Hang 'em High

Hangman - Ottawa and Victoria Version*

I may have let my imagination run away with itself when I heard that yet another Parliament of a white majority former British Colony had been "hung." It can't be a criime to accidentally imagine Stevie Harper and John Baird dancing with their feet high above the ground, can it?

First it was Stevie, and then Stevie again, eking out a "minority" government, though why acceding to the will of the actual majority of the house is equated with a coup is beyond me. Of course Mr. Harper just ignores the fact that maybe 15-20% of Canadians actually want him to be Prime Minister and rules like a man with a mandate and runs and hides (prorogation) when that becomes difficult. About forty percent of the vote in an election that half of more of the qualified voters refused to participate in hardly seems a mandate to me. Of course having the last election on short notice, right after everyone went to Grandma's for Thanksgiving and quietly changing a bunch of ID requirements over the summer didn't promote participation either, or was that the intention?

But with a lack of leadership in opposition, or any opposition party with a prayer of governing and slipping your agenda into bills about other stuff, US style, and Canada is well on its way to being "unrecognizable, when Harper is done with it" as he promised years ago.

It was after the election in the UK that everyone became familiar with the term "hung" as the kinda winner reached out to the kinda equivalent to Jack Layton or Gilles Duceppe here - in other words the third place party, and formed an actual coalition with Clegg as Deputy PM, rather than endlessly threatening to call another election that "nobody wants" or at least that's what they claim. After all, it is soooooooo damn hard to pry oneself away from the couch or whatever and go to the polling station. Harper and his henchman make participation in the democratic process seem just slightly less onerous than serving in the military or on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan.

Now that the Australians have brought about the tri-fecta of "hung" parliaments, perhaps it will become clear that the majority of the voting public in the old Empire DON'T LIKE ANYBODY VERY MUCH! In the Sydney Morning Herald, some of the currently being heavily courted small independent party MPs hope this hung situation can lead to change in "Parly."

Most observers would agree with the independent that question time, in theory the most important hour of the parliamentary day when the executive is directly scrutinised, has degenerated to virtual uselessness.

The prime minister and ministers of whichever party is in power very rarely answer opposition questions in any real sense. Instead they turn their answers into torrents of abuse that often run unchecked for many minutes.

Jeepers, creepers, sounds just like Ottawa and Victoria, don't it?

The situation has caused the Aussie Dollar to lose value and created instability all around Asia but hey, the guys who spent $100,000,000 to get rid of Kevin Rudd and bring about this election and will buy another one if necessary are so far cautiously happy with the results.

This first hung parliament in 70 years is a potential tailwind for the nation’s mining companies, as a Liberal Party majority would likely shelve the new mining tax.

....../snip

News of the hung parliament sent shares of mining companies in Australia higher on Monday, as Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, and Xstrata (XSRAF.PK) all posted gains

By the way, they are as dishonest with party names in Australia as they are in B.C. and Canada, as the "Liberal Party" there is just slightly to the left of Attila the Hun - right wing whack jobs compared to the Labour Party (interesting how "labour" hasn't been turned into a dirty word yet in the Mother Country and the former penal colony)

They look forward to the demise of the hated mineral "profits" tax, and so far have been much more successful in evading corporate responsibility than say Catalyst Pulp mills have been in BC. Somebody has to pay taxes, but goddamnit, it ain't gonna be the folks with money, not if they can help it - they would rather pay lawyers and accountants even more to avoid their share of maintaining the quality of life for their employees, who wouldn't even be white if God woulda put the damn minerals in the right place to begin with.

* I haven't been able to make my javascript game work in Blogger, but I could e-mail working instances to anyone interested. I could even include any favorite air dancers for anyone requesting their copy. One just needs to download onto their hard drive and then open in a browser.

My copy currently contains -"Stephen Harper","Gordon Campbell","John Baird","Colin Hansen","Rick Coleman","Stockwell Day", "Mikey DeJong","Jason Kenny", "Helena Guergis", "Ida Chong", "Shirley Bond", "Peter McKay" but there's room for more. One must take petty satisfaction where one finds it, eh?

Of course the goal isn't necessarily to spell the "word" or name correctly because then they don't "swing." Then you get a dialog box telling you something like.

