Tuesday, November 27, 2012

What I Really Meant to Say ...

I think what outgoing Premier Clark really meant to say is that the chickens are coming to roost, folks. Our last decade of privatization, fiscal mismanagement, unparalleled corruption and incompetence and ill-fated attempts to introduce corporate and business models to provide public services has been not only bad social policy, but also, as it turns out, a really, really bad way to run your government. 

The downside of all of this is we are dead broke! Well, lets face it, we're beyond broke. But I'm really, really thankful, you the taxpayers and electorate (suckers as I like to call you in the backroom) will have no idea how bad things actually are until May 2013. By that time, I will already have lined up my next gig. As an aside, it's so helpful to have friends in high places at a time like this. 

So, while I head into my final months as Premier, we're going to keep using taxpayers funds on advertising, because, let's face it - we can get away with it. We're going to continue to pretend we're doing something about child and family poverty with the bafflegab of the "BC Jobs Plan" while we continue to dodge making a real poverty reduction plan.

Most importantly, my little warning here today is going to soft peddle the massive spending cuts we're about to carry out on your taxpaying asses. How does anyone balance a budget when there is a gigantic hole under the cookie jar that has been funneling all of your public funds into the corporate masters our party has been serving for the last decade. And two of the funniest things of all is you, Mr. & Ms. Taxpayer can't do a thing to stop us and a bunch of my own MLA's probably even don't know what's about to happen & they're going to go down with the ship in the next election and they don't even know it yet. But don't worry about me, I'll be okay, because I've got friends.

British Columbians should brace for bad economic news: Christy Clark
But she still vows to balance the province's budget next year


By Jonathan Fowlie, Vancouver Sun, November 27, 2012.


A quarterly economic update to be released by the B.C. government Wednesday "won't be pretty", Premier Christy Clark warned in a speech Tuesday.


"The global economic uncertainty that we're facing has put huge pressure on our commodity prices in British Columbia and it has certainly affected our budget," Clark told the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce.


Clark did not go into specifics, but said that despite the economic turmoil, her government will keep its promise to table a balanced budget for the coming 2013-14 fiscal year.


"We are going to balance our budget nonetheless and we're going to look at everything to do it," she said.


"No we will not cut education. No we will not cut health care but we will do what it takes to get to balance," she added.


Finance Minister Mike de Jong is expected to release the province's second quarterly update on Wednesday morning, which Clark said will provide "a clearer picture of what exactly we're facing."


"I do want to give you the heads up," she added. "It won't be pretty."


When he released the first quarterly report in September, de Jong revealed the province had taken a $1.1 billion hit to projections of the natural gas royalties it planned to take in over three years.


At the time, de Jong promised an immediate hiring freeze across government and a wage freeze for public sector managers, including those at schools, universities and health organizations. He also projected the deficit for the current fiscal year would be $1.14-billion, up $173 million from what had been forecast in the government's February budget.



© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

British Columbians should brace for bad economic news: Christy Clark

But she still vows to balance the province's budget next year



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/British+Columbians+should+brace+economic+news+Christy+Clark/7617711/story.html#ixzz2DTSZ3Prc

Sunday, November 25, 2012

BC Liberal-style Politics: Throwing the Faithful Soldiers Under the Bus

Excellent analysis and spot on to what we here at this humble blog have been saying. This whole bit of nastiness says more about the festering core of the BC Liberals and Mr. Plecas than anything we could ever rant about. At the very outset of his political career, Mr. Plecas' good name has been tarnished by all of this and now he will lose this seat for the BC Liberals. 

Welcome to politics BC Liberal-style, Mr. Plecas. Faster your seat belt and enjoy your short stay.

Dirty game of politics gets dirtier with B.C. nomination

GARY MASON, The Globe and Mail, Nov. 23 2012.

Darryl Plecas is now officially the B.C. Liberal candidate for Abbotsford South. He shouldn’t be.

The circumstances that surround Mr. Plecas’s acclamation Thursday night should make everyone pause to consider just how desperate and morally broke B.C.’s governing party is. They also raise troubling questions about Premier Christy Clark’s own principles and ethics code.

No one should be treated the way Moe Gill was – even in a game as dirty as politics.

