Spin Doctors Just Getting Started

As unelected premiere for less than a month, Ms. Clark has found herself neck deep in spin doctors doing what they do best: spin doctoring. It will only get worse, and soon she will question if she is allowed to have her own opinion about anything. The answer: not.

This is how modern neoliberal governments are run. Ms. Clark is a figurehead for delivery of economic booty to transnational extractors. The sooner she figures that out, the quieter she will be. Might she have some independence left in her? We'll see.

Great coverage.

I for one am glad that the

I for one am glad that the government is finally getting the truth out about the HST. So far the average person has only heard the politically slanted one sided argument from the likes of Vanderzalm and Tieleman. It will be interesting to see how their ranting against the tax change will resonate with the public when they are getting both sides of the argument.

Get your head out of the

Get your head out of the sand bob1964,the HST is hurting everyone of us ordinary British Columbians, Remember it is a tax shift from business to the people.

Propaganda

bob1964
This will be decided by the amount of propagande the governemnt sponsors.
It will have nothing to do with intelligence, but be all about which side can afford the best spindoctors.
Voters are stupid! have you not figured that out? or are you another victim?

Ministry of HST Propaganda

If you haven't yet visited the Ministry of HST Propaganda (hstinbc.ca), you should do so ... just to get a clear picture of how your provincial government intends to objectively "inform" you about the HST.

Remember that John Les described his job this way: "The HST Information Office was established to provide information and help facilitate a fact-based dialogue with British Columbians in order to have an informed vote ...".

It does no such thing, of course. The entire website is a blatant attempt to manipulate public opinion by concealing the disadvantages and exaggerating the benefits.

The bottom line conclusion comes across loud and clear: "There are no drawbacks to the HST, period, and anyone who says so is either stupid or a socialist wingnut."

You can expect to see that same kind of "objective information" in the $700k mailers the government will paper us with soon.

Sadly, it will work ... because there are too many "bob1964" types in the world.

I Checked Out The HSTINBC.CA Website

It's just awful, I agree with Tanglers comments the website does attempt to manipulate public opinion which of course is always been a BC Liberal strategy. I now know not to trust a word from these folks, no matter what they promise or say. Our democratic process has been trampled on by this process and only a provincial election can change it.

Violence against women

Yikes.

I've just been watching Helena Geurgis (Conservative Independent MP) explaining her year, starring The Harper Government.

The image of an abused woman is haunting. The appalling facts of unsubstantiated insults linger like the smell of evil rotting.

Harper's government and the Campbell-ChristyClark government are the same thing ... operating outside the law, right in front of us.

How much longer? Surely the very least we can do is to change the government of 1) Canada, then 2) British Columbia.

A pox on idiots trying to tell us that the only good options are these bad, bad options.

I agree with you Propaganda,

I agree with you Propaganda, it has been all about "spin". We just disagree on which side's spin we choose to believe. I to choose to believe the economists that agree with the tax change as apposed to a disgraced pubic servant and a professional paid "spin doctor".
I also happen to believe in encouraging made in BC products, so yes, anything that can make us more competitive I think is a good thing.

No need for numbers, complex equations, deconstructions of spin

I use the "John Winter Axiom" - if John likes it, it's bad. If he likes it a lot, it's really bad.

John like this HST budget plan, calling it fair and balanced, therefore, it's bad, unfair and stacked in favour of the business lobby.

It's really that simple.

I wouldn't be surprised......

.....if Cristy Crunch dropped the HST a point before the referendum.

@bob1964

When you say "a disgraced public servant and a professional paid spin doctor", are you referring to Bill Vander Zalm or Gordon Campbell?

After all, there is no question that Campbell resigned in "disgrace" - having royally screwed up the HST introduction and reached record levels of unpopularity across the political spectrum. As he said himself, the degree of public dislike and distrust made it impossible for him to remain in the job. If that isn't "disgrace", I don't know what is.

And, while premier, there is no question that he was "spinning" the value of the HST, and he was being paid ... by the taxpayer. That makes him a paid spin doctor, correct?

But here is what you don't understand about the HST: It is one more incremental step toward the ultimate goal of conservative politicians - which is to place 100% of society's tax burden on the individual, and 0% on the corporation. It's happening on all levels, all around the world, as conservatives gain power.

The sad thing is, people like you don't even see the train coming. By the time you wake up, you'll be roadkill.

We need to look at facts

Prices we were told would be lowered, thet haven`t gone done a red cent..In fact there were stories out yesterday about how we in BC are paying 20% higher or more than the same products in the USA.

Not only are we paying more, the USA has no HST,we should be paying less.

We were told the HST would create jobs, BC has shed 30,000 full time jobs since the HST came in, Shaw Cable just whacked hundreds of employees in BC alone.

So prices have risen since the HST, jobs have been lost, Government coffers are bare except stolen loot from ICBC and the HST bribe.

There is a lot of talk about the savings business gets from less accounting, however with today`s technology that argument fails, the software...One inputs the tax amounts and presto, all accounting done.

Giant corporations employed accountants in the past, they still employ accountants today, no change there.

There are simple measures to jump start the economy and create jobs without clubbing the middle class.

