Public Safety Minister treading on dangerous ground

Every political big top seems to have one clown that's a little out of control. The Federal Conservatives' recent recalcitrant Bozo is Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews.

Vic wants to enact legislation that will allow government and the Polezei to probe people's privates in a way not seen since Orwell's 1984, Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany. The so-called Lawful Access bill is chilling in its implications and astounding in its scope.

The legislation would require telecommunications companies to hand over personal information of customers, called basic subscriber information, to police without a court order.

In addition to name, address, phone number, email address and name of service provider identifier, the bill will require companies to hand over the Internet protocol address. The opposition parties and Canada’s privacy commissioners say this will allow police to build a detailed profile of people, including law-abiding citizens, using their digital footprint — without any judicial oversight.

The proposed bill will also require Internet service providers and cellphone companies to install equipment for real-time surveillance and will create new police powers designed to access the surveillance data. This means police can order a telecom company to preserve data for a specified period, but must first obtain a warrant to read the actual content.

When the outrage to this ridiculous invasion of privacy reached critical mass, a petulant Toews accused those against the bill of siding with child pornographers (!) Really Vic? Privacy commissioners, members of Parliament, prominent academics, respected journalists, civil libertarians and decent members of the public who oppose this legislation are pro kiddy porn? Questioning the ramifications of legislation does not automatically make one sympathetic to those who exploit children.

Vic, Vic, Vic...such clumsy politics, such puerile polemics. Why not just label everyone resisting the 3 a.m. jack boot on the front door as Poopie-Heads and blast them with a squirt of seltzer.

Oh the irony! Wasn't this the government who just got rid of the intrusive gun registration legislation? Victor, don't you know that what we have in the “lawful access” legislation is a bill that violates the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens, while leaving criminals easy ways to avoid it entirely. Doh!

To the Conservatives credit most of their M.P.'s are distancing themselves from this dystopian proposal and even Harper is quoted as saying, "...we will ensure that Parliament fully studies this bill and that private life is also protected in this regard," which is in effect, the political equivalent of slamming a whipped cream pie in the Toews clown face.

Toews is not acting like a leader. He's acting like a narrow-minded, short-sighted Philistine who preys on people's fears and works their guilt for his own ends. Thankfully, he's now on his clown tricycle back-pedalling furiously out of the spotlight.

I leave you with another quote from a historical clown, albeit one who more resembles Stephen King's Pennywise than the innocuous Bozo:


"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. " -Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ. Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403.


Sign the petition to stop online spying!

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Christy...

Premier Christy Clark decided to forego the formality of a throne speech to outline her party's plans for the year. Instead she took the opportunity to return to familiar territory and use the Bill Good Show as her soap box. Some have joked that Good became Christy's ersatz lieutenant-governor but to his credit, Good tried to hold Clark accountable - at least twice.

The entire exercise was a waste of time and filled with Christy's dodging and weaving, her nervous giggling and her empty platitudes.

Technically, since the legislature was prorogued, there was no need for a formal throne speech but nevertheless the premier has an obligation to inform all citizens of its plans in a neutral environment. Not all B.C. citizens could access the Bill Good show, and her former employer's flag ship was hardly neutral.

Familiar themes soon emerged from Christy's answers to Good's queries: It's not her fault. It was the previous government's policy; it's too late; it's too difficult to change; it's complicated; do people really want Dix? This broadcast should have come with air sickness bags.

Instead of offering what Clark was so quick to tout to the voters as her "fresh" approach to a moribund government, she made it clear to the listeners that she had nothing new to offer and that she was still stuck in the Liberal morass.

Clark tried to take credit for initiatives she had absolutely nothing to do with like the eight billion dollar shipbuilding contract (an essentially apolitical process), the family law collaborative divorce change (she was at 'NW), yet she tried to deny responsibility for things she was guilty of (see Community Living B.C. cuts) such as the gutting of the CLBC which started while Christy was Deputy Preem.

She was unable to answer how an internal review of recent community service cuts to the developmental handicapped could happen if her government didn't even know how many clients were waiting for help. Her response? "Exactly."

Her lame excuse for the glacial speed at which the HST is being handled was ridiculous, and she couldn't explain why it took 19 months for an HST freedom of information request to be released, despite her insistence that her government was a more "open" one.

When Good asked her why the delays for trials was longer than ever despite more judges and more money thrown at the problem, Clark replied, "I don't know..."

More than once an exasperated Bill Good exclaimed, "But you're the premier!"

