Ain't keen on Keenan's redundant columns

Ahh, it's nice to read  Mike Keenan's hack columns in the St.Catharines Standard, where he regularly loves to smarm Harper, or Stockwell Day, or G.W. Bush or Sarah Palin or Cheney. Tiresome, predictable, safe old hack stuff; guess every paper needs its lefty grump. Guess Keenan ain't too keen on examining the laugh-riot of Biden/Obama...eh? Can't find anything funnee in that, eh?! But guns n'Republicans... heeheeheee, this keener's on orange-alert fire, yessirreeee. Nothing hilarious about Iggy, huh, Mike? Can't bring yerself ta openly admit that Dalton McGuinty is a FLICKING Liberal liar, eh, Mike, but your innuendo about Harper being one is gold... gold, I tells ya...
Really, do you actually believe anything which McGuinty says anymore, Mike? Just checkin'...
Really, should anyone, um... actually like Keenan, a tasteless hack who can't bother to figure out that carbon dioxide is actually an odourless and colourless gas?
Actually, it is.
Really? Who actually knew?
Not Mike, actually.
Foul-smelling, actually, ya...

Who is the "real boss" at the Niagara Health System?

Regarding Grant Lafleche's story "Meet the new boss", (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.29, 2011), it's quite clear that the 'new boss' is cut from the same cloth as the 'old boss'; that the 'new direction' is the same as the monopolist 'old direction'; that it's 'potatoe / pot-ah-toe' time at the NHS; and that this is nothing more than pre-election bait and switch in the Liberal government-run health monopoly.
Of course, Lafleche hasn't the time, or inclination, to tell us - seeing that Sue Matthews is as enthusiastic about the NHS's HIP plan as now-fired Debbie Sevenpifer ever was - why, then, was Sevenpifer thrown under the bus?
Why hasn't the rest of the NHS board resigned, or been fired?
Was Sevenpifer culpable of something, yet the rest of the board was somehow held harmless?! [...Remember when a Soviet-sounding-Smitherman, the Liberal health-care-cutter, was propagating the idea that this was a "people's system"?! But "the people" have no say in it, and have no right to even know why the NHS's CEO was fired!]
Why is the NHS not under a supervisor's control, whereby the ombudsman would have had the authority to fully scrutinize the NHS's past and present finances and governance models and the CEO's and boards' performance?
[Hmm, isn't "governance model of the NHS" Kim Craitor's favourite cry? So why was the proper way to get this independent investigation/ evaluation - by firing the entire NHS board and appointing a Supervisor - not been done by Craitor's own secretive Liberals?]
Not that Lafleche knows such answers, but, did this reporter even ask ?
Were any Liberals asked to comment on this health-care story?
Reading this article, there is no mention of the Liberal government's role in the change at the NHS. As we all should know by now, the so-called "boss" which Lafleche refers to in his story, is not a "boss" at all: the NHS is run, funded, and controlled by the monopolist Liberal government.
The real 'bosses' at the NHS are the Liberals; the NHS is a pawn of the Liberal government, and the NHS board and chair are merely government lackeys. Their 'independence' is a monopolist charade.
So maybe that's why the St.Catharines Standard can't bring itself to mention the local Liberals whose government actually controls the NHS, and, who are the real bosses of the NHS.
It's best to perpetuate the illusion that the "bosses" at the NHS are "real", and that the real bosses, Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley, have nothing to do with the NHS!
Why, reading Lafleche's article, one would be at a loss to figure out what, if anything, any Liberal could ever possibly have to do with anything at the NHS!!!!  [The St.Catharines Standard has demonstrated a clear propensity for protecting  local Liberal Jim Bradley's ass and treating him with kid-gloves, spinning stories so that Bradley either is made to look good, or, he's not mentioned at all.]
Why, this is all arm's length from Kimmy n' Jimmy! hahahaha!
The Liberal government has nothing to do with the NHS; or with the LHIN that oversees the NHS; or with the Ministry of Health which oversees the LHIN! hahahaha!
Look at how Lafleche writes that the HIP, "approved in 2008, repurposed emergency rooms in Port Colborne and Fort Erie into urgent-care centres". [..."Repurposed"?! That's a cute new euphemism for 'Two hospital emergency departments closed by McGuinty's Liberals". Seeing that this is an election year, apparently it's best not to mention the words Liberals, cut, or closed, in any health-care stories...]
Wow: no mention at all by Lafleche as to why or how this "repurposing' occurred!! Certainly, no Liberals were hurt by the spin of this velvet-gloved story!
The HIP was just magically "approved"?????!!!!!! Wow: approved by whom?! Lafleche doesn't quite get around to that.
Why wasn't George Smitherman's role as Liberal health minister mentioned, when Smitherman forced the Ministry of Health to force the LHIN to force the NHS to create the HIP?
Where was Lafleche's contextual explanation about how, after the HIP was created by the NHS (as it was told to do), that the HIP was subsequently approved by Dr.Jack Kitts, and then after that, also approved by the LHIN, which then ordered the NHS, under then-CEO Sevenpifer, to implement the HIP?
Lafleche also forgot to mention that subsequent Liberal health ministers David Caplan, and now Deb Matthews, both refused to stop or even reconsider the NHS's HIP.
So, yeah, believe it: this ole HIP plan just miraculously appeared one day, out of thin air, and was magically 'approved'!!
What could the Liberal government possibly have to do with any of this?!
It's best not to mention them at all!
*

Iggy, the kitten-eating Liberal devil? Huh?

Strange little column by John Ivison "Deep game, or just in deep" (National Post, Jan.28, 2011) where Ivison writes about the "popular misconceptions" being bandied about during this latest spat of election fever in Ottawa. Ivison's column was entirely focused on federal politics; nothing in this column was about provincial politics. Yet Ivison himself writes this cute li'l disingenuous misconception:
"...But the Conservatives have learned from bitter experience that campaigns are unpredictable and they could just as easily lose seats because some over-served backbencher calls the Liberal leader an evil, reptilian kitten-eater..."
WTF?  That was about Liberal Dalton McGuinty - from the 2003 PROVINCIAL election, Mr.Ivison!!
That had NOTHING to do with federal politics then, or now, in 2011!!
When Ivison mentions  "the Liberal leader", who the hell is he talking about??!! (It ain't Iggy!) Which "Conservatives" ?! Which "over-served backbencher" is he referring to?!
Ivison conveniently neglects to mention that in 2003 Iggy wasn't even living in Canada; having left the country some thirty years earlier.
Funny that Ivison couldn't be bothered to mention that, eh?!
Yet, Ivison managed to throw in the 'kitten-eater' quip, which has nothing to do with any federal election, nor with Ignatieff. [see: here;  see here ]
It's not as if Ivison doesn't know this entire story and its context, for cryin' out loud: he himself wrote about it in the National Post in 2003!
Wow: so Ivison now dredges up an eight-year-old joke, which was unrelated to any federal election and unrelated to Iggy, yet conveniently manages to overlook sulphur-smeller Ignatieff's recent odious innuendo about Harper being the devil?! Hee hee hee! Nice drive-by, Mr.Ivison! See: here;  here;  here.
Why didn't Ivison remind us of that smarmy remark by an "over-served" Iggy?! If the kitten-eater remark was worthy enough for Ivison's narrative of the unpredictability of rhetoric and its relation to seat-losses, why didn't he include Iggy's devilish remarks? That ain't relevant?!
Astounding how Ivison mixes apples and oranges here, picking one quote from an unrelated provincial incident and applying it federally to another situation altogether. This is Toronto Red Star-worthy "journalism"; we expect better analysis in the National Post.
There was this drool response from Peter Varley to Ivison's column in the Jan.29, 20011 Post: "I deeply resent John Ivison's suggestion that, as the author of the "Evil Reptilian Kitten Eater from Another Planet" quip from the 2003 Ontario election, I was "an over-served backbencher." I was in fact an over-served backroomer"!
The 'kitten-eater' reference was a completely relevant quip playing on Ontario's then-opposition leader Dalton McGuinty's admitted obsession with the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' series. The lib-left howled in outrage, as they would if anyone today called Iggy the devil - which he might be. Lookit how the federal Liberals know, and admit they know, that Harper - as he has said on numerous occasions - doesn't want an election; yet the sulphur-smelling Iggy [who knows this, and who claims he doesn't want an election either] nevertheless continues to goad the Conservatives into calling one. Isn't that what devils do?! (Just askin', Mr. Ivison!!)
This is the same disingenuous Liberal Iggy who tempts the electorate with grand promises, frequently rattling his election-call sabre - and who then (as did the laughing stock Stephane Bumbledore Dion before him)  folds his rhetorical lawn-chair and votes for the government budgets anyway. How devilish of Count Iggula to pretend that the last five years of Conservative budgets had nothing to do with his Liberals; as if the Conservatives weren't a minority government which Iggy's Grits have continuously propped up! Fiendishly clever!
As far as the 'kitten eater from outer space' joke goes,  its concept is still as relevant to McGuinty now as it was then; in fact, we now see that this "joke" was prescient. We have had the misfortune of seeing how McGuinty's other-worldly Ontario Liberal government has been a hellish disaster of lies and incompetence since 2003: the concept of truth and responsibility - as we since seen - were always alien to McGuinty's Liberals.
And, hey: on that basis, the same joke can now be recycled and could just as well apply to Ignatieff!
So, thanks then, for bringing it up again, and making the connection for us, Mr. Ivison.
*

Long ER wait times have nothing to do with McGuinty's Liberals!

