The Damn-Fool Fisheries Policy

Yesterday’s man delivered yesterday’s ideas and claimed it was the future.

Liberal leader Kevin Aylward unveiled his party’s fisheries platform on Friday.  As a historical document, it would be wonderful for an election from 1975. But in 2011, the colourful pamphlet serves only to remind everyone just how far out of touch its authors are with the province and its people 20 years after the collapse of the cod stocks.

The central problem of the fishery today is that stocks have been decimated by decades of overfishing as a result of government policies that encouraged too many people to enter the fishery than it could sustain economically or environmentally without hundreds of millions annually in federal and provincial government subsidies.

The Liberal policy for the fishery of the future is to return to the very policies that led to its current sorry state in the first place.

One can scarcely imagine anything more stupid. 

Take the cod stocks, reduced to the point that by 1992 the federal government had to shut down the fishery that brought Europeans to this place 500 years ago.  There were no fish left, at least for any commercially viable industry.

The cod numbers – the biomass – are not appreciably larger in 2011 than it was in 1992.

Well, armed with that knowledge, the Liberals want to increase the total allowable catch for the endangered cod to more than double its current level.

There is not a shred of scientific evidence to back them up.

None.

Common sense would tell you to stop fishing altogether.

The Liberals are having none of that sort of talk.

They want to double the current slaughter.

They are not content to let professionals get the last codfish from the sea. The Liberals want to widen the Damn Fool Fishery to boot. 

And to ensure they can find every last fish, the Liberals want to continue the current Tory policy of spending provincial cash on “fisheries science.”

On the surface, it sounds like a good idea – more knowledge is good – but if you look at the end purpose, you realise what the Liberals want to do. 

Conservation and sound management are not the objectives the people who wrote this policy had in mind.  If it was, they wouldn’t advocate resuming the cod slaughter. This is a plan to find the last fish so someone can split it and freeze it into a block for export with taxpayers footing the bill for most of it.

And when the fish are gone, they’ll be on the sea snails,  the sea cucumbers and the krill.

The Liberals want to set up $250 million for what would likely be a batch of make-work projects. They call it a Fisheries Investment and Diversification Fund but those are code words, to be sure. 

The “employment rebate” for processors is nothing more than committing taxpayers to cover the salaries of fish plant workers in businesses that would not survive economically without more government handouts.

Worst of all, the Liberals want to bring back the Fisheries Loan Board.

To understand the significance of this, you have to go back to the 1970s.  With the 200 mile limit in 1977 cam policies designed to increase the number people in the fishery.  Fish that used to be taken by foreigners were available only to Canadians once the 200 mile limit came into effect.

Both the federal and provincial governments abandoned plans to reform the fishery.  Instead they created policies to draw more people into the industry.  In 1976, there were 13,376 fishermen in the province.  By 1980 there were 33,640.  Total federal and provincial subsidies added up to about the same as the landed value of the catch.

The Fisheries Loan Board – provincial money for boats and gear – went from $12,488,000 in outstanding loans in 1976 to $43,796,000 in 1980.  Most of the money was never repaid.

But as far as the goal of getting more people into an already over-stressed industry, the FLB was a stunning success.

The Liberals even resurrect the old chestnuts of co-management and joint management.  And for good measure they repeat the asinine commitment to pay for federal jobs and add a new commitment to support Ryan Cleary’s quest to have taxpayers foot the bill for his education, a.k.a. the judicial inquiry into the fishery.

They don’t need an inquiry. Read anything by Memorial University economist William Shrank. He can tell what happened to the fish and why.  A 1995 article in Marine Policy, titled “Extended fisheries jurisdiction:  origin of the current crisis in Atlantic Canada’s fishery” is as good as any.

As for new ideas, the Liberal policy has none. 

There’s just a vague reference to making sure the aquaculture industry has government financial support and that the Liberals will make sure that projects don’t harm the environment.

To be fair to the Liberals, and to the architects of their policy like Beaton Tulk, the Tories and New Democrats are pushing variations on the same pathetic theme.

But for people looking for some solution to the problems plaguing the fishery and the people who depend on it today, the province’s three political parties have basically left them with nothing to look forward to.  What’s worse, if any of the political platforms make through to government policy, taxpayers will be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars of wasted spending.

We know it is wasted because none of the ideas will work.

We know they won’t work because they failed in the past.  Either that or,  as in the case of joint management, for example, they are solutions that might have helped 30 years ago or more.  But the problems they were supposed to fix simply don’t exist any more.

Today we face new problems created by the sorts of policies some people in the Liberal Party think are solutions to the problems those same policies created.

They couldn’t be any more wrong than they are.

On Friday, yesterday’s man delivered yesterday’s ideas and claimed it was the future.

He couldn’t have been any more wrong.

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The Popcorn Calculation #nlpoli

From the Telegram’s editorial on Wednesday:

The problem is that, when the proposed appointment first came to light, Premier Kathy Dunderdale and Natural Resources Minister Shawn Skinner fell all over each other claiming that they — not Williams — were responsible for the appointment. …

Problem is, the only way to keep the glare from falling on Williams was to deliberately dissemble and mislead, and it appears that the politicians who remained in office were completely up to the task.

At the very least, the letter shows Dunderdale and Skinner have a facility in being less than candid.

That’s really the crux of the story that dominated political news coverage for the first three days of this week.

And you have to put that fact against a group of politicians who claim they came to office on a platform of openness, accountability and transparency.

What they’ve done is the opposite of what they’ve claimed they were about.

Skinner and Dunderdale opened up a huge credibility gap for themselves.  That’s bad news for politicians. 