With the blessing and encouragement of Liberal Party officials, Mr. Gill worked for nearly two years putting in place a team to get the nomination in Abbotsford South. He lived in the riding. He was a long-time councillor in the area. For years, he had staunchly supported the Liberals and one of their leading politicians, Finance Minister Mike de Jong. He’d helped Mr. de Jong in his failed leadership bid in 2011. Mr. de Jong, in turn, had assured Mr. Gill the nomination in Abbotsford South was his.

You see, Mr. Plecas was a name, a somebody often quoted in the media. Mr. Gill was just a lowly party stalwart who was naive enough to believe that the word of party powerbrokers actually meant something.

Mr. Gill was stunned. He’d raised thousands of dollars for the riding, the benefits of which Mr. Plecas would now enjoy. He’d spent some of his own money, too, in the process of organizing. Now party HQ wanted him to seek the nomination in Abbotsford Mission, where he had no support and where other candidates had an unbeatable head start. He’d stand no chance.

The riding association executive resigned en masse. Mr. Gill announced he was ending his association with the Liberals. Party brass could not have cared less.

We all know politics is a tough, bruising business. But we don’t have to like it when it’s grotty and deceitful. And we don’t have to like or support individuals who represent values that are anathema to those possessed by most fair-minded Canadians.

What the Liberal Party did to Moe Gill was rotten. By all accounts, Mr. Plecas is a smart and decent person. But he should never have accepted the nomination under the conditions he did. It says as much about him as it does about the party he represents.

When I heard Mr. Plecas on CKNW radio with Bill Good the other day, I wondered what all the fuss about his candidacy was anyway. His answer to Mr. Good’s question about why he wanted to run for office couldn’t have been more facile: because he believes in open and transparent government; because he thinks government should be more inclusive; because he believes we need to think less about why we can’t do things and more about how we can make things work.

Mr. Plecas should have declined the party’s gift-wrapped nomination because he is going to be dogged by this unpleasant bit of business from now until election day. You can’t say you want to run for politics because you believe it can be done differently, because you believe you can take the politics out of politics for the common good, and at the same time represent a party that orchestrated something so cynical, that treated a good and decent person with such contempt.

The great irony here is that the Liberals probably had a shot in Abbotsford South with Moe Gill as their candidate. But what the party did to him almost ensures its defeat there come next May.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Dan Murphy, Political Satirist last cartoons for The Province

The bloated, dying corporate media of BC has apparently pulled the plug on the respected political cartoonist, Dan Murphy.


have been told this is my last cartoon for the province. adieu

        

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Dan Murphy: Liberal office electioneering

Dan Murphy: Liberal office electioneering

Friday, November 23, 2012

BC Liberal Fiscal Fail: Education Computer Program

More brilliant fiscal management by BC Liberals. People who have more energy than this intrepid writer should investigate where the money trail leads, because I can virtually guarantee it that the corporation who got the bid to create this software had lobbyists and put money into BC Liberal party coffers. 

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Inadequacies confirmed; BCeSIS to be dropped
Janet Steffenhagen, September 19, 2011, Vancouver Sun.


BCeSIS, the BC electronic Student Information System, cost of $16 million to develop and about $11 million a year to operate and maintain, says a story in Monday’s Sun. In addition, the province paid $6.6 million in incentives to the 56 of 60 school districts willing to use the software.

 Last year, in response to complaints, the Education Ministry hired Gartner Inc. to conduct an independent review to determine whether BCeSIS was worth saving. In a Sept. 12 report, the company said it’s time for a change.
“BCeSIS, as currently deployed, is not meeting the business, technical or operational needs of BC and is not a viable future alternative,” Gartner concludes. “Within the current marketplace there exist multiple vendors that would be better able to support the direction of BC and be able to provide the technical architecture necessary to achieve its objectives and goals.”
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Updated: Ministry of Education corrects Minister's comments over BCeSIS
VANCOUVER/CKNW (AM980)
Shane Woodford | Email news tips to shane.woodford@corusent.com
11/21/2012

The Ministry of Education is clarifying comments made by the Minister over replacing the troubled provincial student enrollment software called BCeSIS.

Education Minister Don McRae had said the contract wouldn't go to tender until this spring.

But the ministry says the request for proposal will actually be issued in a couple of weeks. The Ministry is also updating the cost of the software putting it at $81.3 million as of the end of 2013.