Ban self serve gas stations like Portland, that would put 10,000 to work tomorrow, just add 2 cents a litre.

More HST

I think we should raise the HST. For the last 30+ years we have been engaged in a consumer pig-fest and we purchase more and more foreign made plastic crap.

Point taken Tangler, but in

Point taken Tangler, but in this instance I was referring to Vanderzalm.
I do however like the idea that product produced in China is taxed at the same level as one made in BC.
If only it got to the level that it was not worth shipping raw logs to be milled in Washinton as the evil corporations found it cheaper to do it in BC. How about drinking BC wine because it's cheaper than the Spanish variety ? Oh to dream.

The Right Way to Run a Referendum

Obviously when the government takes one side on a referendum question, any public outreach that any government ministries do is suspect. Even during the STV referendum when the government did not officially have a stand on the question (though there was little doubt what government MLAs felt), there was ample reason to view the Referendum Information Office's publications and other choices and actions as biased against the Citizens' Assembly's recommendation.

With the HST referendum, the government is explicitly in support of the HST. If we can't trust the ministries to put out an unbiased flyer, the obvious solutions are either to:

1. allow both the Yes and No groups to put together their own flyer and send out both via the ministry, or

2. appoint a clearly arms-length committee (eg, made up of sitting judges) to review the proposed flyer for accuracy and to allow both official sides to present critiques to this body until they agree that the flyer fairly presents the pros and cons.

Note that it costs $700k to put out a flyer to all BC households. During the STV referendum, neither side received enough money to do this, and the government refused to reissue the Citizens' Assembly's report, despite being explicitly asked to do this by the proponent organization, Fair Voting BC. $250k is not enough to make more than a blip on the public's radar screen.

Ms. Clark, are you listening? The people of BC expect fairness in this process. There are sensible ways to do this that will serve you well beyond the referendum date.

Untrustworthy

This whole thing is being made into a set-up right before our eyes and the government thinks we are all so gullible as to believe that this will be a fair referendum count.

Who exactly counts the ballots; the “completely impartial” electoral officer Craig James or whatever his name is??

When you mail in your HST referendum ballot, make sure you send it by registered mail. I wouldn’t trust any of these clowns to state they have received it.

independent website

We need an independent website to counter the huge sums of money that's going to be spent by the Liberals and their rich corporate buddies to counter act their message. Has anyone seen the new website www.ShitHarperDid.ca ? Some young artistic people from the lower mainland started it and you can link to it on facebook. The postings are amazing and they're all by independent individuals without any political affilliation. Anyone can post stuff that Harper did and it reflects the truth about Harper and avoids the spin doctors. There's already been something like 3 million hits on the site. We need something like www.LiesLiberalsTold.ca or some such address. Get it linked to facebook which will get the young people involved and interested in voting on the issue. The young people who don't vote in an election will also get interested in voting. We need involvement in a way that corporations and the government can't highjack the procedure. By the way the ShitHarperDid site does not fall under the restrictive campaign financial guidelines which helps negate the advantage the Liberals are trying to set up. Check out www.ShitHarperDid.ca It's well worth a look.

VOTING IS THE ANSWER

All the anti-Harper types out there, those yapping on Facebook etc.-all great efforts but if you don't get out and vote all your efforts will be for naught. GET OUT AND VOTE! DRAG YOUR FRIENDS TO VOTING STATIONS. NO EXCUSES!

Don't Have To Go All The Way To Vancouver Island

Buy your gas in Richmond and you won't have to get out of the car. Richmond has a by-law banning self serve gas stations.

public beware

GEt ready for Christie's pro-HST brainwash campaign to begin..to bad you can't classify it as assault.

The comment about the co-op

The comment about the co-op is good. And the members get a cash rebate at the end of the year for buying gas and groceries.Gordo the sucker who thought he was a sharp business guy got taken , big business saves bog bucks and we end up paying for their taxes.

Can you say skewed?

Unless third party advertising is restricted (which it wasn't), the amount of information the general public receives will be skewed in favor of the "pro HST" side as Liberal friendly businesses will be bombarding us with news about the benefits of the HST (which of course benefits them). (I wouldn't be surprised to find Phil Hochstein assigned to this portfolio).

To balance this, maybe the "Fight HST" folks should get a few million bucks to get their message out.

The Fix Is In

Christy Clark makes a promise? So what?

Lying and cheating are right there on the BC Liberal calling card. So how do they get away with it? Razzle-dazzle is how.

Now, we already know about the infamous lie that got us the HST. And the one about having to "pay back" the $1.6 billion inducement if the tax is rejected by referendum. And, of course, the one about how it'll be good for us to shift billions of dollars of tax burden from business to consumer.

Cheating includes appointing a BC Liberal partisan to the Chief Electoral Office then choosing a corruptible mail-in/on-line ballot system for the HST Referendum, both to ensure cheating can't be detected.

The razzle-dazzle includes changing the terms and conditions of the Referendum petitioners forced upon the BC Liberals, promising to uphold these irregularities, asking an ambiguous and confusing Referendum question, dangling the possibility of changing the tax after it's approved by the referendum, and, of course, rolling it all up in the giant ball of bullshit which is the $1.7 million "education" program.

