Showing posts with label corporate welfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporate welfare. Show all posts

24 July 2011

The Politics of Public Spending

Check the local media for the past week and you’ll see a sudden bunch of stories about the series of fire truck announcements provincial politicians of the Tory persuasion are making across the province.

Voice of the Cabinet Minister’s got one.

CBC’s got one.

Apparently there have been 19 announcements or unveilings of new fire trucks, with three more to come.

Municipal affairs minister Fairity O’Brien insists this is just routine stuff and has nothing to do with the provincial election coming in October.

Now ordinarily that would be such a nose puller of a line that one would involuntarily scream “bullshit” at the top of one’s lungs. 

Except that it is Fairity O’Brien. 

In fairitiness to Fairity, the guy who probably can’t remember the name of the  district St. Anthony is in and who bullshitted about planning and emergency response likely does not know that what he said about the fire truck and the truth are two different things.

So let’s just say he has a particularly virulent case of pinochiosis.

And that he’s more full of shite than usual on top of that, besides.

The announcements are all about politics and the upcoming election.  Even Fairity knows it.  As Geoff Meeker pointed out, here’s what Fairity said in his rambling answer to a question on an open line call-in show about the pork announcements.  After denying they were political, O’Brien said:

okay, so the question here in my district is, and I am only speaking for myself, do you want four more years of what you’ve just experienced in the last eight, or do you want to sit in the Opposition, or whatever it may be…

Now sending such an incredibly weak minister as O’Brien out to defend blatant pork-barrel politics is a sign of arrogance or cynicism.  Take your pick which it is; either way is bad.

O’Brien threat, however is one thing:  stupid.  Were Fairity and his colleagues to punish a district for voting for an opposition member, they would only be cutting their own political throats. Ask the Tories from the 1980s what that sort of political extortion netted them. 

Better yet, ask the Tories on the Great Northern Peninsula what even the mere perception of a political vendetta – the air ambulance decision – has netted them since the Tories lost the Straits and White Bay North by-election.

Not much of any good would come back the answer.

If Kathy Dunderdale wanted to send a stupid message to voters about patronage and voting, then she evidently picked the right fellow.  Fairity O’Brien did a fine job for her.

The Tories might have a bigger problem.  They might be faced with an electorate that knows full well this is all about pork and that realises they win pork no matter what way they vote. He who lives by the hock might wind up dying by the hock, so to speak.

All three political parties in the province will be running campaigns this fall built around delivering ever increasing amounts of pork in exchange for votes.  All three political parties agree that the provincial economy is going gangbusters.  So basically there’d be no legitimate reason to justify cutting back any spending.

The choice for voters this fall is not between fire trucks and no fire trucks. It is over how many fire trucks they want. 

Or a search and rescue centre.

Or an offshore supply base.

If you want to see naked electoral pork-barrelling in action, don’t look at fire trucks.

That’s old hat.  The first election fire truck announcements came in 2007.

Look instead at Bay Bulls.

The provincial and federal governments held separate announcements this week to give cash to the same project.  They held separate announcements so the provincial minister – in trouble in his own district – could get some free advertising for himself without the original tree hugging federal cabinet minister horning in.

Federal cash of $1.0 million for an expansion to Pennecon’s offshore supply base at Bay Bulls met the investment criteria for a provincial program.  Now the province will kick another half million.

$1.5 million in public money for a project estimated to cost no more than $2.1 million in total.

The job haul? 

Maybe 15. 

$100,000 per job.

The Tories hand out millions of taxpayer dollars to private businesses, often free of charge  The Newfoundland and Labrador NDP want to give Nova Scotians a free university education. The Liberals and the New Democrats want to give rich people in the province a break on their Hummer fill-ups and cut the cost of heating their luxury homes. Next thing you know the Liberals will resurrect that God-forsaken Stunnel idea just to mark themselves as the stupidest of stupid political parties.

But seriously: the Tories ran in 2007 on the argument that the Liberals would bankrupt the province by spending like drunken sailors.

They simply can’t make the argument any more. No one will believe it is possible to bankrupt the place after Fairity and his buddies spent the last four years spending on anything and everything imaginable.  And they really will find it hard to accept that money is tight if every political party in the province wants to double electricity rates in the province and double the public debt at the same time through this insane Muskrat Falls megadebt project.

Happy days are indeed here again, b’ys.

The only thing missing is the Fonz.

Now that you are squirming a bit, think about what might happen if at the same time people had three parties offering variations on a pork-flavoured platform, they also realised that neither of the leaders would be in their jobs four years from now.

And then wonder what all that might mean in an election where there is nothing to chose from and turn-out might drop by 20%, mostly consisting of Tory voters.

After all, that’s what happened in 2007.  Liberal vote collapsed.  Tory vote declined and the same New Democrats turned out in 2007 that had turned out in 2003.

It could give new meaning to the politics of public spending.

- srbp -

02 July 2010

When the quota of good news meets a failure to perform

The provincial government’s business department issued a news release today crowing about an estimated increase of the province’s population by a mere 96 people.

To see the business department’s stunning record of success to date, check out the list of news releases for 2010 or read about the fragile economy.

What will they say when the recovery sets in and outmigration resumes once more?