Grant Lafleche wrote in "ER back-ups causing longer wait times" (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.28, 2011):

"It was a long 8 1/2 hours for Jim Brady. He understood why his daughter was not at the top of the triage list at the St. Catharines General emergency room.
But the wait seemed like forever, and was one he had hoped to avoid if possible.
"If we know the ER is really busy at, say, 11 or 12 at night, we'll not bring her in until around 2 in the morning to try and avoid the wait," Brady said.
There was no avoiding the wait.
Brady called ahead, but the hospital would not tell him how long the wait time was. His daughter was suffering from serious nausea. She was treated during a previous hospital visit, but the doctor said to come back if the problem returned.
It did, so Brady brought his daughter in last week.
"That's when we saw the sign," he said. "It said the wait was 8 1/2 hours. I understand they are busy, and the life-threatening cases have to go first. But 8 1/2 hours seems too long under any condition."
Unfortunately, the wait times at Niagara ERs have been longer than usual for non-urgent cases, said Anne Atkinson, vice-president of patient services for the Niagara Health System.
Atkinson said the volume of patients has not increased. But what has changed is the number of patients needing cardiac care and those who need to be admitted. That's led to a shortage of beds to move patients into the hospital, meaning many of those patients end up staying in the ER.
"We've cancelled all elective surgeries for the week," she said, although emergency surgeries and cancer-related surgeries will go ahead as scheduled.
While she sympathizes with people like Brady, she said it is not possible for the NHS to post real-time wait times on the Internet or tell people when they call.
"We need staff to be taking care of patients," she said.
Besides, the wait times at the ER are often event-specific. The wait time might be relatively short, but can change quickly because of a car accident, for example.
Atkinson said the ER also does not want to discourage patients from coming in if they need emergency care because of a potentially long wait. If someone needs emergency care, she said that person needs to go to the ER.
Nevertheless, she said the NHS continues to encourage people with non-life-threatening conditions -- like broken bones, fever, cough or sprains -- to use the urgent care centres, like the one on Ontario St. in St. Catharines.
Atkinson said typically, the wait time at the urgent care is about 2.3 hours. Right now, wait times at the St. Catharines ER are longer than the provincial benchmark of four hours, she said, a problem that's exacerbated by the severity of the conditions of current patients at the hospital."
*

Well, we know how Jim Brady feels, but how does Jim Bradley feel about this???

It's funny, eh, how there isn't ANY mention at all in Ole Slant Lafleche's article about how Jim Bradley - who just happens to be the local Liberal MPP whose government runs the hospital monopoly in St.Catharines - feels about what his Liberal policies have done to health care in Ontario!!

Was Liberal MPP Jim Bradley even asked by this slanted Standard reporter/stenographer/propagandist for a comment or explanation?!

Hahahaha... better just to leave Ole Jimmy outta this!!!

{The St.Catharines Standard Bradley Bootlicker should have a warning label on their LiberalFriendly TM biased stories, assuring readers that the story has been sanitized for the reader's political protection, and carefully crafted so that no Liberals were harmed by the Standard's slanted spin!}

Predictably, Jim Bradley conveniently isn't mentioned by the St.Catharines Standard - why should he be?!!! hahahahaaaaa...

It's not like Jim Bradley or his Liberals have anything to do with controlling the monopolist health care system which Brady's daughter had to - was forced to - wait in... right?!?!  In about a half an hour, Brady could have gone to Buffalo, like so many other Ontarians have had to do. Don't tell Michael Moore though.

Gawrsh, just think of how sanctimonious and giddy Ole Jimmy Bradley and the slanted local press would be if this had happened during Mike Harris' watch: both Jim Bradley and Slant Lafleche would be sleeping in front of the evil-Conservative-with-the-hidden-agenda's home, protesting health-care-cuts and trying to get an interview!! No?!

But now... so what? The Standard's slanted spin is to not mention Ole Liberal Jimmy, and not to get Ole Jimmy involved, when the optics ain't good fer Ole Jimmy!!!

Seeing that it's Jimmy's Liberals who are now in charge...
[and have been for the last seven years, in case Kim It's-All-Harris'-Fault Craitor hasn't noticed]
...then this can be easily glossed-over and excused as just a wee wittle hiccup - as Smitherman used to say, these incidents aren't problems with monopoly health-care, these are just mere 'anomalies', hearsay, anecdotes, old wive's tales..! - in other words, it's no biggie! This isn't important enough for Bradley to be involved!

So what that some lowly Ontario patient waited for 8 hours for emergency care! Big Whoop... ya think Ole Liberal Jimmy gives a shit about patients?! Jim Bradley is busy Saving The PLANET!!!

Jimmy's more interested in lickin' Tommy Douglas' dead socialist ass; and the monopoly-cheering-press is more interested in keeping Ole Jimmy as far away from these frequently disturbing incidents as possible.

We all know the song, all together now: Jim Bradley has nothing to do with this!!

McGuinty's health minister Deb Matthews several days ago was dancing with glee in Brantford, telling their local hospital how great they were - even mentioning their low DEATH-RATES. Gary Chalk "reported"...

[...more like gushed.... by the way, Standard reporters: read Chalk's story as a lesson and marvel at its pure Liberal ass-kissing pageantry. This is how monopolist propaganda should be done!! Oh-rah-rah-raahhhh-Liberals-Yippee!!]

...in the Brantford Expositor earlier this week in "Minister celebrates - and washes hands" about Matthews saying:  "You are the No. 1 hospital in Canada for the lowest death rate of patients. This doesn't just happen. All your indicators, all the patient safety indicators, infection rates, are very low here," she said to applause. "Congratulations!"

Yet this same Liberal Health Minister has never bothered to explain the high patient-death-rate in Niagara!! Neither did her predecessor Liberal Health Ministers David Caplan, nor did George Smitherman!

So, Deb: did the high patient death rate "just happen" in Niagara - or was that one planned?! Did the high death rate at the NHS have anything to do with your Liberal health care cuts?

How did all that "happen" Deb?

Feel free to contact the St.Catharines Standard with your "explanation". (Cuz the Standard won't bother asking a Liberal, they're just happy ass-kissing a Liberal, any Liberal...)

Yeah: Deb Matthews "washed her hands" all right: she washed her hands of explaining to Niagarans what transpired under her Liberal government's watch in the LHIN-controlled NHS.

No-one at the St.Catharines Standard has bothered to ask their buddy, Best Boy Jimmy, about that, so why the hell would the Standard bother to involve Ole Jimmy in some two-bit story about a long wait time?!! Feh - Jimmy's got priorities such as building useless arts centres and attending election fundraisers.

Why would the local yokels need an explanation from Jim Bradley about the bed shortages, surgery cancellations and outrageous wait times, in his own riding, in his own Liberal health monopoly? What does MPP Jim Bradley have to do with any of that?!

Like Deb Matthews, Jim Bradley has also "washed his hands" of any responsibility for what is happening in Niagara's Health System.

And the local ass-kissing press conveniently keeps handing Good Ole Jimmy more soap.

