Comments and news about "public games"
... home thoughts from home, or, of the world's passing parade, and what I think you should know about the parade's marchers...
The Canuckstan Chronicles: September, 2004
Preparing for Winter Olympics 2010 - and other items
It's always grimly amusing, as well as faintly disgusting, to watch political revenge play itself out. Witness the latest public investment hijinks in Vancouver. Richmond gets the 2010 Olympics ice arena, at Burnaby's and SFU's expense, since the original idea involved putting the facility at SFU, to complement its jock programs. This irrational change of plan provides a retaliatory two-for: Burnaby's fiery mayor, Corrigan, is punished for his outspoken and sensible opposition to a transit train down Cambie Street rather than on Arbutus, and at the same time Richmond's flaccid Mayor Brodie has another reason to claim his watery, chaotically developed town needs a transit train in the first instance, which it doesn't.
The Olympics scandals have only just begun, as have these venal acts of
political vengeance. As a consquence, the 2005 election should be a real
barn-burner, and by 2010 the political recrimination and infighting will be extremely
torrid. It will be "our time to shine." as the BC Government propaganda ads on
TV suggest. In embarrassment. But then, Canuckistani governments have no blush
glands. And Canadians are too deaf and ignorant to notice.
The Canuckstan Chronicles: July, 2004
Canadians live in a dream world. They think they have the best health care for the dough they spend, while objective studies place Canadian health care 30th, and clearly middle class Americans with jobs have the finest medical and research facilities in the world. Canucks think they live in a democracy, while election expenditure laws and phony hate crime legislation muzzle free speech. And the Liberal Party rules on. Canadians consider themselves serious players on the world stage, and peacekeepers, while their government provides sanctuary for terrorists and starves its armed forces into a lame joke. Many view the CBC as bastion of civilization, rather than seeing it for the neo-communist propaganda machine it is. Measuring their image as a distaff of Americans, Canucks propagate and nurture a large and foggy cloud of self-delusion about themselves and the world in which they live. Here's five arch examples of Canuckstan society at work.
- The Canadian Open Tennis tournament opened in Ontario in late July in great
triumph. The event boasted a new $38 million facility. The event promptly fell behind schedule because of rain. No roof. Plenty of box seats for VIP's and government parasites, though. Meanwhlle the colour commentators describe the rare bit of action so amateurishly that one can't help wondering whether the whole effort is satire on bad sports-casting.
How Canuck. - Night clubs in Vancouver are ablaze in gunfire, as casualties mount in bar brawls that now frequently involve handguns. While the federal government has spent more than $1 billion on firearms registration, any piss-ant coward can readily buy a sidearm and carry it about in case he's offended. Meanwhile hunters and farmers face threats from the cops for not registering properly. The lame cops' major function a good deal of the time seems more concerned with chasing down Canadians using satellite TV systems that are not properly regulated by the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) , or prosecuting those who violate "Canadian values." (see following)
- A Montreal radio station loses its licence upon renewal because its programming is "offensive" and "contrary to Canadian values," according to the CRTC, a thought police organization that attempts to control TV and radio in Canada. Who complained? A mere handful. Who likes the programming? Thousands. So 50,000 station supporters took to the streets in protest against the loss of the station. Apparently the station was disrespectful toward governments, individuals and commonly held prejudices and superstitions. Off the air it goes. Meanwhile those Canadians outside the broadcasting orbit of the station jawn in the face of agitation for support for the station from much of the popular press. "Principle? What's that in Canadian?" "When they came for the gypsies, I didn't say anything, because I wasn't a gypsy..."
- The federal Liberal government announces it plans to buy the wrong helicopters for billions. In 1993, the Liberals paid out $500 million in penalties to cancel a helicopter deal done by the previous Conservative government. It was a matter of political spite, a corrupt Chretien government admitted. Now, eleven years on, at a multi-billion higher price tag, the Martin Liberals are going to buy the whirlybirds, but they are the wrong ones for modern military use. However, this particular choice of chopper will maximize job creation in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. That sound you hear is the joyful shrieks of patronage pigs, this country's most pampered political domestic animal east of the Rockies.
