Many will also not know that Mr. Mair was a former BC Liberal. And that shortly before his election as MLA and elevation to the Cabinet, the majority of the BC Liberal's then sitting MLAs, (of whom Mr. Mair was NOT one ~ he had not made it into the Legislature at that point), were absorbed into the BC Social Credit PARTY. Mr. Mair was absorbed, too, and ran as a BC Socred.

This new PARTY subsequently replaced the former BC Social Credit LEAGUE (WAC Bennett's 'grass roots Movement')as the NDP Dave Barrett government's Official Opposition.

The idea was to unite the 'free enterprise' forces to avoid vote splitting, and defeat what had been, in its three too long years, the worst government BC had ever seen. A record unequalled until Gordon Campbell was elected.

While the 'coalition' of BC Socreds and BC Liberals achieved its intended purpose, the absorbtion of the BC Liberals turned out to be a 'reverse takeover', as everything 'good' about Social Credit was progressively ('regressively' would be more correct), done away with, and a political apparatus and regime that had all the failings that've blossomed so fully under Gordon Campbell were allowed to develop.

These people continued to pay 'lip-service' to the concept of 'free-enterprise'. But what they were really all about was something very much different. 'Global capitalism'.

With it came such brilliantly enlightened policies as "sympathetic administration" for our forest industry. Something that made an utter mockery of even having a "Ministry of the Environment", and a fellow like our Rafe as its first Minister.

Where true Social Credit would've recognized that the solution to the problem of a fall off in international markets for lumber and other forest products was NOT to 'highgrade' the best and waste the rest, but rather to deal effectively with the 'money' problem, Bill Bennett's government couldn't see that.

To them, like our Gordo, the dollar bill was their God. The 'books must be balanced'. At all costs. Their inane slash and burn policies, not only in the woods, but 'financially' in the early 1980's, spawned the militant, just as nutty, 'Environomental' movement that would phase out all human activity, indeed even the whole human race, to preserve "Nature".

Without a return to our willingness to understand and tackle the overriding 'financial' problems that beset us today, something the BC Liberals and their big-monied sponsors, nor the NDP and its adherence to the outdated concepts of 'socialism' and "government knows best" elitism, will never do, we're wasting our time even bothering to vote.

Our history is what we build on to make us what we are today. Nobody will disbute that Rafe Mair was a politician and toewed the party line But today he just tells it like it really is!!!

Keep up the great work Rafe!!

Socreep I think you have an agenda and you try to fix every issue around your agenda for more debt to delay the day of reckoning for free money accountability. I think your shot on Rafe was a low blow to try and further your own agenda.

I have a real doozy of a quote for you that I think says it all about the banks and their adherence to capitalism. This one quote explains why our markets will no longer work because the curtain has been lifted...

My quote is off topic, but it is the antidote to Socreeps comments about using bankers debt to get out of a recession.

"Congress and the President have some input in appointing the Federal Reserve Board, but the Board works behind closed doors with the regional bankers, without Congressional oversight or control. Bank CEOs actually sit on the boards of the Fed’s twelve branches. As just one recent example of the private control of public monies, in March of this year the New York Federal Reserve agreed in private weekend negotiations to advance $55 billion of the people’s money so that JPMorgan Chase could buy Bear Stearns at the bargain basement price of $2 a share, down from a high of $156 a share. It was a hostile takeover, not approved by the Bear Stearns shareholders or the American voters. JPMorgan Chase is the bank founded by John Pierpont Morgan, who sponsored the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Jamie Dimon, the current CEO of JPMorgan Chase, sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which dominates the twelve Federal Reserve Banks; and he has huge stock holdings in JPMorgan Chase. His participation in the decision to give his bank $55 billion in Federal Reserve loans is the sort of conflict of interest that federal statute makes a criminal offense; but there is no one to prosecute the statute, because the banking lobby is too powerful to be denied. The banking lobby is powerful because private bankers, not the government, create our money and control who gets it."

(See Ellen Brown, “The Secret Bailout of JPMorgan,” May 13, 2008, www.webofdebt.com/articles; and “What’s the Difference Between Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns?”, June 14, 2008, ibid.)

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The result will be to privatize profits to the banks management and shareholders... while socializing risk to the taxpayers.

I think the markets should pick the winners and the losers and not the bankers.

Eagle, if you put your faith in the likes of Ellen Brown, who bases a large part of the material contained in "Web of Debt" on monetary myths that have been debunked publicly time and again, (like the 'magic money' States Notes that the government of the Isle of Guernsey was supposed to have just 'printed up' to pay for public works ~ which were really paid for from duties on imports; and all the 'supposed' quotes of Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin on financing through the issuance of 'Greenbacks' and 'colonial scrip' ~ most of which are provable fabrications put out by the 'Greenback' Movement in the late 19th century), I truly pity you.

For you, like she, in her belief that ALL money creation should be vested in the hands of "Government" not only know NOT whereof you speak, but are unconsciously calling for a type of 'government' that is completely totalitarian and fascistic.

For your information, I DO think there should be far more 'regulation' and 'oversight' from the government in the affairs of private banking, than there currently is. Both here, and most certainly in the USA, and elsewhere.

Banking is a 'natural monopoly', because the 'money' (credit, actually), that Banks create "out of nothing" (the terms of the lending agreement called a 'promissory note', that didn't exist before they and the borrower agreed to them), must be fully 'fungible'. It's acceptance universally in the general community, including at other Banks, is what makes 'money' money.

Like any 'monopoly' it should be publicly regulated, and the effort should be to 'de-centralize' banking as much as possible. NOT concentrate and 'monopolize' it
further in its credit creating function into the the hands of any "government", and especially ones over which we, the people, already have such little actual control.

A proper monetary system would SERVE man, rather than as now, continually tend to be his MASTER. You cannot have a proper monetary system by making an existing monopoly of credit more absolute, but only by de-centralizing it in order to have CONSUMER control of credit. Since it is the function of 'money' to facilitate the control and distribution of production to CONSUMERS. And that's really all it should be good for.

Concentrating ALL credit creation into the hands of 'government' is the most perfect mechanism ever devised to absolutely control the affairs of each and every individual by those (same people as now ~ the 'banksters', as you call them), who now actually already have far too much control over "your" government.

The "markets" CAN'T properly "pick the winners and the losers" when the TERMS MAKER and the DEAL MAKER are ultimately one and the same. The existence of ANY market, for goods, services, or SECURITIES, depends on their being an "effective demand" for these things. The control over that "effective demand" is currently vested entirely in the Banks. Some ill-informed individuals, like Ellen Brown, want to vest that control in Government instead. In a manner that will make worse the situation they say they are trying to correct.