Good for you, Ben!

I guess there's no actual law against misrepresentation ... or is there?

Come to think of it, how faking and planting a paid political announcement any different from pre-loading an opinion poll to make it look the way Mr Money-Bags wants it to look and not the way things really are.

Misrepresenting public opinion is a rotten abuse of the privileges of free speech.

Not many people know that the Gordon Campbell government hired 185 new -- NEW -- Public Affairs Officials in September 2006 under Order-in-Council #656. Public Affairs? Media Monitors. 185 in addition to the number of Spin Doctors already on the public payroll. Who needs them?

The awful irony is that taxpayers are paying quite a few employees to fool us into thinking ... well, whatever they decide ... no guarantee it's the truth.

Personally I think this reflects poorly upon the big monopoly press in BC.

Thanks for telling a few of these Comment-Planters that they should get a real job, Ben.
.

What a load of twaddle !!!

The real problem here, IMO, is that most people in the North are working their sorry butts off to pay for the indulgences of those in Victoria who have NOT a single clue about what it is like to struggle with a REAL job to fill the tax coffers which are spent by the Overlords
in their fairy-chasing, fantasy lust !!! (and don't run that trash by me about how the government does such a good job of investing in the North's infrastructure... look around and see what we have been "given". )

Take the $400 million that you are going to send us before July 1st (BTW... Happy Canada Day! - the irony is not lost on us) and use it for your so called "Carbon Tax" and leave the playing field fair.

Sort of like giving the kid his allowance, then claiming it all back for room and board !! Shame on you !!

I, for one, will be sending my cheque back with "do not cash" written on the front and back.

Grimtimes ...

Carbon tax for nothing. Global warming by man, this is going to turn out to be about the biggest scam ever. Did you know that the earth has shown an over all cooling trend since 1998! Al Gore makes over 120 thousand a speech and the power bill for his hame is 30 thousand a year. He is concerned about sea level rise but just bought ocean front condo in Florida. The suzuki foundation is running with this scam also. Here is an excellent web site for lots of information. icecap.us, check out the links in this site.

I had a hunch that some of the back patting for the Liberals over the carbon tax and the budget in general, might have been set-up!
Nobody can be that stupid...can they?
It is the most damaging budget for the little guy here in B.C. that we have seen in a long time.
Sooner or later people will start to see just what this government is all about and it isn't honesty!
Unfortunately, the damage will already be done if they are not stopped soon.
Thanks for the heads up Ben!

I wonder how much all the international warmongering (military) efforts contribute to global warming?

Plenty, as does the manufacturing of all the weapons of war and their constant scrapping and replacement with newer, more deadly and more accurate ones.

Which country is the biggest offender?

The one that refuses to do anything about it and spreads the most unscientific propaganda about it.

Why not demand that the problem be tackled from that end as well? Politically incorrect?

Mankind is a funny lot. It always acts after the fact, often after it is too late, even if it had all the information already.

Oh, yes. The more than 1,400 scientists (many of them Noble Prize laureates) were deviously wrong when they sent a joint letter to the Bush administration expressing their concerns about mankind's contribution to global warming.

However, lately Bush himself has admitted very reluctantly that the combustion of many billions of tons of fossil fuels each and every year for almost half a century may indeed make a negative difference.

As more and more countries adopt a green agenda those which don't will undoubtedly be left behind and soon they won't have too many partners to trade with or which they can legally trade with.

In the meantime the arguments keep raging on.

The times - they are a'changing.

Right wing dictatorship running amok?????

Well the Liberals are a bunch of fools, are doing a terrible job, and we can bash them all we want, However we voted them in so......

I assure you I ain't no toady for any level of government. Municipal, provincial or the Feds. And by the way, not even for that pseudo government called Translink in the Lower Mainland. A pox on them all. Too many rules, too many laws, and too many taxes. Grrr.

"Not many people know that the Gordon Campbell government hired 185 new -- NEW -- Public Affairs Officials in September 2006 under Order-in-Council #656. Public Affairs? Media Monitors. 185 in addition to the number of Spin Doctors already on the public payroll. Who needs them?"