Her most egregious bafflegab, however, occurred when she was asked by a caller about the unfairness of the Port Mann bridge toll. The caller explained that carpooling with a friend involved travelling over the Port Mann every day but since his partner was dropped off before the bridge he wouldn't be paying the extra $1500 dollars a year out of his disposable income, despite riding on the Highway 1's improved infrastructure.

"That was the previous government's policy," protested Christy. "But that was YOUR government!" a frustrated Good ejaculated.

Clark's unwillingness and inability to deal with the unfair tolls will come back to haunt her. Suburban communities, especially south of the Fraser will seethe with resentment over the tolls, while the Sea to Sky and North Shore bridges continue to be free for the privileged on their way to Whistler.

The answer, clearly, is to either eliminate tolls or make them more equitable. Vancouver could follow San Francisco's example when it comes to tolling. That region implemented $1 tolls on all seven state-owned bridges back in 1988 to pay for administration and maintenance costs of the infrastructure. The tolls have since risen to $5, with $3 paying for critical seismic upgrades to all bridges, and another $1 increase approved by voters to pay for a package of transportation improvements including BART extensions, new express buses, highway upgrades, and pedestrian and cycling facilities.

Adopting a similar model here would raise enough to invest in future transit, pay for a new Pattullo, create a third SeaBus, expand West Coast Express, and expand transit to UBC and Surrey just for starters. With this tolling model commuters would also think critically about their travel and routes creating fewer congested roads.

What isn't going to work is the pig-headed refusal by Christy and the Sycophants to ignore the tolling issue. Commuters' personal radiators will continue to boil over as they pay to sit in the snail trail of daily commutes.

Don't know if newly elected Diane Watts would abandon her job as mayor of Surrey to take over the Liberal leadership but if Christy's popularity continues to plummet or if (read "when") she loses the next election, watch for Watts to  roll up her sleeves to tackle the Liberal mess.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Christy, it tolls for thee.

eDucation vs. Erudition: Quo Vadis Millenials?

"[Why do] teenagers and 20-year-olds appear at the same time so mentally agile and culturally ignorant. Visual culture improves the abstract spatialization and problem solving, but it doesn’t complement other intelligence-building activities. Smartness there parallels dumbness elsewhere. The relationship between screens and books isn’t benign. As “digital natives” dive daily into three visual media and two sound sources as a matter of disposition, of deep mental compatibility, not just taste, ordinary reading, slow and uniform, strikes them as incompatible, alien. It isn’t just boring and obsolete. It’s irritating. A Raymond Chandler novel takes too long, an Emily Dickinson poem wears them down. A history book requires too much contextual knowledge, and science facts come quicker through the Web than through A Brief History of Time. Bibliophobia is the syndrome. Technophiles cast the young media-savvy sensibility as open and flexible, and it is, as long as the media come through a screen or a speaker. But faced with 100 paper pages, the digital mind turns away. The bearers of e-literacy reject books the way eBay addicts reject bricks-and-mortar stores."
               -The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerline

Fibbing Liberals at it again with Dix attack ads

The Liberals are obviously worried about the possibility of the NDP forming the next provincial government and have created ads attacking past NDP policies in general and Adrian Dix in particular. 
Ironically, when they tried the same kind of attack ads against BC Conservative Leader John Cummins it resulted in a jump in the polls for the Conservatives. 
While not outright lies, the shots taken at Dix involve some selective use of statistics to misrepresent such things as interprovincial migration, job growth, taxes and NDP promises. Nothing can be verified in Clark's weasel ads and if examined closely they collapse like a cheap tent.

False Claim #1: Dix was top advisor to NDP premiers. This will come as crushing news to NDP politicians like Moe Sihota, Joy McPhail, Doug MacArthur and Tom Gunton. The Liberals go to great pains to denigrate the NDP records of two decades ago and they want to make sure they tie Dix to the negative characterizations. Anything to avoid being accountable for their own dismal record and loss of public trust.

False Claim #2: BC under NDP "dead last" in job growth according to Progress Board. These words don't appear in the report and the ad misuses the rate of change in the job to population ratio. Stats Can annual labour force survey data show BC unemployment of 1.5775 million in 1991, 1.9 million in 2001 and 2.3 million in 2010. That means that the annual average compound job growth was 2% from '91 to '01 and 1.8% from '01 to '10. BC experienced lower job growth in 2011.

One of the first things Clark did was to get rid of the Progress Board. It's 2011 report showed BC to be in better shape in 2000 than in 2010. BC had a better ranking in every year from 1990 to 2009 than it did in 2010.

