Time for Hahn to shove off!

B.C. Ferries' CEO and president David Hahn sails off into the sunset at the end of this year taking with him his $2000 per day pension. As a parting gift to the citizens of B.C. he's left one last lump of coal in everyone's stocking. The Ferries are over 20 million dollars in debt and for every dollar they collect over 80 cents goes to service that debt (interest).

Friday, B.C. Ferries announced it would double the fuel surcharge for those riding the ferries between Vancouver Island and Greater Vancouver. The increase is to take effect Dec. 12.

This ferry rate increase will decrease the already declining ridership as people find other ways to get to and from the island.

The number of people utilizing the Nanaimo Airport has taken off. Almost 19,000 passengers went through the airport in August, a 9.4% increase from the approximately 17,000 last August. That trend continued in September with more than 15,000 people catching flights to and from Nanaimo, up almost 8% from September 2010.

Hahn claims the decrease in ridership is due to the strong Canadian dollar and the cost of fuel. However, with the dollar now below par with the U.S. dollar ridership has not rebounded. The high cost of ferries has discouraged families from visiting the island. Business commuters are now choosing air travel because the seaplanes and Nanaimo flights are quicker, more convenient and competitive with the return trip car rates.

The Liberals enacted Bill 14 in June to block increases in ferry rates but they're allowing the fuel surcharge increase to go ahead, thereby breaking at least the spirit of their own flaccid legislation.

It's time to scrap the Coastal Ferry Act and - I can't believe I'm writing this - return to the spirit of the vision W.A.C. Bennett had in 1958 when he understood that the ferries should be part of the provincial highway system. The Liberals by creating the quasi-private B.C. Ferries Service Inc.destroyed that vision.

The NDP is also partly to blame for the ferries mess. Since Nanaimo-Parksville MLA Judith Reid created the semi-private system in 2003 the rates have climbed at an alarming rate.

In just the last three years, according to fares listed on B.C. Ferries' web site, the price for a car and driver has increased $5.50 to $61.50 for a one way trip between Nanaimo and the mainland. And when the increased fuel surcharge charge kicks in on Dec. 12, it will cost $64.

Hahn epitomizes the profligate waste that has been the ferries system for years. With his fat pensions and enormous salary he's infuriated most citizens who recognize that anyone who ever ran a lemonade stand could probably do a better job than David Hahn.

In a press release issued last August by Ferries corp. it was stated they lost 5.5 million over April, May and June - a time when they should have been reaping the windfall of peak season travel.

Hahn's decisions have been appalling. Without consultation, a half billion dollars was spent on three new car ferries, built in Germany, while vehicle traffic reached an eleven year low.

And just when it couldn't get any more laughable, in August, in an effort to recoup huge losses, BC Ferries sent three security people and a trained German Shepard after a cyclist to ban him for not paying $2 for his bicycle. That's right banning him from ferry travel.

After the cyclist explained that BC Ferries own Experience Card allows cyclists to travel without paying the $2 bicycle fare, the Terminal Manager lifted the ban.

Ferry rates are obscene and the way they got there was through egregious mismanagement and poor marketing. At the very top of this steaming dung heap of debt is the bloated, overpaid, unaccountable corporate dung beetle, David Hahn - the symbol of everything that's wrong with the ferry system.

It may already be too late to turn the Ferries Corporation into a wholly publicly subsidized government entity, but one thing that isn't too late is for Santa to leave Hahn his own lump of gritty coal at the bottom of Hahn's cavernous, publicly purchased stocking.

All men created equal? Not so fast...

The recent unrest created by the Occupy Wall Street movement has given the media a spotlight on the issue of the widening economic gap between the 1% and the 99%. Inequality is the new klaxon's call. It's not fair cry the protesters. Give us equality! Redistribute the wealth. Tear down the fat cats.


Protesters insist something be done to right inequality and they say the solution needs to happen with government intervention to level the economic playing field. The rich must pay their fair share. However, the facts are that the 1% pay 40% of federal income taxes and the bottom 50%, in some years, have paid nothing. Yet, the rich must be made to pay more.


This argument may be appealing on the surface but Western Society, especially American society has never been about equality, except the equality under the law granted by the Constitution. The revolution that took place in America was about freedom and liberty. It also guaranteed that men would never be equal.


When Thomas Jefferson wrote the famous line, about all men being created equal he was referring to equality under constitutional law and not equality of expectations or rewards. The word "equal" doesn't appear until the 14th page of the Constitution. Jefferson was referring to an ideal.


In a letter to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson made it clear that he believed nature had blessed society with a precious gift, a natural aristocracy of virtue and talents to govern it. In his autobiography, a half decade before his death in 1826, he restated this idea of the aristocracy of virtue and talent which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society.

The revolutions of "equality" were the French Revolution (egalite), The Bolshevik Revolution, Mao's Revolution of '49, Castro's Revolution of '59, and Pol Pot's Revolution of 1975.



This was the Big Lie, of course, because what was supposed to be a liberation of oppression was in fact mass murder of the old ruling class and a rise of a new ruling class which was more barbaric and tyrannical than the regimes they replaced. Power to the people ends up as power to the party and its dictator. The most egalitarian society of the 20th Century was Mao's China and that regime managed to murder more of its own that Lenin and Stalin managed to do.



With freedom comes inequality. Gifts and talents are not distributed equally among men. Children come from various backgrounds. Not everyone has the same drive or ambition. In a society that rewards industry, and drive, and sacrifice and natural talent, there will always be those who rise above the conditions of others.


Political regimes that espouse equality for all are really after equality for all except the ruling class, which is really only after power. We will right the unfairness of society by taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor, but first...you must give us power.



