The Sir Robert Bond Papers
The real political division in society is between authoritarians and libertarians.
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Churchill Falls and Muskrat Falls - Background
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21 December 2016
Spin, illustrated #nlpoli
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Spin is a bit more than a mere biased interpretation or a clever reframing of an idea. In other words, there's more to it than saying t...
Ding dong merrily on high
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20 December 2016
Gender Gap - Sunshine edition #nlpoli
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The House of Assembly passed a bill during the last sitting that would allow the government to publish a list every year of all the people w...
19 December 2016
Gender Gap, 2004-2014 #nlpoli
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In 2004, the median income for men in Newfoundland and Labrador was $10,000 higher than the median income for women. By 2014, the gap in ...
15 December 2016
The Darker Side #nlpoli
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The day after Cathy Bennett talked about the hate-filled and threatening messages she'd received after delivering last spring's budg...
14 December 2016
Brutal #nlpoli
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Any Liberals who thought they were out of the political woods got a harsh reminder of the truth on Tuesday. Their leader remains as unpopu...
Townie Elite #nlpoli
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Add Townie Elite to your online reading. Peter Jackson spent 25 years at the Telegram, where he used to write a regular column. Now he&...
13 December 2016
Unacceptable #nlpoli
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Finance minister Cathy Bennett did something very brave on Monday. She did something far braver than carry on without disclosing some of th...
12 December 2016
Six dollars and eighty cents #nlpoli
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We should pay members of the House of Assembly a good salary because they do a hard job that demands much of them and their family. It is ...
09 December 2016
AIMS refutes austerity hysteria #nlpoli #AIMS
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From the latest Atlantic Institute for Market Studies paper: " Measuring Austerity in Atlantic Canada investigates whether the use...
08 December 2016
Poll numbers not very comforting #nlpoli
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A little over a month ago, only about 16 or 17 percent of respondents told pollsters they thought Dwight Ball was the best choice for Premi...
07 December 2016
Megawreck #nlpoli
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Over the past couple of weeks, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador have been shown more and more the lunacy that is Muskrat Falls. Not...
Faint hope #nlpoli
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Nalcor won't be able to install a boom upstream from the powerhouse construction. The result is that there will likely be damage to the...
Get Knotted Doc O'Keefe #nlpoli
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No one should be surprised that St. John's mayor Doc O'Keefe is huffing and puffing over comments by former mayor Andy Wells to the ...
06 December 2016
Policy and sausages #nlpoli
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People like to think the world we live in is run by some sort of magically rational process and the folks in charge are all much smarter tha...
05 December 2016
Mazel Tov Cocktails #nlpoli
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Scottie Nell Hughes is one of the legion of ident-a-bots who turned up on news programs during the recent American election spouting lines f...
01 December 2016
Setting the agenda #nlpoli
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In a set of media interviews this week, Premier Dwight Ball thought he would be talking about what's he learned in his first year in off...
29 November 2016
Down due to illness - updated
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Update (30 Nov 2016): A trip to the doctor on Tuesday proved to be the best thing to do. The cold is on the run and regular screeding wil...
Waiting for Fidel #nlpoli #cdnpoli
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From the National Film Board : "This feature-length documentary from 1974 takes viewers inside Fidel Castro's Cuba . A movie-mak...
28 November 2016
The graveyard of ambition #nlpoli
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Think of it as an inside joke. James McLeod interviewed Premier Dwight Ball about the horror show that has been Ball's first year in...
25 November 2016
Fractured Fairy Tales: Jerry Earle edition #nlpoli
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Via VOCM , the reaction of NAPE boss Jerry Earle to a study that showed the provincial government is overloaded with provincial public serv...
24 November 2016
The future will be something #nlpoli
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The association representing the province's offshore supply and service businesses paid a consultant from London to look at the potentia...
23 November 2016
Population density and just dense #nlpoli
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The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is in financial trouble. It will spend this year about $3.0 billion more than it will take in....