- In the Vancouver area, a Maple Ridge mayor suggests at a regional government meeting that a contentious rapid transit project called the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver (RAV) train, go to a referendum of the region, since all levels of government will put up hundreds of millions if this boondoggle were ever built. At present RAV is in tender, the only two "competing" firms being Quebec-based firms closely connected to the federal Liberal party, and in shakey financial straits in spite of billions of taxpayer subsidies over the years. The eight members of the Greater Vancouver Finance Committee meeting, upon hearing of the mayor's suggestion, vote 6-2 to turn it down. The reasons? Citizens are too ignorant. They will not vote in sufficient numbers to make the referendum meaningful (actually referenda get better turnouts than do municipal elections), and such an idea would violate representative democracy ("they voted for us, didn't they?") I hear the pigs snuffling again...
Stay tuned for more bulletins from the world's richest Third World tyranny.
The two Johns: will they beat up on business and ruin us all?
[USA Presidential election campaign - John Kerry and John Edwards]
Canadians interested in capitalism and prosperity know that John Kerry and John Edwards have had much unkind to say about NAFTA and open borders for foreign investment. Kerry spoke of "Benedict Arnold&quo;t companies that move plant offshore and kill Yankee jobs. Edwards crowed and cawed on and on about job creation and preservation, class war and of union righteousness in demanding high wages in America's competing countries. Comparative advantage? Relative efficiencies? The record of trade versus protectionism in creating widespread wealth? Neither candidate seemed to want to know. If the democrats win, will these two apparent luddite ignoramouses throw off Bill Clinton's and George Bush's constrained, erratic but still mostly positive, pro-trade and open investment efforts, and become protectionist?
That would be bad news for Canadian lumber industries and farmers, to say nothing of scaring the bejesus out of Ontario manufacturing unions in spite of the fragile Auto Pact, our auto free trade pact that precedes NAFTA by generations. In fact, we all should quiver. The U.S. government has always been a bit of a hypocritical whiner about open trade, perhaps more than have most countries. However, political pressures push all national governments into breaking agreements, fighting arbitration decisions, and simply refusing to abide by verdicts of mutually appointed referees in trade disputes. Americans have done this with wheat and wood from Canada, and with steel from Europe and Asia, and many other items. Eventually though, they come around, since they know open borders enrich everyone. In fact, open borders account for all the richest countries' prosperity more than just about any factor. But denial is ubiquitous, evidently for home-rube appearances.
Corrupt human nature means nobody plays fair consistently, but trade pacts with recourse mechanisms do eventually create mutual prosperity that free trade and investment inevitably brings. Since the late 1940's the world has headed inexorably toward open commerce and investment free flight. For good reasons. Trade is war insurance as well as prosperity-generating. Trade creates democracies and forces countries to sanctify private property, rule of law, stable banking systems with international financial co-operation. Trade creates a world-wide demand for communications, so we get to know each other and articulate our interdependence. Trade imposes market discipline on companies, businesses of all sorts and on resourceful capitalist-employees, while creating jobs even in transitory times ten times faster than new trade and commerce adjustments destroy them. Every economic surge comes with open trade. The Four Horsemen feed their steeds on embargoes and sharpen their swords on protectionism.
However, old ignorance seems to always be just around the corner, as pols run for office riding on a tattered, fetid old faded hobby horse consisting of simple-minded and self-destructive home trade and "job creation," that most ironic of terms. Kerry and Edwards are talking like stupid fools on the subject of economics and finance. For now. The more intelligent of us on both sides of the border hope they are mere deceitful hypocrites who will toss their protectionist ideas in the dustbin from which they came. . If they are not, and do not, Canada and the rest of the world, including the U.S., will be in for a rough recession within two years of a Kerry - Edwards ascendency. Nice smiles. But are they dangerously dense?
04.07.10
RAV III: The Second Resurrection
Vancouver-Richmond Rapid Transit RAV Line 2004
As Translink's Board prepares to thumb back the trigger for its third round of Russian roulette, it's perhaps timely to consider the outstanding features of the Richmond Airport Vancouver Olympics train project.
