Liberal Party.

[maple leaf]

There is actually at least one Liberal with some great suggestions.To bad all the time he was Gordon Campbell's chief of staff nobody listened to him and it looks like Christy Clark doesn't want his advise either.If they had taken the advise of #5 #6 they wouldn't be wallowing in the currant manure pile.


If the B.C. Liberals really want to show they are in touch with the times and are listening to British Columbians’ deep desire for change, they will use this convention to lay out a serious plan for real reform. They will show greater respect for political diversity and new regard for the value of opposition voices and parties, including in the B.C. Legislature. In the spirit of their “open convention,” I offer some initial suggestions:

1. Immediately recall the legislature to be accountable as a government and to use the precious time that power affords to advance a proactive agenda.

2. Change the standing orders to accord official party status and the resources it confers to any party that has two or more MLAs. Correct the glaring mistake that I helped the Campbell government make when it rigidly applied the current standing orders to deny Joy MacPhail and Jenny Kwan party status and its related funding and support resources in 2001. It was punitive, petty and hurt the government by suggesting an arrogance of power that the Clark government has done little to correct and much to exacerbate.

3. Repeal the discredited statutory requirement for balancing the budget on an annual basis. It was a well-meaning and philosophically admirable initiative that has proven to be unworkable when revenues fall by billions of dollars in a single year.

4. Commit to improving transparency about British Columbians’ net tax burden and tax competitiveness over time that includes the net impact of fees, licenses, premiums, tolls and permits on taxpayers at various income levels. The limited taxation “scenarios” that are shown in the budget for some “typical” types of families do not show the net impact of various forms of taxation that government imposes over time. Taxpayers deserve to know how the tax benefits that are extended on one hand are effectively clawed back and negated by hidden taxes, such as tolls, car insurance premiums, BC Hydro rate increases and other means that are used to flow hidden tax revenues to government and to finance capital projects.

5. Be honest and transparent about the true cost of government advertising, including the current multi-million campaign. Refer all major proposed government ad campaigns to an all-party committee that can scrutinize and approve or reject those expenditures, and make public that information as soon as any ad campaign goes public.

6. Invite Opposition MLAs to help review and improve draft government bills that are, in principle, supported by all parties. Create an all-party legislative review committee that vets and informs such non-contentious bills, to give all legislators a more meaningful role in law-making, to save precious debate time in the legislature and to strengthen legislation before it is introduced for first reading.

7. Allot a portion of each budget – perhaps $50-100 million — to the official Opposition to allocate as it sees fit, for its most important priorities in light of any given budget. Allow the Opposition real power that carries with it real accountability for making hard budget choices that help remedy perceived underfunding in critical areas and that enable the Opposition to better represent British Columbians’ interests.

8. Change the legislated set election date from the spring to the fall, effective for the next Parliament, in the fall of 2016. This would ensure that the annual budget is passed in an advance of an election and that the audited public accounts for the year past are released before people vote, to clarify and confirm the province’s true fiscal situation.

Martyn Brown



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/20 ... z2CoBtkvkL

[steven lloyd]

... in perspective, who's the bigger thief?

There is the crux of the question that only a few remaining Liberal apologists fail to grasp. Everyone else is now just laughing at the desperate attempts to try and paint Dix as something we should fear more than another four years of governance under this stagnant, corrupt and malfeasant cesspool. Not defending Dix but the more you guys go on about Skytrain tickets, et al, the more everyone else is reminded just how trivial all that is compared to what has happened and is still happening right now with these current clowns. We all know who the much bigger thieves are. You guys are funny.

[NAB]

Good post steven. Although while I have over the years accepted the concept of Liberal "apologists", perhaps not many of them really exist any more. Those who appear to be so now are more than likely simply "participants"????? Some fighting to maintain the status quo and their public trough position, ....while others fight to accomplish necessary change within the party before it's too late????

[flamingfingers]

^^ Nab, who do you see 'within the party' who

fight to accomplish necessary change within the party before it's too late????

They are mystical creatures as far as I can see.

