The Powell River
Persuader Sez!

If you only read one more thing this year get on over to Grant's blog at the Straight Goods and read Provincial Liberals across Canada are destroying lives, just to satisfy their arrogant and apparently unlimited GREED! Grant, who does more research in his spare time than all the CanWest drones in BC who mainly collect and cash a pay cheque for their complicity in the on going Crime Spree that is happening in BC, Ontario and New Brunswick. Those overfed fools actually enable the criminals and are satisfied with the crumbs that their bloated paycheques are compared to the booty being amassed by the real crooks. Actually it is being carried out elsewhere as well, but it is uncanny, the degree to which these three LIEberal governments are operating from the same shameful playbook.

Some choice excerpts:

Canadians across Canada better wake up fast,provincial Liberal governments are stealing assets from the public and selling them, not just in BC,not only in Ontario,add New Brunswick to the mix.

......Our rights have been slowly taken from us for decades but in the last 2 years the speed in which the thefts and government sell outs have occurred have made me very scared, I see a gathering storm of corporate totalitarianism grabbing everything, grabbing human rights,stealing futures, butchering pensions, eliminating social guarantees, at the pace of the transformation I believe within the next decade North America will be nothing but a glorified penal colony.

......we know whats happening here in BC, Gordon Campbell(Proven lawbreaker and compulsive liar)[and adulterer - koot] has lied his face off, "I won`t sell bc rail"......here is what the liar Gordon Campbell said on march 1st/2001..in the Vancouver sun...." A BC Liberal government will not sell or privatize BC Hydro`s dams,transmission lines,water resources or other core assets"........Yet we know what happened, he sold BC Rail, he outsourced 1/3rd of BC Hydro`s operations to accenture, a Bermuda based company with ties to Enron.Next they established the BC Transmission corporation,carving out transmission operations from BC Hydro so private power producers could transmit electricity throughout the north American grid,they also banned BC Hydro from building or competing for new power projects and....The most insidious thing GordonCampbell has done is guarantee massive profits to IPPs for 30 years, guaranteed rates that will cost BC Hydro(the taxpayer) upwards of $3 billion dollars per year by 2015 which will ultimately bankrupt BC Hydro thus forcing it`s sale and leaving BCers hanging by the noose of the corporation.(read more here on the IPP sell out)

But don't take my word for it, go on over and read the whole thing, follow the links he provides and if you think he is making it up......tell me, that's what the comment thread is for. While you are there, check out some of his other posts, like today's epitaph for the case of the women who wanted to ski jump at the Fascist Owelympic Follies.

I'll be watching my visitor logs and will consider banning anyone who reads this and doesn't at least go give Grant's masterpiece a look see!

Saving the Planet
with from "Kermit" CampBULL

BC liaRs' Christmas All Year Round Display!

Yesterday the CBC reported some results from Environment Canada regarding "facility" emissions. Thanks probably to the economic meltdown and mill, factory and other closures all provinces, except British Columbia had reduced GHG emissions from industry. In spite of the fact that most sawmills, pulpmills and other industrial sectors are on their knees or shut down, BC managed to increase its emissions, and buck the trend, thanks to the subsidization of the gas and oil sector by Kermit Campbell.

British Columbia was the only province in the country to report an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from major industries in 2008, according to figures released by Environment Canada.

The figures cover so-called "facility greenhouse gas emissions" from power plants and heavy industries such as mining, pulp and paper, and petroleum.

British Columbia's dubious distinction was largely the result of oil and gas extraction, Environment Canada said.

A commenter called JohnnyMan at the CBC site summed it up better than I can with:

So all you have to do to be "honoured in Copenhagen" is tax the poor and call it a "Carbon tax".

This is a very dubious distinction indeed!!!

I wonder if the BC Liberals changed the name of "Income tax" to "Carbon tax" would we be even greener? Maybe Campbell would have been up for a Nobel prize?

Every British Columbian, except the ultra Environmentalists, knew that this Carbon Tax was nothing more than another scheme by this Liberal government to suck more wealth out of the common citizen.

And the only reason the ultra Environmentalists didn't see the writing on the wall was because of their deep desire and hope that this government actually meant what it claims.

When the biggest polluters receive tax breaks and the tiny polluter (a British Columbian) gets taxed heavily for driving to work, you know there is nothing "environmental" in the Liberal agenda.

We are being conned and lied to by this government. Again.
But we British Columbians have built up such a tolerance for lies from the Liberals that after a while you stop listening - and then you stop caring.