Danny Williams managed to maintained credibility even when he said some absolutely incredible things.  People believed him no matter how big – or how obvious –the whopper.  And he told whoppers a lot more often than people admit.

Kathy is no Danny, not by a long shot.

So when she heads into an election  - even against the Liberals and the NDP as weak and disorganized as they both really are,  taking a blow to your credibility is never good.

Lots of people already have questions about Dunderdale.  The CRA polls, as fundamentally skewed as they are, still aren’t so crude that they missed the huge drop in leader support for Dunderdale compared to Williams.

What’s worse is the drop in party support.  It now stands at a mere 44% of respondents to the last CRA poll, once you take all the CRA torquing and massaging out.  In other words, it wouldn’t take much to put the Tories into a serious election problem.

How do people respond to claims about Muskrat Falls, for example, when the person who is telling them the whole thing is great is also the person who dissembled and misled – in the words of the Telegram editorialist – about something as comparatively trivial as Danny Williams’ role in the Liz Matthews nomination?

People looking at the current provincial government will also start looking at other examples like the Dunderdale Skinner performance.  Joan Burke on the MUN president, for example. 

Dunderdale on Joan Cleary and the Public Tender Act.

Kevin O’Brien.

Kathy Dunderdale and the Tories stand on the edge of the Gorge of Eternal Peril.  Dunderdale’s credibility is weakened. More people than before will think twice when she says something now.

The Tories aren’t likely to be swallowed up by the political chasm as a result. 

Amateurs think winning a campaign is about having a star leader.

It isn’t.

It’s about the ground game.

The logistics.

That’s still where the Tories have an advantage.  If the party district organizations hold, that alone will pull through seats the Tories might otherwise lose.  District level organization beyond one or two spots has been the traditional NDP weakness. If they’ve added some strength, they could have a stronger showing.

The Liberals have atrophied at the district level over the past couple of terms.  They’ve rebounded in a good few but overall the party is still far weaker than it ought to be.  You can put that all down to neglect of the basic party organization by the people right at the top.

And organization on the ground is what wins campaigns.

But if the internal splits and schisms evident in the Danny Williams outburst this week got wider…

Well, that might be a different matter.

Stay tuned. 

The election is only just starting in earnest. this could be a real Ginger- get-the-popcorn kinda show.

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The Arrogance Factor #nlpoli

Can Len Simms be far behind your humble e-scribbler asked back in June when deputy minister Ross Reid quit his job to run the Tory campaign.

Simms – a former Tory party leader – ditched his patronage appointment in 2007 to work the Tory campaign.

Both got reappointed to their jobs as soon as the Tories was back in office.

The answer to June’s question was an emphatic”yes” on Tuesday as the Tories announced Simms was quitting his job to play at politics for a bit.

For the purposes of analysis, assume both the existence of political arrogance and that the level of arrogance for an incumbent political party grows in proportion to the length of time it is in power.

Arrogance.

That’s about the only way you can explain the Tory sense of entitlements to treat public service jobs as partisan plums they can abuse in this manner, let alone to admit that Simms is a partisan hack and apparently see nothing wrong in what they are doing.

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On missing the point

Mark Watton has been leading the charge against sections of the province’s election laws that allow people to vote when there is no election.

On the face of it, the idea is bizarre.

You’d think it is obviously bizarre.

And yet a political science professor at Grenfell in Corner Brook managed to miss the point entirely in a recent interview with The Western Star:

Meanwhile, Mario Levesque, a political science professor at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, agrees it is a necessity which adds to the democratic process. However, he also says there are adjustments required to address issues around voting prior to the nomination of candidates.

“That is kind of an irritant, but is difficult to address,” the professor said. “It is pretty difficult for all political parties to have candidates in all the ridings two months before the actual election, and sometimes it is three weeks before an election date before a party has a candidate in that riding.”

For starters, Levesque confuses the idea of having allowance for people to vote who might be away from the district or the province on polling day with the idea that they could vote when there is no election.

His comment about parties having candidates in place also isn’t an issue.  Unless a candidate meets the conditions set out in the provincial Elections Act, he or she simply isn’t a candidate. And those are the rules that actually don’t put candidates in place until after the election writ is issued. 

Even then, the candidates are not finally – legally – in place until a week or so before voting day.

Seems ludicrous, then to put it mildly, that people are given ballots to vote two months or so before a likely election date.

This is not really the kind of stuff that should tax people’s faculties. In Levesque’s case, he obviously understands how things work, he just mixes them up.

He also skips over the fairly obvious point that the balloting system affects both voters and those seeking office alike.  The best illustration of that recently would be the case of John Baird.  He originally planned to run for the Liberals.  Then Baird walked away from the Liberal Party  and plans to run as an unaffiliated candidate.

That means that under the law as it stands right now, all those people who want to vote for John Baird can’t. And anybody in a situation like that who had cast a vote for the party because the system didn’t let them vote any other way would be – in effect – disenfranchised if they cast a ballot a couple of months before voting day and before their man switched parties.

Then there’s the scenario that Watton spelled out in the Western Star article.  What happens if an election in a particular district comes down to a difference in vote totals that is smaller than the number of special ballots cast upwards of two months earlier.  That is, people voted one way based on assumptions at the time but then would have voted another way later on.

You see there is a reason why voting takes place on a single day and in the case of advance polls, not much before that one day.  Absentee ballots are handled differently but the process often involves mailing the ballot back.  As long as it is postmarked no later than the actual voting day, the vote can be legally counted even if the mail system stakes a week or more to get the ballot to the voting officials.

Special balloting In Newfoundland and Labrador actually ends well in advance of polling day and not long after the last day for nominating candidates under the election law.  In other words, the system in this province pushes absentees away from voting for individual candidates and forces them to make choices before everyone else and before they actually have a chance to weigh fully what choices they actually have.

