How do you spell winner?

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski seems likely to be re-elected in the first victory for a write-in candidate in an American federal election since 1954.

Murkowski lost the Republican nomination to Joe Miller, a challenger with backing from the Tea Party movement and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Murkowski decided to seek re-election but Alaskan election rules, voters would have to write her name on the ballot.

Double problem.

Although Murkowski she had been appointed to the senate by her father – governor Frank Murkowski – and although, she’d already won re-election in 2004, there was still a chance voters might not be able to spell her name correctly. In a two-way fight between a red Republican and a blue Democrat, voters could vote for colour or party and still get their choice regardless of how the candidate’s name looked on the ballot. A write-in candidacy could hinge on the accuracy with which voters rendered her name.

The Republican primary and the narrow Tea Party victory also foreshadowed a tough legal challenge to a third candidate.  Take this third party ad as a typical example of the anti-Murkowski war from the campaign:

Murkowski’s campaign used a simple television spot to push the spelling of her name and get across the reminder that she was the incumbent:

She campaign also used a 17 second video that showed how to vote for a write-in candidate. Her campaign uploaded 61 videos to her youtube account, most of them fairly simple productions with high production values.  In other words, they weren’t expensive to make and told a simple story very effectively.  Most noticeably they were positive.  Even an ad that pointed to problems in her opponents finished on a positive note and let the other guy’s words tie a potential noose around his neck.

The same couldn’t be said for Joe Miller’s stuff. The music in an anti-Murkowski spot remains dark and foreboding even when discussing Miller’s positives. There are – of course – spots on Miller’s youtube account that touch on the media persecution message popular among some conservatives and a core part of the Tea Party’s messaging.

The Alaska Daily News account of one incident includes some video of a confrontation that appears to involve conventional news media and security hired by the Miller campaign. The episode would be familiar to anyone who watched the federal Conservative campaign in the 2005-2006 Canadian general election.

The write-in ballots are the last to be counted in an election that still hasn’t been declared for either of the three candidates.  By some accounts, there are enough write-in ballots and enough of those for Murkowski to give her the election. Republican candidate Miller continues to battle hard by challenging the validity of individual ballots and accusing state officials of favouritism in the counting.

- srbp -

Frank opinions and the almost inevitable local response

Geoff Meeker recounts what has become an inadvertent sub-theme of his blog;  the reaction in the local community to frank opinions expressed publicly.

In this case its a young man who began to offer critiques of the local visual arts scene that didn’t amount to wallpaper paste.

His reward has been vicious personal attacks by anonymous smear-artists.

Some of the comments Craig Francis Power has received over the past four years or so will seem very familiar to regular readers of this and other similar spaces.

-srbp-

Whine, moan, bitch and complain

Danny Williams muses on his political past and future in the weekend Telegram. All of it is very much old hat for the locals after six years, but the mainlanders might find it revealing, especially those who are looking for some perspective on NB Power. 

The constant negativity the Premier displays really starts to get wearisome after a while.

Relentless negativity.  There’s hardly anything positive to the guy. And then he accuses others of always harping on the bad stuff.

It’s all vintage Danny:  things were so much better (for him, of course) when he was in the private sector and didn’t have to be accountable to anyone.  If only things could be like that now, with no criticism or complaints from anyone, all following dutifully behind  - unquestioningly - and jumping at his every bleat. 

He doesn’t even seem to take heart that he still has the Fan Klub, as the comments section to the story shows.  Some are so smitten with the aging leader that it seems only a matter of time before they start holding conventions, like Elvis groupies.  There they’ll be, some with their hair in Mullet Danny and others in the Silver Fox Danny of later years, either version – of course - perfectly parted down the middle.

Either version always tanned, as if fresh from yet another vacation.  Of all Canadian premiers, only Richard Hatfield spent more time out of the province he ran during the course of a year than Danny.

Perhaps they’ll hold shoulder twitching contests and if he should deign to make an appearance perhaps the Fan Klubbers will be like Ontario and fall on their knees, on a go forward basis.  Can’t you just see it?  There he is in the director’s chair, a lone spotlight glinting off his cufflinks as he takes questions from the audience about his career as a politician who loathes being a politician.  What was it like in episode one, when you did battle with the evil emperor of Canada that first time? they will ask.

Then they will mouth the lines they have memorized from countless viewings of his previous scrums as he repeats his answer, complete with the quite-franklys at just the right spot.  All designed, it seems,  to send their Fan Klubber hearts a-twitter. 

Sometimes all you can do is chuckle at it all.

Some of his fans no doubt have not heard all his past rants about what he would like do, if only he had the time.

Like no free speech in the legislature.  That’s right.  He once mused about stripping the legislature of the right of members to speak their minds without fear of persecution. A right hard won centuries ago by English parliamentarians and cherished by all elected to such a body ever since.

Well, all but one, so it seems.

