Urban Vancouver

If General Motors is actually serious about turning their sinking battleship of a company around, perhaps they should look at dusting off the plans for their electric car, the EV-1. The EV-1 was the "plug-in" car that GM built and leased (but would not sell) in the mid to late 1990s. For some unknown and seemingly mysterious reason, in 1999 GM stopped making the electric cars and by 2003 had pulled the vast majority of them off the road.

Now GM is proud to be developing the "Volt", an electric super-car that is supposedly going to be able to do 200mph...just ...

Is it possible that BC's municipal elections be linked to the provincial vote? One has to wonder if there is some way that the two votes could be held concurrently in order to increase voter participation at the provincial and municipal level.

Of course at this time the municipal elections are held on a three year rotation but there is movement to increasing that term of office to four years. Why not move the provincial elections to the fall and have one ballot with multiple choices to be made? Yes, there would have to be changes but the changes might improve our ...

With the TSX and the Dow continuing their steady declines, all the people who "locked in their loses" when the markets droppped below the sacred 10,000 point are actually looking pretty intelligent these days. They have only locked in loses of 5-10% whereas many of the people who decided to ride out the market rollercoaster may never see their portfolios regain value.

Of course the common wisdom of the markets is that you need to look at the long term and not watch the day to day activity of the markets. Still, it hurts to see the portfolio statement sliding through the ...

We are very pleased to announce that The Tyee Online has now picked up a feed from our efforts. They now list our website on their list of BC Blogs. Follow the link below to find more quality BC Blogs:

http://thetyee.ca/BCBlogs/

And while visiting the Tyee online, we did happen to briefly see an article about the new German built BC ferries...the headline posed the question; are the new ferries lemons? and went on to discuss the new German built ferries fuel guzzling tendencies, excessive noise, vibration and more. Maybe Washington Marine Group would like to lease the Fast Cats ...

Just a couple of observations this evening. First, Gregor Robertson's star is seriously on the rise. Three years as Mayor of Vancouver...and the "Olympic Mayor" no less.That puts his first term through to the end of 2011 and a second term running until 2014. If he can accomplish half of what he has set out to do without any serious blunders along the way...look out provincial scene.

There will be a provincial election this coming May, 2009. If Carol James cannot rally the troops to a New Democrat victory in that election, her time may be limited. More than likely though, she ...

In your excitement to get to the heart of the news on our web page, you people are forgetting to support our sponsors. Our sponsors are all down the right hand side of this web page...there are advertisements for all sorts of interesting and inspiring articles. You can find commemorative Barack Obama plates, mugs and t-shirts! You can find property for sale and valuable information about the candidates in tomorrow's municipal lections.

Check them out people...remember when you support our sponsors, they can support us and our ongoing quest of revealing the truth or at the very least, commenting on ...

Vancouver Olympic CEO John Furlong spoke to the BC Business Council on Thursday. The audience was not sure if he was trying to be funny or serious with some of his remark

Furlong suggested that businesses urge their employees to take vacation during the 2010 Games. He went on to say that perhaps businesses could "mandate" that their employees take vacation when the Olympic Games come to Vancouver-Whistler. That remark was met with a ripple of laughter...this was when people were not sure if he was joking or serious.

If we assume he is joking he definitely needs a better speech writer. If ...

One of the many difficult issues for president-elect Barack Obama to deal with may be the "enemy combatants" that the George W Bush regime has kept locked in cages on Guantanamo Bay. What is he supposed to do with the Bush-Cheney legacy of disregarding the human rights of so many human beings?

The end result of the failed Bush policy of keeping people in cages on an island is that they have created a significant group of individuals who will now have a lifelong hatred for everything to do with the USA. What is Obama supposed to do with these people now?...

The day before the American's elected their new president there was a reporter wandering the streets of the USA asking people their thoughts about Barack Obama. Two comments particularly stood out: first, one person said they don't like Obama because he is a socialist. Another person said they did not like Obama because his name was so similar to Osama that it is very likely that he is a terrorist.

