Interesting news, buried under bull #nlpoli

There are two aspects to Monday’s announcement about Muskrat Falls and electricity rates:  political and practical items related to Muskrat Falls.  

Another set of decisions are actually related to the provincial government’s non-Muskrat Falls finances.

And then there’s a little tidbit about how far behind Muskrat Falls is.

Political - If this is how Dwight treats his friends…

Monday’s announcement was a political stunt pulled purely for the province's benefit apparently to cover over the fact that there was no agreement as Dwight Ball had promised before Christmas.

The announcement came front-end-loaded with the sort of ego stroking and puffery that is not merely unnecessary but tends to turn off audiences listening for a major announcement about arguably the most pressing public issue.

Power and Influence #nlpoli

If nothing else, the controversy over the sweet heart deal the provincial Conservatives cut with Frank Coleman’s son at Humber Valley Paving should dispel the fairy tale that Coleman and his family are political outsiders.

They are very much the quintessential political insiders.

Transportation minister Nick McGrath admitted to reporters on Tuesday that he’d never been involved in a negotiation before about road paving contracts like the one with Gene Coleman for Humber Valley Paving. 

That takes juice. In itself, that should give an idea as to why the deal stands out in people’s minds and why the Coleman influence is obviously so strong.  The Coleman influence is so strong, in fact, that it clouds people’s minds.

The debt is passed #nlpoli

Monday’s throne speech was so bad that people started making fun of it almost immediately.  On Twitter a few of us tried changing lines from famous John Kennedy speeches and giving them a local twist

You could find a variation on the moon speech:  we will go into debt,  not because it is hard but because it is easy.  Another tried German:  “Ich bin ein Bauliner!”

Or this one from the inaugural:

The debt has been passed to new generation, born in oil riches, untempered by profligacy, undisciplined by debt.

None could top the corrupted Kennedyism an actual speech by the Old Man, Hisself in 2006:

I say to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians: "Ask not what we can do for our country, because we have done enough. Let's ask our country what they can do for us."

If they don’t stop it, we’ll go blind #nlpoli

You have to wonder sometimes how far Tory politicians will go to issue a good news comment of some kind during the time when the government pollster is in the field.

They are the only ones who do this, apparently, as part of the Tories’ organized effort to skew public opinion polls and then crow about the adulterated results.

Anyway, this is a two part example of the lengths to which the quarterly orgy of public onanism goes sometimes.

The Delusion of Competence

Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale, in full rhetorical flight during Question Period in the legislature, May 26, 2010:

Mr. Speaker, when the members opposite sat over here they certainly had no expertise in developing deals, negotiating contracts, as we saw on a number of occasions in the fourteen years of their mandate. Voisey’s which we had to renegotiate, I tell the Opposition Leader, Mr. Speaker.

No shortage of confidence in her own abilities and that of colleagues, would you dare say? Not much, at all especially in her own estimation.  In fact, Dunderdale seems supremely confident in her assessment that her crowd will do better than the crowd that went before.

Friends and supporters of the current administration would likely all nod in agreement and might even offer that Dunderdale’s confidence in their abilities is well justified. Confidence, after all, is something people usually assume comes with competence.

But it isn’t a safe assumption.

Research at Cornell in 1999 showed that the tendency to braggadocio is associated with people who are actually less competent than others. The confidence people often see in others, especially when expressed as a self-appraisal is pretty much a product of self-delusion. 

Remember the old saying “buy him for what he’s worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth?  That’s pretty much exactly the phenomenon researchers found.

Very often, people think they are much better at tasks than they actually are.  Now in an of itself, that hardly seems like a penetrating insight into anything except the obvious.  Well, that might be true except that you actually have to apply these little observations. Bear in mind that people who pump themselves up are likely actually not very good at whatever they are bragging about. 

Think about the delusion of competence when someone engages in excessive self-congratulation, in public oratorical onanism as your humble e-scribbler used to call it.

Or brags and blusters as Dunderdale did at the beginning of the whole Lott/Motion Invest affair and then performs far short of her self-appraisal when all is said and done.

-srbp-

Community Values

Some Newfoundlanders and Labradorians may be offended that a Pentecostal pastor received a light sentence – a suspended sentence and 12 months probation - for masturbating in a Walmart parking lot.
Put it down to community values.

Since 2005, Newfoundland and Labrador is a place where throne speeches are annual exercises in public oratorical onanism, members of the governing party routinely massage their Leader’s ego whenever they can.
Even a newspaper editor got into the public jerk-off craze before he entered politics.