-srbp-

24 June 2010

Public money in inflatable shelter company now hits $4 million in four years

With a dose of $249,978 research money from the provincial government’s research and development corporation, Dynamic Air Shelters has now received about $4.0 million in public cash since 2006.

The federal government dropped $300,000 on the company on Monday.

That was on top of nearly $3.5 million the company had received between 2006 and earlier this week.  Most the cash has come within the past 18 months.

Here’s how the official news release described the most recent cash infusion:

Dynamic Air Shelters Limited is a world leader in inflatable blast shelters. Dynamic has the lead in this market and must maintain it by demonstrating constant improvement and validating the improvement through rigorous and controlled testing. The goal of this R&D project is to prove the performance of a production-model prototype of a fully upgraded blast shelter system that includes components and assemblies not yet tested. Expanding the blast resistant market and repelling competition is the most critically important feature of this product development. The RDC’s investment is $249,978 of a total project cost in excess of $1 million.

Dynamic Air Shelters received the largest single batch of funding in the most recent announcement.

-srbp-

22 June 2010

A Crown corporation by any other name

A company that has received almost $3.5 million in federal and provincial government money since 2006 is getting another $300,000 from the federal government to support its production.

Dynamic Air Shelters will receive another $300,000 for “research, and development, engineering and marketing initiatives.”

That’s in addition to the $575,000 the company has received over the past two years for research from the federal government.

Since 2008, the company has received more that $2.0 million in federal and provincial government money to support its business operations.

A Crown corporation by any other name would not  be sucking so much public money.

-srbp-

31 March 2010

Jobs that depend on tax money: stump of forest industry edition

So the provincial government is pumping taxpayer cash to keep a paper mill in Corner Brook alive.

Gee, like that hasn’t been done before.

2006.

2007.

And that’s just the stuff we know about.

-srbp-

21 March 2010

The Money Program

Within the past 12 months, federal and provincial government sources have poured $2.0 million into a building expansion at Dynamic Air Shelters and to unspecified research projects the company is running.

The most recent injection – this time from the provincial government – came last week.

That brings the total amount of public cash in this private company to slightly less than $ 3.5 million in the four years since the company relocated from Calgary to Grand Bank. That doesn’t count what the company received as a result of EDGE status.

 

Date

Description

Amount (Cdn$)

Type

19 Mar 10

12,000 square foot building expansion plus new equipment

725,000

INTRD - unspecified

17 Jun 09

Research

50,000

NRCC - contribution

17 Jun 09

Research

30,000

NRCC - contribution

12 Jun 09

Research

30,000

NRCC - contribution

19 May 09

Research

465,000

NRCC - contribution

16 Apr 09

Building expansion plus new equipment

500,000

ACOA – interest free loan, Business Development Program

   

200,000

Grand Bank Development Corporation loan

06 Nov 08

6,000 square foot expansion plus 30 + jobs

500,000

Business

Oil and Gas Manufacturing Services Export Fund

27 Jun 08

Salary subsidy – hire and train 18 employees

180,000

INTRD - unspecified

01 May 07

Loan – unspecified purpose

250,000

INTRD – SME Fund

20 Dec 06

Prod. “efficiencies” and employee trg

20,000

INTRD

26 Jun 06

Construct oil industry shelters

499,926

ACOA – “provisionally repayable contr”

12 Jun 06

Hire marketing manager

50,000

ACOA - contribution

SUB-TOTAL

Provincial

Federal

1,675,000

1,824,926

 

TOTAL

$ 3,499,926

 

-srbp-

23 September 2009

Marine service facility in land-locked town gets free gift of taxpayers cash

Rolls-Royce marine is establishing what is touted  - by the provincial government but not the company - as a $10.5 million service centre in Mount Pearl.

Other Rolls-Royce marine service centres are located right next to the ocean, usually with wharf facilities as part of the complex, like the 40,000 square foot facility in Galveston, Texas or the 21,000 square foot plant  in Seattle, Washington.

Mount Pearl is land-locked.

Unlike the other Rolls-Royce service centres, the new one in Mount Pearl is actually quite far from the major shipping locales or construction yards where one might think it would be easier and cheaper to repair Rolls-Royce engines.

Of the great sea-faring cities of the world,  of all the great maritime cities of modern times, Mount Pearl isn’t a name that comes readily to mind.

So what exactly will these 36 employees be doing, one wonders.  Neither the news release from the company nor the one from its government benefactor gives any real indication.

Very odd.

But nothing is quite so odd as the idea of a multi-national company establishing a facility valued at 10 million bucks that needs a few hundred thousand – completely interest free – that they don’t even have to pay back to the public purse.  Supposedly this money will help defray the cost of equipment and training.

$500,000 against $10, 000,000.

Something doesn’t add up. 

-srbp-

22 September 2009

Public money coming for Rolls-Royce

Paul Oram may be having trouble paying the health care bills but his predecessor, Ross Wiseman, apparently has cash for what appears to be an outright give-away to one of the great international symbols of luxury.

Yes, Ross will hand out taxpayer cash to Rolls-Royce.

“Contribution” is the word the provincial government likes to use when it hands over cash to a private sector company, not as a loan with interest.

Let’s see if that’s what it turns out.

-srbp-