[NAB]

Not so much mystical as simply folk (core members) who tend not to be as impatient nor make as much inconsequential noise publicly as the other group. I think that, in the end, their approach may be the successful one, but not likely in time for the spring. We should recognize too there are centre right wingers who will patiently just let the status quo crowd shoot themselves in the foot and limp away into oblivion. It takes time, sometimes a long time, to clean up and rebuild after such a crazy mess has been made of governance. Edit: It took over 4 decades and numerous governments and entrenched career bureaucracy and thinking to bring us to the unfortunate place we are at in BC. Good luck to anyone who thinks that can be changed quickly or easily. But most I believe now know that it must be changed. And turfing the Liberals is about the only option we (the electorate) have left to at least start that process in any meaningful way.

[twobits]

... in perspective, who's the bigger thief?

There is the crux of the question that only a few remaining Liberal apologists fail to grasp. Everyone else is now just laughing at the desperate attempts to try and paint Dix as something we should fear more than another four years of governance under this stagnant, corrupt and malfeasant cesspool. Not defending Dix but the more you guys go on about Skytrain tickets, et al, the more everyone else is reminded just how trivial all that is compared to what has happened and is still happening right now with these current clowns. We all know who the much bigger thieves are. You guys are funny.

Truth be known, I don't give a chit about Dix's skytrain ticket. It is as petty an argument as suggesting email exchanges between caucus emplyee's is grand theft. That was the point. Believe me when I say that if there was a viable alternative to the Libs, my vote would be there in a flash. I am no apologist for them. The difference between you and me (and nab) is that you are able to vote for the NDP just to get rid of the Liberals. I cannot go down that road,especially since they have released little information on how they might be a different NDP than that of the 90's. So unless they release some dramatic information on their transformation, and with Dix's far left socialist history I doubt it, I will be holding my nose and voting liberal. There was a glimmer of hope with the Cons but that window slammed shut.

[maple leaf]

Truth be known, I don't give a chit about Dix's skytrain ticket. It is as petty an argument as suggesting email exchanges between caucus emplyee's is grand theft.

Your right,that would be just as petty.
Is Dix loosing his sky train ticked as petty an argument as,suggesting that this is wrong.Because in your comparison you conveniently,for got to mention the main crux of the issue discovered in those emails.

What the disclaimer didn't disclose was that the website was conceived, planned and executed by legislature staff in Victoria, who used the taxpayer-financed government computer network to do the Liberal party's political dirty work.
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/taxpaye ... z2ChEOcEan


Because the ads and the campaign were not put together by some minor official working in a regional office (although even that would be totally unacceptable) but reportedly by Liberal-appointed government employees, right at the Legislature,
http://harveyoberfeld.ca/blog/

[NAB]

We have to remember too that actual membership in political parties accounts for only a very small percentage of the BC electorate, and those who participate actively in issue and agenda setting just a small percentage of even that group. The vast majority of the electorate, even though they naturally may be historically supporting to the right or left even though not members of any party, now have their brains engaged and are counting their fingers struggling with perhaps taking an unnatural (for them) position with their next vote. It is that factor as twobits testifies that may be the only thing that might serve to make the spring election something relatively close in terms of outcome, mainly due to pettiness and focus on playing lowball politics rather than concentrating on good governance and high quality decisions with balance. My read right now is a Liberal/Coalition runaway next election is unfathomable, and at the right time the NDP will serve up an agenda that will be hard for anyone but a hard core extreme right wing member and participant to ignore.

And we are talking here about the ability of unaffiliated millions of voters versus just affiliated thousands, in some case just affiliated hundreds or even less, all with very questionable leadership capability. Those millions of unaffiliated voters are for the large part walking a thin line as to which side they will fall on come election day, each having consideration for how they personally feel they have been treated over the past decade versus how they expect to be treated over the next 4 or 5 years by the next government. The divisions are glaring, not just across BC but across the country, even the world, and in my view the decisions each voter will take are now on a hair trigger, so it will not take much positive or negative to cause people to go against their inbred positions and switch. In my own case I feel I have enough information now to justify switching from voting right wing to voting left wing for the first time in my life. Not so much because the left wing approach so far are a bunch of attractive carrots I cannot ignore, ..but rather that the centre right coalition and their supporters in BC is a bag of apples that, in their entirety, have become incompetent and prolific manipulative self serving liars, rotten, and stinking to the core.

