CTV: Crowsnest community groups face eviction

So again, representatives from the Centre Board continue to give our community a black-eye.

Crowsnest community groups face eviction

When is council going to put an end to this fiasco of a community board, managing a municipal facility, working at cross-purposes to the direction that a majority of council wants to stir this community? Why has this board not been disbanded? If you want advice on how to do this, just see the mayor, as he has plenty of experience of doing this very thing over the years, and with far less reason and excuse to begin with than what this board has given you, especially over the last few months.

It seems amazing and quite preposterous to me that The Centre saga is allowed to continue with its ongoing battles between the board and council and the wasting of tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on lawyers to fight, for example, eviction notices over recently (read eleventh hour) long-term leases that are suspect and quite possibly scandalous to say the least.

Council should do everybody a favour (including themselves) and disband this board and prevent them from doing any more harm and damage to a community already reeling from economic stagnation and social collapse.

We need to put this behind us and move on, and not allow a small group to keep us stuck in the mud while throwing sh--balls at us every chance they get. Think about it and then take some action! Do something!!! Put an end to this charade.


Taking action leads to results; not taking action only leads to feelings of hopelessness – and helplessness.

Do the crime and get the time... except in Canada you say?

Today's headlines are all about Bernard Madoff Fraudster Madoff gets 150 years who has been given the maximum prison sentence of 150 years for masterminding a massive fraud that robbed investors of $65bn (£40bn).

In recent years, we see that in the States white collar crime is taken seriously resulting in stiff sentences, and in places like China it is taken 'very seriously' with public executions being the norm. But here in Canada under the Harper conservatives, it is, for all intents and purposes, a 'badge of honour' and treated pretty much as a misdemenour.

This government is on record for wanting harsher sentencing for juveniles and blue collar crimes (ordinary people), but has a double standard when it comes to their friends in high places.

A case in point to watch out for is the upcoming sentencing of conservative supporters Garth Drabinsky and his right hand man Myron Gottlieb, who together stole $500 million and then successfully dragged their case through the courts for ten years. The contrast should be startling! And, hopefully, a wakeup call to the people of this country of the hypocrisy of this conservative government, and our two-tiered justice system of Justice for the Rich, and the Law for the Poor.


Conservatives do not believe that people can work together and help each other so they do not believe in government and law. Instead they believe in a dog-eat-dog, everyone on-their-own and out-for-themselves society where the strongest survive and it doesn't matter what happens to everyone else. So whenever conservatives gain power they abuse it and use it to get money for themselves and their friends.

A Well-Planned Retirement

This Is A Great Story that I just got from my good friend Stan McLeod who is now living in SK. (He told me the last time we spoke, that now that he has left the Pass, he can stand straight again.) :-)


A Well-Planned Retirement
From The London Times:

Outside the Bristol Zoo, in England, there is a parking lot for 150 cars and eight coaches, or buses. It was manned by a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars £1 (about $1.40Cdn) and coaches £5 (about $7).

This parking attendant worked there uninterrupted for all of 25 years. Then, one day, he didn't turn up for work. "Oh well,", said Bristol Zoo management, "we'd better phone up the city council and get them to send a new parking attendant. "Err, no", said the council, "that parking lot is your responsibility. "Err, no", said Bristol Zoo management, "the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn't he?" "Err, NO!" insisted the Council.

Sitting in a villa somewhere on the coast of Spain, is a bloke who had been taking the parking lot fees, estimated at £400 (about $560) per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years. Assuming seven days a week, this amounts to just over £3.6 million ($7 million)!

And no one even knows his name.

AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. HARPER

A friend of mine sent me the following and now I'm passing it on. Sounds like a plan to me... :-)

Dear Mr. Harper,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Canada's economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks and car companies, that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan:

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Twenty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new Canadian CAR. Twenty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.

4) They must send their kids to school / college /university - Crime rate fixed

5) Buy $50 of alcohol / tobacco / petrol a week... there's your money back in duty / tax etc.

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.

Ah, My Joyful Sophia (wisdom)

'To be or not to be', is the question? I remember in my readings of a Rabbi who lived during the Middle Ages, who had been offered the position of head honcho (The Messiah!)... and declined. That struck me as so profound! It contradicts great western philosophers like Nietzsche who have expounded the philosophy of 'Will to Power', and man's innate desire to conquer all. (Man, for all intents and purposes, a selfish individual.)