Of course then there is slightly less polite, but just as accurate, Thanatos, who contributes:

B.C.'s emissions are going up because Fat Gordo and the mob let them go up. He's a slimey womanizer who is about as two faced as you can get. He preaches green and taxes you and I, but leaves his corporate task masters alone.

Then there is, the usually kinda tending toward right wing whack, Adrian of Unambiguously Ambidextrous who covers the hypocrisy quite well at his blog with B.C. Makes Money From Oil and Gas, Then Taxes Residents For Buying It. Adrian adds to his blog post over at the National PooP Post with the chart provided below and this comment, B.C. collects green award while emissions increase

"Facility" Emissions by Province - 2008


Of course we shouldn't forget the rest of Lord Gord's "green" (as in USD)initiatives, such as, promoting oil tanker traffic on the BC Coast, the ongoing efforts to kill off wild Pacific Salmon with his buddie's fish farms, the obscene Enbridge Northern Pipeline to enable the Goo-Pits of Northern Alberta, burning the forests of BC to provide "green" brown power, the urge to supply enough coal to China so they can continue opening a new coal plant every week or two, the massive amount of infrastructure being built on borrowed money to accomodate even MORE cars trucks and things that spew fumes.......and of course I could go on....but again, I have other things to do today.

Premier Kermit
goes to Copenhagen

Even though I think British Columbia is a beautiful and blessed corner of the earth, I've always felt that the BC liaR's motto "The Best Place on Earth," was arrogant and not the best way to encourage people from say Tahiti, Hawaii or even Ireland to visit as they may not think BC better than their own home, no matter how nice it may be. But then for Lord Gordon Campbell and his sychophants in the BC Liberal Party, arrogance is a pre-requisite for being in caucus. But BC is a better place than usual today, for Premier "Kermit" Campbell the greenest guy on God's green earth after Arnie the Governator, is away to share with the world his secrets to a green future at the Copenhagen Conference. The bad news is that he will be coming back. Too bad we can't turn him away at the border for his criminal record in the USA!

I heard Doctor Andrew Weaver on the radio say the Gordo could hold his head up high, and I for a moment thought he meant so that the noose could be slipped over ala Saddam Hussein's last moments. But alas, Dr. Weaver meant that Gord could be proud of his progressive green policies and show them Europeans and the rest of the world how it is really done. So lets examine Greenwash Gord the saviour of the environment, so we can understand why we should all be so grateful to him for saving the planet.

Let's see, the only thing I can think of, and the one that somehow even fooled enviro-bimbo Tzeporah, Nature of Things guru David Suzuki and others, was his imposition of a carbon tax on everyday British Columbians. Of course the biggest polluters get exemptions or rebates while even carbon tax supporter Marc Jaccard stated that the tax would have to be 25 times higher to serve its intended purpose of changing people's behaviour. And since the imposition of the tax, more cars are driving more miles on BC roads than before the tax was imposed. Of course due to other factors the price of gas at the pump is about half what it was when the tax was first announced.

The whole idea of using a tax to encourage desirable behaviour is fine with me, though many conservative types just see it as income re-distribution (not letting the rich have it all). The fact is though for the bulk of British Columbia, except for the Lower Vainland and Southern Vancouver Island, people HAVE NO CHOICES. Well, I take that back, the logger (the last one) north of Prince George somewhere could decide to NOT GO TO WORK, and just STAY HOME and FREEZE IN THE DARK! Our logger, or even our pharmacist outside of the Lower Vainland with its transit system, has no way to get to work (or in the logger's case, do his work) than by using gasoline or diesel fuel. Then even if he stays at home, if he wants light on a winter's night or any heat other than by wood (cut and hauled with the help of carbon taxed fuels) ching-ching goes the carbon tax machine.

I don't live in the extreme boonies, but my "public transit" options consist of twice a week I can trade about 4 hours of bus time for slightly more hours in the middle of the day in Nelson, Castlegar or Trail (or slightly less if the bus is running late due to weather or many pick-ups off route for disabled folks). Then once a week I can spend about six hours in Nakusp. To get anywhere else at any other time I have no option but driving a private vehicle, walking or hitch-hiking.

So as far as I can see, the Carbon Tax is just another tax grab from the middle and lower-classes, disguised as some sort of progressive environmental policy - Tzeporah, Suzuki and the others should be embarrassed for falling for Capo Gordo's flim flam routine!

So lets examine some other magnificent GREEN policies of the man who deigns to make a gigantic carbon footprint to fly him (and his mistress most likely) to Denmark to tell the world how to save the planet!

