Suspicious old me ....

A while ago, the BC Liberals weren't even considering selling the BC Liquor Distribution Branch. Now they are suddenly scampering to get a deal done before they are thrown out of office. Why?

Freedom of Information documents released Thursday by NDP critic Shane Simpson suggest that the government had no interest in selling its liquor warehouses - one in Kamloops, one in Vancouver - until Exel Logistics presented a plan to MLA Shirley Bond during a golf game. And Liberal insiders Patrick Kinsella and Mark Jiles lobbied several other government ministers on behalf of Exel relating to privatization of the province’s liquor distribution system.

Keep in mind that BC is one of the largest importers and distributers in North America for liquor, about 900 million dollars a year! A very rich plum to control for a private company. Sales per capita in BC are far above those of Quebec and Ontario.

Kinsella served as an adviser to Premier Christy Clark during her successful leadership run. He was also Gordon Campbell’s election campaign manager in 2001 and 2005. (Yes, the same Gordon Campbell who has run up huge bills in London as High Commissioner to Canada.)

Exel has a monopoly in Alberta where it is said liquor prices are 30% higher than before privatization. 

 Shirley Bond wrote in August 2011 to Exel; “At this time, the government is not considering making any changes to the existing liquor distribution system.”

So what changed their minds?  Yet here in July 2012, she is saying, "We need to get this done." As if SHE thought it up for the good of the people and as if there is some urgency in handing a private company millions of dollars. Well what can be made of this?

The BC Liberals,  seem to be shepherding the process so a deal can be contracted by March of 2013, only 10 WEEKS before an election! Where in all likelyhood, and probably partly because of this deal, they will get thrown out.

Adrian Dix has already said the NDP can't work wonders and tear up legitimate contracts. (Yes, I recall the BC Liberals doing just that a few years ago, but we're talking about integrity here.) Yet that doesn't mean that Christy Clark and the cabinet members involved in selling away assets wouldn't be susceptible to criminal investigation and charges, for ignoring their fiduciary responsibility in handling BC assets.

Suppliers who sell in both B.C. and Alberta, where Exel Logistics handles distribution in that province, said supply and delivery costs are double in the neighbouring province than what they are in BC. That has to reflect your retail costs.

 If one had a suspicious mind to nefarious deals, and I do, one could think there is a payoff built into the process somewhere. A payoff that would not exist with a new government who would be unfriendly to the likes of Kinsella et al. So in order for someone to collect that secret fund, or commission, or payoff, or graft, or bribe, or finders fee or whatever you want to call it, the deal would have to be in place before it could be rescinded by an NDP government.

Suspicious minds are built over a length of time or by a series of events that don't make sense. Is there some reason why anyone would NOT be suspicious of anything these Liberals do? Shirley Bond had a meeting with an Exel official at a golf event in Prince George. After which it was a go to sell off more BC assets. Isn't that the exact method mafia boss John 'the Teflon Don' Gotti used to avoid planted police microphones and FBI surveillance? By meeting his mob buddies on open golf courses? It remains to be seen how slippery these BC Liberals are, but taking a cue from our former Premier, pretty slippery.

You can't wonder why I am suspicious.

Just sayin'.

Nothing there. No worries.

The room:
Anyone see anything?
I don't see anything.
There's nothing in this room.
By the way, where's Christy?
She must be out somewhere.
Yeah, photo opping.
Well, we might as well go.
Yes, nothing here.
Right, nothing in the room.
Okay.

Shut it down quick! Truth is showing!

This is the Enbridge Pipeline spoof by Dan Murphy that the Province Newspaper pulled from their website immediately after an Enbridge person called them to complain about it. I guess we know who the major Vancouver newspaper takes its orders from. It is actually hilarious!



You can embed your very own copy of this video into your website or blog too, by just cutting and pasting the following code into your html ..... please pass it on ......

 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eZrr-4DCZL8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I'm not Lisa.

