BC Parents dropping their Christy Clark $40 bribe checks right into the Teacher's strike fund kitty

They were at $12,000 a few hours ago the last time I looked, they're about to hit $15,000 now. 

This is BC parents giving to the Teacher's Strike fund, in denominations of $40.

The Christy Clark Liberals are throwing a farcical $40 a day bribe paid for with public funds at BC parents in a desperate attempt to deflect the well deserved blame for the teacher's strike.  The parents, in huge numbers, are then turning around and giving that money to the Teacher's strike fund.

The Christy Clark government is helping to finance the Teacher's Strike.

Can there be a more symbolic and perfect demonstration how utterly the Christy Clark government has lost this public relations battle? 

The Teacher's arbitration offer is just a twist of the knife, the government knows it can't win a fair, unbiased arbitration, or even come out even, and they can't explain to the public that they are rejecting arbitration because they can't live with a fair settlement.

All that's left to this war is shooting the wounded. 

Christy Clark's Liberals sacrifice BC children to protect Christy Clark's Liberals

School will start late in BC because the BC government wont agree to any deal with its teachers that doesn't give the government immunity from the Supreme Court for any consequences of its failure to bargain in good faith.

This government is sacrificing BC kids on the altar of protecting the BC Liberals from the consequences of their own misdeeds. Their blatant bad faith bargaining is going to end up costing millions of taxpayer dollars once the grievances finish winding through the arbitration process and they don't want to explain that to the voters.

When Fassbender proposed leaving grievances out of bargaining, and allowing the courts to settle the matter, he argued it would allow negotiations to focus on the key issues.

Iker, however, dismissed that proposal after Saturday’s talks.
“Does the government really expect that teachers would bargain away everything the B.C. Supreme Court has already awarded us?” he wrote in a release. “And what future decisions might bring?”

Get him off the Street!

Despicable swaggering bully Const. Taylor Robinson, who shoved a disabled woman to the ground in an unprovoked assault still thinks he did nothing wrong.

"It's important to know the officer has never acknowledged really any wrongdoing in shoving Ms. Davidsen and has continually held to the unbelievable position that she was grabbing for his gun," Bernstein said Tuesday.
"The video shows her hands nowhere near his gun," he said of the June 2010 incident. "It really is unbelievable he can continue holding to this position, but that's what he's doing."

If he doesn't think he did anything wrong that's basically a 100% guarantee he will do it again or something even worse if he thinks he can get away with it.

Like Digger Wasps

I was born in Alberta and I've lived most of my life here but I did spend a decade on the lower mainland in BC.

In BC the two main political groupings are the people, as represented by the NDP and what I'll call the Chamber of Commerce Tendency as represented by... well thats the thing.  It tends to burrow inside existing parties, hollow them out from the inside and ride them until their exclusive and enthusiastic servicing of the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else taints it beyond reclamation and then it is abandoned to wither and die as the Tendency moves on to its next host.. 

When I lived there it was animating the husk of the BC Social Credit Party - most of the kookiness of Social Credit had been shed in favour of cold blooded service of capital but  their last Premier Bill Vanderzalm mixed a sleazy televangelist grinning wing-nut vibe with an approach to ethics and finances that also brought televangelists to mind. After years of less flamboyant but still sleazy simmering scandals under Vanderzalm's predecessor Bill Bennett, Vanderzalm's toothy religiosity and nickle and dime sleaziness in his personal dealings with shadowy Hong Kong land developers sunk the Social Credit label completely. As the NDP took over the Chamber of Commerce Tendency  withdrew to lick its wounds.

And to slowly, over years inhabit the BC Liberal Party, hollow it out and animate it like a grotesque jerking corpse puppet.

Now that the zombie stink has gotten too much for the BC voter and the Liberals look like they are shambling to a political grave the 'Tendency' turns cold eyes to its next husk, the BC Progressive Conservatives.