Costs: while estimates vary wildly, it appears costs are a function of money available from various levels of government. As a number of political observers, including Michael Campbell, have noted, Canadian public projects are touted for how much money is thrown at them, rather than for the results sought or achieved. That may do much to explain our expensive and underperforming public sector. So the taxpayers' representatives have put about $ 1.4 billion on the table. Or is it $1.91 million? Or... apparently we can expect that the average public project of this type to be 40% over budget. What budget?
What will that squander really cost? This: overruns that will likely take the capital servicing or interest costs from an implied $70 million a year, up to $100 to $150 million as construction expenses balloon to $2 to $3 billion. Operating losses will run from $20 to 40 million, or somewhere in the range of that for the Millenium Line, as RAV attempts to corral the present bus ridership from Main to Granville and from commuter buses onto the line. Other costs: the loss of the Cambie Boulevard, in whole or in part for the line and its stations. How much is that worth? How about the noise and other negative impacts along the line? How much are they worth? No-one has measured these things, in spite of fibs from the beginning that the project proponents had done a cost-benefit analysis of RAV. There is no such analysis. What are the opportunity costs associated with spending money on an underused RAV rather than building a better bus system across the Lower Mainland and improving roads such as the TransCanada Highway or the Number 10 highway in Translink Chairman McCallum's own back yard? Mayor Brodie's Richmond could use a few bucks for wider roads, better buses and fewer ditches as well. To say nothing of better planning. By destroying Cambie Boulevard instead of using the Arbutus Line, what extra costs does this impose on transit systems to UBC? Residents of Marine Drive, living with long lines of university traffic much of the day, might wonder. Building an underused train in the wrong place forever skews real estate development to the wrong patterns. What's that worth? Look at Skytrain. And weep.
So what will the public gain? Perhaps 50,000 or 60,000 former bus passengers will now ride a train, at considerable new inconvenience in transferring, in many cases. The rest of the bus-using public will get much less. How much less? Nobody is saying. Car drivers will be relatively unaffected, since few will shift to transit in their journeys to Richmond's big box stores or to the airport. Real estate developers along the line will get a big present with new rezoning for high densities to provide a tax base to help pay for the line. If we compare what the public at large will lose with what the politically connected or publically dependent will gain, will we like the results of the calculus? I would guess not. As a Vancouver resident, I resent, even object to, the plan to ruin my neighbourhood and city so a few real estate speculators and political grandstanders can indulge themselves like children playing with trains. Barbarians.
How did we get to this point? Skytrain's first sponsor was former premier Vanderzalm. Striking a deal with Ontario for this technology allowed him to indulge in transprovincial politics, and minimize unionized jobs on the line itself. Vanderzalm left office under a cloud of allegations about corruption. The Expo Line continues to underperform and cost too much. Former premier Glen Clark sponsored Skytrain II, the Millenium Line, over considerable objections of many in the GVRD. In this particular case, Mr. Clark didn't guarantee the cost of the toilet paper. The line opened uncompleted, and loses about $30 million a year. Oh, and Mr. Clark left office under a cloud of charges of corruption.
Now we have Skytrain III. Following tradition, we smell a rat again. I have been part of an effort through Freedom Of Information legislation to find out how RAV came to be, from its beginnings as a concept on Arbutus, to a switch to Cambie in the late 90s, and to RAV's increasingly close alliance with the Olympics and with key personnel in the Premier's office, particularly one, Ken Dobell. We are also curious about the connection between former officials of the Ontario bureaucracy who marshalled the deal that delivered the Skytrain technology to Bombardier and Translink. Our hunt for malfeasance continues, in large part because the project is too absurd in concept, route and scale to make any sense except as a boondoggle.
So there you have it. Or not. Let the games begin.
Brian Buchanan June 2004 (Vancouver Resident who lives near Cambie Street [prime route being planned for much of the RAV line)
2004.06.21 - Summer is here!
The Pornography of Censorship
Here we go again. Apparently a child murderer told court officials that he was inspired to commit his vile deeds by "child pornography&qot; he saw in the media . He should know the origins of his pathology, apparently. That was enough for the book-burners and other mouth-breathers, including a disappointingly misguided Stephen Harper. "We need to do something about child pornography," cries the grand-standing self-righteous bleat. As an intelligent person, I agree that we should round up and prosecute those who abuse children sexually or in any other way. I also agree that we should ban the publication of any material that depicts sex with children. With one provision. I get to choose what materials do in fact depict that pornography. No-one else. I don't trust others, particularly the same sort of people who run the post office or man border crossings, to decide what materials show vile acts. That's the rub, isn't it?