1. His government has promoted a huge transportation policy focused on more lanes and bridges to accomodate more cars with the Golden Ears Bridge, 10 lane Port Mann Bridge, the Sea to Sky Highway and the assault on Burns Bog for the Deltaport project (to feed cargo ships which are themselves an enviromental nightmare)

2. Continued pressure to allow Oil Tankers on the BC Coast, so we too can maybe have our own Exxon Valdez - we probably wouldn't even know about it either until the US Coast Guard told us, as happened recently with a near spill off of Mayne Island - BC liaR Environment Minister Barry Penner was too busy being awesome to notice.

3. Consistent refusal to hold fish farms accountable for destroying natural Pacific Salmon - not to mention that each pound of farmed salmon requires MANY pounds of ground up wild fish to produce - all around about as efficient a process in real terms as the Goo Pits of Northern Alberta.

4. Speaking of the Tar Pits - Gordo the Green does everything possible to enable and assist in the largest and dirtiest and most in-efficient project in the history of human activity, by promoting the Enbridge pipeline to transport goo to Prince Rupert or clean natural gas to the Pits to use twice as much clean energy to produce dirty energy and money for certain folks.

5. Promoting Coal Bed Methane Extraction in the Flathead Valley

6. Removing square miles of formerly Forest Reserve for the profit of Gordo's original tribe - the Real Estate Speculators/Developers.

7. Promoting the bad business both financially and environmentally Rape of the River projects for the benefit of General Electric and other mostly non-BC based corporate piggies.

8. Gutting of environmental standards and staff at the ministry of the environment.

9. Gutting of staff for Parks and Game management.

10. Even the sale of BC Rail has had negative effects environmentally because of worse service for producers in the north who now need to ship by truck, and by not upgrading the track from North Vancouver to Whistler - a much more GREEN solution to getting people to the Owelympic events than the millions spent on the Sea to Die to take 15-20 minutes off the trip for a BMW. This is without even thinking about the bluffs that Betty K and her first nations friend Harriet went to jail trying to protect - ultimately costing Harriet her life.

11. A policy supporting the extraction and shipment to China of enough dirty coal to emit gases equivalent to the amount generated by powering over thirty times the number of home in Canada or keeping 15,000,000 cars on the road for a year. And according to his sychophant Kevin Kruger, the more coal to China the better. By the way, already 30-40% or more of the particulate matter in the smog over Los Angeles has been sent back from China, probably partly from our coal - maybe we can get some back too, or maybe we already do, but our gutted environmental ministries (fed and provincial) probably don't have the staff or equipment to measure it!

I could continue, maybe all day, but that is some of the high points, I've gotta go do some stuff that will involve paying some carbon tax - but I'm helping the environment, eh? And I have to admit, there is a lack of a bad smell in the air, that is usually there, oh yeah, Gordo's gone!

Yep, that Gordo, he's certainly a greenie - more like the greenies I find in my nose!

British Columbia


Free Zone

Not Welcome in British Columbia

Today the oh so Special Prosecutor (or his designated representative), so called Justice Anne MacKenzie and an OH SO "secret" witness are meeting down in a secret chamber at Robson and Smithe. As Bill Tieleman, one of the few media types who even acknowledges that this now six year travesty exists puts it:

Long-awaited testimony about why the identity of a police informer in the BC Rail corruption case must remain secret will happen on Monday December 14 in BC Supreme Court - but the public, media and even defence lawyers will be barred from the hearing.

It's enough to make one long for the days of the Spanish Inquisition and Star Chambers!

“The RCMP brutally killed a new-comer to Canada, put out fake information into the public sphere while investigating themselves, then refused to correct the record and held on to the video that showed the horrible truth. The loss of public trust is no mystery.”

The above quoted from the Globe and Mail by Robin Matthews, in a piece published over at BC Mary's, is just another account of business as usual in British Columbia, third rate banana republic presided over by a tin-pot CEO dictator, the land that Justice forgot! The quote refers to the Dziekanzki fiasco where four mounties "nominally" led by Benjamin "Monty" Robinson killed Robert Dziekazki within seconds of arriving at the location where Robert had been stranded for over ten hours after a 12 hour flight, not counting plane changes and such.

Of course Mr. Robinson would, before the year was out, go on to smash into and kill motorcyclist Orian Hutchinson, leave the scene of the accident to allegedly go home for a couple of drinks, to perhaps cast doubt on the BAC readings eventually taken by the officers responding to the fatal accident.

So far, in spite of being involved in two very questionable deaths, committing apparent perjury to investigators and a commision of inquiry looking into the YVR incident, Mr. Robinson only faces charges for "attempting to obstruct justice" in relation to the fatal motor vehicle accident. Apparently if one is member of the RCMP, pretty much anything is acceptable behaviour - I guess that is the meaning of "To Serve and Protect" - the Force!