 The B.C. Conservatives took 2.1 per cent of the vote in the 2009 election. But under the leadership of John Cummins, the party is tied in recent polls with Premier Christy Clark's B.C. Liberals in second place at 23 per cent.

Marshall said there are striking similarities between B.C.'s Clark and Alberta's Redford: Women in their mid-40s who returned to elected office after successful careers outside politics and became leaders of par-ties whose previous male leader had become too unpopular.

Both enjoyed brief bursts of popularity, added Marshall, followed by a decline in the polls as small-conservative voters shifted to an insurgent party from the political right.

Similarly, Redford was a red Tory - "certainly not the blue-est of candidates for the Alberta PC leadership" - while Clark was a federal Liberal, said Marshall.

Simon Fraser University political scientist Royce Koop agreed that Wildrose and the B.C. Conservatives share a common tack. "They are both consistently and openly principled conservative parties."
"There doesn't seem to be any attempt or desire to moderate that. When you are coming in from the right, as the Reform Party did on the federal scene, you sort of behave in a principled right-wing manner."
One difference, added Koop, is that Wildrose is poised to take power. Given the NDP's current strength in B.C., the most the B.C. Conservatives can hope for in next year's election is to replace the B.C. Liberals as the main party for B.C.'s anti-NDP forces.

In case there was ever really any doubt...

...That the BC Liberal Party is actually a far right party:

Former Treasury Board president and retired Conservative MP Stockwell Day says he's backing the provincial Liberals in British Columbia because any other choice would result in an NDP-led government.

In an interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio's The House, Day said he will campaign for Premier Christy Clark's party, but also believes the party's name should be changed to reflect the reality of its support base.

"I know for people living outside of B.C., it sounds strange," Day said.

"'BC Liberals' really is, if I dare I use the word, a coalition of the non-socialist vote that took place a number of years ago … That particular coalition by-and-large worked."

It doesn't really sound that strange if you know that the BC Liberals are just the latest camouflage suit that the right wing chamber of commerce tendency has worn in BC like the Social Credit Party before them.  They ride one of them until they are so tainted with extremism, dirty deeds and contempt for the public they become unelectable and then they change their names or abandon the husk for a new party shell like digger wasps animating a corpse.  The BC Conservatives are probably next.

If things go well for the federal NDP opposition, if progressives break for them and they actually look like they may form a government in four years, watch the federal Liberal Party that's left merge with the Conservatives rather than let progressives form government.

My Mommies help me with my homework

Arbitrary school rankings designed by the Fraser Institute to promote an anti public school privatization agenda?  Absolutely worthless.

Having a school for cultist polygamist kids get a perfect score?  Absolutely priceless.

A school for children in the polygamous commune of Bountiful, B.C. is among the highest ranking on the 2011 Fraser Institute Report Card. 

Bountiful Elementary-Secondary scored a perfect 10 mark. 

It tied with 12 other schools, mostly private schools in the Vancouver area, that also achieved perfect 10s. 

The Fraser Institute rates 875 public and private elementary schools throughout B.C. based on 10 key indicators using data from province-wide testing, known as the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) test. FSA tests are mandated by the B.C. Ministry of Education.
Fraser Institute spokesperson, Peter Cowley, said not much is known about what made Bountiful so successful on FSAs. 

“With regard to what techniques they may have used or how they taught in math, for instance, between kindergarten and grade 4, all those things may be interesting but we don’t have any long term record of success yet,” Cowley said. 

Jane Friesen, the director of Simon Fraser University's Centre for Education Research and Policy, said people should look at these rankings carefully. 

“It’s simply telling you how is a particular cohort of students in a school doing in a particular year. I think we have to be careful to not interpret those results as a measure of the effectiveness of the school and I think that’s where the real issue comes in,” she said

The Self Destructing BC Liberals

Meanwhile, the freshly fired Mr. Bennett – his cellphone and cabinet credit card cancelled before he could hop on a flight to Victoria – arrived in the capital for an extraordinary 35-minute gathering in which he described what it was like to serve under Mr. Campbell for the past decade.