Or at least in a freedom-respecting society that should be the rub. For many, the CBC's political bias is obscene. So is most religious rant. As for the connection between depiction of sex or violence and the act, there is no such connection, notwithstanding the words of murdering scum, or zealous mommy-staters. The evidence is overwhelming that there is no depiction-act connection. So why don't we ban censorship? In Canuckistan, a country half in love with Hitleresque "hate crime" laws, and one content with muzzling regulation against expenditures on political expression during elections, censorship has many mothers.
Taking A Pass On Big Pork: Are We Growing Up? Or Merely Anticipating The Next Barbarians?
The transit authority for the Greater Vancouver region decided in a close vote to take a pass on building a $2 billion train southward to Vancouver's airport and to the boggy, hideous, contiguous suburb of Richmond. This move avoided financial losses of between $150 and $200 million in perpetuity. The decision also saved a beautiful boulevard and surrounding neighbourhoods from the urban planning equivalent of stripmining. Good move, folks. The big surprise was that for the first time in good while a Canadian local government backed away from a well-established Liberal tax revenue siphoning process that sees local, regional and national bucks ending up largely in the hands of Ontario and Quebec manufacturing companies and local Liberal paper-pushing drones who supply the services and materials for large projects that have "federal contributions" embedded in them.
In this case, the final two bidders on building and operating this Richmond-Airport-Vancouver (RAV) rapid transit train project were SNC - Lavalin and Bombardier, both Quebec-based firms well-connected to the Liberals. All this in the midst of a federal election that the Liberals will likely lose, albeit narrowly. Have pork and patronage winds shifted in anticipation of a Conservative victory? Apparently. And think of the money we've saved. But maybe something more fundamentally encouraging occurred. The "barbarians" as Vancouver's pro-RAV, compliant shill of a mayor, Larry Campbell, calls the conservatives, have a chance to break out of the pork cycle so long part of the Canadian political landscape. Here's hoping. Meanwhile, after the celebrations, we will continue to pee on RAV's freshly dug grave, and on its proponents, too.
Water Numbers... What Water Numbers?
In a recent Vancouver Sun article, columnist Pete McMartin revealed a scandal that could be measured in gallons. Apparently the parks bureaucracy took it upon themselves to water the city's plants and replenish the ornamental pools with drinkable water, to the tune of 441 million gallons' worth. Baaad, apparently. Why? Well, because the prols and taxpayers of the town were on water restrictions at the time. So, how is the confluence of those events a manifestation of a scandal? How does this hypocrisy work? Is it analogous to a "cops and ambulances can speed, but we can't" argument? Or does the rationale go "we are more important than shrubs, because we pay taxes and they don't"? McMartin wasn't saying. By the way, Pete, how much is 441 million gallons as a proportion of the total annual consumption, or how would that compare with, say, an average household's annual usage? Pete wasn't about to discuss that, either. On the positive side, Pete's description of Mayor Larry Campbell's patented phony outrage was priceless. It's just that a few facts and statistics in context would have helped, as would a bit more logical exploration. Too much to ask for? Dim Sun is not a Chinese dish, but a newspaper, sort of.
See also for reference:
- www.vancouversun.com Vancouver Sun Newspaper
- www.city.vancouver.bc.ca City of Vancouver, Municipal Government, British Columbia
- www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/parks Vancouver Board of Parks & Recreation
Toujours Gay
Apparently the Liberals would refer gay marriage to the courts, while the Conservatives would "allow" a free vote in parliament to decide. Surely it's nobody's business who decides to get hitched to whom. Gays produce fewer abused and unwanted children to burden society, and make good adoptive parents for others' rejected kids. Same sex marriage seems like a pretty deal for all of us. Married people, regardless of gender, should be entitled to the same tax and social transfer benefits. If we can't afford to extend married benefits to all, let's cut off bad parents, druggies and socialists. These groups impose more harm on us all than do those with same sex preferences. We have nothing to lose but bad interior decorating. Yeah, I know. There's Sven Robinson, but the principle is still sound in spite of that grotesque paragon of exception.
