as per doctors per 1000 people compared to Canada at #58. 

As far as I don’t know what I am talking about  the fact is most hospitals in BC have at least one aspect of care in the critical category. 
The Liberals have overseen the squandering of multi-millions of precious health care dollars, everything from the poorly conceived, ill fated NEW ERA, to the disastrous and illegal union and contract busting of public sector health care workers which inevitably led to nothing more than costly spinning of wheels to deadly ideological mistakes such as privatizing hospital cleaning that has been the direct cause of at least 84 deaths and counting, doctors refusing to operate because of unsanitary O.R. conditions and much anger and frustration with the nurses and other health care professionals.
The senseless shutting down of hospitals such as St Mary’s that has put extreme pressure on other facilities, the fact is BC has 4 out of the 8 worst hospitals in Canada with the lowest or D rating and our Maple Ridge Hospital is one of them, and not one BC hospital rated A+ the highest grade, and it is something to brag about by Mr. Bing and his BC Liberal colleges. 
MSP and the Maximus fiasco is a whole other medical and security nightmare but overall I think it goes to say that everyone is entitled to an opinion but not his own facts. 

Canada is using one of the most expensive un-inclusive health care system systems in the world as it’s model, Americas privatized system which is a dismal #38th in the world and still doesn’t cover everyone. 
Why would Canada copy an inferior system, other than to please some very big US corporations?

Well if we look back to where it all seems to have all gone wrong BC surgery wait times doubled from the late 1990s to 2006 and the BC Liberal's doubled MSP premiums from 2001 to 2006. BC and Alberta are the only provinces in Canada that have this regressive tax that you and I pay the same as a multi-millionaire. You might also wonder where this money goes, you would expect it would go to pay for health care right, wrong it goes into general revenue to pay for the government advertising propaganda you see every minute of every day telling us what a great job they are doing and of course their raises and let’s not forget India film festivals and other BC Liberal high priority expenses.  

Some of the obvious reasons for these obscene wait times defy explanation doctors are only allowed one day a week in the O.R. and they can not operate after 3:30 and if the last operation at say 2:30 will take more than an hour it is canceled which happened to me just last month, is it any wonder there are extensive waiting lists. 

You might ask yourself why the medical system has deteriorated so rapidly under the BC Liberal's, it really doesn’t make any sense unless you bring the whole underlying BC Liberal ideology into this sad picture their whole purpose so far has been to privatize everything they touch whether it make sense or is cost effective or not, and if they can stress the health care system to the breaking point they think we will let them privatize it out of desperation.

The answer to this problem is to throw this disaster of a  government that not only doesn’t believe in government at all, but it’s only vision for BC is privatizing all profits and socializing all costs, they are only interested in breaking every government function and bankrupting Crown corporations so they can justify selling it off to their friends for pennies on the dollar, do the people of BC really want BC Hydro privatized, or the BC Liquor, or how about the Public medical system, etc etc.

The obvious solution to this disastrous race to the bottom is to throw these radical incompetents out of power while we still have public health care and what is left of the legacy of our mothers and fathers built and let a government like the NDP that actually believes in government fix a severely crippled public health care system as well as other stressed government functions into something we can once again count on and be proud of.