Unopen Government #nlpoli
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The idea of open data has been around for a while. In government, it means that government would make information like census data, stat...
22 November 2016
un autre pet de cerveau de Jones #nlpoli
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Labrador member of parliament Yvonne Jones got so effercited at the prospect of more hydro-electric development with Hydro-Quebec that she ...
School Board Elections #nlpoli
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Some folks were a bit agitated over the weekend about how hard it is going to be - supposedly - to vote in the school board election. Vo...
21 November 2016
Poor Russell's Almanack #nlpoli
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Pity Russell Wangersky. Somebody is telling Russell he is part of the elite and Russell doesn't like it. Not me , writes Russ...
18 November 2016
Canadian war grave destroyed by illegal salvagers #nlpoli
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A recent survey of the waters around Indonesia by researchers using three-dimensional sonar imaging has confirmed that illegal salvagers hav...
17 November 2016
Canadian soldier dies on Jordanian training mission
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Major Scott Foote, a logistics officer with 1 Canadian Division in Kingston, Ontario, died on Thursday while on a training mission in Jord...
Political campaigns matter #nlpoli
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New information calls for a change in perspective. Turns out that the drop in turnout identified by the initial vote results wasn't ...
Ego and folly #nlpoli
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“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then mi...
16 November 2016
Ball, Coady confirm secret talks with Quebec on Labrador hydro #nlpoli #cdnpoli
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Premier Dwight Ball confirmed in the House of Assembly on Wednesday that officials from this province are talking to officials in Quebec abo...
The Sunshine List Case hits the court #nlpoli
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The public sector unions' attack on freedom of information is finally in front of a judge. The unions want to block disclosure of the...
15 November 2016
General Ignorance: Economic Version #nlpoli
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Of all the people in Canada who know something about the Equalization system,. none of them sit in the House of Assembly. Item: Kevin Hu...
The Trump Election #nlpoli
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All you will ever need in order to understand the recent American presidential election is contained in this little chart. It appeared wit...
14 November 2016
Leaders and salaries #nlpoli
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Donald Trump says he won't even take one dollar in salary as president. Sounds familiar. In Newfoundland and Labrador, Proto-Trump...
His best shot #nlpoli
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The most important measurement you need to take of Dwight Ball's great vision for the provincial government is that this is his one, bes...
11 November 2016
Remembrance Day 2016
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Captain Nichola Goddard -srbp-
10 November 2016
Citizenship and Newfoundland's decision to join Canada - Raymond Blake #nlpoli
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From Ray Blake's recent post on the Acadiensis blog: Approaching the constitutional politics of Newfoundland in the 1940s from the ...
Why national history matters - Jerry Bannister #nlpoli
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"Nations matter. National cultures matter. And national histories matter," historian Jerry Bannister writes in his commentary o...
09 November 2016
The real news in one sentence #nlpoli
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According to its supporters, we need to have a special office for search and rescue in St. John's because Newfoundlanders spoke English ...
08 November 2016
Apparitions #nlpoli
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You can go back to September 2006 and find one of the earliest references at SRBP to the impact the aging, shifting population would have on...
07 November 2016
Politics and Theatre
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Adam Schiff is a United States congressman representing the 29th district in California. He's a Democrat. His fictional namesake was ...
Appearance #nlpoli
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What you know of the world outside your immediate physical sensation - what you can touch, taste, feel and so on - is a mental construction....
04 November 2016
North Spur sideshow #nlpoli
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Jim Gordon, a n engineer previously critical about the design of the Muskrat Falls dam has revised his opinion. Gordon had earlier believed...
Feds offer more help with Muskrat #nlpoli
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The federal government delivered a $2.9 billion additional loan guarantee Thursday in time for the Liberal Party convention this weekend in ...