I Hate Hate Laws. Is That Legal?
Hate laws are essentially violations of free speech. If our convictions and conventional wisdoms can't stand the heat of contrary argument, and particularly the assault of assinine drivel that is the apparent target of our hate crime legislation, then our democratic and intellectual underpinnings are woefully weak. Ronald Reagan made this argument before the McCarthy hearings during the commie hunts of the 1950s in the U.S. Of course, the argument is as old as intelligence. Wouldn't it be illuminating for our federal politicians to take up the hate crime issue on their election campaign? " Mind you, the conservatives would have the most to lose, since politically correct Canadians tend to view conservatives' balanced views on free expression or abortion as evidence of fascism. One dimension is all simple minds can handle. Precious little sensitive souls that we Canadians are, we may well find ourselves in the same position as Germans under Hitler: well-"protected" by laws against hate and choice, but with no freedoms at all. Hitler was a socialist, too.
Barlow Bashed
Maude ("please don't call her 'fraud'") Barlow is currently pedaling a peevish stream of outlandish fibs about private water supplies. Her Councll of Canadians (which counts among its front-line warriors such well-past-expiry-date Canlit foggy bottoms as Pierre Berton and Farley Mowat) wants your signature and support to fight degovernmentalization of your lives. The Council is particularly enflamed about civic utilities, in this case, water supplies, though Barlow is vague on details about what parts of a water system would be actually run for profit in her concept of hell: a world without a mommy state. Barlow would concede that the private sector would build such a water system, evidently. But it can't "run" a water system. Too prone to criminal negligence engendered by profit motives, apparently. Absurd, of course. Check the comparative record of screwups, corruption and waste of the private and public sectors. Maude, Farley and Pierre's group studiously avoids mention of the Waterton scandal in Ontario, a discredited poster child for the evils of privately run water systems. It turned out at Waterton that public officials were responsible for killing water drinkers, not private companies. Still, Maude and her intrepid band of anti-trade, anti-business, anti-American luddites would have you believe that "water privatization has been tried around the world and failed miserably." The evidence is overwhelmingly the other way, of course - Europe, the U.S. New Zealand and Australia, et al. Barlow's examples of failure hang on the examples of South Africa and Hamilton, Ontario. They don't bear scrutiny as scandals, either.
Why would Maude be ranting on about this fantasy monster of the neocommies in the middle of a federal election campaign? Is Barlow worried someone might fully privatize her pork supply if her erstwhile political allies, the Liberals, lose? Wouldn't that be a revolting development for one of Canada's preeminent irrational publicity hounds? By the way, why don't Barlow's speenful rants qualify as hate-mongering under our precious laws against offensiveness?
Saturday Night Fervor: In Praise of Simplemindedness
According to Saturday Night, Canada's underloved and oversubsidized neocomm magazine, gross domestic product as a measure of economic well-being is a "hoax." Sean Butler's brave attempt at analysis points out that GDP includes disaster as well as windfall as a "good." Wow." In junior high, I might have been impressed." But now that I am a man I know that GDP is the economic measure of the dollar value of all the goods and services produced in a country in one year. That's it. Handy, but not transcendental. It does not proport to do much more than exhibit one dry and single-dimensional measure of one economic insight, to be taken with dozens or hundreds of others statistical and financial numerical and verbal perspectives of an economy. It's not a big thing, but a small, but useful thing, taken with many other factoids. So where's the hoax? Life consists of nuances, and even complications. But neocomm writers like simplicity and a single groove or index.
For years, the welfare lobby used Statistics Canada's comparitive income or "cutoff" figures in Low Income Cut Off (LIC0) as a surrogate poverty index, for which they were not suited. In relative terms, people might be getting only a bit more prosperous because they were not gaining much against others. In absolute terms, progress was always much better, since economic prosperity raises all incomes. Still the welfare dependents' lobby was much more interested a simple poverty index. Life is complicated. Motives often aren't: politics of envy, not pursuit of justice, were in play. Making a big deal of the "hoax" of GDP is a similar exercise in speenful simplemindedness.
June 14, 2004
Brian Buchanan, Vancouver BC, Fracas.com publisher and contributing writer. © 2004 Canada