The Black Rod

The Winnipeg Free Press is working so hard at being trendy that its forgotten something important--- to report the news. This week they were hyping an appearance at the trendy Winnipeg Free Press News Cafe by trendy millionaire moocher Gail Asper. News Cafe website: "Join the Free Press for a (late) Power Lunch with Gail Asper, No. 2 on the Winnipeg Free Press Power 30 list, at the Winnipeg Free Press News Café... Hear the inside scoop from the woman behind the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, one of the most-anticipated projects in Winnipeg's history." 18 people showed up. Once Gail Asper got her mouth running, she unleashed a series of bombshells, none of which has been reported in the pages of the FP. So we'll do their job instead. Gail Asper revealed: * The fund-raising Friends of the CMHR haven't raised a penny in the first seven months of 2011. * The cost of construction has risen $3.6 million. * The cost of the museum might go eve...

Manitoba Hydro is fighting tooth and nail to keep the Public Utilities Board from finding out the details of their latest contracts with American buyers. They're going to court to keep the contracts secret and the PUB blind. You can understand why the PUB is antsy about Hydro's deals. The last time Hydro signed on the bottom line, they wound up selling power to the U.S. at less than it costs to produce it, meaning that your rates have gone up to subsidize the Minnesota users of Manitoba electricity. And the dam they built to provide the subsidized power (Wuskwatim) was partially privatized without the approval of the Legislature, with a third being sold off to a group of Indian reserves, who couldn't pay for their share and had to borrow the money to pay Manitoba Hydro -- from Manitoba Hydro. To top it off, Hydro agreed to pay the reserves profits from the power sale even in the years when there were no profits, which is the foreseeable future. You know ...

There's one thing you can say about millionaire moocher Gail Asper and her stalwart supporters like Sam Katz. When they start to screw the Winnipeg taxpayer, they are consistent and utterly without shame. Only two months ago Mayor Katz gave Gail Asper's pet project, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, a present of $3.6 million. "Here, we don't need it," he said, just before rushing to the microphones to whine about an infrastructure deficit. "Wahh. We don't have any money to fix the streets. Wahhh. It's Greg Selinger's fault." Today, guess what? The CMHR has stiffed the city on its property taxes for the second year in a row. And that's after the city shaved their tax bill down so that they owed less than last year. Yessiree. Despite sucking up more than 30 million federal dollars in the past three years in, ahem, "operating costs", the CMHR can't find a penny to pay their taxes. (There's a legal ...

Six months in, and the biggest good news story of the year is going unreported. What would you say if we told you that crime in Winnipeg had dropped 26 percent in one year? Well, don't get excited, because we can't make that statement. But we can say that there's been a 26 percent drop in the ten crimes surveyed by the police department's Crimestat service. That's a huge improvement and its not driven solely by a phony drop in car thefts. (Phony because there was no legitimate reason for the sky-high level of car theft in Winnipeg in the first place. To credit anyone with reducing car theft is like congratulating the local arsonist for setting fewer fires this year. If the provincial NDP, judges and probation officials had done their job, there would have been no car theft epidemic.) The single dark cloud over the good news is in Crimestat is the likelihood we may recapture the unwanted title of Murder Capital of Canada again. Winnipeg's 16 homicide...

Psst. Wanna buy a dam? How about a power line? Maybe a transmission tower? For the kids. The little wife might appreciate a shiny new converter station. C'mon. The sale won't last forever. You won't get a deal like this anywhere. No money down and forever to pay. Hell, we'll give you the money to repay the purchase price--- and more to cover your profit, no questions asked. Manitoba Hydro for Sale. Call now. Ask for unelected Premier Greg Selinger. Tell him we sent you. The NDP has begun privatizing Manitoba Hydro and the usual watchdogs of the press are asleep again. What, you say? The NDP? But, but, but....isn't it the other guys we should be afraid of? The facts tell the story. The NDP has been selling off pieces of Hydro for years and nobody has uttered a peep. They've sold off 33 percent of the Wuskwatim dam. They've signed a deal to sell 25 percent of the Keeyask dam, which will be almost five times as large as Wuskwatim. And they're plan...

