Zombieland

Fresh from his humiliating defeat at the hands of Doc O’Keefe, Ron Ellsworth is not content to be politically dead for a moment.

He is playing the political zombie card.

Ron is trying his hand at getting elected – again – to the Eastern School District board. 

He’s running in the zone that matches Ward Four in the City of St. John’s.

Lest you think this makes Ellsworth something special,  Ronnie isn’t alone in being a defeated candidate trying his hand at another elected office. 

Over in the board zone that matches Ward Two, voters can find Scott Fitzgerald.  He ran in said ward just a few weeks ago and was soundly defeated by incumbent Frank Galgay.

Meanwhile, in the zone matching city Ward Three there is George Joyce.  You may recall George ran in the last provincial election against Sheila Osborne in St. John’s West.

And, of course, the guy from Avalon West who is currently the board chair – Milton Peach – is a former Tory cabinet minister from the Peckford years.

Now for people who haven’t held elected office before, the school board can be a way of getting your name around and building up some contacts for a run at something else.

For Scott and even George, then,  there is some sense to this if they have future political ambitions.

But as for Ron, it seems a  bit odd to go backwards  - so to speak - like this.

After all, if he loses this one, where else can he go?

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When all they can offer is an E.A., Terra Nova version

Said it before.

Say it again.

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Yep. Something’s wrong.

Gasoline prices in Newfoundland and Labrador jumped by more than three cents per litre last Thursday.

Interestingly, the prices in this province have taken some wildly leaps up and down over the last while.  But they didn’t flip quite some much on average across the country.

Your humble e-scribbler has always maintained the government gas price-fixing scheme needs to be abolished.  Here’s more evidence.

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Cliffs to buy Wabush Mines

Cleveland-based Cliffs Resources is exercising its right of first refusal to acquire outstanding shares in Wabush Mines from U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittel, according to CBC.

The buy-out comes in response to a bid by Consolidated Thompson for the shares.

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Jerome’s Guarded Language

labradore does yet another commendable job on demographics and recent population increases.

He also dissects the former finance minister’s guarded language when attributing the in-migration trends to a cause.

Basically, Jerome doesn’t.

He talks instead about things that will happen manana.

Tomorrow is a very important concept in the language of Newfoundland politics.  it is when things happen.  Unlike American politics where happy days are here again, Newfoundland politics is a place where good things will come tomorrow. 

We must be ready for a better tomorrow.

Today is a chore to be endured until tomorrow.

Today there must be cuts in health care and so forth, but it will be all worth it, tomorrow.

There are lessons to be learned from here or there that will prepare us for the rapture coming tomorrow.

The Lower Churchill is on the way.  It gets here tomorrow just as it has been getting here tomorrow for 40 years now. Some people aren’t attuned to the local political argot and so get taken for a ride. It’s especially wonderful to read the post on selective perception from 2006 and note the issues that still dog the Lower Churchill three years after the most recent political resurrection of this golem.

Heck, in one sense, Tom Rideout can hardly be faulted for thinking one June that tomorrow was actually four months away.

And tomorrow as we all know is a day that never arrives anyway.  When it does get here it is actually “today”.

Yet for all that, people still wonder why Alice in Wonderland is a good metaphor for Newfoundland politics.

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66 at 6 in 2

Once it was a million dollars, but heck if there was only a half a million there are better things to do with it than give it to Rolls-Royce or any other company that could get along without it and still create jobs in Mount Pearl.

And heck, I wouldn’t be pumping cash into getting more women to have babies. 

I’d put the money into looking after the ones we have and are having. Your humble e-scribbler would support breast feeding in Newfoundland and Labrador.

It’s good, preventive health care.

It helps change attitudes toward women way better than being crude and beating the crap out of Randy Simms for something he didn’t say.

There is a campaign apparently, as this story from The Aurora notes.

"We are launching this campaign in Labrador-City Wabush to highlight the success this region has had in promoting breastfeeding," Ms. Murphy Goodridge said during the launch. "Labrador-Grenfell Health is the first regional health authority in the province to implement a comprehensive regional breastfeeding policy based on international standards. Breastfeeding rates throughout Labrador have always been higher than the rest of the province, so I am here to recognize Labrador-Grenfell Health employees and their community partners on their tremendous success and to encourage them to continue to strive to improve breastfeeding rates. Other areas of the province are looking to replicate your success."