It’s hard for Williams to get things done, apparently, when half his time is taken up with pesky things like speaking to reporters  -  or editorial boards too? - or blocked off with nuisances like going to cabinet and caucus meetings.

In the past, he has worried about whistleblowers and what they might get up to if they are not properly controlled.  No mention this time of the headache of trying to keep his speeches from being made public.  You know, speeches that were in public in the first place.  These are the sorts of things that prevent from doing more. 

Uneasy lies the head, he is wont to remind us all constantly.

If only people would focus on the positives instead of the negatives, he complains.  Danny has been on this complaint track quite a bit this year.  Much more so than usual, even for him.  Ranting at Randy Simms seemed like only yesterday.

But thankfully – for the Fan Klub and Tony’s sanity -  he’s going to stick around in a job he evidently despises for some totally incomprehensible, unexplained reason.

Unless, of course…

"I'm definitely going to hang around to see if I can get it [the Lower Churchill]  done," said the premier.

But Williams said he's not going to stick around forever "to beat a dead horse" if a deal cannot be sealed, nor will he sign a bad deal for the sake of getting one done while in office.

Dead horse, eh?

Keep clicking those heels, Tony.

-srbp-

The Marine Atlantic Disconnect

Consider if you will, the number of times a provincial government official – usually the tourism minister du jour – has bitched about the ferry service between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

The fares.

The schedule.

The ships.

Doesn’t matter:  Marine Atlantic supposedly sucks.

Now for the poor folks running Marine Atlantic, they just can’t win.  One minister refers to the ferries as constitutional cattle-cars.  People clog the open line shows to chime in their agreement.

So the company invests in a new boat with plenty of modern, trendy conveniences.

The same people bitch that it is too grand when all they need is the marine equivalent of a cattle-car.

Anyways, the latest round of bleating is about a fare increase to offset rising fuel costs.

Clyde Jackman issued a news release on October 6 predicting possible dire consequences resulting from the latest fare changes.

Diane Whelan did the bitching in June 2008.

In 2007, there was a bevy:

• December
• September, and
• February.

Okay.

Still following?

But, just a few weeks ago, Clyde was out there trumpeting the fact that “[n]on-resident traffic on Marine Atlantic is up 4.4 per cent over 2008, while resident traffic exiting the province is down almost one per cent…”.

So despite all the supposed problems, there are actually more people using the service this year compared last year.

That wasn’t good enough: by October 16 Jackman had decided that traffic on the ferries was actually up 5.2% from last year  And, said Jackman, “…we cannot continue to grow this industry without a reliable, affordable Gulf ferry service.”

But hang on a moment.

There is a problem here with the minister’s logic:

If the current ferry service is not reliable and is not affordable – according to the bitching to date – how can it be that the ferry traffic is growing?

Tut. Tut.

It’s really terrible to see this sort of pessimism coming from a provincial cabinet minister.

-srbp-

Burn your boats!

Over at labradore there has been some delight in poking at an opinion piece that turned up in the weekend Telegram and over at NL Press.

That’s the one that started out with the really creepy metaphor over the whole Danny/Randy thing:

On its face, this question reminds me of the pushy, unappreciative parent who says, "Fine, you got 90% on the test. What happened to the other 10%?"

As we noted before, Randy Simms is apparently the province’s – or Danny Williams’ – demanding father.

Ordinary political discourse is now reduced to someone’s psychological demons if that metaphor is to be believed. 

Then there is the logical implication:  if Randy is everyone’s Dad, then we might also wonder who Jeff Rose-Martland would have as the June Cleaver in this lost episode of Leave it to Beaver penned by Rod Serling.

Perhaps, if the classics are more you speed, you might be considering the prospect that, with a bit more thought, Rose-Martland  could have gifted the writers of the annual Review sketch comedy shows with a local version of Oedipus for next year. 

Anyway…

The latest labradore post on the subject shows only a tiny example of how this defence of the Premier’s testiness is actually an example of the very pessimism, negativity and crap the Premier was supposedly ranting about.

The negativity part is easy:  that would be the first line in which Jeff Rose-Martland accuses Randy Simms of making his comments out of spite.

Anyone who actually heard Simm’s lead-in that fateful day  - Rose-Martland certainly didn’t - or anyone who knows Simms would appreciate that such an imputation is not only being negative, it’s being pretty bloody vicious. Simms doesn’t have a spiteful, malevolent bone in his body.

The pessimism permeates the opinion piece.  It really comes to the fore when the writer likens the fishery to a bog. One presumes he meant quagmire and not a colloquialism for toilet;  that isn’t a safe presumption though, given the whole things slips to the Freudian fairly early on.

The crap part is actually the line which labradore reprints:

Premier Williams looks forwards to a prosperous future where Newfoundland is a successful industrial society, free from the vagaries of nature, and is working to accomplish that.