[Smurf]

Exactly, no one thinks a few emails mean that much other than employees breaking policy which is bad. It is not the emails but all the work that went into the material that required those emails taht is the problem. The highly trained staff that would be required to create the material on paid time. Time which we are paying. Do people not see the problem there. Emails not a real problem. Work to create emails (adds and campaign) a big problem. Much, much larger than a skytrain ticket.

[Alvis]

Truth be known, I don't give a chit about Dix's skytrain ticket. It is as petty an argument as suggesting email exchanges between caucus emplyee's is grand theft. That was the point. Believe me when I say that if there was a viable alternative to the Libs, my vote would be there in a flash. I am no apologist for them. ........

It is much MUCH different. It is not so much the emails but what they contained and what the employees were doing on tax payer time when they were supposed to be doing government work, not partisan campaign work. At the heart of the email scandal is BC Liberals were using tax payer funded public employees to produce BC Liberal campaign material. I do not want my tax dollar being used to re-elect people whom I see unfit to govern. That is a much different issue than whether or not Dix bought a train ticket and lost it or tried to get a free train ride. Dix was not using tax payer money as his personal fund for re-election campaign.

[Logitack]

what a tangled web the liberals get caught in, and what is worse they play dirty tricks on their own. no wonder the ndp and dix are keeping their mouths closed, they do not have to say a thing, the liberals are doing all the work for them... this is the free enterprise party, you know principled, family first party of christy.

is there nothing the liberals wont do, even to each other, to try to stay in power!

At convention, deJong re-enters the fray, and approaches Gill, telling him that Abbotsford-South was his, and not to worry about what anyone else said. It was a ‘done deal’ according to deJong. But when Gill pressed him for a more detailed explanation of how this could possibly be true, deJong brushed him off, and scurried away onto the convention floor.

Now who to believe. The Deputy Premier? Or Gill’s long-standing friend? It was a dilemma over which both Gill and Evans were angst-ridden.

Four days post-convention, Gill receives a phone call from BC Liberal regional organizer Bruce Burley, a former RCMP officer from Surrey, and someone not known for seasoned diplomacy. He insists on meeting Gill as soon as possible–but he tells him it must be alone, without Evans present.

When they meet, Burley produces documents which he demands Gill sign immediately, in an intimidation effort that allegedly lasted hours. He tells Gill that Abbotsford-South is out of the question, as it was going to Plecas, and, that Gill must sign off on the spot that he’s withdrawing or he would not be allowed to run for the BC Liberals–period. A despondent and exhausted Gill finally signs the documents, copies of which, to this day, have never been provided to him, despite repeated requests.
After Plecas’ announcement and the manufactured fanfare subsided, deJong, recognizing that his double-cross was out in the open started calling Gill frantically. Gill refused to take his calls, eventually breaking down two weeks ago and giving deJong an earful about loyalty and commitment.

He complains to deJong that the $36,000 he raised was now in the Plecas campaign’s hands and that the 1600 members Gill signed are “80% Indo.” He tells deJong that the elders in the temples won’t like being used like this, and how they will flock to support John vanDongen instead of Plecas. Gill also tells of how he will go to the temples himself and tell them how the BC Liberal Party preferred a politically inexperienced parachute candidate, to a long-time, local, honourable Sikh politician. He tells deJong, in abundantly raw terms, that “the temples will all know you people wanted a white, Christian professor instead of a brown, Sikh farmer.”

deJong, in full panic mode, begs Gill to calm down and that deJong would personally see to it that Abbotsford-Mission was his, even admitting that the optics of all this wouldn’t serve deJong’s ultimate goal of getting rid of John vanDongen. The message couldn’t be clearer: Here was deJong, once again manipulating the brown community in Abbotsford, while vanDongen is seen as supporting Basi and Virk, both Sikhs, who were also used and discarded by the BC Liberals.
Meanwhile RD Burley, contacted by the Abbotsford-South executive in protest over Plecas’ appointment without their knowledge, tells them that Darryl Plecas is their candidate, and if they didn’t like it, they could all leave.

