Pot Activist Trumps Officers

At least, that's the way it seems to be in the court of public opinion and the bleeding-heart BC media. I'm of course talking about the shooting last week of Michael Vann Hubbard, the homeless man who when questioned about a near-by robbery pulled out a box-cutter and advanced on two VPD officers. Let me give an overview of exactly how this sad circus has played out:
At first, the media was consumed with Adam Smolcic, the pot activist who claimed the cops erased his cell phone video of the incident that would have shown that Vann Hubbard was cooperating with police and was not aggressive. Global BC paraded Smolcic, who by the way is described on this myspace page as "The Marijuana Awareness Initiatives Rev. Adam Smolcic" (http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=137195536&blogId=478670868) on to every newscast and even paid for his cellphone to be sent to a forensics expert to recover the deleted files. Never mind that Smolcic was high at the time or that other witnesses reported Vann Hubbard advancing on the officers. Ridiculous! The VPD behaved admirably in light of all this, remaining silent, not commenting on the furor in the public square over this. The VPD broke that silence over the weekend, albeit unintentionally, when an internal VPD memo was leaked in which it becomes clear that security cameras around the area show a very different story from that of 'Reverend' Smolcic. According to Chief Jim Chu, the officers talked calmly with the man until he pulled out a exposed razor blade and advanced on them. The officers drew their guns but backed away and tried to calm Mr. Vann Hubbard while also warning bystanders to be careful and back away. Only after his continued aggression was a single shot, not the several shots Smolcic claimed, was fired. In fact, the VPD has no evidence that Mr. Smolcic was even at the incident or that he witnessed anything at all! If this version of events proves to be true, and I expect it will, the law should be unleashed in full against Smolcic. His false charges and accusations were surely some form of obstruction of justice and quite certainly slanderous against the officers and the VPD. Making false claims such as these, whether it was to garner some sad form of fame or accidentally out of some pot-induced drug confusion, should be taken seriously and punished seriously.
I've included a lovely photo of Mr. Smolcic who also describes his heroes as "Me, Myself, and I" designates himself as a "Swinger" and notes that his education includes a major in Pot and a minor in Alcohol. The Rev. is apparently also "right now listening to alot of electronica."

Campbell's Gang Solution

Premier Campbell has come up with some concrete solutions to the gang violence plaguing the lower mainland of late. Among his ideas are some good measures that I support: building more jails, banning body and car armour, and hiring more police officers and prosecutors. Unfortunatly, Campbell and his government have done little regarding this issue for years and are now scrambling to look tough as the public watches gunplay in the malls and on their streets. Attorney General Wally Oppal has for years been insisting that BC's sentences are not lenient and the system is working. Why then is he now trekking off to Ottawa to demand tougher sentences? The NDP pointed out yesterday that many jails and courthouses have been closed by the Campbell government over the last 8 years, which makes it difficult to trust Premier Campbell's convictions when it comes to building the new jails he has promised. While I applaude the measures the provincial government is advocating, when I go to the polls in May, I'll be thinking too little, too late.

Worth Fighting For

As a tepid Conservative supporter in the last election and a former Liberal party member, I can call each as I see it and this week I'm disappointed in both.
The Tories, staying true to their Reform roots, want to do away with the $1.75 the parties get for each vote they receive in elections. Beyond their ideological motives, Harper is doing this to kick his opponents while they are down. The Conservatives do a better job raising funds from private citizens, so they need the public funding less. Clearly, their strategic calcualtions lead them to conclude that cutting out this per-vote funding will only hurt them while it decimates the other parties. So much for Harper's claim that he wanted a better relationship with Parliament. He has a duty to earn the confidence of the House, and if he's not even going to try, what is he there for?
The Conservatives have been misrepresenting this issue. First, it is not a "subsidy." It is a grant to parties based on vote share. Nobody who voted Conservative is seeing their money go to the Bloq or the NDP or the Liberals and vice versa. And if you do not vote, you send no money anywhere. So it is essentially a donation to a party of your choice. Secondly, it is not the only source of public financing the parties receive. Nor is it the biggest. Parties that get more than 2% of the national vote get 50% of their election expenses reimbursed. And candidates that get 10% or more of the vote in their riding get up to 60% back from the government. This amounts to more than the per-vote money. Why aren't the Conservatives cutting this? Considering that they spend more than any other party during elections, they benefit the most from this.
Public funding of parties may sound distasteful, but it is integral to our political process. We have banned unions and corporations from donating and have severly restricted private donations in an effort to ensure that our politicians aren't bought. Undoing this would be a terrible idea. Most democracies follow this path and we have done it for years. If you want to debate the merits of this, fine, but do not sneak it into a fiscal update and make it a confidence motion as the Conservatives have done. By doing this, they deserve the backlash of the parties. And if voters were more educated on this matter, they'd have to deal with backlash from them too.
I'm disappointed that the Liberals have been unable to find an MP who can communicate this to voters. They have pretended that they are angry with the economic update. And while that does leave much to be desired, the real reason for all the coalition talk is the cuts to party funding. The Liberals should not be afraid to say so. If they could manage to communcate their ideas to voters, perhaps they wouldn't be in the dire situation they are in now. They allowed their leader, Dion, to be defined for a year before they bothered to communicate what he was all about. They let the Green Shift get bad mouthed for a year without ever explaining it to Canadians. If they can't explain why election financing is good, then they don't deserve to form government in a coalition. A fight for election financing is worth bringing down the government for, especially since it was snuck in to an economic bill that it had no place being. Don Martin wrote in the National Post that "while the merits of political funding might be worth a debate during calm prosperous times, it has no place on an agenda that should now be devoted to important decisions." The NDP and Liberals should not be afraid to tell Canadians what they are standing up for. If they don't, then there's no way Canadians will stand with them.