He added that, "It is in his blood to be a terrorist." Is there a blood test you can get done to find out if this is true?

And for Obama being ...

General Motors admitted today that they lost $4.2 billion for the last quarter of operations. The $4.2 billion loss compares to a $1.6 billion adjusted net loss for the same quarter in the previous year.

Perhaps more troubling for GM is the fact that they are rapidly running out of operating cash...that is the money that it uses to pay the day to day expenses, things like their employee wages. General Motors has said that they need to raise significant dollars to maintain operations; in order to accomplish this they are considering selling off more assets or seeking money from private funds ...

If you want to see what a "political sandbagging" looks like in action, watch the video clip of Peter Ladner finding out in the middle of a public meeting that Vancouver's chief financial officer, Estelle Lo has resigned.

Some are reporting that Estelle Lo has resigned from her position with the city of Vancouver because she has serious concerns about taking $100 million from the city's Property Endownment Fund to support the Millenium Development Corporation. That is the corporation that is building the Olympic village for the city of Vancouver.

Ladner looks as if he has literally been hit ...

In perhaps the most poignant acceptance speech President-Elect Barack Obama told the gathered crowds, "YES WE CAN!!" and you know, we believe him. We really believe him.

What an amazing night. Senator Obama, the President-Elect of the USA is the most amazing and most statesman-like individual that has graced the world stage in a very long time. Congratulations to the USA for electing an amazing individual as their 44th President. Beautiful.

As well as voting for who will be the next president of the USA and who will be the local dog-catcher, voters in San Francisco were also voting on "Proposition R".

"Proposition R" proposes to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W Bush Sewage Plant. The proponents of the measure say the country has gone down the drain under W's leadership and naming a sewage plant with Bush's name is a fitting way to remember the 43rd president.

Looking at the projections on the map of the critical electoral districts of the United States, theleftcoast.ca is projecting a Barack Obama win. This means that the fisrt African-American president has been elected in the USA. theleftcoast.ca wants to be the first to congratulate Senator Barack Obama on his win of the Presidency of the USA!!

Today is a historic day in the United States; the American people have the choice to elect an African-American President...or another grandfatherly old white guy who sees the solution to the world's problems through the sights of a gun. What an amazing opportunity this is for them.

We will be watching the polls this evening and if the opportunity presents itself, we will be posting our observations. As well, we will be posting from deep inside the beast, with information supplied by two of our American correspondents. Stay tuned for the ride!

With a minimum of political wrangling, the United States government was able to come up with $700 BILLION to bail-out the greedy money manipulators of Wall Street. That is $700 BILLION.

In 2005, the G8 leaders agreed to increase overseas aid to $50 billion a year by the year 2010 to save countless millions of children and families from dying of malnutrition. The agreed upon target of $50 billion is so far $30 billion short.

That gap in funding will cost five million people their lives. Five million people will die because the G8 leaders will not honour the commitments they made in ...

Heard Barack Obama saying, "We are not a collection of red states or blue states. We are the UNITED states." Beautifully said.

A dispatch from our Eastside correspondent:

Dear Red States,

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.  In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and all of the Northeastern states. After this election, we'll be adding <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Colorado and New Mexico. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, especially to the people of our new country - Nuevo California .

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states; we get ...

A great big welcome to the Legislature for the two newest MLAs...Jenn McGinn and Spencer Herbert. 

The voter tradition of electing members of the oppositions was upheld in yesterday's by-elections while one expectation was tossed out; the expectation was that Vancouver-Fairview, snatched from the BC Libs in the last provincial election by the uber-charismatic Gregor Robertson was held by the New Democrats with Jenn McGinn's victory.

In the Vancouver-Burrard riding, Spencer Herbert thoroughly whooped former Canucks owner, Arthur Griffiths. It was a most peculiar decision to see Griffiths running for office in a community in which he seemed to have little or no connection.

If ...