So again, the establishment (Adhoc Committe) has told me to take a hike (which I did, at Darcy's Mental Health walk last weekend, and got blisters to prove it :-)). Again, I have been rebuffed to the outer realms of the tribe, to live out my existence in ignominy. A fate for a warrior, that is worst than death itself!

Oh, the shame of it all!!! ... My application, supposedly, presented to the board by the chair Shane Stewart.

note: But then, I remembered what my friend Chief Dan George said, long ago: "we must endeavour to persevere". Ah, My Joyful Sophia (wisdom)!


Not bad for a guy who just got back from chicken wings at Pure Country, plus 5 beers, hey! :-)

Open Letter to Council

The following is a letter I just sent to council today:

Dear Councillors,

Re: Adhoc Committee/Community Futures

The most difficult enterprises are easiest at their inception,
and the greatest of enterprises have humble origins.
Confront difficulties while they are still easy, then,
and tackle a big thing when it is still small.

With the above quote in mind, let me remind you that you have it in your power to change the status quo here for the better, and to save our community from its downward slide. Stop being led and start leading! Take the reigns of power from those who have used and abused it for their own greedy self-serving purposes for far too long, and give it back to the people, where it belongs.

Best Regards,
John


Men who are governed by reason desire for themselves nothing which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and consequently are just, faithful, and honourable in their conduct.

Council's shameless apologizer and lying, backstabbing, gutless wonder

It seems a certain member of council in our blogging world is trying to bamboozle the public with b.s., while at the same time avoiding answering any questions on accountability, due process or why he is a two-faced, backstabbing, ass kissing, gutless, fine upstanding gentleman, 'fearful' of the common-man?

This shameless apologizer wants us to believe with his majority on council and tight control that the mayor, somehow, just managed to... slip in, on the Adhoc Committee. They had no choice in the matter. Ya, right! You can't BS a BShitter, Buddy!

The very antithesis of the board's stated goals is now a player at the table, in which the primary goals of the committee will be to challenge Him, and (in his mind) his god given right to subject the majority to his personal taste and whims, on such things as 'beautification' (Unsightly Premises and Bylaw Enforcement).

The current makeup of this committee is doomed from the start. Vast amounts of wasted time and energy fighting among themselves will be the end result. Again our illustrious mayor has duped them all!

What chance does this committee have now, having the organizational structure it does, and having a cancer from within about to eat away at all its good intentions?

When someone gets half a good thing they sometimes tend to compromise their principles and what was the ultimate goal. In order to get to where they are now the committee had to compromise by allowing the wolf in among the sheep. They figured half a loaf is better than nothing. These are not the people who can lead a nation, or in our case, a community such as ours, forward. Compromising one's beliefs and ideals makes one less a man, and not the kind of leadership we need right now at this critical juncture.

The people on the Adhoc Committee compromised their principles and stated goals in two ways, and as a result are now NOT deserving of public support. First, they allowed to sit among them, as I have already stated, the antithesis to what purportedly is their stated goals, who obviously will be using his Machiavellian ways to counter, obstruct, block, etc., while at the same time keeping out those of us who could have made a real difference, in terms of credibility, integrity and honesty. Second, they reduced the involvement and participation of the public to nothing more than groups 'groveling' before them, or one of their sub committees.

They have lost all credibility and are now nothing more than a joke. Who is going to trust them now, knowing how wrong they got it from the get-go and how self-serving they have already become.


A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.

Et tu, Brutus?

On Monday, the Adhoc Committee met, in part to deal with council's request to consider members-at-large be part of their committee. No council member, community futures representative, or chamber member, contacted me afterwards to inform me of their decision?

While driving through Blairmore today (Wednesday), a member of the committee managed to tell me in passing the committee's decision, but no particulars, as traffic prevented us from communicating further.

I was told the Adhoc Committee turned down members-at-large being part of their committee. Now, one has to wonder how a majority on this committee, who told me to my face they would support such an initiative, can land up losing the vote? Is this because self-serving people can tell you one thing in front of your face, and then stab you and the community in the back when you are not looking? "Et tu, Brutus?" Is it in part, that no one wanted to leave the committee in order to make room for 'grassroots' participation? Or were these two-faced, backstabbing, ass kissing, gutless, fine upstanding gentlemen, 'fearful' of the common-man? Who might jeopardize 'their thing'?

It looks like the 'old-boys club' is still alive and well in the Crowsnest Pass, having a few new faces, but still having the same mindset and Modus operandi. Things are not changing for the better here. It's the same old, same old, except now we are putting 'lipstick on a pig', and calling it progress.


The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.