False Claim #3: NDP policies caused mass exodus according to BC Stats. Clark's ad asserts that 50,000 left for other provinces in search of work between 1998 and 2001 according to BC Stats provincial migration flow data. However, the data Clark uses don't show why people leave or come to BC in any given year. Upon closer examination the data show that tens of thousands of people flowed both ways. The numbers fluctuate each year. BC's population had an average annual growth rate of 2.2% between 1991 and 2001 and 1.3% between 2001 and 2010.

False Claim #4: BC Liberals are big tax cutters for average families. Clark's negative ad claims, "Dix wants to raise taxes again." The actuality is that the Liberals have shifted where they get their revenue in a kind of shell game. The cuts they implemented for personal income tax have been considerably offset by increases in more regressive provincial taxes and fees. A family of four making $60,000 per year pays the same MSP premiums as does the same size family making ten times more.In 2000 the MSP premium for a family of three or more was $864 per year; effective Jan. 1, 2012, the family MSP premium tax increased to $1,536 per year, an increase of 78%.
MSP premiums weren't the only taxes to claw back income tax cuts. Tables published in the Ministry of Finance budgets compare provincial and federal taxes by various benchmark families.

The B.C. Progress Board's 2011 report indicated that in terms of real personal disposable income per person, B.C. ranked third amongst the provinces from 1991 through 2007, slipping to fourth from 2008 through 2010.

On the Bill Good show recently Dix said he'd return corporate taxes to 2008 levels, something Clark promised if the voters agreed to keep the HST. Dix also said he was reluctant to consider raising personal income taxes. He said any tax changes would be disclosed before the May 14, 2013 election. An unprecedented disclosure.

False Claim #5: Dix is committed to "billions in new spending." They claim Dix is the source for that figure and have a bunch of dates next to his name. Nowhere on either the website that features the negative ad or on the Liberal caucus or party website can anyone find a list of promises that add up to and support their assertion.
In the speech Dix gave at the NDP's December convention he talked about the financial challenges facing the province and that an NDP government would be limited to what they could accomplish during a first term. He has promised to explain how planned commitments will be financed.

The Iowa Caucus: Random Thoughts...

Mitt Romney: He might win but I hope he doesn’t because then we’re in for crushing boredom for months. I always like to follow the money and Mitt’s got the moolah. He’s still my pick for the GOP nominee because he looks like a senior citizen Ken doll.

Newt Gingrich: Always thought The Newt was the sharpest of the bunch, but I’m wondering if he won’t be crushed by all the baggage he’s carrying: the treatment of his former wives, the censure and fines imposed upon him by a Republican House, and collecting millions for “history lessons” with Freddie Mac. He’s also been bloodied by the negative attack ads fired from the pro-Romney camp. Here’s hoping he shows better than fifth for no other reason than the entertainment value he’ll provide.

Rick Santorum: If he wins or even comes second/third the media might actually have to pay him some attention. Rick’s in tough because he hasn’t got a whole lot of money. If he’s judged a “serious candidate” by a possibly good showing, the attack ads will begin.

Ron Paul: I like Ronny because he’s almost as cranky as I am. I also like some of his ideas even though they’re a bit out there. What’s wrong with bringing all the troops home, eliminating the IRS and abolishing the income tax? Too much racist and homophobic baggage here, too, I’m afraid. He doesn’t have a chance in New Hampshire and even the GOP establishment is horrified by his foreign policy. Best he could do tonight is second. Paul's poor chances at a GOP nomination are unfortunate because he's the closest thing America has to a third party.

Rick Perry: The debates hurt this guy, big time. He seems lost outside of Texas. The national stage has been less than kind. I think the voters have decided he’s not ready for the presidency and his donations have been reduced to a trickle.

Michele O’Bachmann (that’s what Letterman insists on calling her): She’s lost her Iowa chairman to the Paul camp. She’s running bare-bones and she stuck too long with some of her goofy positions like the cancer vaccine causing mental retardation issue. She’ll have a poor showing in Iowa since they’ve never endorsed a woman candidate or sent one to the governor’s mansion. She’ll have her hands full just saving her House seat in Minnesota.

Jon Huntsman: He’s looking at New Hampshire instead of Iowa already and says he’s putting some of his own money there. This guy has received all kinds of positive spin from the pundits but for some reason he’s never connected with the voters. I predict he won’t break out of single digits in N.H. and will be history.