Remember Liberal claims about BCR losses?

Ironically, BC Rail suffered more operating losses after the railway was sold in 2003 than it did in the years preceding its sale. The four senior officers have taken total remuneration in the last four years of:
2007: $ 1,244,799
2008: $ 1,209,167
2009: $ 1,059,285
2010: $ 1,234,546

http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2011/11/cost-of-ilence-highest-losses-in-bcr.html

Utilitarian Pitfalls of Plea Bargaining

The Crown prosecutor and the lazy defense lawyer love the plea bargain. It's the legal profession's 'Let's Make a Deal'.

It begins by the Crown over-charging the accused, thereby placing him in greater jeopardy than the evidence can support. Now the accused's self-interest kicks in because of the Crown's amped-up charges, facts aside. If found guilty as charged, fear of a longer or more severe sentence becomes a significant motivator to co-operate, This criminal procedure, itself, makes copping a plea or offering quid pro quo oral evidence against another the best deal for many accused.

As a result, such deal-making circumvents the need for real and/or 'unadulterated' viva voce evidence to ever see the light of day. Yet this very same evidence would have been needed to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt had it gone to trial without the deal making. Ultimately, this utilitarian process is one subtle example of state oppression/coercion as it diminishes the Crown's burden of proof.

With a confession or conviction in hand, the Crown has served justice, and the police have another successful conviction padding some officer's resume. And in a politicized case like this one, it's hard not to understand exactly why the Premier is so desperate to propagandize that the conviction speaks for itself. Now that's justice. /laugh

PAB

Cutting half the salaried positions in the Public Affairs Bureau should give us quite enough money for a very decent inquiry indeed.

And should give much less reason for that whole bureau to exist, being solely responsible (yet wholly incapable) for "correcting" the spin about this issue.

$6 million bribe not typical part of a plea bargain

Yes, plea bargains serve lawyers who prosecute and lawyers who defend. Do the service justice? Not so much.

The Basi/Virk BC Rail case is unprecedented though for the crown paying a huge enticement for its guilty plea and agreeing to "house arrest" that was less than a slap on the wrist, allowing extensive absences during year one and allowing unfettered movements 17 hours a day in the second year.

Clearly, the Liberal government wanted the trial to be ended because they had failed to control it. Continuation meant political ruin.

This piece provides details of the actual sentences handed down by Justice MacKenzie. People who read only the mainstream media will likely be surprised.

http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2011/11/old-news-news-anxieties.html

Explode the myths, Ms. Clark

"A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them." Gilbert Ryle (1900-76) British philosopher.

Come on Christy; explode those myths. Sit for a real interview with Mr. Tieleman, and speak our language. Or would you rather just continue to deny the facts?

Simple, really

"Clark also could have asked Toope to investigate why Basi and Virk's legal fees were exempted from repayment when they pled guilty. But she didn't."

No need, really, It's all because since it's still their turn, they can do what they want. They can disclose things or not, use whatever money they want to pay for whatever they want for whomever they want, for whatever reasons they see fit. And they don't owe us an explanation, for we still give them a continuation of 'their turn', no matter what they do. Only thing that will dispense with all these issues is to give some other people a turn. They may be equally abusinve of our trust, but seeing they will be following a different ideology, at least there will be some other money given to some other people, and another set of people will get fleeced to pay for it. Maybe some of those folks whose turn it still is now, and who are therefore in a position to fleece us.

Simple, really.

By Audit or, If Necessary, Archaeology

The BC Liberals have spent a huge amount of capital, real and political, on BC Rail. The political capital alone has about broken the bank for the government: the original campaign promise not to sell the public-owned railway, cooking the books to make BCR look like it was losing money when it wasn't, breaking the promise not to sell BCR, corrupting the bid process, getting caught and hauled into court, perverting the course of justice by disclosure non-cooperation and by paying two BC Liberals to take the blame and keep quiet (with public money), and continuing to refuse calling a public inquiry. The cost: an irredeemably disgraced government, a Premier ignominiously forced to resign, a culpable caucus hostile to the complicit replacement, at a time when other BC Liberal transgressions are coming home to roost, facing a revitalized Opposition, a new, alternative right-wing party and an angry electorate going into an election they're doomed to lose.

Is this the good money Christy doesn't want to throw after bad?
About the only benefit they've ended up with is the licence to continue lying.

The tide-mark day will come in seventeen and a half months. If the BC Liberals lose the next election (which is likely) and the NDP calls a public inquiry into the BC Rail scandal (again likely), it will set off a chain of events that might see certain BC Liberals facing prosecution, and maybe the retroactive scuttling of the corrupt deal that would see BCR returned to public ownership.

Doubtless this will put another capital dent into the public weal; but it will completely bankrupt the BC Liberal party.

Question for Christy Clark

.

In 2003, somebody stole a very big railroad (3rd largest in Canada) from the Province of British Columbia, without the people's permission. It was ours, publicly-owned, OK? And it was stolen without so much as a "by-your-leave".

Ms Clark, why can't you understand how wrong that feels?