Absentee ballots aren’t a bad idea.  In fact, they are a very good idea since they enfranchise people.

The problem comes with the peculiar way the law is written in Newfoundland and Labrador.  That could be fixed with a few simple changes.  Those changes would be easy to make, just as easy in fact as the original changes were made that created the mess in the first place.

The problem is that the politicians aren’t interested in changing the system. 

And why should they?

It favours the people who already have the jobs.

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Rideout tags Tories for election pork-fest #nlpoli

Former premier Tom Rideout didn’t mince words about the orgy of pork-barrel spending his former caucus colleagues have been pushing in the run-up.

On a political panel on Tuesday morning, Rideout told the audience for CBC Radio’s West Coast Morning Show that the public mood has changed over the past few decades and that people view these things differently now than the way they used to.

Rideout, who said he liked to think he had an independent mind, said he thought the provincial Conservatives can go too far with their announcements, and re-announcements and announcements of the same spending for the third and fourth time.

Rideout singled out municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien, saying that O’Brien had acted “like a buffoon”’ by going around the province “dropping off fire trucks” all over the place.  Rideout said that he could have left it up to the local member of the House of Assembly.

The issue wouldn’t be enough to defeat the government, said  Rideout, but he did feel there could be a backlash in some areas.

Wow.

Rideout basically confirmed what your humble e-scribbler has been picking up for months from all around the province.  Lots of people are miffed for lots of reasons.  The blatant pork-barrelling is just the latest thing.

The fire trucks have become a twisted symbol of the Conservative’s old-fashioned political mentality.

What’s really startling here is that Rideout openly laced into his political colleagues and tagged one minister in particular.

That’s a huge sign that the provincial Tories are not the invincible political behemoth they once were no matter what the townie media would want to read into CRA’s always dubious poll results.

Stable political environment? 

Try not to pee your new back-to-school pants no matter how hard it is to stifle the guffaws.

Kathy Dunderdale did say she thought the poll suggested the polling numbers had stabilised but that was just because the Tories have been in a pretty sharp decline for most of the last year.

But with the Tories having the support of 40% of respondents to a recent poll and the opposition parties at 18% and 16%, it wouldn’t take much to give Kath and Fairity a visit from the Old Hag.

There’s more to it than fire trucks. O’Brien could well be a liability in other parts of the province, too,  becoming the poster-child for perceived political arrogance in the face of some fairly obvious cock-ups over the provincial government’s response to natural disasters.

On the Great Northern Peninsula there are other issues.

On the northeast coast there are others.

Still more on the Burin peninsula and in central Newfoundland.

And then there is the threat of Muskrat Falls.

Look around.

The mood is anything but settled.

Rideout is right:  it might not be enough to bring down the government yet.

But when a prominent Tory takes such a smack at other Tories as Rideout did this past Tuesday morning, it is enough to think things in this province  could get quite a shake in October.

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What you can see at the horse race…

Horse race polls are the heights of political journalism* in some circles despite the fact they tell very little about what is happening in voters’ heads.

But since this is all there is, let’s look at the latest Corporate Research Associates poll and see what it tells us.

The provincial Conservatives are at 40% of respondents down from 44% in May.  The New Democrats are at 18%, up from 15% and the Liberals remain at 16%.  Undecideds are up to 26% from 23% in May.

The Liberals and NDP have swapped places but all of the changes are well within the polls horrendous margin of error of plus or minus 4.9%.

For those unfamiliar with the numbers, what you just got was the CRA numbers adjusted as a percentage of poll respondents, not as the very misleading percentage of decideds that CRA uses.

Let’s try some observations:

• All that Tory poll goosing – unprecedented in volume and timed to match CRA’s polling exactly – was a complete waste of time.
• You can also put the jack boots to any suggestion that the NDP had a Jack Boost and are on their way to replacing the Liberals as the official opposition. The Dipper torque machine will be in hyper drive but this is really nothing to write home about…yet.  The local NDP still have not produced the kinds of polling numbers you’d need to see in order to confirm any switching to the Orange as the leading opposition party.
• The Liberals experienced no change despite having a new leader for the entire polling period and attracting consistent news coverage for a week or so beforehand.  This poll should be a massive wake-up call for them. The only question at this point is whether or not they will hit the snooze button.

Now let’s try something a bit more complicated.

Even if you accept CRA polls, we know that there’s been a fairly steady slide away from the Tories for most of past 18 months.  Since Danny left, the slide stopped, reversed course and carried on downward again. 

We also know that CRA polling seems to pick up about 15 to 20 percentage points for the Tories that doesn’t show up at the polls.  Their Liberal and NDP numbers seem to be spot on or close enough for government work.

So here’s where the fun can start.  Shave 15 to 20 points off the stated Conservative number in the adjusted CRA poll results and you start to see Tory support down around 25% in May and 20% in August.

You can tell the Conservatives are edgy because of the orgy of politicking with public money they’ve all been doing.  Kathy Dunderdale has been campaigning already in areas where the Tories are perceived as being weak, namely the Burin Peninsula and central Newfoundland.  The Tories don’t have a lock on things in several places in the province and they know it.

So just for the heck of it, let’s imagine what might happen if the CRA results we see in August are pretty much what turns out in October.

Here’s one scenario run through an amazing, colossal supercomputing vote-a-tron machine kept hidden at a secret location, and offered here purely for entertainment purposes.

Using these most recent, corrected CRA results, you could still have the Tories forming a comfortable majority of more than 34 seats and as many as 37.  The Liberals would pick up seven or eight and the NDP could win as many as three or four.