Here's the rub: we can't know the extent of lying, cheating and razzle-dazzle as long as the BC Liberals are in control. And the general election won't be until after the Referendum. When the HST is "approved" by the Referendum, Christy Clark will say,"See? All we needed to do was educate the voters about the HST, and they came around. We admit that we should have done that from the beginning. We're sorry. We promise we'll never ever do that again...now vote for us!"

But what the voters want, and how they vote won't matter anymore.The fix is in.

same old

Of course the deck will be stacked!
Crusty is no different from Gordo, they have an agenda, and will manipulate the media to achive it --- and with our dollar too!

Taxes

Businesses don't need a tax breaks for other counties to buy our products. Our dollar has gone up from $.60 cents to $1.05 and we are selling more than ever.
Companies are posting record high profits and our leaders want no part of those profits.
The USA corporate tax rate is 35% Harper has our corporate tax rate at 16% and want to lower it more.
Our leaders are just plain stupid or they own shares in these companies.

Is it just me?

Or does the fact that Christy promised us an open vote on the hst before she was elected, and then, after winning her position as the leader of the lying party, laid this 'by mail' referendum on the people of British Columbia? Does that not sound a whole lot like premier campbell saying he would not sell BC Rail, only to do so after he was elected? Does that not sound like the the Liberal government saying that HST was 'Not On the Radar' only to implement it just two months after they were elected? Well, yes it does! You are looking at one more election dog who will do anything to further her own interests and God Damn the interests of the people who live here. You are looking at one more sociopath who puts her personal interests ahead of everything else. And if that isn't so, Christy, I challenge you to debate me right here in the public eye!

10000 Gas jockeys? WTF? Really?

@ Time Traveler
I don't think hiring 10000 gas technicians or fuel hose conductors is really a way to make the economy boom. BUT if you want to hire a bunch of transient workers that will boom the economy, reduce student debt, and fix a major problem you only have to look to the forest or the 6 Vancouver Islands that are red, dead, and rotting away right in the middle of BC. And nothing is being done about it!

On the brighter side of things the HST has yet to change the price of weed! But the price of everything else IS NOT GOING DOWN! The fact that they tried to spin it that way shows utter contempt for the intelligence of voters. And if they get away with it they will have been proven right. Why don't we just have an election over the issue? Kill two birds with one vote!

whatever i like HST, I make

whatever i like HST, I make money off it. no, im not ignorant or stupid and im decently leftists...

Can't wait to hear Ms Christina

Lose every debate to Adrian Dix.

She couldn't carry Dix's books to school - let alone compete with him in an intellectual showdown.

It is really quite simple!

Just look at what the HST is costing you more with everything and YOU don't get any rebates!
Penner told me years ago, that the carbon tax is revenue neutral. What is "neutral" supposed to mean?
It costs money to collect it -
it costs money to process it -
it costs money to write cheques, sent them, cash them and keep track of all this and the climate is changing anyway! If by neutral he meant IDM (It Doesn't Matter), maybe he is right.
It is an afront to each and everyone of us, to take our tax money and pay a HST campaign and rob us some more!
Before HST, some things were not taxed by either the feds or the province, but now each is collecting on the other's tax rules and we pay double.
I ask you all, what is there to think about?
LET'S AX THE TAX - NO MORE HST!

skeletor

I'm happy for you that you've figured out how to make money on the HST.

What advice do you have for the minimum wage rat sharing an apartment with another, living paycheque to paycheque, and now having to come up with another $50 per month to pay for the items that he or she will eventually receive an HST credit on - 4 months down the road? How many poor people do you know can afford, out of a $1400-a-month minimum-wage salary, to front the government 3-4 months expenses, amounting to $176 a quarter?

That's always been my biggest beef with the HST. Yes, I get hit, so does the rich CEO who buys a Maserati GT; but the one who feels it most is the single mom feeding her child on $50 less every month than she used to, and hoping like hell she can last until the HST rebate cheque arrives.

Meanwhile those who still line up to plunk cash down for new homes live it up with an exemption that only ensures they can spend the same money to get an even larger house than the one they now enjoy...

I don't see the justice in it; nor, so it appears, does anyone else.

You expected a fair fight?

Of course the government will play dirty in the upcoming referendum on the HST. They want it to remain in force, have unlimited funds which is supplied by the taxpayers and seem to have a compliant MSM to carry their message whether truthful or not.

They also love to brag that approximately one quarter of the citizens of BC are getting some form of HST rebate. Maybe it's time the other three quarters realized that this simple fact means that they are the ones that are truly shouldering the annual $1.9 billion tax shift from business to consumer.

And while the government crows about the fact that one quarter of their constituents are getting some form of rebate, they fail to realize that this means that one quarter of British Columbians are are either living in poverty, or soone will be. Now there is a statement on their economic policies.

Just had lunch with a couple of small contractorw

They report that virtually everyone in their business is hurting more now than they ever did in the 1990s....and that bit about prices coming down after the HST bait and switch routine...don't believe a word of it.

NO Prices are coming down - Jack Mintz to the contrary - the HST has been an unmitigated disaster.