McRae says he is looking for a BCeSIS replacement that is a little cheaper.

"The world is changing and so is technology so I think we are at a place where we can actually get a program that will have better access for teachers and allow, when students go from one district to another, that there information flows with them seamlessly. But right now what we really want to do is use our stakeholder groups whether it is a teacher, a principal, can they give us feedback as to what would make a great program for them."
McRae says new software will be phased in by September 2014.

"Starting the transition period and it will be by 2015 it should be on province wide usage."
When asked if school districts would still have to pay into the new software, like they do with BCeSIS, McRae says "I am not going to guess where we are going to involve going forward what I do want to know is if there is mistakes in the new program or are there things the districts have a real concern about that they are sharing that information with the ministry that we make sure that we get the best possible program out there."

The province decided to scrap BCeSIS after a 2011 review determined the software was falling short of meeting the needs of educators.

The problem plagued software crashed province wide causing widespread frustrations in the beginning of the 2010 school year.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

BC Liberals Politics: The Worst Mistress a Candidate Can Have

Heard Plecas on a radio clip this morning, boy is he in for an eye opener about what the BC Liberals have really been up to over the last decade. He would be smart to have a look at what has happened to all of the other so-called "star candidates" over the BC Liberal reign of terror. 

And wouldn't you know it, Deputy Premier Coleman's paw prints are all over this latest mess. Mark these words: the BC Liberals are going to lose this safe seat.

Now that Van Dongen is gone as a Liberal, there are going to be different ways to split the vote.  I also don't think the people of Abbotsford are going to tolerate these kind of heavy-handed political tactics the BC Liberals have used in this riding any more than voters around B.C. The citizens of BC are tired of people who are BULLIES.

Message to Plecas: You are about to be SCHOOLED!

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Liberal riding association quits over Plecas nomination

Michael Smyth, The Province, November 22, 2012.

 

Darryl Plecas got a golden parachute into politics — and immediately dropped into the middle of a bizarre snake pit.

The outspoken criminologist will be acclaimed today as the Liberals' new star candidate in Abbotsford South, the riding held by hellraising ex-Liberal John van Dongen.

But rather than embracing Plecas as a saviour, Abbotsford Liberals are up in arms. The entire executive of the Abbotsford South riding association has quit in protest.

"The party brass cooked this up in the backrooms and forced it down our throats," said Stephen Evans, who quit as the Liberal riding president along with five other local party executives. Evans and the others wanted Abbotsford city Coun. Moe Gill to be the candidate. Gill said he organized for three years to take a run at the Liberal nomination, and figured he had it in the bag.

"(Deputy Premier) Rich Coleman even came to my house and told me and my wife that I'd be the candidate," Gill claimed Wednesday. "Instead, I feel like the Liberal Party dug a trench, threw me in and dumped a pile of manure on me."

Darryl Plecas got a golden parachute into politics — and immediately dropped into the middle of a bizarre snake pit.
The outspoken criminologist will be acclaimed today as the Liberals' new star candidate in Abbotsford South, the riding held by hellraising ex-Liberal John van Dongen.
But rather than embracing Plecas as a saviour, Abbotsford Liberals are up in arms. The entire executive of the Abbotsford South riding association has quit in protest.
"The party brass cooked this up in the backrooms and forced it down our throats," said Stephen Evans, who quit as the Liberal riding president along with five other local party executives. Evans and the others wanted Abbotsford city Coun. Moe Gill to be the candidate. Gill said he organized for three years to take a run at the Liberal nomination, and figured he had it in the bag.
"(Deputy Premier) Rich Coleman even came to my house and told me and my wife that I'd be the candidate," Gill claimed Wednesday. "Instead, I feel like the Liberal Party dug a trench, threw me in and dumped a pile of manure on me."


Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/Liberal+riding+association+quits+over+Plecas+nomination/7593910/story.html#ixzz2CzI7rqom

Plecas said the party kept up the pressure, eventually telling him about three weeks ago he would receive the nomination by acclamation.

Gill, meanwhile, said he was asked to a meeting with a party official at Abbotsford's Cactus Club restaurant, where he was told he wouldn't be the candidate.

"I said, 'Don't do this to me' and they said, 'Too bad, you're not accepted.'"