If the good pastor could learn to stroke himself verbally, he might have a wonderful new career ahead of him.
Apparently the locals don’t think there is such a thing as either too much self-love or the enthusiastic public verbal display of ones self-affection.

Yes, we do love our wankers.

-srbp-

The lowest common denominator

If you have spare change in your pocket, it is sometimes amusing to pick up that upstart weekly newspaper, The Independent.

Paul Daly's photography is worth way more than a twonie so even if the rest of the paper doesn't enlighten or edify or stir up anything else besides a yawn, you can always be sure you have helped keep employed one of the finest news shooters on the planet.

This week, Ivan Morgan eschews his package of jam jams to take issue with Richard Raleigh, the new columnist at the Business Post. Raleigh, you may recall is the local writer who publishes Serious Business, a blog on local politics. The Business Post you may recall is the local paper owned and published and everything-elsed by Craig Westcott.

Seems that Ivan Morgan has some issues. Well, issues in this case with Raleigh who criticizes the Premier or his administration from behind the cloak of a pseudonym. This is apparently not on in Morgan's world and Morgan uses all the high moralizing dudgeon he can recall from his days as a New Democrat to curse Raleigh for his sins.

None of this should come as a surprise.  The Indy is full of not just holier-than-thou but holiest-of-all public onanism when it comes to journalism and ethics.  Its radio ads on VOCM always draw attention to the fact the paper is locally owned, as if that actually has any positive impact on the quality of the stuff on the pages. [Hint:  it doesn't.]  Indy editor Ryan Cleary likes to slag off the province's major daily, The Telegram, mostly about its being owned by a mainland company which therefore means  - to those who think that way - that the Telly's content is negatively affected.  [Hint:  it isn't.]

To add to the moral outrage at the Indy, Raleigh had the temerity to put his stuff in the Business Post.  Westcott, you may recall, left the Indy suddenly after a very short stint.  While the story may not be widely known, the parting wasn't necessarily the friendliest of all.  it didn't sink to the way Hydro Queen departed, but there weren't a lot of kisses and hugs going around.

Morgan claims his columns are superior because as a journalist he doesn't slag people off in an opinion piece and then go and try to interview them on another subject for a news piece.  That isn't what Raleigh does incidentally.  That's what editor Westcott has been accused of by those who felt that his being blackballed by the Premier's Office was okay because Westcott slagged the Premier in his opinion pieces and then wanted to interview the Premier on other subjects.

As you may have gathered, the ethical pedestal onto which Morgan climbs exists entirely in his own imagination. Raleigh isn't Westcott, as near as anyone can determine. Raleigh only writes his opinion pieces online and now in print.

Now he does use a pseudonym and around these parts, the view has been that if you are going to make a stand, then you should have the courage to stand behind your convictions.

That said, Raleigh is an equal opportunity slagger, taking the piss out of a wide variety of public figures and even himself on occasion. He writes well and his observations are forcefully presented.

It's a bit hard to take Morgan's attack seriously, though. As he well knows, people who do write critical opinion pieces and use their own name are also slagged off by the Indy.  For several weeks running last year, Morgan's paper tried to smear four individuals with nothing more than a bit of venom and some old fashioned personal innuendo. They did so in the opinion spaces where the defamation laws apply a little more loosely than otherwise. In other cases, the paper has slagged people off in its news stories not in the opinion spaces but on the basis of a minimal amount of research and damned little context.

More often than not, and for all the claims to the contrary one is more likely to see an homage to backside of the Premier and his cause du jour in the Indy's editorial and opinion spaces than not.  There's really no surprise in that. After all, his world view aligns with the world view of the Indy's editor.

So go figure.

Criticize Danny from behind a cloak and you get told off.  Criticize Danny without the cloak and you get personal smear and innuendo or the little jabs of the type we see in Morgan's latest column.

It's not hard to find the lowest common denominator in all that.

Update:  In which Mr. Raleigh himself turns his guns on Comic Book Guy, in detail.

-srbp-

Leftovers from polling period

Government news releases must be on the quota system.

Either that or some departments just felt the need to clear out their backlog of bumpf on this, the last working day before Christmas.

How encouraging it is to know the provincial government is committed to safe communities.

That last government grant to roving gangs of murderers and rapists had me worried for a second.

Sheesh.

Oh yes.

One last thing.

It's nicely written, Bill.

But public onanism - even in written form - is still a crime that can land you in jail. Look up s. 173 or 175 of the Crim Code. There's a good chance someone in your office has a copy.