Bay of Islands, Humber Valley, Isles of Notre Dame and Torngat Mountains would swing Liberal in that scenario.  The NDP could pick up Burin-Placentia West and Labrador West.

There could be close races in Grand Falls/Windsor-Buchans, Lake Melville, Placentia and St. Mary’s, St. Barbe and St. John’s East.

There’s still a long way to go before polling day and lots can change between now and then.  Voters appear to be ripe for a significant change.  Too bad none of the parties are offering one.

Just remember:  in the scenario we just walked through, the number of people staying home rather than voting would be at a historic high level.  No political party in Newfoundland and Labrador could crow about that.

Horse race polls - as they are normally used -  are no fun.

But if you look beyond the normal, all sorts of amusing things suddenly appear.

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Ya gotta chuckle update: CBC’s lede is classic:

The governing Tories are holding a strong lead heading into October's election, while the NDP is challenging the Liberals for second place, a new poll shows.

Gal-o-war is way out in front and Townie Pride is nose and nose with Western Boy for second.

Total crap, of course.

Like this line later on that adds more turds to the total crap offered up front:

The fact that the NDP, not the Liberals, are in second place appears to set the stage for a competition for the Opposition.

That would be true if it wasn’t for the fact that it is false.  The only way such a proposition floats is if having the second biggest number of decided respondents to a CRA poll question actually translates into seats.

It doesn’t, but that obviously isn’t important.  Twenty-four is bigger than 22 so the NDP must be in second and challenging for official opposition status.

To make matters much worse, CBC misrepresents CRA’s quarterly advertising poll as a tracking poll.  It isn’t. Tracking polls are repeated much more frequently than once every three months.  They are averaged over time to give a moving picture of trends.  As that 1998 link to a CNN piece notes, a daily tracker will show fluctuations for specific events on a daily basis.  A weekly tracking poll will wipe out some of those daily blips to show longer trending.

CRA’s poll once every three months, with only three questions and with a margin of error that borders on the laughable tells you very little worthwhile. In 2007, CRA missed the vote result for the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points.

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Election 2011 and the Resource Curse

During the current provincial election you are going to hear a lot about natural resources and the need to spend the money that comes from it on all sorts of things.

The province’s New Democrats wasted no time in bitching that oil money isn’t being poured into rural Newfoundland and Labrador:

"We have to have a plan in rural Newfoundland to make sure that our fishery is maintained as the backbone of rural communities," she said.

The Dippers are also hopped up on spending the cash on education, mostly likely to help Nova Scotians get a cheaper education.

Of course, the province’s Conservatives have been on a spending spree these past couple of years.  They’ve dropping dropping money on everything anything from road paving to hockey rinks.

The provincial Liberals are on much the same sort of kick, especially for the fishery. All three parties want to take over federal responsibilities like the dozen or so jobs at a coast guard marine rescue call centre.  The local pols want to buy the jobs just to keep them in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In fact, if you look at most major issues in the province, the only disagreement among the three parties is how much is enough to spend.  On any given issue and any given day, the incumbent Tories will announce cash for something.  The other two parties will scream:  “not enough!”

The Politics of Cynicism: even worse than thought edition #nlpoli

If they accidentally accumulate enough credits to a form a government after the next election, the provincial New Democrats will keep taxing small business income at 14%.

What the provincial party announced last week was a very small reduction in the rate that applies only on the first $500,000 of business income.

So what was dishonestly torqued as a 25% reduction (a one percentage point reduction from four percent to three percent)  solely to make the policy appear to be much more significant that it was is actually even worse for what the release did not include.

Just to add to the crass manipulation the New Democrats engaged in last week, consider New Democrat candidate Gerry Rogers’ words at  the news conference announcing the NDP’s small business policy. 

Here’s the version from the Telegram:

“Absolutely, it’s important for the NDP to be seen as pro-business,” Rogers said.

“I think the NDP is clearly pro-business, pro-development, but only in as much as it’s good for all the people of the country.”

Yes, important “to be seen as”.

But not as important to actually be, it seems.

People wonder how the New Democrats would pay for the cut.  truth is they wouldn’t have to.  If the local economy grows at the optimistic rates forecast by some people – and business income grows along with it -  small business will fork over as much or more when they pay 14% on amounts over $500,000.

So what would a real small business policy look like?

Well, if tax cuts are your thing, you could increase the amount of income covered by the lowest rate.  Apply the four percent rate to the first $750,000 or even first million of small business income.

That would be a real tax cut, not the charade the Dippers offered last week.

Reduce red tape.  Don’t just engage in the charade the Tories did over the past seven years.  Seriously reduce the weight of unnecessary regulation.  The fishery is probably one of the finest examples of an industry almost breaking down under the weight of completely useless paperwork and restrictions.

The current system reduces thousands of people in the province to little better than wage slavery and perpetual dependence on government hand-outs to make a very meagre living.  Your humble e-scribbler highlighted that idea, among others,  a few months ago:

The third idea is for the provincial government to abolish processing licenses with the elaborate red tape restrictions that go with it.  The current system helps to keep too many people and too many plants working in an industry featuring low wages, limited capital for investment and with no prospect that new workers will enter the industry to keep it going.

The Dippers couldn’t do that, of course, since it would seriously shag up the fisheries union on which the NDP depends for so much support.  Since the provincial NDP is basically the political arm of the province’s unions, with a few other people along for the ride, there’s no way they could make a meaningful change to help everyday  people every day, whether they are workers or small business owners.

But the NDP will issue news releases that make it seem like they would to something.

Because, after all, it is important for politicians to be seen to be [insert the phony value of the moment here].