This generation will be worse off than the last but it's not because of any radical shift in political ideology. There are economic factors at work like the shifting of native jobs to overseas countries where goods can be made cheaper and profits can be maximized. The politicians who cater to these corporations continue to dance with those who brung 'em.



The current crop of Wall Street occupiers, et al. are resentful, envious, and greedy. Their lots may be inferior but it's not because of the absence of equality as they understand it. It is because of their inability or unwillingness to work within a system for change. A system which guarantees the very freedoms and opportunities that allow them to enact their misguided kinderspiel.



Give us equality, but first give us power...I don't think so.

Scrapping long gun registry is bang-on

The long gun registry (LGR) created in 1995, has been a failure. This feel-good, politically correct legislation has not made our streets any safer nor has it stemmed the tide of guns flowing across our border. It's ignored by the rank and file RCMP and even supporters of the program admit the accuracy of the data is flawed. Initial cost of the registry was predicted to be four million dollars per year. The current cost of registering seven million long guns is 2.2 billion dollars. That's "billion" with a "b," folks.

It's claimed police use the registry data over 10,000 times per day, but the fact is computer activity does not denote usage. Of the 11,086 computer hits per day in 2009, 7,653 were for a name, 2,842 were for addresses, but a mere 19 were checking a registration certificate…of all types. The vast majority were due to hits automatically generated by a system designed to produce impressive statistics from irrelevant inquiries.

During Parliamentary hearings into the long-gun registry, the President of the Canadian Police Association, Charles Momy, admitted that less than 1 per cent of his association’s membership responded to a survey on the long gun registry. The reason is because cops ignore the data. They know it's flawed and no law enforcement officer is going to bet his life on the registry's accuracy. Police assume there will be firearms present in any police situation; to do otherwise would be foolhardy.

Many, but not all, police chiefs are on record as supporting the LGR. One has to remember, however, that the chiefs are political appointees and therefore subject to political influence. Again, the beat cop understands the reality of the LGR's ineffectuality. The crooks who use firearms to perpetrate violent acts of crime don't register their weapons with the LGR, regardless of whether they use "long guns."

Keeping the LGR's database is also a waste of money and a continuing infringement of personal rights protected under the Charter. Quebec is keen to keep its LGR data but the idea of some Quebec lower level civil servant bureaucrat fingering the personal data of an Albertan resident doesn't sit well with those who value personal rights and liberty. Maintaining a flawed, and essentially ignored registry would be throwing good money after bad.

Not everyone may enjoy Harper's current swagger afforded by the Conservatives' dominance of Parliament and the Senate but law-abiding, responsible, freedom loving Canadians are pleased that the long gun registry is finally being blown away.

Crushing naivete should evict Occupiers

By definition protests usually include specific demands from the targets of the vitriol. Quite often, there will also be evidence of alternate ideas. Occupy Vancouver is rife with the former but lacks any of the latter. As a matter of fact, what characterizes the movement most is the stupendous naivete of the occupiers.

Getting any specifics from this group is like nailing Jell-O to the wall, but the common thread is take, with absolutely no give. Free university tuition, forgiving of student loans, credit card reform (the elimination of all debts), and a commercial free CBC immune from government cuts are some demands that have bubbled to the surface of this steaming kettle of churning murky funk.

The reality that a few people have most of society's wealth is nothing new. It's always been this way. Everyone wants a better life. It's why we chew through the restraints each morning and get out of bed. Unfortunately, the process by which the protesters seek to tear down this system, ironically, would see the curtailment of many personal freedoms and rights.

I'm all for civic protest. After all, it's what killed the HST. It's what responsible citizens do when governments don't listen. Yes, unrestrained capitalism is a bad thing and we need look no further than some of the European countries teetering on the economic brink, but what does the legalization of drugs have to do with any of this? The idea that legalizing and setting up competition with the dealers would only enrich them further. Nobody in the tents gets that. Dummies!

Tear down the corporate structure but who's going to run the factories that employ the workers? Who's going to own the Starbucks that some of these schmucks work at? It's great to smoke dope in public, scream epithets at the rich, and dance on tellers' counters at the bank across the street but when it's time to roll up the sleeves of their flannel shirts and get to work, what will the distribution look like and where will the resources come from? They don't know - or aren't saying.

"Stop the war! The Canadian military are baby killers!" Really? Check the unbridled violence that emanates from the regions using the Qur'an as their manifesto. Set up your tents in Tikrit or Tehran and see what happens.

If the occupiers had focused on one issue like housing, or interest rates or the price of corn in Iowa, their cause would have resonated more with the very people they need to persuade, but this inarticulate belly-aching and inchoate petulance just pisses people off.

If these protesters really want to make a difference they have to first wash their hands, pull up their pants, turn their hats around, field-strip their blunts and join the system they hope to change. Democracy offers options but accessing those options requires discipline and effort.

Hey, you losers! Get off the Art Gallery lawn!

Seinfeld

In one of the Seinfeld episodes, George can't stop singing, "Master of the House" from Les Miserables and Jerry cautions him by explaining that the composer Schuman went mad from obsessing over one note. Well, I think I'm obsessed with the show itself.
Everything that happens in my life has already occurred in a Seinfeld episode - albeit, much funnier. My speech cadence is affected by the New York, slightly Jewish rhythms of George and Jerry. My outbursts resemble the manic antics of Kramer - even my approbations ring with lines like, "That's gold, Jerry. Gold!"

There are worse afflictions, I'm sure, but I fear people are starting to tire of my constant Seinfeldian references. I'm not sure why I'm posting this, other than to check the display properties of my first blog. Maybe it's because without some inspiration, "I'm speechless! I have no speech."