Desperate LIEberals
Go After Big Bucks!

Rich Coleman (right) "I could eat these three for my lunch"
("and still go have a few burgers for dessert!")

The BC liaRs have finally figured out how to balance the books by going after the people with the real money. After years of giving the rich tax cut after tax cut and spending money on really important stuff like improved access to Whistler for rich folks, bridges no one can afford to use, a roof for a stadium to please casino builder friends and endless legal fees and settlements for wrongdoing against their own citizens, they've finally figured out how to balance the books.

Unfortunately for them (and us) closing hospitals in communities outside the Lower Vainland, refusing to fund education, firing government workers tasked with protecting parks and other public lands, cutting funding for legal aid and closing courthouses and other cost cutting measures weren't enough to help the LIEberals balance the books - the same books they inherited in a state of surplus by the way. But now thanks to the pea brain in the oversize body of Rich Coleman, they have found the solution to their fiduciary difficulties. They are going after those greedy welfare recipients for overpayments.

According to AnaheimNorthDOTcom:

The B.C. government is suing hundreds of welfare recipients in small claims court to try to recover overpayments, a strategy critics are questioning.

But the Minister for Housing and Social Development says there is nothing unusual about the government trying to get back overpayments to welfare recipients.

The ministry has filed 300 claims against people in small claims court in the past month alone, a dramatic spike compared with the few dozen it filed in each of the previous five years.

Coleman said that taxpayers expect government to go after any kind of fraudulent payment, even if it involves people with little or no money.

..../snip

“This is news for me,” Fredi Cruz told CBC News after receiving a $5,000 claim.

The construction worker said he went on social assistance six years ago after breaking his back. He said the claim notice was the first indication he had that the province wants a portion of the money back.

“How? I don't have any money to pay. You know, it don't make sense, how to pay something when I don't have,” said Cruz.

Jessie Hadley, a staff lawyer at Community Legal Assistance, said it's unusual to see the government take so many cases to small claims court, and she said many of those targeted by the legal action may not have received overpayments.

According to Andrew MacLeod in today's Tyee:

Lawyers with the British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre......../snip

.....say the government's overpayment cases often fall apart under legal scrutiny, and yet it insists on attacking people who are little able to defend themselves. It does so in a climate where legal aid has been cut for people living in poverty. And in this case it didn't bother to contact groups like BCPIAC that often advocate for welfare recipients.

BCPIAC has now been able to review six of the claims and found them to be "cookie cutter" in their wording, a June 11 letter to Coleman from lawyers Sarah Khan, Ros Salvador and Eugene Kung said.

Of course these are the same guys that pay Admiral Hahn of BC Ferries over ONE MILLION dollars per year to provide less service to fewer users for higher fares, while his peer, the CEO of Washington State Ferries gets $140,000 for doing a MUCH BETTER JOB! These are also the guys who have coerced BC Hydro into signing contracts to purchase IPP Power at 12.6 kwh which they are they forced to sell at times of peak supply and NO DEMAND for less than 1/2 cent per kwh. Masters of Business, yup!

They are also the same guys that harassed half of the doctors in British Columbia and stressed out most people on disability in the province by forcing everyone to REPROVE their eligibility for disability benefits by filling out massive forms. This process led to so much busy work for doctors who could have been actually treating patients and so much stress for disabled people that some even wound up committing suicide. Nice guys and GREAT BUSINESS FOLKS!


Birds of the Feather!

When the BC liaRs decided that in their efforts to wrap up BC Hydro and drive it into a state of unprofitablity to justify giving it away to corporate pig friends they looked around to find someone to outsource billing services. Who better than the disgraced and renamed remnants of Anderson Accounting, Accenture, who had helped Enron cook their books enroute to their spectacular crash, burn and prosecution of most of the executives.

Thus it shouldn't be surprising that today, when locals in the East Kootenay found out that Coal Bed Methane exploration had begun (underway for a couple of weeks, before any locals were even aware) that it was being undertaken by that exemplar of corporate responsibility British Petroleum!

Actually BP was granted its license 3 days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and locals only found out in the last 24 hours that work had begun south of Sparwood.

BP gets BC drill license