03 November 2016
Muskrat Math #nlpoli
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Stan Marshall told the province Tuesday that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador can never get their money back on this pig of a project...
The polls remain discouraging for Liberals #nlpoli
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Heading into their convention this weekend, the provincial Liberals have another poll that confirms what all the other polls have said for...
02 November 2016
How much do we owe? #nlpoli
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CBC Radio Noon had board of trade president Des Whalen in the studio on Monday. Board of Trade thinks the debt is about $13 billion toda...
The Muskrat Circus rolls back into town #nlpoli
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Stan Marshall appeared out of the shadows on Tuesday to do a round of interviews with every media outlet in town. He told NTV what he tol...
01 November 2016
Building higher walls #nlpoli
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A new government security policy does everything short of banning people from Confederation Building altogether. Visitors to the main gover...
31 October 2016
Ball, Bennett, Williams, and Marshall #nlpoli
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One of the things finance minister Cathy Bennett told NTV's Issues and Answers this weekend was that the Premier Dwight Ball scrapped t...
28 October 2016
Sunshine, lollipops, and fluffy kittens #nlpoli
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Finance minister Cathy Bennett read words that tried to make the provincial government's financial situation sound better than it was f...
27 October 2016
Three for Thursday #nlpoli
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Quebec opposes more federal cash for Muskrat Falls The Government of Quebec has always opposed federal loan guarantees for Muskrat Falls o...
26 October 2016
The Mustafa Principle #nlpoli
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Go back to Friday's post about false choices . That's where you will find the explanation for the 11 hour marathon meeting. The...
Truth and Reconciliation #nlpoli
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Long ago, so long ago no one remembers when, they did away with Virtue in Newfoundland politics. To be on the safe side, they slit the th...
25 October 2016
Small town politics in the big city newspapers #nlpoli
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The federal Liberals created a new process to pick judges for federal court appointments. The process - as the Globe pointed out on Thursda...
24 October 2016
The political dynamics of Muskrat Falls #nlpoli #dip-o-crites #cdnpoli
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The people of Labrador who have now occupied the work camp at the construction site are exercising the only political influence they have in...
21 October 2016
False choices #nlpoli
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It's not often you can see a "half-way" compromise as plainly as the one the provincial government announced on Wednesday abo...
20 October 2016
The Reverse Midas Touch Rides Again #nlpoli
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The crowd running this place these days has an unrivalled ability to look at a problem and find the worst possible response imaginable. On...
19 October 2016
Rumpole and Reversible Error #nlpoli
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Brian Tobin's favourite judge may be on his way to the Supreme Court of Canada but along the way he will probably have to answer a few q...
18 October 2016
The War of the Flea Circus #nlpoli
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Muskrat Falls has become a three-ring flea circus. In the first ring, we have the political ambulance chasers, a.k.a. Maudie Barlow and ...
17 October 2016
Caribous, Choice, and Craziness #nlpoli
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For a while, it looked like one of the island's major communities wouldn't be able to put a senior hockey team on the ice for the ne...
14 October 2016
Refitting the USS Nimitz (CVN-68)
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Ordered in 1967, laid down in 1968, launched in 1972 and commissioned in 1975, USS Nimitz is the lead ship of a class of 10 aircraft ...
13 October 2016
The politics of Sally Albright #nlpoli
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A surprisingly large number of people loved Monday's post about the political impotence of protesting against Muskrat Falls now that the...
12 October 2016
Eeyore and the Blustery Day #nlpoli
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Premier Dwight Ball stood up before a hand-picked crowd at The Rooms on Tuesday and told them they were there to help develop a strategy for...
11 October 2016
The Bigger Picture #nlpoli
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Whatever the provincial government is doing about its own spending or the provincial economy generally or whatever it is up to starts at 9:0...
10 October 2016
Politics as masturbation #nlpoli
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"I am warning you. Don't make me wear my pikachu costume." Demonstrations at Memorial University and at Nalcor headquar...
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