Vancouver IAM Daily Blog Report: Campaign Donors Route Thru Non-Profits, Carmen Aguirre: Talented Bomshell, BC's Pot Economics

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This is a selection of recent popular blog articles from VancouverIAM where you will find the best blogs from Vancouver, BC as well as video uploads, social networking, rumors, and blog authoring

Loophole in Donation Policy Revealed

In a recent post, Monty Paulson at The Tyee notes that recent campaign disclosure statements suggest that “routing donations through non-profit societies can also mask their original sources.” Both the Non Partisan Association and Vision Vancouver have “taken donations from registered societies.” One of these gifts is a $5,136 donation to the NPA “from the Nanitch Policy Society, a shadowy non-profit directed by Mayor Sam Sullivan.” Five of the Nanitch directors have said they are “unaware” of any donations to Sullivan’s party. “Upon learning of the gift, one former director said simply: Well, I'll be damned.”

In the post, Paulson quotes Patrick Smith, SFU political scientist, who said “This is a loophole that allows donors to evade the single thing that would make for an informed electorate: disclosure.” According to smith, it denies the public right to know who the contributors to a campaign are. “A former director of Nanitch says the society also helped fund the successful Sullivan-led campaign against shifting Vancouver to a wards system for electing city councillors.” The blogger states that Mayor Sullivan refused requests for information for his article.

Is Underground Income Affecting BC Economy?

Walter Schultz asks in his most recent post why the “proportion of British Columbians living in low income [is] greater than those living in other provinces over the past decade?” He calls our attention to the 2006 report from Statistics Canada to figure out why there is a gap and why its widening. Key findings included employment levels (i.e. the more people working in BC, the fewer people we have living in low income), a high proportion of new immigrants than the rest of Canada, and the growth of the underground economy in BC since 1995, “when the low income gap began to open up.”

Underground economy is basically “unreported income that isn't captured in any statistics.” The Vancouver police department “estimates the total economic impact of organized crime in B.C. at $1.8-$2.7 billion a year. Simon Fraser economics professor Stephen Easton estimates the total at $2 billion a year for marijuana exports alone.” In the post, the blogger notes that the GDP for underground income is usually estimated at 15%. “Based on BC's GDP of $180 billion in 2006 that works out to $27 billion in unreported legal and illegal economic activity.” This leads to a distorted view of BC’s true income levels, “widening the low income gap with the rest of Canada.”

Vancouver’s Carmen Aguirre Not Just a Pretty Face

The most recent post in Alex Waterhouse-Hayward’s blog gives kudos to Vancouver actor, director, playwright Carmen Aguirre, who the photographer deems top of the list of the most beautiful women in Vancouver. Waterhouse-Hayward has photographed Aguirre many times. “The first time it was for the Georgia Straight in 1999 when Aguirre was directing a play she had written about Latinos ¿Qué pasa con la Raza, eh?” Through their mutual friends, including painter Juan Manuel Sanchez, the photographer has been fortunate to work with her.



“My favourite sessions involved pictures of her with the cast of the Electric Theatre Company's production in 2002 of Donna Flor and her Two Husbands,” states the blogger in his post. His favourite play of hers is an adaptation of Argentine Novelist Julio Cortazar’s short story Final del Juego (The End Of The Game), which she directed in English and it opened in Langara's Studio 56 in 2003.



Transportation Blogger Buses It

It’s been a long time since Urban Transportation blogger Stephen Rees has taken the bus. “But since there is an upcoming transit camp… [he] decided to buy a book of two zone tickets and try the bus for a change.” His first comments are on Translink’s “strange” on-line trip planner. “I feel sorry for those unfamiliar with the transit system who rely on this tool. They must have some very odd trip experiences.” The blogger notes that some trips are listed as faster according to the website, but are actually riskier. “Two transfers means twice the opportunity to miss a connection” and if they’re not “timing points” the drivers won’t wait for you to make the connection.

Door to door time for our adventurous blogger was “just over an hour from home to SFU’s Wosk Centre,” which was as advertised and “really not bad compared to driving.” Although, he admits in his post, that many stops do not have shelters, so there was a lot of “hanging around on street corners in the rain.” The return trip, he claims, was much worse. In addition to the rain, youth sleeping across the courtesy seats, and lead-footed driver, the transfer at Richmond was a 20 minute wait in heavy rain. The plusses were that people offered to help each other and he even heard ‘thank you’ calls “to the operator as [passengers] left by the back door - something I have only ever encountered here.” The trip back home took Rees 90 minutes.

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