*
Here is a good editorial  "Crisis in the ER" (National Post. Jan.28, 2011) (Same day as LeFleche's half-story appeared)

"This just in: Going to the emergency room is hazardous to your health. Not only do you have to worry about whatever afflictions may have brought you there in the first place, but also those you could pick up while you wait -- and wait, and wait.
That is the conclusion of a landmark paper authored by researchers at Dalhousie University, recently published in the international health-care journal BMJ Quality and Safety. According to the study, prolonged waits in the ER put patients at greater risk of suffering "adverse events," ranging from surgical complications, medication errors and c. difficile infections.
Among 982 otherwise healthy elderly patients tracked by the study, the risk of these incidents climbed by 3% for every hour spent in the ER. With average wait times of 20 hours in some provinces, this represents a substantial increase in mortality, not to mention an increase in system-wide pain, suffering and economic costs to the health-care system.
Why does this happen? Researchers theorize that a combination of factors, including immobilization for long periods of time, exposure to infectious disease, a disorienting environment and sometimes incompatible treatments from multiple health-care workers (some of them on different shifts), may increase susceptibility to hospital-induced problems. In the words of author Stacy Ackroyd-Stolarz, "It might push [patients] over the tipping point."
And sometimes that point isn't just illness, but death. Over the last year, there have been several shocking cases of patients dying in Canadian emergency rooms while waiting for treatment.
In December 2010, 41-year-old Marlene Stephens died after waiting an hour and a half at the William Osler Health Centre emergency room in Toronto. According to family members, she was experiencing respiratory problems, and crying out that she couldn't breathe, but was ignored.
In October 2010, at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in Montreal, a 64-year-old diabetic man, Andre Desjardins, died after a seven-hour wait in a wheelchair, during which he was denied a stretcher, because none were available. In February 2010, an elderly Alzheimer's patient died after a two-hour wait in the same ER.
And then there is the case of Montreal resident Mieczyslaw Figiel. In February 2010, he died in a corridor at Maisonneuve-Rosemont, after his family banged on the window of the ER triage station in a desperate attempt to get help. Nearly one year later, a coroner's report confirmed that the ER was so overcrowded that patients were not being seen until the following afternoon. In the past year, the number of 48-hour waits in Quebec's ERs increased by 15%.
Studies already have concluded that prolonged wait times for surgery can bring on secondary health problems, such as depression or dependency on pain medication. Waiting can also exacerbate the patient's underlying condition, requiring more serious intervention than if the problem had been promptly corrected. Governments promise to remedy the situation--usually by throwing more tax dollars at the problem, yet the queues only get longer. Despite constant increases in health spending, Canadians are waiting 96% longer for surgery in 2010 than they did in 1993, according to the most recent edition of an annual report on treatment wait times, Waiting Your Turn, published by the Fraser Institute think-tank.
More money is not going to cure this condition. According to Nadeem Esmail, the Fraser Institute's former director of health policy, Canadians currently underwrite the developed world's second-most-expensive universal public health system. In an article published in 2009, he notes, "Only Iceland spent more on a universal-access health insurance system than Canada as a share of GDP, while Switzerland spent as much as Canada.... Twenty-five developed nations [that] maintain universal health insurance programs spent less than we did; as much as 38% less as a percentage of GDP in the case of Japan."
Instead of propping up a state-run, monopoly-payer system, in which care is rationed from the ER to the OR, governments should allow the private sector to lift the burden from our overcrowded public hospitals. A mixed-delivery system, such as exists in Europe, where wait times are nowhere near Canadian levels, would create competition and open up more facilities and opportunities for treatment.
To those politicians who cling to an ideology of enforced "equality," we say this: How long do patients have to wait before they get choice in health care? How many have to suffer? How many more have to die?"

Maybe, one day, someone from the St.Catharines Standard will actually pull their head out of Jim 'The Monopolist Enforcer' Bradley's butt, and ask Jimmy those same questions.
I wonder what the wait-time will be before that ever happens.
*

McGuinty Liberals export cheap electricity while Ontarians forced to pay through the nose

A CTV story, Jan.26, 2011, lets Ontarians know that Dalton McGuinty's Liberals are selling-off EXCESS electricity from Ontario, at rates cheaper than Ontarians are paying for it!!
The incompetence of McGuinty's Liberal scumbags is unbelievable, seen not only in their health-care monopoly, but with George Smitherman's greenie energy fiasco. (It's astounding how we are now facing the repercussions of the stinking piles of Grit policy shit which Smitherman smeared all over Ontario)
So, Ontarians have been forced by the Grits to wash our laundry in the dark in the middle of the night so that this vile, disgusting, global-warming-fear-mongering, over-taxing, lying Liberal government can sell power to the States and Quebec (yah: electricity - to Quebec...) for a song?!
Let's ask Ontario Liberal MPP (and full-time GreenFear global-warming/climate-change fearmonger) Jim Bradley to explain his Liberal energy fiasco, especially in light of the fact that this same smug ole Jimmy was so sanctimoniously AGAINST power exports from Ontario - when he was in opposition. Bradley wanted to LIMIT the generation of power in Ontario, see Jim Bradley looks like he's got something to hide! {Did any of the electricity, which Jim Bradley's Liberals exported from Ontario, originate from coal-generated plants in Ontario?! Why, wasn't it Good Ole Jim Bradley himself who was eagerly reported by the St.Catharines Standard (Jun.21, 2002) smugly railing on about how such electricity exports should be banned??!!}
Christina Blizzard wrote in "Power splurge" ,Toronto Sun, Jan.26, 2011, (also in the St.Catharines Standard):
"Stupid. Reckless. Incompetent.
What word captures the way Dalton McGuinty’s government has blown it when it comes to windmills and green energy?
Having sold us on their new, clean, green energy, and having hiked our bills to the stratosphere, the province is now in a situation where we have so much wind power, we had to pay Quebec and U.S. states more than $1 million to take it off our hands.
You’ve heard of fire sales? This was a wind sale.
New Year’s Day was warm — and windy. Our windfarms were in overdrive. Most of industry was shut down, so energy demands were low.
You can’t store electricity, so you either have to cut back on production — or find somewhere for it to go.
In brave new Ontario, the government pays windfarm operators a whopping 13.5¢ a kilowatt hour (kwh) to generate electricity.
That compares to about 2.5¢ a kwh for electricity from hydro plants such as Niagara and about 5.5¢ for nuclear.
(On top of that, we pay a “Global adjustment of about 3¢ a kwh — and going up — for new wind and solar projects).
The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) must take electricity produced by wind first.
So with an excess, generators such as the Beck Plant in Niagara Falls were forced to spill water. Yes, you heard. We had to throw away the cheapest, greenest electricity in the world from Niagara to make way for the really expensive green wind stuff.
And we still had too much — so we had to pay our neighbours to take the expensive stuff off our hands.
(You can’t turn off a gas plant or a nuclear plant completely, because they’re big and complicated to re-boot.)
Energy Minister Brad Duguid defended the sale.
“We were paid to take power from other jurisdictions on Dec. 30,” Duguid said. “It’s a reciprocal arrangement that has been in place for some time.
“Any jurisdiction that is operating on the open market is subject to this kind of provision, where energy exchanges when your demand dips below your baseload capacity and it is more expensive to start shutting down some of those baseload capacity units, like your nuclear units, than it is to pay somebody to take that surplus power that occurs on rare occasions.”
Fair enough. Only two problems with that. First, industry is still in a funk. We aren’t using as much power — so these days we’re using less power all the time. How often will this occur?
Second, if you have to pay people to take excess juice, why would you keep generating the really expensive stuff, like wind?
Surely you should tell the wind operators to shut down first.
A spokesman for the IESO says that’s what they are looking at.
“One of the things we are working at is the ability to turn off that wind.
“If you’ve got a situation that’s going to last for a couple of hours, does it make sense to turn off a plant that’s going to be off for 72 hours, that you might need within those 72 hours, or does it make sense to turn something off for a couple of hours, and deal with the situation that way?” said Terry Young. In the immortal words of Kermit the Frog: It isn’t easy being green. It’s not cheap, either."

Maybe someone can ask Good Ole Jim Bradley about why Niagara Falls' green hydro power is being dumped in favour of Smitherman's expensive "green" fiasco. Jim Bradley is a local Niagara Liberal MPP and a McGuinty cabinet member - isn't this a LOCAL ISSUE, which the elusive Jimmy should be explaining himself?!
Where's Jim Bradley's explanation?!
Too bad Doug Herod or some other Bradley-buddy at the St.Catharines Standard can't bother to ask Good Ole Jimmy about his Liberal lies and duplicity.
Now that wouldn't be cricket, y'see; we don't want to make Jimmy look bad, do we?! Good Ole Jimmy means well, y'see; he's doin' his darned-ole-best fer us all, bless him.
(...and don't get me started on McGuinty's Liberals and cricket...)
*

Horseshoe Falls separated by ice formation

Below: a summer view of Niagara's Horseshoe Falls, looking from the Canadian side.
The arrow shows one of the rock outcrops on the edge of the Falls. The amount of water which drops from directly in front of this particular outcrop pales in comparison to the flow which passes on its left and right.
[I'm not certain whether exact location of this outcrop is on Canadian or U.S. territory! It is closer to the American shore]
Click on photos to enlarge!

above: same view, Jan.24, 2011 - looking the same outcrop (directly in the center) it has become iced-over, and the usually-continuous water curtain running along the crest of the Falls has clearly been completely separated (at the top, as well as underneath, where the water plume plunges) leaving an obvious gap.