Now before going any farther let us note the sentence is constructed as if Mr. Rose-Martland is speaking authoritatively on behalf of the Premier or has some firm knowledge of the Leader of The Province’s policies.

The vision held by the Premier, we are told, is of a Newfoundland (but not  Labrador, apparently) society that is not only prosperous but industrial and, as a result ,not affected by nature’s caprice.

Let us begin by establishing that the whole statement is crap, as in nonsense.  Danny Williams and his crew may not have devoted sufficient attention to anything but the oil industry in the eyes of many but at no point has anyone from the administration, Williams included, suggested consigning the rest of the economy to the bog.

But look at the phrase:

…Newfoundland is a successful industrial society, free from the vagaries of nature…

There’s something about those words which is familiar.

Really familiar.

Wait a minute.

Not exactly those words, but something really close.

Hmmm.

That’s basically the Smallwood industrialization policy in the 1950s and 1960s:  everything from rubber boots to eyeglasses and ladies gloves, all as a wage-based alternative to the pre-Confederation fishery. Now to be fair, the policy embraced industrialization in the fishery as well but people don’t necessarily remember that, though.  They just remember what they think Smallwood said and the phrase that captures the idea: 

Burn your boats.

Rose-Martland’s understanding of recent history is clearly as off-base as his metaphors.  The current state of the fishery is not the result of the vicissitudes of fortune, the cruel hand of nature that sometimes delivers bounty and at other times starvation.

Rather, the local fishery in its current form is suffering from the combined impacts of at least two forms of human folly. 

The first is over-fishing perpetrated by the locals with as much zeal as the foreigners.  They decimated the cod-stocks, purely and simply.  Lest someone get a tad upset at that suggestion, let some enterprising person put the question bluntly to people like Gus Etchegary and not relent until he gives a straight answer on the fishing practices at FPI when he was there.

The other folly has been successive federal and provincial policies that have sought to keep the fishery organized as a social welfare program rather than let it develop as a sustainable industry.

Successive governments in both Ottawa and St. John’s have preferred, it would seem, to be engineers of a societal soul - with all its Stalinesque implications -  rather than allow the fishery to develop in such a way that the people engaged in it could earn a decent living by their own labour.  There have been impediments to progress, resistance to change that has come, as much as anywhere else, from politicians themselves. 

Those who seek change in the fishery and in other sectors of the local economy are not the people caricatured by Rose-Martland.  One can say caricature since his piece is built, for the most part on sheer invention.

The people about whom Simms spoke are those who are seeking to get beyond the current day, where government hand-outs make up the balance of a very meagre total income.

If Rose-Martland was actually paying attention to any current discussions,  he’d realize the only people hopelessly mired in the past when it comes to the fishery are the very people he claims are looking steadfastly to some supposedly idyllic future. 

The people talking about changes are the people in the industry:  processors, harvesters and plant workers alike.  The only people talking about stamping up the fishery workers, but only if necessary, to tide them over until maybe next year are the Premier and his fish minister. Both are currently out of the province.  One is on vacation.  The other is heading off to foreign lands as proof of how much he cares.  Well, that’s a paraphrase of the way his deputy put it.

The politicians and others trying to respond intelligently and thoughtfully to current economic problems should be troubled by the sort of endorsement that one finds in Rose-Martland’s piece for the current administration. 

Not only does his argument display an appalling  ignorance of the subjects about which he writes, it misrepresents the current government’s policy in the process.  There are enough people who believe that Danny measures the future in only barrels and megawatts, not in quintals and cords.  Rose-Martland doesn’t help matters with his self-confident assertions about what Danny wants, even if his assertions aren’t supported by evidence. 

The real political problems for the current administration come from the fact that - put aside all the money supposedly spent in the past five years -  the current provincial government has shown it has absolutely no idea about what to do with the fishery. 

Their policies have been a combination of status quo and  still more of the same, interspersed with a one-day gab fest that produced nothing meaningful and the break-up of Fishery Products International.  There may be people within the administration with new and good ideas, but thus far they do not seem to have impressed their colleagues  of the need for action. 

Even without any evident ties to the Tories, Rose-Martland the most ardent of Fans of the leader of The Province, the first Townie Premier in 80 years, will surely be taken as representing the way the townies are thinking about things out beyond the woods and the wilds.

The political problem is not that there are no ideas on how to bring about substantive change in the fishery, how to make it competitive and sustainable both for the stocks and for the people who depend on them.

The political problem is that the politicians seem unable or willing to bring about change.   If the fishery is a quagmire, it is a political one and only political leadership will avoid a disaster.

No good can come of just hoping the whole thing will pass away. Nor can any good come from what amounts to a work of fan fiction.  The Premier would be right to reject such a genuine mountain of pessimism, negativity and crap just as surely as he assailed Randy Simms for an imagined one.

-srbp-