Gill said he was then "bullied" into signing a statement that he would instead seek the Liberal nomination in neighbouring Abbotsford-Mission.

"I was desperate, so I signed," Gill said. "But I have no support in Abbotsford-Mission. I'm finished. This party just took me out, they destroyed me."

Evans said he thinks Coleman favoured Plecas because they're related. "That's a stretch," Plecas fires back. "Rich Coleman's son is married to my niece. Moe Gill actually knows Rich Coleman better than I do."

Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun, November 21, 2012.

VICTORIA — As criminologist Darryl Plecas tells it, he was sitting across from Rich Coleman one day this summer, when out of the blue, the B.C. Liberal cabinet minister and deputy premier asked if he’d consider running for office.

“When hell freezes over,” replied Plecas. He had no self-evident political skills and no taste for the blood sport of B.C. politics.

Coleman persisted. Three decades working and teaching at the University of the Fraser Valley. Policy adviser to governments. Go-to guy for the media on crime, policing, and justice. Would Plecas at least think it over?

Persuaded, Plecas contacted the Liberals. “I’m a soldier,” he told them. “I’ll run wherever you want.”

They wanted him for Abbotsford South, the riding long held by John van Dongen, lately defected from the Liberals to the Conservatives and then to sit as an independent. Plecas lives a half block outside Abbotsford South and the campus where he spent his working life is in the middle of the riding.

He filed his nomination papers, party headquarters green-lighted him as a candidate on Nov. 5, and expedited the nomination meeting for Nov. 22 with him as the only approved candidate.

Plecas had signed up no members and done no campaigning. He had not even met with the riding executive as a courtesy. Still he was to be acclaimed. Party headquarters said so.

Then came Tuesday of this week and the resignation of pretty much the entire constituency executive, protesting what they saw as headquarters freezing out their preferred candidate, Moe Gill.

Gill is a 16-year veteran of Abbotsford city council and the first Indo-Canadian elected to local government in the Fraser Valley. He’s made no secret of his interest in securing the Liberal nomination in Abbotsford South, even back when van Dongen was still a member.

When the incumbent MLA quit the party in March, Gill seized the opportunity to win control of the riding, via the annual election for the executive board. Gill’s longtime associate Stephen Evans was elected president, flanked by a slate of allies.

Once in, Evans and crew waited for the party to schedule the nomination, secure in their belief that Gill, who had been signing up members for months, could defeat any rival.

But other Liberals had their doubts about Gill. He’d barely won re-election in his last run for council. He’d also run for the federal Liberals in 2004, finishing a distant second. They fretted that he’d alienate supporters of the federal Conservatives, clearing the way for van Dongen to win re-election as an independent.

Hence the decision to recruit Plecas as a presumed star candidate and better match for the riding’s right-of-centre proclivities. At the same time, the party hoped to rescue the situation with Gill.

Coleman met with the councillor at his home and urged him to divert his ambitions to neighbouring Abbotsford-Mission, a no-less-reliable bastion of Liberal support where incumbent MLA Randy Hawes was retiring.

Gill balked. So party headquarters sent an emissary, who, as Gill describes it, made it clear that the councillor wasn’t welcome in Abbotsford South, then “bullied” him into signing up to run in Mission.

A cheap diversion as it turned out. Two other candidates were already declared for the nomination and Gill’s supporters were, of course in South. Upon reflection, he repudiated any interest in Mission.

Thus did Gill and his team discover the rough side of Liberal party politics. “We will exact our revenge,” Evans told me. In the next election? “Just watch us,” he replied.

And thus did Plecas get his baptism in the political arena. Any second thoughts? “No,” he maintained Wednesday. He’ll soldier on, starting with tonight’s scheduled nominating meeting, expected to convene against a backdrop of protest from Gill supporters.

Come the election, the rookie Liberal candidate will be challenged from all directions. Van Dongen. The Conservatives. Maybe Gill. And laughing in the midst of it all, Lakhvinder Jhaj, already nominated to run for the New Democrats.

Last time out, her party finished second with 26 per cent of the vote. If she can improve on that by a few points, in a four- or five-way race, it could be enough to win.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun.

Vaughn Palmer: The criminologist and the rough side of B.C. Liberal politics



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vaughn+Palmer+criminologist+rough+side+Liberal+politics/7591811/story.html#ixzz2CzG0oDTU