Goat Island is in the distance.

above: closer view of the water separation and the ice column beneath. For a brief period, the Horseshoe Falls have been split into two sides, there is now, for the time being, a 'Horseshoe Falls East', and 'West'!

There are four visible rock outcrops which appear along the rim of the Horseshoe Falls, which are like mini-islands, as well as some large boulders.

As the eternal erosion of the Horseshoe Falls imperceptibly continues, these outcrops are getting closer and closer to the edge of the Falls.

One of these outcrops in the last day or so has frozen over, and created an ice shelf, which can be seen is now frozen in a series of giant ice columns all the way down.

Even in the summer, this outcrop has only a small volume of river-water which flows around it at the front (the falls side); most of the water is diverted to the left and right of the outcrop, and then drops over the edge. The other outcrops receive a bit more water at their front than this one, but they're all pretty close to the edge; eventually they are going to create a permanent gap-tooth effect along the rim of the Horseshoe Falls, breaking it up into several sections, instead of the continuous shore-to shore line which we're used to.

In the photos above, the part of the Niagara River directly to the right of the outcrop is the part which carries the greatest volume of water; also, it is eroding, and it can clearly be seen as being deeper and lower than where the outcrop is. As this channel deepens, it will pull water away from those outcrops seen today, exposing them even more.

This effect can be seen in the autumn, when the hydro-generation water-diversion happens further upstream, and the river level drops significantly, revealing "new" rock outcrops which are usually underwater. Just slightly upstream from the crest of the Falls, the upper Niagara River is a very wide rapid (the Cascade Rapids), see below, parts of which are not that deep. The water-diversion creates wide swaths of newly-revealed rocks and open river-bed, some parts with barely a trickle of water running here and there, and some parts, being on an ever-so-slightly-higher elevation, become completely dry.

above: Nov.2010 - looking at the rapids -the Cascade Rapids - just above the Horseshoe Falls. The planned dropped winter water-levels have caused the entire area in the centre to be revealed: in the summer this area is mostly covered with water. Two water intake control-gates for the Beck hydro plants are seen in the upper right distance. The cranes are at work digging at the entrance to the newest Beck 3 tunnel.

 above: same view showing how small ice islands form in the shallow rapids. (click photos to enlarge!)

above: same view showing  how the entire shallow rapids area in the centre has become an ice island.

above: Mar.25, 2011 - same view of the rapids, showing little flow in the center. The long structure running across the Canadian side of the river in the distance is the control dam which regulates the flow of the river, affecting the flow of water which ultimately drops over the falls. The drop in river elevation from the control dam to the edge of the falls is about 50 feet.

*

below: video of ice separation at Horseshoe Falls, taken by R.Bobak Jan.24, 2011.

*
see also:
- Niagara Falls Ice Bridge 2011
- Niagara Falls Ice Bridge  2010
- Niagara Falls Ice Bridge  2009
*
 Thanks for visiting Right In Niagara!
*

The forgotten link between the Niagara Health System's high patient-death-rate and McGuinty's health-care cuts

Further to my previous post, "Liberals cut health-care to the bone", back from Nov.29, 2008...

... let's put some perspective and context to this mysterious firing of NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer, and to Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's comments about having some kind of "independent investigation" into the NHS.

Ray Spiteri wrote in "Leadership change 'just tip of the iceberg' " (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.20, 2011) that Craitor "said an independent investigator could once and for all prove whether the NHS, which was conceived in the late 1990's by the previous Conservative government has delivered on its mandate." (also see here)

So, this is Craitor's political end-game, eh, from the same hypocrite who peddles the patently-phony illusion that somehow health-care 'is NOT political' for Liberals: spinning the blame on Harris (!) linking him to the NHS, while diverting attention away from the role of the Liberal-created LHIN, that unholy Liberal bastard child of George Smitherman and Dalton McGuinty.

Why isn't Craitor asking for an 'independent investigation' INTO HIS OWN LIBERAL-CREATED LHIN's ???!?

Why doesn't Craitor want to 'once and for all prove' whether McSmitherman's LHIN fiasco has 'delivered on its mandate' ??!!...
 [...whatever its 'mandate' even was! If the LHIN's mandate was to be a political firewall, insulating Liberals from their own health-care-cutting monopolist disasters, THEN THE LHIN HAS BEEN A WILD SUCCESS!!! Craitor's own spin demonstrates this: Craitor can only fathom that the NHS could be responsible (...responsible for what? Craitor's not sure...) and that only the NHS should be 'investigated' - yet he completely ignores his own Liberal-conceived, Liberal-appointed, and Liberal-funded LHIN - the direct over-seer of the NHS!!]

Kim Craitor ignores the fact that the LHIN runs the NHS (...it's not the other way around..!) and, that the Liberals - HIS Liberals - completely run the LHIN!!!

Is this sequence of authority really so hard for Kimmy to FLICKING understand?

Craitor, the duplicitous weasel, conveniently ignores the fact that it was McGuinty's Liberal health minister Smitherman who, through his LHIN-avatar, forced the NHS into creating and implememting the HIP.

And yet, Kimmy's sticking with the red-herring, diversion-causing line that somehow only the NHS should be 'investigated'?!

Why isn't any Liberal calling for an independent investigation into the LHIN fiasco - and consequently, an investigation directly into the cabinet-level decisions of those Liberals who created the LHIN??!! When the FLICK is that going to happen?!

Sevenpifer mysteriously gets fired - for doing what was asked of her by the Liberal-controlled LHIN and the Liberal Ministry of Health; yet the Liberals - who control the MoH and who created the LHIN - get off scot-free!!

The entire board of the NHS did what the Liberal-controlled LHIN and MoH asked of them, yet everyone one else involved in this incestuous mess IS STILL there - blameless! - EXCEPT for Sevenpifer??!! WTF?



So now, let's go back (re my 'Liberals cut health care to the bone" post above) and let's remember that Craitor, back in late 2007, began calling for some kind of 'governance review' of the NHS.

Let's remember this, and let's ask why Craitor did this, and let's look at what Craitor's demands for some kind of a 'review' ultimately caused.
What could have prompted this call for an NHS 'review'?

It can be posited that in fact, Kim Craitor caused the NHS HIP to be created and implemented, which led to the ER closures.
Craitor had badgered on with his 'review of the NHS governance' mantra to the point where, after numerous reviews were done...
[...and then, even more reviews reviewing the reviews...]
...that his Liberal government, under Smitherman, came up with a scheme to 'save money'...
[...in other words, to reduce the deficits which were due to Liberal underfunding in the first place - though this was denied by Jim Bradley...]
...by forcing the NHS to create a deficit-reducing HIP plan.
Let's remember that it was the Liberal-controlled MoH which demanded that the LHIN do yet another 'review' of the NHS: the NHS then did as they were told by their superiors, and this morphed into the Hospital Improvement Plan (HIP), which was then reviewed and rubber-stamped by Dr.Jack Kitts, after which it was then also approved for implementation by the Liberal-run LHIN - the same LHIN which had ordered the HIP in the first place!!
Then, the entire board of the NHS - not solely [now-scapegoat] Sevenpifer - was ordered to implement the Liberal-instigated and Liberal-approved HIP.
And let's not forget: not one subsequent Liberal health minister ever challenged or decided to cancel the HIP: neither Smitherman, nor Caplan, nor Matthews!
Yet: Kim Craitor walks around as if he has no idea what HIS OWN Liberals were doing!!!


Y'all follow that, so far? If not: read the previous sequence of events again until you understand them.


Craitor's calls for a 'review' of the NHS led to the cost-cutting HIP plan, then to the ER closings and its subsequent repercussions, and to Sevenpifer's firing!


But let's look at what happened prior to Craitor's 'review' calls, at what precipitated these calls: let's look at the Nov.29, 2007 CIHI report which revealed that the NHS - at its St.Catharines site - had the third-highest patient-death-rate in Canada!