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The Politics of Cynicism, NDP style #nlpoli

One could hardly imagine a better way to bitch-slap the carefully fabricated Legend of Jack Layton than Lorraine Michael’s news release announcing a 25% reduction in something the provincial NDP leader calls a “small business tax”.

“Small businesses employ most of the workers, contribute to their local economies, and continue to create most of the new jobs in this province,” Michael said today. “A focus on small business in Newfoundland and Labrador became an important part of our platform preparation. Consultation with small business owners helped us identify some key ways to give them a break.

Problem Number One is that Lorraine doesn’t bother to tell anyone what small business tax she would like to chop.

Perhaps it is the Small Business Income Tax.

Problem Number Two is that the current rate is 4%.  The New Democrats will drop that to 3%.

Whooppeee friggin’ ding. This is a non-announcement.

The release has absolutely no detail in it at all, in keeping with current New Democratic Party practice.

That means you can’t really tell what they are promising and as such you will have a hard time holding them accountable later on should they accidentally compile enough credits to form a government.

For those keeping score, we are up to problem Number Three.

In that same theme, this lack of accountability is exactly the opposite of what the Dippers did in Nova Scotia.  Over there, Darrell and the crew issued a simple statement of goals and had all sorts of details that you can use to tell if they did it or not.

The province’s New Democrats are running a very aggressive campaign that is centred primarily on their steady stream of candidate nomination announcements.  They are getting plenty of media coverage for it.

Whether that’s enough to cause a massive break through in seats in the province remains to be seen, but if past history is any sign, voters in this province aren’t that stupid.

At some point, voters will pay attention to the candidates and the party platform.  What voters will see at that point is pretty striking.

The first thing voters will see is that the New Democrats want to see the Conservatives back in office.  Lorraine is in her last campaign – most likely – so they don’t have any bigger plans at the moment.  They are hoping the Liberals will collapse but the Dippers aren’t doing anything substantial to move themselves forward.

The second is that their campaign “platform” is just a thin series of statements like this one on small business taxes.  The releases sound vaguely interesting but on closer examination, they turn into puffs of smoke at best.  At worst, they advocate policies that benefit people outside the province more than those who are actually going to pay for it.

Like, Muskrat Falls.

On Muskrat Falls,  the NDP stand firmly behind the provincial Conservatives. Their position is that they back it, if it works.  Well, the thing will “work” because local voters will be forced to pay the whole shot for it even though Nalcor and the provincial Conservatives ignored cheaper alternatives.  Either the New Democrats haven’t paid attention to what is happening with Muskrat Falls or they don’t give a shit about local voters. 

The third thing the voters will notice is that the New Democrats have turned from a party of ideals to a party of intense  - and pretty blatant cynicism.  Their position on Muskrat Falls is perhaps the best illustration of that.  Their positions on gasoline tax cuts and home heating fuel are examples of aping Conservative retail politics while mouthing words about ordinary Canadians, helping people and protecting the environment.

If that doesn’t add up to some pretty blatant cynicism, it’s hard to know what else would.

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* Link added.

Compounding the abuse #nlpoli

It wasn’t bad enough that the province’s special ballot laws make a mockery of democracy.

For the 2011 general election, the province’s elections office is opening 12 special offices across the province in addition to the existing 48 electoral district offices specifically to handle special ballots.

Let’s hope there are no close contests in any seats.

Can you say Sally’s Cove, boys and girls?

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A monstrous abuse continues #nlpoli

While there will be a general election in Newfoundland and Labrador this fall, there isn’t one at the moment.

And yet, the province’s chief electoral office is proudly encouraging people to cast a special ballot if they need to do so. 

People who don’t live in the province might find this very odd but such is the reality  in the undemocratic former republic of Dannystan.  Changes to the province’s electoral laws made before the 2007 general election created a situation in which people can vote in an election that doesn’t exist. You can be your own electoral grand-pa, as it were.

Now some of us have been criticising this monstrous abuse of democracy since it began. But in the current election people can get a very good sense of how the special ballot provisions of the Williams Election Act rob voters of their right to choice.

Under the Act, a person can request a special ballot and vote for the candidate or party of ones choice any time up to four weeks before a writ is issued for an election.

Sounds good so far.

One small problem.

What is a candidate?

Well, under the Act, a candidate is a person nominated to be a candidate under the rules laid out in the Act. One of those rules is that the person must be nominated by:

by filing the nomination paper with the returning officer between the date of the proclamation commencing the election and the close of nominations.

Date of the proclamation… that’s what people mean by dropping the writ.

And that won’t happen for some three or four weeks yet, just as the special ballot section of the legislation already acknowledges.

So without a writ, there can be no nominations and without nominations  there can’t be any candidates.

But one can vote for a political party.

Okay.

That might work.

Except for people like John Baird. He’s the fellow who had planned to run for the Liberals in the upcoming election but who decided to run as an independent candidate instead. 

“Independent” is not a political party.

Nor is “non-aligned” which is the word that will appear on the ballot next to Baird’s name at some point in the future.

For now, any people who needed a special ballot in Terra Nova district and wanted to vote for John Baird won’t have that opportunity.

If the election turns out to be close, as it sometimes is, those few ballots John Baird won’t get - and all the affiliated, party-approved candidates  can get - could make all the difference in the world.

Special balloting makes a mockery of democracy.

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The secret of life, comedy, and politics

Timing.

The ever watchful labradore notes that after Danny Williams mucked around with the appointments for the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador, they have taken place in November.

No one would be surprised to find out that this is a month when the government’s official pollster is in the field.

In Election Year 2011, the appointments announcement arrived in August.

