The Legislature Raids

Hope your Christmas was a good one!!
Mr. Holman's tone as reported in the article sounds somewhat defeatist to me. We are relying on people like him to assist in getting the information out so people can decide either at recall or election time if their MLAs were acting in their's or liberal party insider's best interests. It is good to see some of the media picking up on this, better late than not at all. The real story is that the pattern of every liberal leadership candidate has been to lie to get elected, then reversed course with very destructive results. It is hard to believe any of the candidates actually think they will get elected for anything, ever again. But then a
rrogance and ego run wild in that group.
 

cfvua: yes, I agree, i was going to say the same thing, though was going to use the term "resignation"...."capitulation" is more like it. "Oh well, it was a great evil but there's no point in trying to fix it now"....very tug-the-forelock don't-make-waves Canadian-ness. "We know they stole it all, but might as well let them keep it" is really waht he's saying.

remember those Olympic commercials about Canadians changing and becoming more outspoken and assertive? It needs to be moer than in just international sports......

As for Tamsyn Burgmann:
Government brass fended off accusations for the next seven years, getting raked over the coals during question period and pressing through two elections with the albatross of an ongoing criminal trial around their necks.

That would be "getting raked over the coals for only the next two years", i.e. until the Joy & Jenny show was over. And yeah, that albatross was sure a burden to them in national coverage of those campaigns huh? Also in provincial campaigns.....must have been an invisible albatross.....I recall CP being among those major news agencies who did everything they could not to report on the trial, the sale, or issues arising from them, and when they did mention them soft-soaped them so ridiculously as to lose all relevance. If Burgmann had been doing her job from 2003 onwards (i.e. the one the public expects of a reporter, not the marching orders from the publisher/owner), the Liberals would have not won in 2005, and not have had a chance to win again in 2009. And given what else we know about that party's morality and conduct, it's not too far of a stretch to think that ballot boxes might even have been stuffed.....seriously.

The free ride that CP and other news agencies gave the BC Liberals was anything but an albatross. It was more like a first-class airline ticket, with complementary massage and a special lane through customs.

Holman's surrender to illegal actions and flagrant theft of public assets, "oh well aw shucks" just doesn't sit well with me....I just lost a lot of respect for him. Seems like he's just becoming another established-system toady.
 

skook--

Ms. Burgmann was not working the RailGate beat back in the day...

Instead,d that was the bailiwick of Ms. Camille Bains, a fine reporter who sometimes did pretty good job on RailGate and occasionally most definitely did not.

Or.....

Perhaps it is important to focus on what was actually published rather than the byline itself.

Why?

Because of who the Westcoast bureau chief of CP just happens to be (scroll down to COX, Wendy).

OK?

.
 

Burgmann:

Taxpayers were left footing the bloated court bill, and the Opposition called for a public inquiry that quickly faded with the HST-induced resignation of Premier Gordon Campbell and internal strife.

Burgmann's claim that Campbell's resignation was "HST-induced" passes over the main context - the mounting questions over BC Rail, combined with the lead balloon-impact of that nauseous public TV appearance and accompanying attempt at bribing the public with the 15% tax cut. The MSM myth that it was "all about the HST" is repeated here, unquestioiningly. "Internal strife" is an interesting euphemism for "impending caucus revolt" but may also allude to "pressure from the backroom", with "the backroom" being the corporate honchos behind the free-enterprise coalition who needed to stage Campbell stepping down so as to make it possible for them to launder/sell a new leader to take over the reins. And he didn't even really step down, not the way he should have.....

Holman:
“There’s some very, very powerful people who were caught up in this whole entire controversy, both inside and outside government, and it’s an important case that people deserve answers to,” he said. “But I don’t think they’re ever going to get them.”

More defeatism, more assumption that the system of lies and secrets will stay in force and that there is no hope of a public inquiry, or redress for the considerable damages to the public estate and public interests. Passing the buck to historians to tell the whole story one day is an admission that the mainstream media - and Holman himself - have been too unwilling to ask, and find answers to, those questions; and the ongoing behaviour that, even though we have the facts, they're not facts until our corrupt court system hears them from the stand. If historians are gonna one day find them, why can't journalists now? Is that because maybe they're journalists with accreditation only, and no teeth and no real morals?