This revelation was COMPLETELY and UTTERLY IGNORED by McGuinty's Liberals. The local Liberal monopoly-pushing hacks, MPP's Jim Bradley and Craitor, said NOTHING about this shocking revelation!!
This CIHI story briefly appeared in the local press, then was strangely forgotten (!!) by the local press and never heard of again...

... see:

* Liberal health-care in Ontario: pay more, get less

* A year later, Liberal Jim Bradley still secretive about high death-rate in his government-funded hospital

* Blood-stained hospital curtains can't hide Liberal health-care neglect

* Niagara Health System second-highest deficit in Ontario, third-highest death-rate in Canada

* Liberals force state-run health-monopoly cuts throughout Ontario

* Over 500 C. difficile deaths in their state-run health monopoly, yet Liberals refuse investigation

Read all the above and weep.


And also read: Pressing hard, or hardly pressing, for more Niagara long-term care beds



... and also read:
Hospital death rate in Liberal Jim Bradley's St.Catharines: third-worst in Canada, where I wrote:


   "After CIHI released their mortality-rates report on Nov.29, 2007, revealing that St. Catharines General Hospital's death-rate was the third-worst of 85 Canadian hospitals studied, (excluding Quebec), the Liberals trotted out a smoke-and-mirror 'organizational review' of the NHS, but ignored the mortality-rate issue! Local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, who in opposition raised a stink about issues like gasoline prices, couldn't be bothered to raise a stink about this health-care embarrassment in his own city.   The Ombudsman's office does not have the mandate to oversee hospitals... unless the government allows the Ombudsman to do so. The Liberals along with Jim Bradley chose not to investigate the high NHS death rates. There was no direct call for the Ombudsman here; nor was there an appointment of a supervisor to the NHS (as occurred at other Ontario hospitals under scrutiny) to pave the way for the Ombudsman.   I guess the death rates - at third-worst in the Canada - aren't yet high enough for the Liberals to warrant concern. As James Wallace wrote in the St. Catharines Standard, Dec.1, 2007, "mortality rates at the St. Catharines hospital, for example, are 35 per cent higher than the national average" ... yet, Liberal Jim Bradley didn't even bother to ask for an investigation, nor did Liberal Jim Bradley himself explain, this disturbing revelation. Maybe it's the Liberal way to meet Kyoto-CO2 emissions by controlling the population? High death rates - that's good, pro-environment 'green' policy, isn't it?
   It is astounding how Liberal health care duplicity extends to making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any outside body to investigate the government-run health monopoly, unless they first get PERMISSION from the government! This allows them to control and stage the timing of events. The 'system' has itself and its political masters to protect first; patients and their health-market-needs are not part of this monopoly's priorities. This system is first and foremost a social experiment. Patients are the political guinea pigs.
   The reasons for the McCreith/Holmes health-care Charter challenge occurring become clearer when seen in context to this kind of lack of transparency, self-protection, and unresponsiveness surrounding institutionalized monopoly health-care in Ontario. This is the judicial by-pass patients have been forced into because legislated monopoly health-care has clogged Ontario's delivery arteries with socialism.
   Patients stuck in this mess have no time for the promises of socialized medicine to kick in - the promises vanish as the failed realities of Smitherman's protected system set in."


Liberal health-monopolists - such as Jim Bradley - pretended that their local health-monopoly, the NHS, WAS NOT underfunded.

[...This the same smarmy Jim Bradley, by the way, who - while underfunding his health-care monopoly; while closing down two Niagara hospital emergency rooms; while forcing ambulances to carry patients to distant hospitals - had the utter audacity to smugly lecture us on Feb.4, 2010 that his "government budget has its limits" when it came to funding the millions in extra ambulance costs which came as a result of Bradley's own Liberal cuts... oh, the irony...!]

Yet - by May 2010 - somehow the Liberals' budget "limits" conveniently disappeared, and Bradley miraculously found $26 million to build a real-high-priority arts centre!! Talk about skewed Liberal priorities and deceptions...!]

Furthermore, McGuinty's Liberals DENIED any links between the CIHI-reported high death-rates and the obvious fact that the Liberal-controlled NHS health-monopoly was underfunded (as even Dr. Kitts had pointed out!!!) Admitting so would be admitting the McGuinty Liberal government's possibly criminal political complicity in the deaths.
And so Craitor popped in with his smokescreen 'review of NHS governance' - a tired form of which he is still pursuing to this day - instead of focusing on his own Liberal government's monopolist health-care demagoguery.

It is truly an astounding feat of Liberal health-care duplicity that the links between the NHS's high patient-death-rate and the Liberals' own health-care cuts remain hidden and unexplained, both by the government and the press, yet somehow, just after the CIHI revelations, the NHS was suddenly found to be in need of 'governance reviews' leading to Liberal-enforced 'HIP' plans, to ER closings, and to Sevenpifer's sacrificial firing - which we're told had nothing to do with the HIP!!

[Huh?! It didn't? Then, pray tell, what did?! We will never be told!]

After the firing, the remaining NHS board then re-iterated their commitment to carry on with the HIP, in a pathetically-hollow gambit to bestow legitimacy upon the HIP, as though its bastard paternity had nothing to do with the Liberals' health-care underfunding, or the subsequent unexplained CIHI-reported death-rates!

And so the institutionalized self-serving spin of McGuinty's Liberal health-monopoly-machine continues.

*

Disingenuous Deb Matthews

Vincent Ball wrote in "Liberals pulled province from brink of two-tier health care: minister" (Branford Expositor, Jan.22, 2011):

"The province's health-care system was on life support prior to the election of the Liberal government, says Ontario's health minister.

"I think we were on the brink of two-tier health care," Deb Matthews told The Expositor in an exclusive interview this week during a visit to the city. "People simply couldn't get access to care. They couldn't find a family doctor.

"They were waiting far, far, far too long for cataract, hips and knees surgery."

The minister said the government got to work.

"We said this is not acceptable," she said.

"Everybody's paying their taxes and if they're not getting health care in return, they're going to go elsewhere. Our universal health care was in jeopardy. There was a lot of talk of people wanting to pay their way to the front of the line."

First, the government started to measure wait times and invest to bring down those times, she said.

"When it comes to family physicians, it was outrageous," she said.

"The stories that we would hear as MPPs of people desperate to find a family doctor. And the sicker you were, the harder is was to get a doctor. That was a real perversion in the system."

Now, as a result of government initiatives, almost 95% of Ontarians are attached to primary care. And, while parts of the province still have problems, generally speaking Ontario residents are doing a lot better, she said.

"There are pockets where it's still a challenge but we now have something called Healthcare Connect so you can go online and get linked with a physician, a nurse practitioner," she said. "We have more allied health professionals, which takes some of the pressure off physicians and we're graduating more doctors.

"In fact, by 2013, we will have doubled the number of physicians graduating every year."

With respect to hospital finances, Matthews said the province is in a much healthier position than it was prior to the Liberals taking over.

"Provincewide, we're pretty balanced. We have surpluses in some and deficits in others," she said. "We said to the hospitals you've got to work with what you've got.

"There was a lot of pain associated with that, a lot of hospitals were worried but, in fact, they were able to work with it and, so, now, generally speaking, they were able to be in balance."

The government has been able to change the mindset of hospitals, said the minister, adding that there used to be this thinking that the government would bail them out if they ran deficits.

"Well, we're not doing that anymore," she said. "We're working with them through the local health integration networks, which have been critical part of this partnership in hammering out agreements with local hospitals."

Matthews was in Brantford to meet with senior administrative staff at Brantford General Hospital, tour BGH, meet with staff and learn more about a new surgical technique being used at the hospital for knee replacement.

The hospital, which has been recognized by the Ontario Hospital Association, has enjoyed a string of successes in the past 18 months.

Matthews thanked and congratulated the staff at BGH, which she called a "beacon in the health-care sector."

There is a lot BGH can teach the rest of the system, she said.

"BGH is in a very, very good position." Brant MPP Dave Levac said the provincial government has forced hospitals to better handle their finances and is rewarding those that show fiscal responsibility.

"In the past all they did was simply say that at the end of the year the government is going to bail us out," Levac said. "And it just means that we have to pour more money into it.

"So we switched the culture and now we're telling them that when they produce good results and show us that what you're doing is good health care dollar spending you're going to get a bonus."

BGH got a $218,000 bonus from the province for its efforts to reduce wait times for emergency room patients.

The hospital has enjoyed a string of successes, which can partly be attributed to having an MRI, as well as other updated diagnostic equipment, such as a new CT scan.

