This is a sad case of transmutation politics. The agenda, promises, and facts go through transmutation from the day people vote the minute the polls close, and the elected become government.

Clearly this is evidence if there ever was that our political system is thoroughly corrupt. Budgets that are off by $2.3 billion in only four months should not be acceptable... an HST agenda that was clearly in play at the time of the election and has a huge impact on BC's sovereignty sprung on the people of BC 3-months after the election should not be acceptable. Clearly our democracy does not work and is thoroughly corrupted. Recall is in order I would think, but who has the time to organize that?

We don't have a democracy... we have a corpocracy. We have a government by and for purely a corporate agenda at the expense of the middle class and small enterprise business. We have a system funded and controlled by corporate interests and a political class that caters to that for the greed of power. The liberals have made a sham of democracy for worse than the Glen Clark so-called 'fudget budget' election budget miss of $400 million that cost the ndp power on a similar time line but only a sixth of the misrepresentation (the power difference in propaganda I guess).

BC needs a free enterprise party that represents the broad middle class and small enterprise business in the pursuit of equal opportunity and a government centered on its people, rather than the foreign shareholder interests of foreign multinationals.

IMHO

Some people say democratic reform can be expensive... I figure in the long run its a lot cheaper than the kind of accountability we have for $2.8 billion dollar fudget-election-budget scandals.

We can only expect more of the same, Eagle. Even from any 'new', or even rejuvenated 'old', political parties. The ideals of the original BC Social Credit "League" (not "Party"), when it first formed government in 1952 probably came the closest to the concepts you're calling for.

But without "economic" democracy, which, even with all the great accomplishments WAC Bennett was able to achieve in his 20 years as Premier still was not attempted, "political" democracy is really a sham.

And we can't have "economic" democracy until we collectively insist that "finance" properly REFLECTS actual physical reality, instead of trying to DETERMINE it.

Especially not when the "accounting", as it is presently carried out in relation to the economy as a whole and reflected in each government's "budget", is flawed to start with.

The government, acting at the behest of the banking system, taxes us 'financially' to increase the "real credit" of the community. The production or provision of all the myriad of things which enable us to increasingly provide actual goods and services as, when and where required. As it properly should. The private sector does essentially the same thing through "prices".

(Only also for taxes, in the government's case, for the continual transmutation of the otherwise unrepayable "floating debts" of the private sector, in their totality, into the unrepayable "fixed debts" of the public one. Which can only be accomplished by the fact that a government can always tax to meet the ongoing interest on them. Its "collateral security" is the enslavement of the public to "work" for this purpose.)

The 'problem' with this, for us, is the government never fully 'credits' us with the value of this increase in the overall "real credit" 'financially'. So we can fully 'financially' draw upon what we HAVE ALREADY CREATED.

Instead, it forces us to work again to try to pay what we've already worked for and already accomplished.

And we are penalised, again at the behest of the banking system (either consciously or un-consciously), through an inadequacy of 'purchasing power' to enslave ourselves to a system that sets the terms and conditions under which we will labour. This is what needs to end before true "democracy" can ever be accomplished.

Well said Eagleone and socredible!

Same old song, the middle class keeps paying for the bums free ride more and more. I should just adopt some bums and buy them cars and clothes and send them to college.

I don't see any "mixed reaction"
Each and every respondent/poster has blasted this budget.

Get out and vote!
When you do,DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY ESTABLISHED PARTY! By voting for the old guard, you tell them that it is just fine to rape the masses.

Vote for independents, then for the fringe party's. This way, we get a government of independents that have no choice but do a good job. This party system has got to go. It is nothing but an ol' boys club with big business (only) as their task masters.

A good start towards ridding ourselves of this corrupt 'party' system would be to sign on to the petition Bill Vander Zalm is starting to have a vote on the HST.

Whether you like Vander Zalm or not, his idea is to use the existing Initiative and Referendum process his government introduced, and the NDP later passed, to force a vote on this issue.

It is doubtful the government would go ahead if enough voters demand that they not. (If they did, it would reveal for all to see that they are NOT our "representatives", but are only there to collect their paycheques and represent the wishes of "high Finance" to us.)

What a bunch of whiners. And here I thought only politicians whine about being "entitled to their entitlements". What a country.