Old is the new Black

With the election of Barack Obama, America proved a few things to the world. It showed that it has moved beyond its divisive racial past and showed that it was both ready and willing to elect a black President. This is despite the endless lecturing we all had to endure about the resilience of the racist, white American. During the presidential campaign, Obama insisted that John McCain would play the race card, and try to tell voters to stay away because he didn’t look like the other Presidents on American money and in American history books, even though the honourable McCain never did. Pundits insisted that Obama’s race was an obstacle in his way to the White House. CNN spent many nights probing the effects of “race in the race” and how it may impact Obama’s electability. And voters had to watch news clip after news clip where reporters would dig up some idiot who said they can’t vote for Obama because of his middle name, and then insinuate that this is indicative of a larger trend. In the end, all of this worrying, hand-wringing and race-baiting was for naught. On Election Day, Obama’s race helped him. The exit polls show that only 9% of voters said race was an important factor to them. Not exactly a huge racial barrier for Obama to have to overcome. But of those people for whom race was important, 53% of them actually voted for Obama. Obama benefitted from being black! So much for racist America, eh? Unfortunately, the candidate who actually had the societal handicap was not the black candidate, but the old one. While nearly absent from the discussion during the campaign, age turned out to be a much greater factor in this election. A whole 15% of voters said it was an important factor to them and 77% of those people voted for Obama. Whereas Barack Obama’s race actually helped him, John McCain suffered greatly because people didn’t want to vote for a person of his age. But where were the nightly specials on age discrimination? Where were the advocates for the aged? Our society was so preoccupied with the potential for racism to hold Obama back that it missed ageism completely. Yes, with the election of Barack Obama, America proved to the world a few things. Sadly, first among them was that while America won’t judge you on the colour of your skin, it will judge you on the number of wrinkles in it.

The Great Double Standard

I have been shocked in the last few weeks at the outrageous double standard that is present in the media coverage of the US election. The media has lashed out at everything Sarah Palin and John McCain do while ignoring negative stories about Obama.
The media was quick to report that there was a shout of "kill him" at a Palin rally when she mentioned Obama's name. For sure, this is a disgusting comment. Or, rather, it would have been, had it actually occurred. The Secret Service investigated and found no evidence of it. Secret Service agents were at the Scranton rally and heard no such thing. Agents also investigated claims made about a Florida rally, where "kill him" was indeed yelled, but directed clearly at Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist. This fact was not only unreported, it was distorted so that it appeared the comment was directed at Obama.
The media was quick to pounce on the "kill him" report and it flooded newscasts, websites and magazines. Now that it turns out the two stories that started it all didn't happen, the media has been remarkably absent in setting the record straight. They have also been absent in covering the numerous attacks on Palin, from the Obama supporters' crude tshirts, to the warning by comedian Sandra Bernhard that Palin would get gang raped if she went to New York to the art exhibit where you can grab a gun and pretend to shoot her.
Where is the outrage over these examples? If a conservative comedian or radio host warned that Obama should stay out of Alabama lest he be beaten and hung, would the media be silent? If there was an art exhibit where you could "assassinate" Obama, would the media ignore it? This is outrageous! These are just a few examples of a double standard that is both unfair to the McCain campaign and to the American voters, who deserve a balanced and unbiased news media.