Not surprisingly, the government pollster is in the field at the moment as well.

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No man is an island: Mount Pearl edition

There are few things about provincial Conservative Steve Kent’s website that stand out.

First, as of August 16, the blog hasn’t been updated since the 2007 general election.

Second, it really is all about Steve.  High speed flash animation of photos of Steve – all by himself – in various poses and settings.

Third, Steve missed the memo on whose party he belongs to.

Forget Dunderdale2011.

Steve’s a Dapper Dan man:

h/t to the Twitterverse

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Bloc NDP MP backs Tory Premier Dunderdale #nlpoli

Noob Bloc NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary wants voters in Newfoundland and Labrador to return Conservative Premier Kathy Dunderdale to power in this fall’s general election.

VOCM reports that Cleary does not have any faith in Dunderdale’s leadership but thinks that she should continue to lead the province, albeit with a minority government.

He wants the Liberals and provincial New Democrats to mount a campaign to deliver a Tory minority government.

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If Rick Hillier really runs for Liberal leader… #nlpoli

For those who may have missed it, CBC’s David Cochrane @cochranecbcnl tweeted on Wednesday that retired chief of defence staff Rick Hillier is in newfoundland and Labrador, talking to “senior Liberals”, and looking at a run at the Liberal leader’s job.

Here are the relevant tweets:

 CochraneCBCNL David Cochrane

Breaking: CBC News has learned that Rick Hillier is considering a run for the Liberal leadership.

 CochraneCBCNL David Cochrane

The former chief of defence staff is in NL. Sources say that Hillier is seeking advice from senior Liberals on a possible leadership bid.

CochraneCBCNL David Cochrane

Hillier isn't a lock to enter the race. But a source describes Hillier's interest as "quite serious."

So that started your humble e-scribbler thinking.

If Rick Hillier really runs for Liberal leader…

• All the other candidates will drop out instantly.
• The number of people considering a run will suddenly hit zero. 
• You will have to set up barbed wire and post guards to control the flood of Tories crossing the floor to the Liberals.
• Plans for a Danny Williams statue will surge ahead as competition ends to see who will get the coveted position  kissing his ass.
• Kathy Dunderdale will crap diamonds…
• and then join the stampede.
• Tony Ducey will cry.
• Marjorie will call Randy Simms to talk about how proud she is of Rick and always knew he’d come home, but that he is is still no Danny Williams.
• Gerry Byrne will call Open Line to suggest the election be held the day after Hillier is installed as leader.
• Gus Etchegary will be waiting on the line to complain that Hillier knows nothing about the fishery.
• Still not getting the joke, Ryan Cleary will post to Facebook asking Hillier if he’d help Jack off a horse.
• NDP twittermaniacs will retweet about the latest NDP nomination call…
• and run like a scalded cat from any reminders that they and outgoing NDP leader Lorraine Michael support Dunderdale’s plan to double electricity rates for people on low and fixed incomes (and everyone else while they’re at it) while delivering discount power to Nova Scotians.
• CRA’s August poll results will show support for the Liberals remains at record lows.
• Bill Rowe will start off NightLine with reminiscences of all the times he met Hillier at receptions in Ottawa while Bill was Danny Williams’ ambassador to Ottawa and had to wait for someone in Danny Williams office to ship up his used snow tires, find him a cell phone to use and buy a laptop at Best Buy. Then Rowe will plug his own insider account of stuff he was outside the room for.
• The local commentariat on twitter and in the online comments section of any website will remind everyone that the Liberal party is in disarray, has a huge debt, can’t find volunteers or candidates so the election result isn’t likely to change from earlier predictions of a sweep by the incumbent party, as if those things never happened before in local politics.*
• One year into Hillier’s term, the local commentariat will be talking about disarray and dysfunction in the Tory party, its debt problems, lack of volunteers and inability to find a leader as if those things never happened in local politics before.  
• You will not be able to find anyone – not a single living human being – who will admit to having ever voted Tory in their lives.

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*  edit to make the point clearer that these things are in fact a function of being an “out’ party” versus an “in” party.

Debt, electricity rates and Muskrat Falls #nlvotes

The editorial board at the Telegram understands the point exactly.

It’s a point your humble e-scribbler has been harping on for six years to one extent or another.

And it’s one of many major problems with Muskrat Falls and the plan to double electricity rates in the province:

The implications are hideous. As the editorial asks:

Ask a simpler question: if power rates double or even rise by 50 per cent, would you be able to afford it?

It’s a frightening question.

Public debt is one thing.  The province is in hard shape and it is even harder given that the province’s finance minister likes to talk about the debt load but then plans to double it with the flick of a pen. Your humble e-scribbler started a series of posts in 2008.  You’ll find other references to public spending going back to 2006.

Personal debt is another.  That’s getting worse in the province as well.

And if the province needs power, there are cheaper, greener alternatives that the provincial government is ignoring. Even natural gas would be better than Muskrat.

This could become the most significant issue of the campaign, not because Muskrat is a good issue for the people backing it, but because the parties backing it most strenuously – Conservatives and New Democrats – may find a strong public backlash.

For the Liberals, this should be a warning to Yvonne Jones that Muskrat is the wrong horse to back no matter what some people are whispering in her ear.

For the Tories and New Democrats, this could become a major wedge issue, shattering their existing support and  - for the NDP - making it harder to attract new converts.  For the Tories, the Muskrat mess could make it harder to get their voters out to the polls.

For the Dippers it could be a classic wedge.  How many NDP supporters are adamantly opposed to Muskrat and mistakenly believe that Lorraine Michael and Dale Kirby oppose it, too? 