I'm not Lisa, my name is Julie
Lisa left you years ago
My eyes are not blue
But mine won't leave you
'Til the sunlight has touched your face
                                    popular song by Jessi Colter from her album, An Outlaw.

Somehow it seems to fit. You try to pretend something is the same but it has changed. The song is about human nature. About the inability to face a disappointing situation. It seems to me that many British Columbians are struggling with this malaise right now. Trying to simply put food on the table and forcing themselves to believe things are not that bad, but they don't want to be told.

What I am trying to say is, I am telling you. And all the posts here are telling you that the BC Liberals have changed the lives of all of us. And we have to accept and face it. Perhaps it has not affected you just yet, but it will, and may be irreversible if we allow it to go on. 

But I am not an NDPer. I do not vote NDP. And having said that, I am not a BC Conservative either. Or a Liberal. Or any other underground cellar plotting party. Although I noticed once that Richard the Troll of the BC Rhinoceros Party got more votes than many of the mainstream party candidates.  IF you can even call the current crop of MLAs main stream these days. They behave like fringe parties raping a Third World country! And have a 'what's in it for me' mentality.

And the Outlaw idea fits too. It seems to me that the BC Liberals are working against the people of BC, not for us. The legislation and the rules and laws brought in seem to be hurting British Columbians instead of helping them. Only favoring a select few. And like outlaws, money is the driving force. Ethics and honesty left you years ago. Along with Lisa.

So how can one judge these people and organizations that want political power now? You of course, can only assess them on their recent actions. Christy Clark is bludgeoning her way straight ahead, pretending there never even was a Gordon Campbell, all the while ignoring our salmon fishery being destroyed by foreign owned fish farms. All the while sucking up to Harper's Enbridge tar sands oil pipeline which has the ability to destroy pristine wilderness forever, (Valdez, Alaska has still not recovered, and Exxon hasn't even paid all their fines) in favour of Alberta oil exports to China. All the while ignoring the BC Rail train robbers who took the whole train! Christy Clark continues stomping out bush fires right and left and pretending nothing is wrong. Christy, the elephant in the room is you and it is 6 million dollars wrong!

What about the BC Conservatives? Well they have been suspiciously quiet, but they have not been attacked seriously by those in power. John Cummins, ex MP, now an MLA and leading the disenchanted right, just smiles and mumbles he would do it better. Hmm, I wonder if he would admit that most of Canada thinks the Brian Mulroney inquiry is the biggest embarrassment we've ever had?
What are Cummins' ties to Steven Harper and his disassembly of our environment laws with Bill C38? And yes, that bill hurts BCers because it clears the way for Alberta to sell its oil to the Chinese without concern or real input from British Columbians. The BC Conservatives have little to go on and we have to guess what they would really do. But hoping is not good enough, is it? The BC Conservative party seems a potential vehicle for fleeing Liberals to hide in.

And the NDP. Yes, they do have a track record. But chanting Fast Ferries is getting old, no one remembers the melody anymore. How long can the Liberals dredge up weathered scare tactics? Adrian Dix is also keeping quiet, preferring so far to edge into the campaign slowly and without hyperactivity. Clever of him. He is trying to look serious like a leader. And what about schooling, health care and unions, all NDP favorites. UBC constantly complains about the education level of students entering higher studies as incompetent to move ahead. Can we do better? Our health care presently is second to none, because of the people practicing the on-the-ground jobs. Unions? Dave Barrett passed back-to-work legislation. Would an NDP party governing BC have a deleterious effect on the people of the province? Or a positive one? It IS about the people who live here.

I suppose one has to look at the immediate past of BC politics and ask what gains we have had with the present government. And then ask what effect they have on you personally. Seems the only thing to me is the fact that everything is judged with a dollar value today. 

No one seems able to account for any of our tax dollars and it is almost like we are starting out to pay for anything new as if it needs all new dollars. As if there is no General Revenue. The new Port Mann crossing tolls will likely be about $4.00 per crossing. So a guy going to work 5 days a week into Vancouver, is going to have a $160.00 hit every month! That's nearly 2 THOUSAND dollars a year. A difference maker in your enjoyment of life and support of a family. It is not always about dollars. It should never be about greed.