But no. Against all warnings, your government decided to push our publicly-owned railway down the slippery slope into private pockets.

The Province of B.C. lost a very big public asset and we absolutely need to know why.

What kind of premier are you, if you can't understand that British Columbians can't rest until they know h.t.f. that happened?

Call a Full Public Inquiry into the so-called sale (999-year lease) of our BC Rail. Call it now, on the 8th anniversary ... and open the books, for once.

A couple of points

There are a couple of points that I think deserve discussion.

The first is the constant claims that the government paid the $6 million for the Basi-Virk debacle and $30 million to Boss Power to stymie another possible court case rhat would also probably not have been kind to the BC Liberal Party's resume. The fact is that the government paid nothing simply because they do not supply their own money but instead redistribute other people's monies. The media should make it crystal clear that it is the taxpayers of BC that have paid out these hush monies.

Secondly I think that it is imperative of the government to explain to the taxpayers of this province how two people, Basi and Virk, were allowed to ring up a $6 million lawyers' tab in the first place. After all, we aren't talking about a couple of people who were really integral parts of our governance, but simply a couple of operatives doing the bidding of a political party. What would the upper limit allowed be for a Deputy Minister, for an outreach director or for someone that may have been actually elected? Surely it can't be unlimited and if so, then the public should be informed of such.

I would hope that the CRA deems the $6 million dollars a "paid benefit" to Basi and Virk and levies the appropriate income tax. At least they have the stones to make them financially accountable.

I think that we not only need an unfettered inquiry into the sale of BC Rail, but also a complete forensic cleansing of everything the BC Liberals have had their hands in in the past 10 years. The P3's, IPP's, Olympics etc. This would not only enlighten the great unwashed on how our politicians really spend our tax dollars but also act as a caution to those governing bodies that follow that we are nothing but their personal ATM.

Expensive Christy?

""But the thing is it would be really expensive and I don't know that there are any more answers to be found out there." said Christy Clark.

As expensive as the paying off of the 2 convicted government employees legal bill of $6 million dollars!

Bruce Clark

Your article says "Bruce Clark has not spoken to media at any point about his role in either the BC Rail situation or his sister's campaign."

But there was a recent Tyee article where he did speak on the record:

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/10/24/Christy-Clark-Inner-Circle/

"...according to the statement of facts filed in court following the conclusion of the Basi-Virk case, he worked as a consultant for Washington Marine Group. But Clark said the truth of the matter is "absolutely not as the statement of facts represents," adding he was "never a consultant for Washington."

But, referring to the statement, he said "there's nothing you can do about those things without spending an inordinate amount of money, which I don't have.""

What is to be made of this?

This Nighmare

Well, it's seldom I'll be agreeing with Teilman about anything but he got this one right. 80% of BCers by poll didn't want to part with their railway. But the Campbell government; of which Christy was an integral part, gave it away for campaign contributions to the Liberal party. There is no other way to look at it - it was fraud and corruption - and any effort to 'sweep it under the rug' only focuses the attention of all aware BC people on the crime it really was. Give away a prime asset of the people of BC for campaign contributions in order to get re-elected and further denigrate the lives of the people who here? What was the railway for? It was put in place by WCB (Wacky Bennet) to enhance the development of the BC hinterlands. Make the resources in BC available to any and all and benefit the people who lived near them. Now, it is owned by a company which purportedly is based in Texas which will charge every dollar they can for transport and damn the people it was intended for. Thank you Gordon Campbell, and I hope you stay in your new neoliberal sinecure in London because nobody likes you where you came from.

This subject has been done to death, and anyone who has been watching knows that the whole province got screwed out of a public railroad worth billions for the simple reason that the liberal party needed campaign contributions to get re-elected. Clarke, Campbell, Falcon; birds of a feather. You want another name for them? Bonny and Clyde BC style. Interested in themselves and no one else.

How are you doing right now? Feel richer because your neocon government embraced 'globalism' for their own benefit? Or do you wish we could go back a little in time to the days when everything wasn't such a goddamn nighmare and benefit our neighbours and ourselves without asking permission from the goddamn government?

wishing

Looking forward to the day, when BC stands for:
"Before Christy"
as well as
"Before Campbell"

picky press

Interesting how the BC MSM, in print, TV and radio who can be relied on to perpetually endorse the Socred/Liberal party in every election and even hire them as "experts" and "journalists", are so silent on this massive scandal.

But when that other Premier Clark had a deck built by a neighbour all hell breaks loose!

TOXIC GOVERNMENT

The Liberals, with their majority, are truly a Kleptocratic government a government that is toxic to the people of B.C. Ask Christy's brother how well he did on the railgate affair. Oh sorry we can't do that now can we.

I saw a train today!

It was a real train, on the E&N Railway, going south from Nanaimo. I couldn't believe my eyes!

It was a REAL TRAIN! Running on the railway tracks! I thought they had gone extinct on Vancouver Island. The only thing we usually see on the tracks on Vancouver Island are the lost souls who walk the tracks looking for loose change. I think they are the ghosts of former E&N Railway employees, who don't know they are dead.