"We don't have a problem attracting specialists to Brantford," Levac said. "Health-care professionals want to work here because of the state-of-the-art equipment and because of what the community has to offer."
-
Brantford roots
Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews comes from London, but she has Brantford roots.
Her grandfather was John Henry Matthews, who was twice mayor of Brantford in 1946 and 1947 and a longtime alderman. He also worked as a stereotyper in the mechanical division of The Expositor.
There were 10 children in the family and they grew up on McClure Avenue.
The MPP for London North Centre was first elected to the Ontario legislature in 2003."
*
Wow - guess we've just seen the preview of the disgusting McGuinty government's health-care narrative for the fall 2011 election.

Lookit that: Deb's Liberals saved us from that old boogeyman, 'two-tier' health!!!! That's the same old shop-worn fear-mongering tactic used by Liberal MPP Jim Bradley as well!! What hackneyed Liberal health-care duplicity.

Guess Deb also wants us to believe that somehow she hadn't heard of, or can't... ummm... quite remember what Quebec's 2005 Chaoulli decsion was all about, eh?! She was a McGuinty MPP by then, right? So Disingenuous Deb wants Ontarians to just disregard the similarities between the Chaoulli challenge and the McCreith - Holmes health-care charter challenge against her Ontario Liberal health-care monopoly?!

Guess Deb's never heard of the Barer - Stoddart [BS!] report, either - where the leftists' solution to 'save money in health-care' was to CUT MEDICAL SCHOOL enrolments in Ontario!! Guess that little bit of monopoly-health-care-engineering had no subsequent impact on Ontario's doctor shortages!

Guess Deb can't see that her own lying Liberal government is on life-support.
*

Jim Bradley doesn't respond to requests for an interview about the Mess at the NHS

Finally, a Niagara reporter - John Robbins, in his report about the NHS ("Minister defends restructuring", Niagara This Week, Jan.21, 2011) - actually wrote this as part of his story:

"St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, the minister of community safety and correctional services and Niagara’s presence within the provincial cabinet, has not responded to requests for an interview."

Wow - Jimmy ain't gonna like having some scribe including that as part of a major health-care story!!!! Jimmy likes the media to swing his way - or, just to not mention him - whichever makes him look better!

This reporter had the decency (and somehow it wasn't edited out, either!) to actually tell his readers that bigshot Jim Bradley was asked for a comment, but didn't respond.

Bloody strange that Jimmy's missing in action - again - when all this NHS drama is unfolding, and when constituents need to know what is going on. It's about time Bradley was outed by reporters on every occasion in which he is asked, and then declines, to make himself available for a comment.

Usually, as we've seen time and again at the St. Catharines Standard, it seems like everyone else in the world EXCEPT Good Ole Jimmy are interviewed on stories that are of local/provincial significance. Jimmy's often mysteriously unavailable!

Jim Bradley has had a pretty easy ride over the decades with a way-too-indulgent, almost fawning press, where readers don't even see Bradley's name (or often even the word Liberal!) in stories of provincial importance which could be detrimental to him; and readers aren't even told whether Bradley - the local MPP and McGuinty cabinet minister - was ever contacted!!

Let's hope that it becomes a trend, not a hiccup, that, in the absence of any comments from Bradley, reporters and their editors at least inform readers whether Bradley was contacted. The standard operating procedure for years when it came to Jimmy was to slough this off - either we saw Bradley portrayed in a good light, or, he wouldn't be mentioned at all. We wouldn't be told whether anyone had even bothered to ask for a comment.

It's time the local press started asking, and Jim Bradley started answering, some tough - not fluff - questions, for a change.
*

The "problem" is Jim Bradley's monopolist Liberal government

Despite The St.Catharines Standard's Jan.21, 2011 editorial, "The problem isn't the NHS, it's the Ministry of Health", the fact is - though the St.Catharines Standard is loathe to admit it - that the "problem" isn't the Ministry of Health.
The "problem" doesn't end simply at the feet of the MoH!
If it could only be be that easy!
The Standard can't fathom that Liberal monopolist health-care statism is the 'problem'.
The Standard, in early 2011, can only offer more editorial band-aids (as they did in 2007 here; and as they did in 2010 here) claiming that all would be better if only the state would 'direct dollars to where they are needed most'!
whaaaa...?!
That's it?
Well, I guess McGuinty and Deb Matthews will get right on that, now that they know what to do!!
Talk about pretending to not to be advocating for the diseased failing, government-monopoly-controlled status-quo!!!
What about allowing patients to direct their own money to where they need it most?!
Is that scenario - whereby the single-payer-pushing government is deprived of its monopoly status - too difficult for the Standard to contemplate?!
The problem is that Dalton McGuinty's Liberals are secretive, incompetent, ideological, single-payer-monopoly-pushing demagogues.
They run the show, the only show, the monopolist show.
They enforce a bloated, self-serving, non-competitive health-care-monopoly, cheered on by the monopoly-loving-media.
If the MoH really is to blame, then why should we take Kalvin Reid's word for it? Why doesn't the Standard get the people ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE to tell us themselves that the 'MoH is the problem'?!
Where is St.Catharines secretive Liberal MPP Jim Bradley? Hiding in his lair, protected by his trusty Cone of Silence? Why is Jim Bradley not mentioned in this editorial?
We need answers from Bradley.
And we expect that at least someone from the St.Catharines Standard could try to get their head out of Bradley's stinking ass AND ASK HIM THE TOUGH QUESTIONS. Why this devotion to being Liberal cheerleader/apologists?
Does Bradley think the MoH is the 'problem'?
Does Bradley think the NHS is the 'problem'?
Does Bradley think the LHIN is the 'problem'?
Does Bradley think Kim Craitor is a 'problem'?
Does Bradley think that his own Liberal health-care-monopolism is the 'problem'?
Does Bradley think his Liberals' arbitrary health-care cutting - while blaming others, as the Standard neatly did - is the 'problem'? (When has the Standard last "lambasted" Jim Bradley??!!!!!!!!)
Does Bradley view Smitherman's Liberal-created LHIN as a 'clandestine insulator'?
Does Bradley think that his Liberal-created health care tax (not "premium") affected the NHS's deficit? {Dalton McGuinty himself admitted that his Liberal health-gouge was a "tax". Somehow, the St.Catharines Standard seems to forget about that.}
Where did the NHS "deficit" come from - was the NHS spending money loosely like some proverbial drunken sailors, or, was it spent on patient care?
Is this deficit not in any way related to Bradley's Liberal-instituted monopoly-health-care cuts?!
Was the NHS's recent deficit a 'surprise' for Jim Bradley?
Does Jim Bradley believe that the NHS was NOT underfunded for the last seven years?
Was Bradley expecting, perhaps, a surplus...?!
Where - specifically - did Jim Bradley expect that the the NHS could have cut, say, 3 to 4 million more last year, to help 'balance' their Liberal-underfunded budget?
Doesn't Jim Bradley remember that Dr. Jack Kitts himself said in Oct.2008 that the HIP plan would NOT stop the NHS's deficits?! (Yet Bradley's Liberals FORCED the NHS to implement the HIP cuts anyway.)

For that matter, did Jim Bradley ever publicly reveal his views on the Kitts HIP report, back in the fall of 2008 - before the HIP was actually implemented by the NHS under force from Bradley's Liberals?

Oh... and doesn't Bradley remember that it was his own Liberal-created, Liberal-appointed, Liberal-controlled LHIN-bureaucracy which gave final approval to the HIP - after Dr. Kitts' made his changes - and then ordered that the NHS (under CEO Sevenpifer) implement it - to save money?

Doesn't Jim Bradley remember that Smitherman was very pleased with the cuts he forced onto the NHS, as was Smitherman's successor David Caplan, who refused to re-evaluate or rescind the HIP, when there was still time to do so, prior to Bradley's Liberal government shutting down two of Niagara's emergency rooms??!

Doesn't Jim Bradley recall any of that?

Why didn't Bradley ever recommend that the NHS be placed under provincial supervision years ago, allowing the Ombudsman open access to its finances and operating structure?

What did Bradley have to hide by preventing open Ombudsman access to the NHS?

Did Bradley have any problem with Sevenpifer's performance as NHS CEO all these years?

Did Liberal cabinet member Bradley know ahead of time that Sevenpifer was to be fired?
Has Bradley told us the specific reason why Sevenpifer was fired, but not the rest of the NHS board?

The St.Catharines Standard can't really tell us... looks like this is all a cozy secret.