You can tell the NDP are touchy about the issue because neither the party president nor the party leader is talking openly and proudly about their commitment to bringing about exactly the financial mess the Telegram is warning about.

Well, if Muskrat turns out to be political and economic bad news, it is not like people didn’t warn y’all.

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Compare and contrast: election policy edition

Compare the New Democrat “policy” announcements on the fishery and shipbuilding, slipped out there last week with the Liberal one on health care and seniors, announced on Monday morning at a news conference.

The Liberal one wasn’t available online as of 1330 hours local time on Monday.  That’s not encouraging, given the announcement happened at 1000 hrs.

The Libs will need to sort this out to make sure their information is readily available.  Online media coverage of this announcement sucked.  Most didn’t have a story and the one that did appear covered only a small portion of a much larger announcement.

But this is not just a case of announcing a vague intention.  The Liberals announcement includes:

• a ministry of aging and seniors,
• an aging and seniors strategy that will also feature health and wellness promotion, respecting and celebrating seniors, supportive communities,  seniors’ financial security, employment and life transitioning,  secure housing options, and, caregiver assistance and support.
• a seniors’ advocate, similar to the child and youth advocate,
• a funding shift to rehab and other support to enable seniors to stay in their own communities longer, and
• better funding for long-term care and home care.

How this announcement plays with the public remains to be seen.  Just recall that health care is the single biggest issue for voters according to polls.  And don’t forget that seniors and seniors’ care is already a sensitive political issue. it will only get bigger in the years ahead.

From the sliding a sheet of paper department, a lot of this will look familiar to people who have been paying attention to any sort of policy announcements over the past decade.

That’s because many Conservative policies after 2003 just continued work that was already done or already in train under the Liberals.

From the superficial reporting department, consider that any media coverage of how many candidates the parties have nominated at this point is pretty much a pile of irrelevant bullshite. 

Update II:  Here’s the policy document in a version you can read and enjoy.

Caring for Our Seniors

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Update:  CBC has an online story that went live after this post first went up.  It is pretty vague on details despite the fact the Liberal announcement had tons of specifics.

What’s more interesting to see in the CBC comments section are the number of NDP astroturf (fake identities, likely all done by one or a small number of people) comments that criticise the announcement or claim – falsely  - that the ideas are NDP ones. 

You can expect a lot more of that sort of foolishness, especially if the NDP can’t come up with solid policy announcements of their own.

Sliding a sheet of paper, NDP version

The New Democrats announced a couple of policy planks last week for the general election campaign.

Well,  sort of announced.  The party’s news release says that leader Lorraine Michael announced something but part of it sure doesn’t look like much of a clear, verifiable commitment:

“Government should have done more to ensure that this province would play a role in the federal government shipbuilding plans.”

In contrast, the NDP leader said, an NDP government will help its province’s own shipyards secure contracts with outside buyers, …

So what does that mean exactly?

Good question.

What Michael is talking about in that first sentence is the decision by a private sector company to withdraw from a federal government tender competition. She doesn’t explain what more the provincial government was supposed to do nor does she give any idea of what some mythical New Democrat government of the future might do to change the situation she doesn’t really describe in the first place.

We just get the comment that the provincial government should have done “more” and that a New Democrat government will “help”.

In the second part of the shipbuilding “policy”, Michael said that the New Democrats would “commit to building Newfoundland and Labrador ferries within the province.”  Of course that is actually nothing new:  the current Conservative administration committed to the same thing in 2003.  While it took them four or five years to sort it out, they have managed to build a couple of ferries at shipyards inside the province.

Now while the release said Michael talked about two policies, there’s no way to be sure if the two policies were about shipbuilding or if this counts as the second plank:

“The provincial government has to work with all the players – industry, the municipalities, the workers – to ensure that the fishery can diversify and thrive,…”

That’s not really a policy so much as a general statement. Unfortunately for voters, it doesn’t actually mean anything. One might wonder, for example, how a municipality could help top restore fish stocks since there isn’t a town in the country that has any responsibility for any part of the fishery.

Maybe Michael meant something else.

Maybe she did not know what she means.

Voters will likely have a hard time knowing what Michael and the New Democrats mean either.

But readers of these e-scribbles will know what it means:

Of course, that’s pretty much consistent with political parties that aren’t interested in drawing in new supporters based on a platform aimed at voter interests.  As your humble e-scribbler noted for NTV, you are going to have a hard time sliding a sheet of paper between the parties on major issues. The one thing they will all have in common is a commitment to spend gobs of public cash:  pork is the priority. Likewise, for all parties – but especially the current incumbent Tories, it will be yet more  paternalism.

Local political parties all practice a form of defensive politics that involves a combination of preaching to the people they already have while repeating whatever it is the other guys have been doing that worked before.

Expect more of the same.

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The Summer of Love 2011

Five years after your humble e-scribbler first wrote about it, the world pretty much accepts the notion that the governing Conservatives time their communications to coincide with polling done by their contract pollster. A couple of university professors have taken up the task of documenting the extent of the poll goosing and talk radio stacking activities.

Well, labradore posted a couple of reminders last week about just exactly how intense this can get.

First, he show a chart comparing the number of releases issued in the middle of summer.  Not surprisingly, 2011 showed the heaviest news release output on record.  That’s not surprising because it is an election year and the the incumbent Tories apparently are having some problems with popular support.

Second, labradore charted the number of media advisories issued by the provincial government, by month from 1996 onward. No one ever said this poll goosing thing was something the Tories invented.  It’s just that they do it more aggressively than the gang that went before.

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Plastic, packaged and preaching to the choir

While some people may be excited about the fact that all three party leaders in the province are on Da Twitter, a close look at how political parties in newfoundland and Labrador are using, or not using social media, shows that there is a lot less here than meets the eye.