Then there is the case of the "labour contractor" who squeezed 17 farmworkers into an unsafe 15 passenger van with a phony safty inspection, bad tires and wound up killing three of the workers and injuring others. With the BC liaRs, who have made a career of gutting workplace safety and worker's wages for almost a decade now, in government, it appears folks exploiting workers can count on getting cut some slack.

The driver, Harwinder Gill, was fined $2,000 for driving without a proper licence and without reasonable consideration

.
Folks I know have gotten harsher penalties for impaired driving that resulted in hurting NO ONE at the time. Oh yeah, so called WorkSafe (the new even more employer friendly version of old WCB) fined the company almost $70,000, but the company just ceased to exist UNDER THAT NAME and that fine will never be collected - besides less than $25,000 a life doesn't seem to put much value on these lives to begin with.

Don' forget, this is the same folks who invented the Sub-Minimum Wage so that young entrants to the workforce could just make enough to pay for their parking in Downtown Vancouver BEFORE deductions, of course (The reaction is not so pretty among people in the downtown core about raising the rates to six dollars per hour). It just reinforces the grossness of the situation to point out that this sub-minimum is a reduction to what is already the LOWEST minimum wage in Canada (and it is applicable in the City of Vancouver, with arguably the highest cost of living in the country).

Good one Gord, I'm so proud your government could find the time to slash the minimum wage, in the midst of all the closing of courthouses,schools, hospitals, slashing of Crown Prosecutors, game wardens, park oversight, tearing up of contracts and ignoring court judgements and UN Resolutions.

On the other hand, let's compare a what justice deals to a normal person who screws up with the kid gloves for the favored crowd!

Teen driver of car that killed Vancouver couple sentenced to three years

We can argue whether or not young Kurtis Rock got a sufficient sentence for committing a very similiar transgression to Monty Robinson crime number two, but the fact that this accident occurred this past February and the case has been resolved already stands in stark contrast to the preferential treatment and delay granted to two time F*** up Robinson and the six year and counting ongoing exercise in Obstruction of Justice that is the Basi/Virk affair.

So far, thanks to the drones of Canned Waste and GlowBall, the Campbell Crime Family has had a free hand, and even a vote of "carry on" every four years. What will it take for the people of BC to wake up and notice how the whole province is being stolen out from under them with the assistance of a completely compromised and rigged (in)Justice System. Will it have to get to the point where it is in Italy today? Will it get to the point where multiple charges are pending against the Capo Campbell (or does our capo have our justice system more under his thumb than Sylvio has his?) Will it come to the point where frustrated citizens have to throw things at our CEO, who is already pretty nervous about appearing in some parts of the province, with good reason?

Either everyone has to answer to the law, the same law, or eventually no one will pay any attention to it. The idea that certain people answered to a higher authority, or no one, has been in decline since before the Battle of Hastings, and in spite of burps along the way, I am confident that even the forces of the Campbelloids cannot permanently change the direction of the evolution of society. The only question is what will it take, can it be put back on track through our broken political or legal systems? Or will we need to do a "tear down" in order to accomplish the necessary repairs?

On a Lighter Note



Someone who never forwards jokes, pictures of kitties or messages about Jesus, DID forward this - and I'm glad she did. I must mention though that these aren't necessarily my favorites, indeed, to me the most important person we lost in 2009 was guitarist, inventor, recording whiz and general all around virtuoso and genius Les Paul!

Dear Grim Reaper,

So far this year, you have taken away my favorite dancer, Michael Jackson, my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite comedian, Soupy Sales, my favorite pitchman, Billy Mays and my favorite sidekick, Ed McMahon.

Just so you know, my favorite politician is Gordon Campbell.

Thank you

"We Don't Just
Steal Railroads"
BC liaRs

Gordo's Fantasy
.......vs. the Real World

The idyllic image above is the way Lord Gord and his legions of minions at the Public Affairs Bureau would like to cultivate in the minds of the electorate about their Independent Power Production greed green initiative for British Columbians. The stream is hardly disturbed, and merrily grinds flour for the miller as almost an afterthought to the stream and the fish that live in the stream. However.........this rustic dream is actually more of a nightmare.