I still have trouble with this because I am old enough to remember old WAC Bennett proudly saying, "No more tolls for British Columbians."

My eyes are not blue
But mine won't leave you
'Til the sunlight has touched your face, and there are thousands of voters out here who are waiting and watching and wondering if any sunshine is ever going to touch their faces. Or the faces of any MLAs. So far, with the present people in power, it looks like rain!
The only ones I hear saying how prosperous we are are those shareholders with a profit agenda or the heads of greedy corporations, most of them foreign owned, enjoying their tax reductions while that guy crossing the Fraser every morning to make a buck is paying for it all.

A change is needed. A big change. We have to face our situation. We have done it before. We have to get back to province building and consider the future of British Columbia, FOR the people of BC. The world is going to get harder to live in in the future, we need to gather and hold on to our resources and quit selling them off. Sometimes I feel like we have been raided and robbed and the train robbers are just waiting around the next bend for more.
And that is just wrong. I want to be proud of my province.

Sometimes we need to throw the outlaws out and start over again. Like cleaning under your sink.

Lisa left years ago. 

Presenting your all new Liberals for 2013

Now all with the proper student looks, full of smarts and intelligence and careful thought and cleverness. Exactly what you want in your government. Christy started it with her faux studious look (hoping to preempt Carole Taylor) and now they're all doing the dark rimmed glasses thing. All designed to fool you yet once again.

 The all NEW, 2013 lineup for BC Liberals!

NOT those old ones but the NEW studious, stupendous, serious, sexy, sensitive, somnambulent, sensational, stringent, sinless Liberals!

Vote for the all-NEW smart BC Liberals!

Trust us, we're the BC Christy Party.

 

The 'Look' from the Looker

 But ... oops ...

Even she has old ugly baggage.

Not the old Christy ... but the ....

... new studious Christy Ckark, serious glasses and all.
The Lieberals are going to change their name, we're wondering if they're starting with the looks of their MLAs? Christy donned these 'smart' glasses to complain about what the RCMP thinks of us BCers. Not much, evidently.

Premier Clark recently commented on the RCMP moving a sexual predator Staff Sergeant from Alberta to BC. She's not happy with an RCMP decision to transfer a disgraced Alberta Mountie to a British Columbia detachment. Clark said Friday she thinks RCMP Deputy Commissioner Craig Callens made a wrong decision in accepting the transfer of Sgt. Don Ray, who was reprimanded for having sex with subordinates, exposing himself to a co-worker and drinking on the job.
Sheeez, don't people usually get fired for that? Especially in this day of sexual harrassment on the job. So far Callens' promise at his takeover of BC to change everything rings hollow.

Aside from the NON leadership of Callens, Christy seems to be doing her usual non leadership grandstanding photo-op where she laments the iniquity of a decision or action, but does little about it and says there is nothing that CAN be done about it. Donning black framed glasses won't change anything, maybe she should go to very dark glasses, those incognito kind.
And maybe you too, are like me in wondering what the Deputy Commissioner's idea of leadership actually is? This is what Callens said Thursday -  "The decision to accept the transfer wasn't an easy one, but somebody had to show some leadership on the issue."
Yes, he actually said that? What planet is this guy from? Does he actually have any idea what leadership is? Did he have the authority to reject the head office direction? If he did he didn't have the guts to fight it.

In a time where the RCMP is being sued by their own RCMP officers FOR sexual harassment on the job, leadership would be to ARREST this Officer upon his entry into BC, and charge him with these crimes, THEN let the Feds sort it out.  Force Ottawa into a public confrontation.  Leadership is going out on a limb when you are right rather than accepting the old boy's winks and nudges. It makes me wonder what the Federal RCMP hierarchy actually thinks of British Columbians?