Gordon Campbell.

seamutt... seamutt... seamutt...

You're better educated and more intelligent in the dynamics of climate and chemistry than hundreds of the world's scientists, are you?

Al Gore didn't come with this all on his own you know.

kevin1006, most of the world's 'scientists' once believed that the world was flat. And that it was at the centre of the universe, with the sun revolving around it, rather than it around the sun. Galileo showed it was not so. (But he had to keep quiet about it, lest he be silenced permanently for his heresy.)

A little over a hundred years ago, all the world's 'scientists' believed in a substance called 'aether'. Later, that was shown not to exist.

Less than 100 years ago, the world's 'scientists' believed that bombarding the human body with X-rays could 'cure' TB, and that any burns to the skin that resulted were as harmless as a bad sunburn.

And it was only a couple of decades ago, at most, that the world's 'scientists' were telling us that we were in sight of another great ice age.

And now we're all going to melt. Or drown under the melted polar ice-caps. Unless, of course, we all stop emitting green-house gases. Such 'faith' we have in 'science' and 'scientists'. I would venture to say that if the whole population of Canada did their bit for the environment and committed mass-suicide tomorrow, the temperature of planet Earth wouldn't vary one degree over the next hundred years.

The great debate on global warming will rage on forever,but there is one underlying fact that we all have a tendancy to miss at times.
It is BIG business and it has become a billion dollar industry that is making many people and related companies very,very wealthy!
It's actually very good for the global economy in a perverted sort of way!
The more fear and spin that people deal with on a daily basis in regards to the world melting,the more dollars it generates.
It's like selling hotdogs at a funeral,somebody will always fnd a way to turn a buck out of a situation no matter how bad it is,and somebody else will always do the buying.
In case nobody noticed,the B.C. Liberals did just that, and that is exactly what terms like "carbon tax" are designed to do.
They are coined to make us think that we are part of the solution and it is supposed to make us all feel better about our daily lives.
Ok,now I am doing my share,don't I feel better?
Unfortunately,the only ones who will actually feel better will be those doing the spinning and the counting of the money!
Gradual global warming may be a serious issue,but the bulls**t and lucrative opportunities that it generates for many will do nothing to solve the problem.
There are no short term solutions, and there may not even be any long term ones either,for all we know at this stage.
The world will keep growing and the demand for everything that contributes to the problem will keep increasing.
But we will all pay for that regardless, because like it or not,greed will go hand in hand with the meltdown.
And that,boy and girls,is how the world works!

Eliminate the income slave tax and allow Canadians to be free to work for all of their income and save that income in a tax-free environment if they choose to save. Deductions for a benefit (eg medical, life insurance ect) are paying for a specific service, but income slave taxation is not.

If we could earn without taxation and thus save without taxation, then we couldn't be forced to invest in mutual funds run by casino gamblers allocating and voting for corporate leadership with our capital so that we can have the privilege of an income slave tax break. The income slave tax and its tax avoidance schemes are actually societies way of investing in its own slavery by its corporate and bureaucratic masters.

All in my humble opinion....

Nirvana!
Except we wouldnt save it, taxes also pay for the social safety net, police education nad other good things like roads, bridges, parks, nad everything else that people take for granted or scoff at (until they need it).
As for the scripted comments: that isnt exactly new is it? How often have the local papers opinion sections been bombarded by very similar letters (at least in theme) from organizations, unions, etc.? People get together, agree to write on the same issue and write at the same time.
There is no law against a person writing a letter , or just typing out another persons letter (with permission) and sending to a public forum. Thats not misrepresentation.
It is due to the anonymity of posters on this site that we have this problem. It has also lead to another problem, where people post rather strong letters that they would not likely post if their name was at the bottom.
I think organized posting campaigns are an abuse, dont get me wrong. I just think it is a little naive to expect otherwise. I think we ALL need to be diligent in avoiding abuse of this forum, in any form, if we want to keep our forum intact.