As ugly as the scar above, part of Plutonic's efforts at beautifying British Columbia, it doesn't begin to show the damage that these so-called green power projects inflict on our province. All we see here is a carved up mountainside, the typical scar of any new constuction and the damage to the forest from previous logging and fire or beetle damage to standing timber. This picture can't show the tunnels big enough to drive trucks through, kilometres long to divert streams, nor the spawning beds which will be to dry to function once the water is diverted through the tunnels. Nor in this case do we see where the millions of cubic metres of rock removed to make the tunnels are piled. It doesn't show the scars and unecessary roads built to erect high voltage transmission lines to take un-necessary surplus power in the wrong direction apparently for the express purpose of destroying as much pristine, alpine wildlife habitat as possible for no rational reason other than the greed of a few.

Keep in mind that the State Senate of California has already voted to designate Gordo's Green IPP "run of river" power as DIRTY and not eligible to be purchased for use in the state with the population of Canada that has been a major customer for BC Hydro export power in the past (even when BC Hydro had trouble collecting payment, like during the Enron/Anderson/Accenture debacle).

Bad Business
.......but Ideological Correctness

Aside from the fact that many, if not most, of these projects aren't really green but indeed destructive of fish, wildlife and other environmental values, is the fact that they make no business sense for the people of British Columbia. The independent British Columbia Utilities Commission made that clear when it stated clearly that these projects "are not in the public interest." These projects will be most productive during spring high-water, a time when hydro power is in surplus supply already, and the spot market for power is at its lowest due to over supply and low demand, it not being winter (heating) or summer (air conditioning) . It is merely an evil, greedy plot to divert money that once went to publicly owned BC Hydro - thus keeping rates low and replenishing the public coffers - to private individuals and corporations favored by our Victoria Mob - our own Cosa Nostra of Infamy!

In this weekend's Business section in the Vancouver Sun Scott Simpson addresses these issues, a surprising degree of coverage for Gordo's PR firm, when he chooses to outsource from the Public Affairs Bureau. For a government like this, to paraphrase Hitler's informationn minister Goebbels, a lie cannot be too big or told too much!

Independent power costs raise questions about B.C. policy

A strange business model BC Hydro is projecting it will be paying between $100 and $125 per megawatt-hour for new electricity supplied by independent producers. That is well above even the most optimistic forecast for what the Crown corporation would be able to sell that power for on the spot market for many years to come.

...../snippity do dah

Both Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom and the Independent Power Producers Association of B.C. (IPPBC) anticipate that the government's plan to contract several billion dollars' worth of new private sector electricity development will strengthen both domestic power supply and B.C.'s natural advantages in the power export market.

...../snip

documents recently filed to the utilities commission by Hydro suggest that the overnight purchase price for a megawatt of power at a primary trading hub in the western United States — Hydro's primary export power customer — is somewhere around $60.

That has more or less been the standard price for the last five years according to studies by U.S. federal electricity market regulators — although the overnight price in California was closer to $80.

Hydro projections indicate that spot market prices won't hit $100 until 2032.

Energy minister, Blair Leckstrom who is apparently almost as awesome (and mentally challenged) as (BC enviro minister) Barry Penner sez:

"I am not a supporter of 'Buy high, sell low,'" Lekstrom said. "That is just not going to happen under my watch of this ministry."

Now how one reconciles the above with selling power at $60 after buying it (under LONG TERM FIXED CONTRACTS) for $100-$125+, defies any mathmatics with which I am familiar. Scott Simpson points out that:

The export market looks solid — recent documents from California regulators suggest that utilities in the southwest state may be willing to pay as much as $130 a megawatt for fixed volumes of renewable power on fixed-price 20-year contracts.

But Mr. Simpson may as well be trying his hand at fiction with the above, as "fixed volumes of renewable power" would require turning the world on its head for two reasons. First in order to supply say California (as Pacific Gas and Electric is the most often touted "steady" customer for "fixed" amounts of "long term" energy) we would have to agree to supply power year round, thus threatening our own domestic supply during lower water, or actually most of the year. Then there is the minor consideration that it seems unlikely that even the State Ruled by the Terminator will consider the IPP "ruin of the river" power as either renewable or green - considering that the California state senate recently declared the EXACT OPPOSITE. Therefore it could very well be illegal for PG & E to even purchase to supply the state with as many people as Canada.


The entire IPP program is nothing more than a scam concocted by the Campbell Crime Family and the cohorts and corporate pigs to whom they answer, to transfer yet another public asset to private hands to satisfy private greed. It will do nothing to promote energy security for British Columbians, indeed it will do the exact opposite and make us compete with Arizona and other more desperate jurisdictions for our own resources - with us eventually freezing in the dark so hair dryers can function in Tucson. British Columbians will benefit financially, but only THE few who can call Lord Gord Campbell a friend (and pay the necessary tribute to him and the rest of the Campbell Crime Family)!


crossposted from WaterWalk