And don't forget that Liberal Attorney General Shirley Bond just signed the new 20 year RCMP contract without reading it or understanding a sentence of it, because they duped her into a monetary deal in their favor, and supposedly the RCMP Act allows for sexual predators to stay on the job! Do you believe this?

And if you are the Premier of our province, knowing this situation, and desperately trying to win over lost voters, blinkers are not the answer, even if they are disguised as studious glasses for image. You'd better study the mood of the people first, you're not fooling anyone into thinking you are smart, intelligent or anything but clever in the worst sense of the word. She might as well be wearing Dame Edna glasses.

Indeed, Bond and Clark both had a great banner regarding police in BC that read, 'Increasing accountability'.  They both need reading glasses.

This is all disgusting!

BC Liquor - Private Profits

So look at this in a simple way.
In BC, the government used to control all liquor sales in the province.
So if we, the BC Liquor Branch, (I say 'we' because it was something that we the taxpayers owned)  bought a case of whiskey or wine, shipped it into our own warehouses, distributed that booze to our own liquor stores, sold it to you the end buyer, then we as a government (read taxpayers) pocketed the profit dollars from that liquor, it was for the good of all the people of the province.

Say the wine cost a dollar a bottle. We built in all our costs, and sold the booze for a profit, say five dollars a bottle retail. If our costs of shipping, warehousing, merchandising and retail sales were one dollar, then our total cost for the bottle of wine was two dollars. After using two dollars of the five to buy the product and get it to you all over again, we made a nice net profit of one dollar. 20%.
That dollar profit went into the BC Government coffers. Which in most people's opinion, was a very beneficial enterprise. For all of us!

Now along comes Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell and he 'somehow'  decides that we need private liquor stores to sell this booze. Certain people from out of province were itching to get a share of our huge consumer market. Gordon is warned that the costs to the consumer must be higher through private-for-profit business, because every time the private store sells the same bottle of wine, they have to have a profit margin built into that sale. Not only that, but the taxpayer benefit of getting that dollar profit on every bottle sold in the province is now gone. Into the pocket of a privateer. All things being equal on the wine, the retail sale of that bottle of wine or whiskey seems to be about 10 to 30 percent higher now. All things equal except we now must build in a profit for the private seller.
Gordon Campbell did it anyway.

Now we have his protege, the BC Liberal Christy Clark, with her ex Gordon Campbell government following his intent; to further undermine the profits going into the government coffers in favor of more private dealers. So the Liberals have announced that: The Province will conduct a Request for Proposals to transfer the government-owned and operated liquor distribution branch warehouses in Vancouver and Kamloops to the private sector by 2015. 

The current BC Christy Clark Liberal party intends to 'modernize' the BC Liquor Distribution Branch or could that be read as fulfilling a Gordon Campbell promise to 'someone'?
Before the selling out of the retail market to whomever, the BC Liquor branch was among the world's largest purchasers of beverage alcohol. That buying power is lessened by other profiteers entering our market.

So we have yet more groups greedily moving into the high profit areas of what we do ourselves in BC. Feeding on our rich cream instead of developing the needed services and operations in the province on a long term basis.
We've lost BC Rail as a developing factor throughout our interior communities. We've lost once trusted BC Hydro as the guardian of our public rivers and power production to privateers from out of province. These utilities were owned by the people of BC and therefore not the property of any government to destroy or sell as a result of poor fiscal management! And BC Ferries and other provincial operations are being compromised by outsider management.  By selling out our assets for quick cash, the BC Liberals have in some cases, eliminated the potential of enduring benefits in perpetuity.

We do need to be more simplistic, in that we have to look out for ourselves first, and suspect any action by the BC Liberals or anyone else that excludes the public-taxpayer-voter from participating in the rightful benefits and largess of British Columbia.

Political situations every four years should not be the basis of building the province over the long term. Any branch of government contributing to the betterment of the people of BC should be left alone to flourish without interference. Any potential of selling off a BC asset should be put to a provincial referendum.

Any meddling is immediately suspect of some nefarious action going on, making us think that 'someone' is up to 'something'. Why?