It's best not to ask too many questions.

Especially of elected scumbags such as Liberal Jim Bradley... after all, Jimmy's got nothin' to do with any of this here health-care stuff...

It looks like Sevenpifer was a made a patsy for McGuinty's disgusting Liberal health-care monopolists.

The rest of the racketeers have circled the wagons. Their cozy monopoly must be protected at all costs - literally.

*

McGuinty conveniently forgets about Niagara's Liberal-created ambulance problems!

Here's a nice piece of Liberal-ass-kissing from the Toronto Star's Martin Regg Cohn who accepts without question Dalton McGuinty's slimy “When was the last time the Toronto Star wrote about backed-up ambulances? "rhetoric.
Cohn didn't quite check back with an answer.
What Dalton didn't ask Cohn was "When did the Toronto Star last write about our Liberal government's dictatorial decision to close two hospital emergency room in Niagara?"!
When did the Star write about ambulances backing up at Niagara's emergency departments, because Liberals arbitrarily cut health care in Niagara?
Hopefully, the Star's answer for Dalton would be never, if we can help it!
And it was hilarious how matter of factly McGuinty stated that Rob Ford was elected out of fear - as if that wasn't exactly how McGuinty himself got elected, when he fear-mongered incessantly about Harris?! Torontonians were right to be afraid of McGuinty's lackey George Smitherman!
Isn't McGuinty's Liberalism of the utmost unblemished purity?!
What a two-faced, slimy, duplicitous Liberal scumbag.

McGuinty's Liberal Party gladly took tax-payer cash from public utilites

{further to my earlier post}

Now we see, once again, how McGuinty's disgusting Liberals get their fundraising - from more public utilities, as seen in this Toronto Star story, Jan.19, 2011, describing how in 2008-09, McGuinty's Liberal Party took $17,500 taxpayer dollars as a political donation from Oakville Hydro! What a scam! What corruption! What disregard for tax-payers!
This is the duplicitous party of proud, health-care-cutting Liberals such as Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor.
Shame.
*
...and as we can see, Liberal hack Kathleen Wynne is now using her office as Ontario's Premier, to personally interfere and agitate in the 2015 federal election  campaign.
The Liberal Party of Ontario is using the premier's office for partisan purposes, in order to act as not-so-discreet-fifth-columnists, cheerleading for federal Liberal hack Justin Turdeau.
This is how taxpayer-dollars are indirectly siphoned and distributed to influence-peddle in Ontario.
*

Ignatieff's hypocritical pseudo-Liberal health-care critic

{Further to an earlier post}

Richard K. Baker, of Timely Medical Alternatives, Inc., wrote in "Ujjal Dosanjh's forgotten roots" (National Post, Jan.19, 2011):

"Re: Liberal Defence of Public Health Care, letter to the editor, Jan. 14.

Ujjal Dosanjh, the federal Liberal health critic, gives a spirited defence of the health-care status quo, vowing that his party will strenuously protest against any attempt to introduce a parallel private system, which, he assures us, would rob the public system of doctors.

Mr. Dosanjh, prior to joining the federal Liberals, was formally the NDP premier of B.C. During his tenure, private surgical centres thrived and multiplied in B.C., having originally been authorized under a previous NDP regime. Currently there are over 20 private pay surgical and diagnostic facilities in the province.

Over the last eight years, our organization has referred thousands of Canadians from all provinces to these clinics, including a disproportionate number from Ottawa, where Mr. Dosanjh now hangs his hat. Far from robbing the public system of surgeons, the establishment of these private centres kept many surgeons in Canada.

Mr. Dosanjh appears to have forgotten his roots."
*
The same fear-mongering argument which Dosanjh trotted out was also used by the monopoly-defending-government - and was discredited - in Quebec's Chaoulli challenge.

McGuinty's Liberal scumbags find a scapegoat to absolve them from their Niagara Health System health-care mess

Well, look at that: McGuinty's Liberals have just found the scapegoat to take the blame for the Liberal-created mess in the NHS: today they (through the government-appointed, un-elected board of the NHS) fired Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer!

Allan Benner wrote in " 'Crack open the Champagne' " (Welland Tribune website, Jan.19, 2011):

"The change of leadership at Niagara Health System has left some opponents of its restructuring plans wondering if it could also mean a change of direction.

The health system announced Wednesday president and chief executive officer Debbie Sevenpifer is being replaced for the interim by Sue Matthews, vice-president of patient services for Welland and Port Colborne hospitals and chief nursing officer.

"Crack open the Champagne," said Pat Scholfield, from the People's Healthcare Coalition, when she learned about the change of leadership.

But she doesn't "blame all our problems" on Sevenpifer. She said the restructuring her organization has been opposing is the result of provincial government policy.

"I strongly doubt that the plans will change," she said, adding she recently read information on the LHIN website says clearly there are plans to cut another 41 hospital beds in Niagara.

"It's a start, but it will not solve all our problems."

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey said change is imminent.

"I think the board has recognized that there is some direction needed for change," he said, adding he hopes that change will mean the NHS will review its decision to replace hospital emergency departments in Port Colborne and Fort Erie with urgent care centres and the impact those changes are having on south Niagara residents as well as other hospitals throughout the region.

"Now that they've made this move, once again, I would expect that they wouldn't stop short. That they would continue on responsibly to ensure that an operational review as well as a performance review of the HIP (hospital improvement plan) is just around the corner," he said.

This week Health Minister Deb Matthews said a review of the health system is not necessary, and that the community should instead embrace the changes being implemented, including consolidation of pediatrics and obstetrics in St. Catharines.

Badawey said he thinks NHS board members feels differently than the health minister "based on the move they just made."

"Let's face it, I think the minister needs to get a pulse on what's happening here in Niagara with respect to our health-care system."

Welland MPP Peter Kormos was not hopeful that the change of leadership would make any difference to hospital restructuring.

"There will undoubtedly be some schadenfreude with respect to Ms. Sevenpifer's termination," he said, referring to people who might be happy about the change of leadership. "But that will in no way restores hospital services to Port Colborne and Fort Erie."

He said Sevenpifer was "doing the bidding of an unelected hospital board, an unelected LHIN and the (Premier Dalton) McGuinty government. It's as simple of that."

And the change of leadership "is no signal at all that there's going to be any shift in the position of the provincial government when it comes to shutting down small town hospitals," he said.

The health minister has reaffirmed her approval of the hospital restructuring now underway at local hospitals, and "that simply underscores that this is part of a McGuinty Liberal agenda."

He said the change of leadership at the NHS will make no difference to that agenda."

So Pat Scholfield (see here, here, here) and her smug yellow-shirted socialists are drinkin' champagne!! [Or are they drinking Tommy Douglas' and McGuinty's monopolist-poisoned koolaid?] Everyone's celebrating that somehow Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley and Deb Matthews have saved Niagara from the 'tyranny' of Debbie Sevenpifer!

It's astounding, isn't it?

Let's remember that it was (Liberal) Vance Badawey's own Liberal friends who closed the hospital emergency room in Port Colborne!!
Let's remember that it was Dalton McGuinty's Liberal lying scumbags who:
- created the LHIN's;
- who forced the Niagara LHIN to impose cuts on the NHS;
- who forced the NHS to create the ER-cutting HIP plan to 'save money';
- who concurrently underfunded the NHS; and
- who did not object to, but unquestioningly accepted, Dr. Jack Kitts' rubber-stamping of the NHS's LHIN-instigated HIP Report !!

Yet now, these same McGuinty scumbag Liberals pretend that somehow this was all personally caused by Debbie Sevenpifer !?!

Why, look at that folks: it's as if McGUINTY'S LIBERALS had nothing to do with any of this!!!

Un-FLICKING-believeable!!!!!!!!!!!

And yet, Juanita Gledhill is strangely still ensconced as the useless local queen of Smitherman's useless Niagara LHIN!

Sevenpifer has been vilified and sacrificed in order to cover-up the McGuinty Liberals' MASSIVE health-care incompetence in Niagara.

What a vile political act this is, designed and carried out by McGuinty's Liberal monopoly-health-care-pushing fascists.
*
Also, Karen Howlett's Jan.19, 2011 Globe and Mail story had this strange bit of bias, which was a little too glib considering the serious nuances in play here:

"Ironically, many of Niagara Health’s current difficulties were triggered by its plans in late 2008 to save $28-million by converting hospital emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into around-the-clock urgent-care centres – essentially walk-in clinics."