Well, apparently, they took this advice to heart, and, as we all now know, resigned en masse yesterday, leaving Plecas with not a stitch of local riding support and both Abbotsford-South and Abbotsford-Mission highly likely in the loss column for the BC Liberals.

Most glaringly, John vanDongen, the target of deJong and Clark, will likely pick up thousands of votes from the BC Liberal-disrespected Sikh community in Abbotsford–the exact opposite of what the conniving and scheming Mike deJong wanted.

I tell you, it is stunning that the BC Liberals claim they want to govern for four more years: They can’t even run their own party with any kind of ethics or code.

http://alexgtsakumis.com/2012/11/21/exc ... candidacy/

[George+]

WOW!

Scratch Abby off the list of possible, Liberal wins.

[maple leaf]

Just another week at the office for Clark and her inept bunch.It's getting harder and harder to keep track of all the continued bungling ,malfeasant actions of these liberals .They come at you everyday, so much so that the one that happened two days ago gets forgotten about.Maybe that is their twisted strategy,get everyone spinning so ,that no one knows what is going on.Or maybe it is to desensitize us, by making everyone accept this as normal.


While the Kids Starve the BC Liberals Play Their Games!
Posted on November 21, 2012
Reply

The BC Liberal Past 24 Hrs.Started here.
A monster horror show of a day by anybody’s standards is just another day at the office for the BC Liberals.

To Wit : The Christy Clark team, as they were winding down their night yesterday were digesting the news that they were once again caught with their hand in the cookie jar regarding the Anti-Dix web-site. Likely as they were tucking themselves in, blackberries went off with the news that BC Liberal-South Abbotsford Abbotsford executive had resigned en masse over the forced nomination of candidate Daryl Plecas.

After tossing and turning all night I would imagine they awoke wondering what next.

What next would have been more stunning news from the land of BC Liberal booze where Gary Mason exposed the Rich Coleman collect a donation for a tax refund scheme.

Think that was the worst news of the day? Think again.

For Premier Christy Clark and her party who have spent her entire leadership career strumming the ole banjo and singing families first comes the news that BC owns a 14.3 per cent child poverty rate, the second worst in Canada.
The report says to cure child poverty the BC Liberal government must attack child poverty with the same gusto that they attack jobs.

Lets hope not. On November 2,2012 the job report was released indicating that BC had lost 11,000 jobs, more than any other province.

Just another day at the office for Clark and her inept bunch.
http://politicalinsider.ca

[Artofthedeal]

For Premier Christy Clark and her party who have spent her entire leadership career strumming the ole banjo and singing families first comes the news that BC owns a 14.3 per cent child poverty rate, the second worst in Canada.
The report says to cure child poverty the BC Liberal government must attack child poverty with the same gusto that they attack jobs.

These "reports" that come out from advocacy groups are such a load of bull - given the entire concept of what constitutes poverty is completely subjective in the first place. The system is totally gamed in that these groups are incentivized to make the situation sound as horrible as possible, as what they are really doing is grubbing for more and more government funds to fund their various agencies. They get no money if they say that BC government is doing a great job. The author doesn't even reference the study - and it also states a blinding contradiction - isn't one of the NDP's favorite talking points that the BC Liberals are responsible for the "highest" rate of child poverty? Now we're second worst? Who is worse? Does it matter? What a load of nonsense.

[maple leaf]

These "reports" that come out from advocacy groups are such a load of bull

.

The report was from First Call BC,yes an advocacy group.Does that make the numbers from statistics Canada invalid?

First Call BC, a child and youth advocacy coalition of more than 90 provincial organizations and 25 communities, says the latest Statistics Canada numbers peg B.C.’s child-poverty rate at 14.3 per cent, with the Canadian average at 13.7 per cent.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/ce ... z2CzD3Wpmk