NTV aired two stories last week about social media and the upcoming provincial election.  Your humble e-scribbler is in both, along with local blogger and former candidate Stephen Eli Harris.  The first piece – here – started from the news that Kathy Dunderdale is the first Premier to use Twitter. The second one – here – built off the fact that the provincial government’s energy corporation is also using Twitter as part of its campaign to gain support for its Muskrat Falls megadebt project.

Do a quick Internet search and you will find plenty of commentary and analysis on the Obama campaign and social media.  Some of the more interesting assessments compare how the republican and Democrat campaigns in 2008 differed.  The Republicans preached to the choir.  That is they used social media as a way of speaking to people who were already committed Republicans or who were leaning heavily that way.

The Democrats used social media as a way of tapping into a large pool of swing voters, alienated voters and independents. The used social media to draw potential voters to core materials and give them plenty of options to take action in support of the campaign.

Both strategies are built around the basic point that social media offer some pretty potent ways to reach voters who are now tuned in a great many places besides television, radio and the local newspaper.

In the upcoming provincial election, you will see that the Conservatives have a heavy Twitter presence. The New Democrats are using it and some Liberals have discovered that it exists.

The more important thing to notice is the content.  The Conservatives tend to spout their talking points or spit out meaningless pap about getting a haircut. The New Democrats tend to retweet campaign news from the party president or leader.  In short, they are packaged, plastic and preaching to the choir. 

One exception that stands out: Jerome Kennedy, with this tweet:

"the harmonies of new floods", "the thunder of insentient seas", "eternal pathways of fire"- E.J. Pratt's "Newfoundland". Required reading.

The dunderdale2011.ca website doesn’t have any sign of an effort to attract supporters, engage them and turn them into activists.  Sure, there’s a “Get Involved” button but it takes you to some sterile text:

There are many ways you can get involved in our Party.

In the lead-up to the general election campaign in October 2011, you may choose to volunteer with your local district association in support of your Progressive Conservative candidate.

You may wish to serve with Young Progressive Conservatives, the Progressive Conservative Women’s Caucus or the provincial campaign.

If you wish to get involved as a volunteer, please contact our Party office:  blah blah blah

This is not about pulling people in and turning them into activists.  This is a website about pushing information out, most likely to people who are already converts.  And if you think about it in light of the leadership controversy earlier this year,  that’s basically the way the party runs.

Ditto for  the NDP website.  For starters it’s just a sub-page from the national NDP site.  The buttons that look like ways to get involved are just e-mail forms to fill out so somebody can contact you later.  The Twitter button takes you to the leader’s feed.  As this is written on Monday evening, the last update was 24 hours earlier.

They’ve got a map of where they have candidates for the election.  That’s right above a list of nominated candidates:  14 as of July 25. The individual candidate web pages are pretty bare.  There’s not much there beyond some basic biographical information.

Ditto ditto the Liberal website.  it hasn’t been updated in a couple of months.  if you click the “where we stand” button you will find the party constitution.  No sign of a platform or policies. The news page is up-to-date with releases as recently as Monday. 

That’s the one clue on this website that there’s an election on.  There is a link to something called candidate nominations but it is a pdf of candidate profiles and pictures.  It’s out of date, to boot.

Of course, that’s pretty much consistent with political parties that aren’t interested in drawing in new supporters based on a platform aimed at voter interests.  As your humble e-scribbler noted for NTV, you are going to have a hard time sliding a sheet of paper between the parties on major issues. The one thing they will all have in common is a commitment to spend gobs of public cash:  pork is the priority. Likewise, for all parties – but especially the current incumbent Tories, it will be yet more  paternalism.

Local political parties all practice a form of defensive politics that involves a combination of preaching to the people they already have while repeating whatever it is the other guys have been doing that worked before.  The more aggressive forms of the defence – like the Tories in 2007 – also use heavy doses of Republican-style attack politics to suppress the opponents.  It can work spectacularly well.

Well, sort of.  The 2007 Tories won a landslide of seats but they actually didn’t get any more votes.  What they managed to do was demoralise the Liberals whose lacklustre campaign couldn’t draw anyone out.  The Liberal vote collapsed and that made it easy for the Tories to pick up seats.

But the Tories actually got fewer votes in 2007 than they did in 2003.

That isn’t what you may think if you only listened to the superficial media reports that did nothing more than repeat the intensive hype coming from the Tory camp.

The current Tory strategy is essentially a pledge for more of the same. For the campaign, that seems to mean yet more of the same but without the small-minded, vicious personal attacks that were Danny Williams’ stock in trade.

Other than that, there’s nothing really new in their campaign at all. Social media could let voters see real people and let that personality energise the campaign. Instead, they get some cross between Max Headroom and Johnny Cab.

Don’t be surprised if the parties have to struggle to get their voters to the polls.  The Tories are almost certain to face that problem. The other two parties don’t stand much of a chance at pulling new voters to their cause and they too will work to get the same people to the polls again.  Some individual campaigns might stand out but at the provincial level, the campaigns are pretty much brain dead.

And growth isn’t really what they are doing even if, as with the New Democrats, they are claiming that miracles are about to happen.  Consider that for all the hype, the Dippers only have 14 candidates in place.  That’s roughly the same number as the Liberals. None of them has a name or a profile outside of their own community or in some cases outside their own household.

For parties trying to take down an incumbent government, social media should be the tool of choice. What’s so interesting about the current election campaign and social media is that neither political party in the province is doing anything but using the new, revolutionary tools, to spit out more of the same old anti-revolutionary crap.

At this point, that’s the story of social media and the 2011 election.

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