BC historians are spineless when it comes to current history anyway; Barman's and Bowering's books (though neither are really historians as such, one's a sociologist specializing in the history of denominational education systems, the other a poet (and not a particularly good one, either). Historians of BC politics in our universities don't exist; other than spin-doctors for the Fraser Institute; you can take critical courses about other political cultures, but there's nothing about our own to be had.

And re the public inquiry and how to constitute it, it's worth noting in BC history that the Yale Convention, which met in 1866, convened itself, without government mandate of any kind, and was influential in pushing BC into Confederation (the meeting was stacked with Canadian-origin settlers, and had the favour of all the newspapermen - who were in the same camp politically).

For those with the patience to read it, here are minutes of the preliminary meeting of the Yale Convention, laying out its terms of reference and composition:

http://www.nosracines.ca/page.aspx?id=215067&qryID=2921dc68-9038-499a-adec-66c32b3e3266
 

Hello Mary, Just curious as to the use of my words yesterday for a short while and their subsequent removal?
Of no concern but curiousity.
All the best!
Don F.
 

Some nice reminders on that link of yours, RossK; and, of course, we owe a big shout-out of thanks to Bill T., too.

As posted by RossK at Tuesday, December 30, 2008:

"I've finally have made it all the way through Bill Tieleman's very fine "RailGate Round-Up b/w Alphabetical Guide To All Players", linkage included.....

And boy, is my brain tired.

Truth be told, most of my hunting, pecking and linkage reading involved re-thinking stuff I'd already read about.

Like remembering what, exactly, was the connection between Gary Collins' former deputy minister of finance Paul Taylor, Brian Kiernan and Glen Ringdal.

****

But that is not to say I did not learn some new things, perspective included, from reading every single word of Mr. Tieleman's latest missive that likely has Mr. Chase and the other members of the Premier's OIC-Infotainment Network blackberrying each other like crazy (both with and without bonus/mocking smiley faces attached).

Factually, the following are three new golden spikes that Mr. T. handed me.....

I knew nothing of the first spike:

Camille BAINS. Media. Bains is a Canadian Press reporter whose diligent stories are now missed, as she has been reassigned and CP is not regularly covering the case.


Which is a darn shame because, overall, I think that outside of Mr. Tieleman, Ms. Bains put as much, if not more, time and effort into covering RailGate than any other proMedia Journo in this town.

I might have known about the second spike if I paid more attention to such things, especially after I slagged a late 2007 story from Ms. Bains not because of what was in the piece but rather because of what was not.

Wendy COX. Media. The B.C. bureau chief for Canadian Press is not covering the case nor is she editing CP coverage of it, but is only mentioned in the category of the "small world" of media and politics.....


So, while she's not covering the case and/or editing the coverage of it, one has to wonder if Ms. Cox is involved as bureau chief in making decisions about reassigning and not replacing reporters who are/were.

Covering RailGate, I mean.

And I ask this because of the third spike Mr. T' handed me, a spike I most definitely should have known about, especially given the government of Gordon Campbell's 'alleged' penchant for 'media monitoring' and the list of cabinet ministers who fled that same government when the RailGate train came chugging slowly down the track back in early 2004.

What the heckfire am I babbling about?

Well, once you read Ms. Cox's full entry from Mr. T. things should be a bit clearer:

Wendy COX. Media. The B.C. bureau chief for Canadian Press is not covering the case nor is she editing CP coverage of it, but is only mentioned in the category of the "small world" of media and politics -- Cox is the wife of former B.C. Finance minister Gary Collins.


The LINO Red colouring of the last phrase is mine, all mine (ie. not Mr. T's).

OK?


______
Originally, I was going to sub-head this post 'YouCanRunButYouCan'tFlyVille'....
Just so you (and maybe she?) know/knows.....there were other times when I praised Ms. Bains' work effusively. We, the members of the RailGate's Obsessive Club, owe Ms. Bains a debt of gratitude.