"Triggered by its plans"?!  Howlett strangely omits mentioning that the NHS's "plans" WERE FORCED by McGuinty's Liberal government!!

Why would Howlett gloss over this extremely important fact?!
These were Dalton McGuinty's Liberal plans, Karen, forced onto the NHS. Do try to keep up with the nuances of the story, please.

George Smitherman, McGuinty's health minister,  forced  Ontario's Ministry of Health to order the NHS to create a HIP plan! This DID NOT originate from the NHS! The cuts were "triggered" by the Liberal government, through its LHIN!!

( ...and note: this was meant to supposedly 'save money' for the Liberals - although now, the Liberals DENY this! At least Karen Howlett did report that in her 2011 story, for the record:
 "Niagara Health has been embroiled in controversy over the board's decision to permanently close the emergency departments in two hospitals and the exit of four of six doctors who worked in another emergency department.

The latest revelation to dog Niagara Health is that it is running a deficit again. The hospital is forecasting a deficit of $3-million for the 2010-11 fiscal year and $7-million the following year, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Globe. The shortfall comes even though Niagara Health received an additional $14-million a year in funding last February to help cover operating costs.")

What Howlett should have focused on, and for some reason completely missed, were the real reasons why the HIP was created in the first place!

It was Ontario's monopoly-enforcing Liberals who forced the NHS to create the HIP;
it was the Liberals who accepted the NHS's subsequent Dr. Jack Kitts-approved HIP;
and then it was the Liberals who ordered the NHS to implement this LIBERAL-REQUESTED, LIBERAL-APPROVED, and LIBERAL-ACCEPTED, HIP!!

The NHS complied with the Liberal government's every order! The Liberals used the McGuinty/Smitherman-created LHIN as their proxy to do the dirty deed.

The McGuinty Liberal government knew full well every detail of the HIP report. The Liberals knew the hospital ER's were to be closed!! The Liberals knew that the deficits at the underfunded NHS were not going to end!! (....because the Ontario Liberals SET the budgets; the Ontario Liberals create the never-ending 'underfunding' crises!!)
They knew this prior to forcing the NHS to implement the HIP! This was pre-ordained from the beginning.

None of this was a surprise to the Liberals! Yet today, somehow, the blame is all on the NHS, on Sevenpifer, but not on the Liberals who run Ontario's health-care monopoly!

*

In Karena Walter's take on this story in the Jan.19, 2011 St.Catharines Standard website, there was, predictably for the Standard, no mention of, or comments from, St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley!! Why should there be? Bradley's got nothin' to do with the health-care system! haha. Was Bradley even asked by the St.Catharines Standard Bradley Bootlicker for his comments on Sevenpifer's firing?

But the pisshead Liberal MPP Kim Craitor was found in the story, whining on about... wait for it... waaaiiit for it: yep - about MIKE HARRIS!!

This disgusting Liberal shit IS STILL blaming Mike Harris for what Craitor's OWN LIBERAL GOVERNMENT has been doing for seven years!!

Kim, remember to say "Thank-you, Mr. Smitherman".

It was Kim Craitor and his Liberal government [...not Mike Harris!] who forced the NHS to create the HIP!
It was Craitor's own Liberal government which did that, proudly led by Dalton McGuinty!
It was Craitor's own Liberal government [not Harris!!] which created the LHIN - which became the NHS's new political puppetmaster!

Kimmy knows all this though; Kimmy knows full well that his own incompetent, monopoly-pushing Liberal hacks have devastated health-care not just in Niagara, but province-wide!
Kimmy's hoping to spread his own version of anti-Harris 'blood-libel', hoping that other insane people will fall prey to believe his disingenuous drivel.

It wasn't Harris who shut down two hospital emergency rooms in Niagara, Kimmy: it was your own Liberal government. You do understand that, eh??????????

[Now, what's interesting about the above-mentioned story by Karena Walter, which appeared on the Standard's website on Jan.19, 2011, is that it was changed the next day (Jan.20) in the actual printed-paper-edition. The following part of the story (which was in Walter's column on Jan.19 on the website) was removed the next day from the printed edition of the same story:

"...Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor said the board's decision won't change the focus of what he's been saying for the past six years — that when the old health care system was brought in by the Mike Harris government, residents were promised the NHS would provide better health care and be more cost-efficient.

"It is time to look and see if we've gotten the results that we were told were going to happen when they restructured," Craitor said.

Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said the move acknowledges some problems with the NHS, but doesn't go far enough.

"I think it's a good start, but I think the issue runs much deeper than the CEO," Diodati said. "Changing the captain of a sinking ship doesn't really change the problem."

Niagara Falls council voted unanimously Monday to ask the provincial government to appoint an independent investigator to look into the management of the NHS. Afterward, provincial Health Minister Deb Matthews said no investigator would be appointed."

The above paragraphs, which were there in Walter's Jan.19, 2011 web-version of the story, did not appear in Walter's column the next day, Jan.20, in the actual printed edition of the St.Catharines Standard. Diodati's and Craitor's names and comments were completely omitted in the re-edited version of the story!]

*
Liberal-pandering can be seen as well, over at Niagara This Week in their Jan.19, 2011 report by Melinda Cheevers, where Cheevers writes that Debbie Sevenpifer "spearheaded the NHS’s controversial “hospital improvement program,” which saw services centralized and emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne closed."

Wow - lookit that folks: Debbie just "spearheaded" all this, ALL BY HERSELF!!
Neither Craitor, nor Bradley - in fact, no Liberal, anywhere in Ontario - had anything to do with it!!!! Deb did it all!

No mention at all from "reporter" Cheevers of how Liberals such as George Smitherman and Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley FORCED the NHS into making the HIP cuts!!

No mention from "reporter" Cheevers about how both of McGuinty's health ministers who served after Smitherman - David Caplan and Deb Matthews - also REFUSED to challenge, to review, or to rescind the HIP plan - WHICH THEIR OWN LIBERAL government forced the NHS to make!!
They ALL had a chance to cancel the HIP, yet, they declined to cancel it, and in fact kept on supporting and defending the HIP!! Yet "reporter" Cheevers somehow just plain forgot to mention any of that haha!! Somehow, only Sevenpifer alone was the 'spearheader'!!!

In the fall of 2008, Niagara's scumbag Liberal MPP Jim Bradley SAID NOTHING about the Kitts HIP report, the health-care-cutting plan which Bradley's buddy Smitherman forced the NHS to create and implement!!!

Why would "reporter" Cheevers mention any of this, eh - the Liberals had nothing to do with any of this!! hahahahah. The Liberals are here to help us, bless them...!

Deb did it all. Yep...

"Reporter" Cheevers does make sure to mention Jim Diodati's spouting off about the NHS, but "reporter" Cheevers neglects to report (!) that Diodati is a Liberal hack, who was eager to join McGuinty; so when Diodati now blabs about "the issues go much deeper than the CEO", what's he actually talking about? It can't go much deeper than admitting the complicity of Diodati's own beloved Ontario Liberal monopoly-pushing incompetent party in the NHS's 'problems' - can it, Jim?! Don't Diodati's Liberal asshole buddies Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley have anything to do with this latest Liberal Mess in the NHS?!

We are supposed to believe this crap from Williscraft's ass-kissing Liberal friendly rag, that Sevenpifer personally "spearheaded" all these cuts, while McGuinty's Liberal scumbags - the NHS's monopolist overseers, and Sevenpifer's political superiors - were not in any way involved; and were not the original instigators behind the whole thing!!?

The blatant, disingenuous spin is unreal!

Hope Sevenpifer sues for wrongful dismissal. She's lucky to get out of this Kafka-esque McGuintyist health-care horror.

And, why the hell is Betty-Lou Souter still on the NHS board??

If Sevenpifer was deemed worthy of firing - THEN ALL OF THE NHS BOARD should have been dismissed. As I had written several times, a provincial Supervisor should have been appointed by the Liberals YEARS AGO to take over the NHS and remove the board; thereby enabling constant ombudsman scrutiny of the going's-on at the NHS.

McGuinty's secretive, ignorant Liberals have continuously refused to do that! (see here; here)

This firing of Sevenpifer is a cowardly act, and a hollow "victory" for the yellow-shirt socialist champagne drinkers; this entire government-appointed NHS board is as equally complicit as Sevenpifer was. This whole gang was allowed to operate by, was directed by - and was [under]funded by - McGuinty's Liberal government.
Souter knew it, and has publicly acknowledged this.

In Niagara there are only two persons responsible for Sevenpifer's alleged transgressions: Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor.
*