Are they Venal or Stupid? Department:

Terry Lake, part of the two man, 1/2 brain cell, brain trust from Kamloops showed his lack of mathematical skills and inability to grasp abstract or basic concepts this morning while being interviewed by Marion Barschell for Daybreak on the CBC. In his exalted position as chairman of the never yet to have met in twenty years "select" committee tasked with dealing with the anti-HST petition said:

Since they only got 37% of the voters in my riding (Almost 4 times the amount necessary by the way or 370% of the required amount) to sign the petition that means there might be 67-68% who LIKE the HST.
(approximate quote...off the air)

Kev and Terry together probably set up an intelligence vacuum that sucks any sense from surrounding ridings as well, thereby explaining why things occur in MudSlide Slater Land and Donna Barnett's (or is that Barnum of Barnum and Baily and fools/suckers being born every minute fame?) imaginary Cariboo fantasy land.

Well Mr. Lake, if I could be so personal as to address you as Meester, once you went over 100% of the voters you got into Star Trek territory for me. I guess fuzzy math skills make the BC liaR book keeping methods easier to tolerate. Keep in mind, feeble minded one, that that was 37% of the ELIGIBLE voters in your riding. The 35-40% you managed to get elected with were 35-40% of about ONE HALF of the eligible voters or 17-20%, meaning that 80% of the voters OR MORE, don't really like you very much.....keep that in mind as we head into the beautiful Recall season and nothing smells as nice as recall on a cool fall morning, NOTHING!

BC liaRs hellbent on
Self Immolation

BC Liberals assisting respecting "Process."

According to the CBC.....

Former premier Bill Vander Zalm says if B.C.'s chief electoral officer won't send the anti-HST petition to the legislature, he will.

Vander Zalm insists the Initiative Act gives him the power to forward the results of the petition against the harmonized sales tax.

However, legislative committee chair MLA Terry Lake disagrees, saying Vander Zalm should know the process must be respected.

Lake said he won't touch the petition until it is officially forwarded by Elections BC — something that's unlikely to happen until after the courts deal with a business group's challenge of the petition's validity.

It is unknown just where the BC Liberals hide their brain trust, but it clearly isn't in Kamloops. Terry Lake and Kevin "I can drive and take orders from gambling capos at the same time" Krueger have almost the I.Q. of a new born ewe between them and less spine combined than the average jellyfish. But keep it up dunces, you are a bigger enemy of Gordo and your party than even myself, and that's saying a lot.

But with even rabid anti-NDPers praying for a....shudder....Carole James government and the Great Prevaricator hisself in need of a suicide watch, if anybody cared, thanks to guys like Lake, the hole is just never deep enough for the mass grave becoming more necessary for the perverse alliance calling itself the BC Liberal Party, so far this millenium. I'm sure y'all can do even more to irritate the more than 700,000 voters who have made their feelings clear on the HST issue and even those who for whatever reason didn't sign the petition now being held up, against the will of more people than elected this excuse for government. So please keep it up boys and girls and, oh yeah, I'd start thinking about a new career if I were a member of this criminal organization posing as a government.

Even the flacks, drones and masters of fiction that write (sic) for the Sun, Province and Times-Colonist seem to be peeking out from Gordo's back pocket and testing the air outside, and wondering if they can remember how to be journalists rather than PR flacks for Gordon Campbell and Gang.

Yesterday, on Friday the 13th, just another UNLUCKY day for Gordo Groupies, Michael Smyth came out in the Province to point out how absurd, and self destructive this attempt to delay and/or deny the will of the people has been and will continue to be in HST petition: Bench-clearing brawl that's set to turn uglier.

The irony of the whole HST-petition snafu is that the province's citizen-initiative law was supposed to give people just a little bit of power to influence their government — without politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, judges or special-interest groups sticking their noses in.

Sounds good in theory, right? But now we're seeing the reality when the people actually dare to use that little bit of power — everybody throwing punches in a bench-clearing brawl that only threatens to get uglier.

On Thursday, former premier Bill Vander Zalm consulted lawyers to see if he could go to court to force Elections B.C. to send his successful petition against the harmonized sales tax to the provincial legislature, as required under the law.

Great, just what we need. More lawyers. More judges. More special-interest groups throwing their weight around in what was supposed to be a pure exercise in citizen democracy.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

...../snip

The lawsuit against the petition was brought by business groups that have collectively donated $381,500 to the B.C. Liberals since 2001: the Council of Forest Industries, Mining Association of B.C., Coast Forest Products Association, Western Convenience Store Association and the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association. The B.C. Chamber of Commerce is also involved.

Although these business groups must believe they're doing the government a favour, their actions could have the opposite effect, breathing new life into the HST saga, and making people even angrier. The government is that much more vulnerable to Vander Zalm's threatened recall campaigns as a result.

The Liberals should have just taken their medicine: let the people have their day at the legislature, and summoned the moral courage to vote down Vander Zalm's repeal bill. Instead, this circus will just compound their problems.