“He’s not a nice man,” Mr. Bennett said.


The Kootenay East MLA said Mr. Campbell has reduced members of his caucus to tears, and recounted an incident when he was left wiping the Premier’s spittle off his face after Mr. Campbell leaned close to yell at him.
Mr. Campbell is a bully whose intimidation tactics have created a government caucus and cabinet that suffers from “almost a battered-wife syndrome,” said Mr. Bennett.


“I’m tired of the bullshit that goes on in politics and I’m really tired of the way that Gordon Campbell thinks that he can just run on people,” he said.


“I’m a tough guy, I can take it. But I’ve seen him do it to other people in caucus.”

I'm getting flashbacks to the last days of Bill Vanderzalm.  He brought the BC Social Credit party down with him through scandal, extremism and completely losing the public trust.
 
With Gordon Cambell though, the level of public loathing is really quite remarkable.  He's despised as a liar, a bully and an arrogant autocrat with a contempt for the public.  After announcing it only weeks after the election where they denied any plans to introduce it, nobody believes the Campbell and the Liberals weren't planning to bring in the HST even while they were denying it. 
 
There's a meme developing, promoted by Gary Mason in the Globe and Mail, among others that Campbell has been mistreated by the public, and the hatred and opprobium he's received is deeply unfair and part of a trend that discourages qualified people from wanting to serve.
 
On the contrary, I suggest that the contempt and disgust Campbell is held in by the BC public is a healthy sign of an engaged and socially concious population rejecting a lying, contemptuous bully who treats them like easily bribed children who can be convinced to believe transparent lies. 
 
That's a good thing.

"You turned down my bribe, so you can all suck it."

Hands up anybody surprised.

"In order to ensure the Executive Council has maximum flexibility to set government's economic and fiscal agenda, cabinet has decided to suspend the planned tax reduction." Campbell said in a statement.

Return of the Hospital Gulag?

It's the old Soviet model: Opposition to the State is by definition, insane. Therefore the proper place for political dissidents is jail or mental hospitals receiving... treatment.

Welcome to Canada in 2010:

Murray Dobbin writes about The BC Attorney General's argument for why a non-violent environmental protester should be imprisoned practically indefinitely:

"When an accused has been convicted of a serious crime in itself calling for a substantial sentence and when he suffers from some mental or personality disorder rendering him a danger to the community but not subjecting him to confinement in a mental institution and when it is uncertain when, if ever, the accused will be cured of his affliction, in my opinion the appropriate sentence is one of life."

The implications are unnerving. If you are someone prepared to fight for social justice or environmental stewardship the courts could start treating you as someone with a mental disorder that needs to be (forcibly?) cured. In short, democratic activism by citizens will be seen as pathological.

(There is a rally in support of Betty Krawczyk at Criminal and Appeals Court, 800 Smithe Street, Vancouver, B.C. at 9:30 on Sept 22nd.)

Within hours of hearing about this draconian government assault on civil liberties, I got a link to a story about some planned additions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in the U.S. If that title doesn't scare you just on its own, one of the additions to the definition of crazy should.

According to Mark Nestmann -- on his financial advice blog -- one of the new mental illnesses is:

" ...‘oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).' DSM defines ODD as ‘an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior toward authority figures.' Symptoms include losing one's temper, annoying people and being ‘touchy.'

While diagnosis of ODD "victims" focuses on children, there's no reason why ODD can't exist in adults. Indeed, ODD can evolve into "conduct disorder" (CD), which DSM defines as ‘wherein the rights of others or social norms are violated."

As Nestmann points out there is a long and sordid history of the state using psychiatry for political repression. First they tried to brand political activists as terrorists following 9/11. Now we are mentally unbalanced. What's next?

To my mind 'hostile disobedience' is virtually the definition of adolescence, but soon it might be considered a mental illness that can be used to justify imprisonment or enforced treatment - for youth or adults.

If this doesn't scare the crap out of you, you have ice-water flowing through your veins Batman.

