Take a gander at this analysis at labradore of the stunning blizzard of funding announcements from a single ministry in the Williams administration.
More than one third of all releases issued since June 1 have been from a single department and all involve hand-outs of government cash. The traditional ministry of pork – transportation – is in second place with 8% (23 releases).*
Now your humble e-scribbler has another perspective on the Summer of Love, Part Deux in the works, but in the meantime, labradore gives a couple of useful observations:
For two, a whole lot of little funding announcements, of a few thousands to tens of thousands of dollars at most, keeps the public mind dutifully associating Danny Williams-Government with the expenditure of money, in a wide variety of geographic locales, without the sticker shock of using roads, schools, or hospitals to generate happy headlines.
For three, there really isn’t anything of substance going on inside Danny Williams-Government that can be used to keep the flow of Happy News flowing in a pre-pre-election summer. Anything big and important that can be delayed until calendar year 2011, will be. That leaves the smaller stuff.
There will be plenty more small stuff next year - don’t be so foolish – but both those points are dead on the money. It is a perpetual campaign in Newfoundland and Labrador. The politics never stops. Only the naive and Danny-lovers would have you believe otherwise.
- srbp -
* Corrects from typo in original.