So keep it up, and if you see Gordo anywhere in BeeCee (I think he's in CallyFournia seeing if his bud Arnie can get him work in the movies), say hi and goodbye for me, willya? Delay and deny the toothless "paper tiger" that is the anti-HST petition. meanwhile we'll be getting our VOTING LISTS (which Elections BC HAS to provide to the Recall proponents) and preparing to put as many of you as possible on the street by early in the New Year - have a NICE DAY!

Living "Sub Judice"
in Beautiful B. C.

A little peek here, a little nudge there.......

Manipulation = Obstruction*

The BC liaRs under Gordo the Great Prevaricator have gotten manipulation of the "justice" system down to a fine art. After a decade of pillaging government they can play the Justice System like Guitar Hero. They've learned how to make Special Prosecutors "...oh...so Special." They can engineer changes on the bench mid-proceedings or with the help of their allies in the formerly CanWest/CTV psuedo journalism world make legal proceedings, decisions and sentences disappear as if into a black hole in space.

Now, even though we CAN talk about it (at least I think we can) the anti-HST petition has been swallowed up into former AG StoneWally's favorite realm of "it's before the courts." Undoubtably much to the chagrin of the Gordo Gang, Elections BC, even with their freshly appointed "acting" Chief Electoral Officer, it proved impossible to invalidate enough signatures to quash the petition. Vaughn Palmer woke up somewhat free of his zombie spell of the Gordo with HST battle could fester for months during court challenges and sketches out how difficult it was for Craig James to find a way to derail the will of the people.

The business groups challenging the petition itself thought that Elections BC shouldn't even validate the signatures until issues were resolved in court (which as we know, in BC could be beyond the life expectancy of many. However as Vaughn points out clearly

The act left no doubt about what should happen with the anti-HST petition once it was delivered to Elections BC.
"Within 42 days from the day on which the petition is submitted to the chief electoral officer, he or she must determine whether the petition meets the requirements."

Must determine whether the petition has the required number of signatures; do so within 42 days.

No leeway there for the chief electoral officer to delay the verification process.

It was in the next step that Mr. James, perhaps hoping to become the "real" and not just acting Chief Electoral Officer, or perhaps coveting other high appointed office found his weasel hole. I'll let Vaughn take it away again from here.

Once the petition is verified, the act provides for it to be sent to a special committee of the legislature for further consideration.
Here's the relevant wording: "If the chief electoral officer determines that the initiative petition meets the requirements, the chief electoral officer must send a copy of the petition and draft bill to the committee."

Again "must send." But unlike the passage dealing with signature verification, no mention of a timeline. That distinction, slim as it was, suggested a way to respect both the initiative process and the court. Elections BC could verify the petition but hold off sending it to the committee until after the legal challenge was resolved.

Mr. James basically provided Bill VanderZalm with a two paragraph letter and made a further statement to Mr. Palmer regarding his actions. Click on small image to right to read the letter to Bill VanderZalm.

"With respect to the reason why I am going to hold in abeyance any further involvement with Mr. Vander Zalm's petition until after the resolution of the court cases, it is important to note that counsel for the [business] group contended that even continuing with the vote count might be seen as an abuse of process in view of the pending court application. Whereas Mr. Vander Zalm's position was that the verification process should continue uninterrupted.

"Under the circumstances, and given due respect to the court proceedings, it seemed appropriate to complete the vote count within the time frame mandated by the Act but to thereafter place matters in abeyance pending the court outcome."

Personally I think that the "[business] group" is abusing due process by even bringing this action. But then I think that the Inferior Health Authority is abusing due process when they file SLAPP suits against healthcare users who dare criticize their policies, just to shut them up under threat of immense legal costs. I also think Gordon Campbell abuses due process by fighting disclosure in the BC Rail case year after year to the extent of ordering documentation relevant to the case destroyed and having the former law partner of the Oh So Special Prosecutor Wild Bill Berardino vetting documents for "privilege."

I think we should thank Mr. James for this contorted conclusion, I think it will only stoke the fires of the raging anti-Campbell, anti BC liaR flames all the more. After all, it isn't as if the Government has to do more than PRETEND to pay attention to the petition (though some MLAs would have to actually....choke.....vote yea or nay on it) - which hasn't been done at all (part of the basis of the anti-HST group's countersuit also before the courts (or sub judice). The only vote I've heard of was the extinquishment of the PST - everything else has been typical Order in Council behind closed doors, or business as usual.

Everybody just remember (to tune of September Song)

It's not a long, long time, until November.....

And then it's time

TO RECALL THEM ALL


* Original (pre-PhotoShop) picture by AHughman