The inquest report into the 2006 death of Blue Bombers fan Andrew Szabo was released on Tuesday -- but news reports only hint at the actual horror story behind the tragedy. Szabo slowly bled to death in Grace Hospital after falling off a landing onto the concrete below and suffering a broken pelvis that went undiagnosed. Inquest Judge Mary Kate Harvie tries to make ER doctor Terrance Bergmann the scapegoat but news reports failed to point out that she cited Winnipeg paramedics as sharing the blame. Here's the full story... Imagine this scenario: a man trips and free-falls, say, 15 feet before crashing into the cement. He' s unconscious and bleeding from the back of his head. What do you think happens next? Most people would say somebody calls 911, an ambulance shows up, and the unfortunate man is taken to a hospital as quickly as possible for x-rays to his skull. You dreamer. Here's how it worked in real life in Winnipeg. * Szabo stumbled on the st...

Viva la revolution. CBC is reporting that Vancouver police have more than 1 million photos and 1000 hours of video to review while building criminal cases against rioters who rampaged through the city's downtown Wednesday evening following the last game of the Stanley Cup. The Globe and Mail says the public has sent police 3500 emails of which 53 have videos of rioters attached, 676 link to videos on YouTube, 798 include still photos, and another 1000 have links to Facebook and other social media sites where rioters are being outed. Whichever is closer to the truth, the fact is it's proof of a public uprising on behalf of law and order like we've never seen before . The Silent Majority has used the new tools of communication to send criminals a message---we're not going to take it anymore. They've formed an Internet posse to identify the rioters, to track them down, and to make sure they are punished. And by doing so, they're sending the politicia...

Whoops. This just in from the Department of Your Tax Dollars At Work... Hot on the heels of the head chopping at Red River College over the turmoil caused by delays in the Union Bank renos (* see link below ), comes this tidbit about another institute of higher l'arning. It seems the University of Manitoba is doing some deep thinking about a little reno of their own. Or is that a re-reno ? The University had been routinely filling up a newly-built storage annex behind the Dafoe Library when they noticed a little problem--- they had so much stuff the floor was at risk of collapsing from the weight. The annex, built at a cost of $3.3 million, is a warehouse-like building that stores journals and books that aren't used much during the year. But obviously it isn't light reading. A little birdie tells us somebody goofed on the metric/imperial and weight calculations. So guess what? They're moving everything out so a new bunch of workmen can come in and re...

Ding dong. For whom, you ask, does the bell toll? For the dearly departed whose heads rolled at Red River College at the beginning of the month. With no fanfare at all, two names were added to the college dishonour roll: * Catherine Rushton, former Vice President in charge of finance and administration, and * Robert Olson, former associate vice president for facilities and campus services. The college put on a happy face until the spring convocation June 2 and 3, then silently dropped the axe. The 3rd was a Friday, and as everyone was focused on the joyous ceremonies, Rushton took the walk of shame in the empty main campus, picking up her "stuff", and heading for the exit with the standard security guard escort. Rushton and her associate Olson paid the price for what's shaping up to be the disaster du jour, the highly touted renovation of the Union Tower building. Was it only two years ago that city, province and college officials were backslapping and gr...

He's the saddest man in Manitoba today. Unelected premier Greg Selinger has just felt the earth collapse under his feet and his future slip away into the swollen flood waters that still cover much of the province. The Jets are coming back. That's shorthand for 'Winnipeg is about to get an NHL hockey team, again.' And it's exactly what Greg Selinger was praying would never happen. Selinger has spent the last few weeks painting himself as The Man Who Saved Manitoba. He was supposed to stride into the fall election campaign as a hero, he who singlehandedly staved off the flood on the Red River, first, then the Assiniboine, and even the LaSalle. But the water just won't go down, and the scramble to build dikes and fill sandbags and evacuate cattle just keeps going on and on and on. And its getting worse, with the overflowing lakes threatening to engulf cottage country and precipitate a new wave of evacuations and property loss, as we undergo another...