UPDATE: Become a 'troublemaker' to the government and your private medical and psychiatric records will be circulated widely among bureaucrats and government officials dealing with you.

Ridiculous double standard!

Women's hockey team members compelled to apologize for celebrating their Olympic win with beer and cigars.

The Canadian women’s hockey team apologized Friday for their post-victory party, which featured beer and cigars, moving back onto the ice at Canada Hockey Place.

Photos of several players celebrating about an hour after their 2-0 gold-medal victory over the Americans made their way onto the internet late Thursday. That angered Gilbert Felli, the IOC’s executive director of the Olympic Games, who was quoted as saying that, “I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values.” He also promised an investigation.

“We realize we should have kept our celebrations in the dressing room,” national team veteran winger Jayna Hefford said Friday. “It was well after people had left the building. We had done it before and some of our favourite memories are going and sitting on the ice and getting a picture by a logo or taking in the atmosphere of the arena once everybody leaves.

How Mr Felli could manage that pompous little speech with that enormous stick rammed up his ass I'll never know.

Can we expect a huge public scandal if the men's team tip a few beers after their last game? I suspect that might be a the mild end of celebrations that may be more Fellini's Satyricon than beer and cigars on home ice.

After the absurdly lame justifications for refusing to allow women to ski jump (and reveal the embarrassing fact that there are female jumpers with better distance than the top men.) it seems more and more that the men at the top echelons of the Olympics have serious issues with women and particularly women athletes.

UPDATE: What CathiefromCanada said!

About Friggin' Time

The RCMP will cease the policy of investigating their own officers for allegations of wrong doing. Going forward they will refer such cases to outside police forces wherever possible.

The old self investigation model was used in the Ian Bush case and ruled that it was possible to shoot a prisoner in the back of the head in 'self defense'.

The Mounties will cease investigating their own in cases of police-involved death or serious injury, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott has announced.

Civilian oversight bodies, where they exist, will be called in to look at what went wrong and whether to press charges. In provinces where such bodies don't exist, other police forces will be drawn upon. In the Far North, Mounties will have to continue to investigate their colleagues because so few other police forces exist there.

There was 'extreme weather' before the Olympics too

The Campbell government encourages observers not to draw any unreasonably logical conclusions from the timing.

Internal government documents show the B.C. government is drafting legislation to force homeless people into emergency shelters during extreme winter weather, according to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

But legislation would will not likely stand up to a Charter of Rights challenge according to BCCLA executive director David Eby, who obtained the government documents and released them to the media.

The B.C. government has not commented publicly on the notes released by Eby, nor confirmed its planning to introduce such a law.

Eby believes the legislation may be just another tool to get homeless people off the street during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver in February.

"The timing is perfect for the Olympic Games," Eby said Monday. "You want to talk about how extreme weather will be defined? Well, typically its defined as three to five days of rain in a row. Well, that's February in Vancouver.

"It will be a great way to get the homeless — force the homeless — off the streets, and get them out of the view of visitors for the Olympic games."

Extending sympathies

This is a condolence post to my friends in the BC blogosphere. Some of you may know that before Calgary and a brief sojourn up north I lived in the lower mainland for over ten years. I regularly check in on more BC bloggers than from any other province besides my own and they all have my sympathies today.

Trust me folks, I know what it's like feeling like you live in occupied territory, at least you actually have an opposition big enough to be an opposition.

I'm not interested now in Monday morning quarterbacking - which will doubtless focus on the carbon tax. Of course, following the standard of the reporting on the controversy so far and taking their cue from BC's hard right Canwest corporate media domination, the focus will still be on the politics and the optics and ignore the substantive arguments about efficacy and equity of carbon tax VS cap and trade. Like most people I'm inclined to think we need both but I do believe this was a good faith policy position.

Shouting out to some of my favorite BC bloggers Rossk, Allison, Northern BC Dipper, courage, and cut the cards. The only slim consolation I can give you; I suspect governments that infuriate you produce more blogging than a government you agree more than disagree with.