According to the article the province-wide initiation rate is a mere 64%.  That’s up a mere 1.3% since 2006. The old article had an old link to the Breastfeeding Coalition:  here’s the new one.

And initiation isn’t the telling factor.  Three years ago only 11% of mothers who started breast-feeding were still breast-feeding six months later. Women aren’t sticking with it. The rate by 2008 was a mere 12%.  That’s basically no change.

Whatever the ponderous government agencies have been doing ain’t enough.  Maybe we need to free-up the people actually running the programs and get a lot of that health care bureaucracy and stodgie government-ish thinking get out of the way.

And lookit, nothing would work to start our children out healthier than to encourage breastfeeding.

The BFC has a campaign to boost breastfeeding but frankly a few posters ain’t gonna do the job.  The campaign needs to have a much higher profile.  For one thing, there could be a group of prominent local someones in addition to all the other stuff outlined in the BFC strategic plan to help reinforce the message about breastfeeding.

And rather than just talk about the need for supportive environments, people need to start initiating action.  There needs to be a concerted effort to make the workplace more tit-friendly, for example.  There needs to be a much wider effort to make more parts of society accepting of breastfeeding.

So there’s an idea.

Rather than kick Randy Simms in ‘nads for something someone misheard or deliberately misrepresented, maybe someone could have done something positive like asked him about the City of Mount Pearl’s breast-feeding policy. 

Are women councillors who are breastfeeding their children able to do so during a council meeting or a committee meeting? 

What about the provincial government?

Was Charlene Johnson able to get her little one to latch on while Danny was in full rant around the cabinet table?   Not ideal for the digestion, admittedly, but still,  you get the point.

And what was all that with her having to get back to work a mere month after giving birth supposedly – and the emphasis is on supposedly – because there was no maternity leave policy in the House of Assembly?

Pish-posh.

Talk about your unfriendly work environment for women.  Now I may have missed it but I don’t recall anyone from PACSW championing that cause at that time.  There’s one for the government appointed pseudo-bureaucrats to tackle.

But there’s an example of simple issue that directly affects the ability of women to get involved and/or stay involved in many more aspects of life outside the family once they start having children.

Simple.

Practical.

Effective.

And everyone wins in so many ways.

People in Newfoundland and Labrador need to get involved in an effort to dramatically increase the breastfeeding rates in this province.

What’s been going on already is great but it isn’t enough.  Clearly.  Not enough.

So on this thanksgiving weekend, let’s applaud the efforts of the provincial Breastfeeding Coalition.  Let’s applaud Labrador West with the highest initiation rate – 75% – in the whole province.

But let’s recognise that that 75% is still 15% below the national average.

And we need to get some kind of “66 at 6 in 2” drive going to ensure that  within two years, we have 66% of mothers in the province still breastfeeding their infants six months after giving birth.

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Some ideas for 66 at 6 in 2

-  A better website.  It’s do-able and younger families are more likely to use the Internet for information.  The current one is buried away and it doesn’t have the kind of simple stuff you’ll find elsewhere.  A good example of a BF supportive site:  the US government one.  There are lots of others.

-  Paul Daly’s shot is great but there is a need to use a much more aggressive approach with messages tailored to different audiences.  And for mercy sakes don’t post the poster as a pdf.   You can get some ideas from this approach mapped out by students in the UK.

-  Nothing work better at changing attitudes and behaviour than making it clear that the dominant attitude has shifted.  People openly supporting breastfeeding – highlighted by some prominent locals – would start the ball rolling.

-  And just do it.  Nothing will work better than having the women who are breastfeeding just doing it.

Blooms and roses

News reports about a climb in the number of jobs across the country buried a key aspect of the story, as in this example from the Globe.

But there was a catch. Much of the private sector has yet to start hiring again. The job growth was due to 36,000 positions added in the public sector, while the private sector shed 17,100 jobs, in sectors such as transportation, professional services and accommodation. Private sector employment has dropped 3.9 per cent over the past year.

That was paragraph four, long after the stuff about huge gains and ones bigger than expected.

Now this is a rather interesting revelation in light of economic developments in Newfoundland and Labrador.

You see the boom on the northeast Avalon isn’t being fuelled by the offshore.  It’s coming entirely from massive increases in public sector hiring, public sector wage increases and a huge jump in public sector spending.

The most recent round of ‘stimulus’ spending for capital works is just more cash in on top of the gigantic increases in public spending over the past four years. That would be the “unsustainable” ones for those who missed the drama of the past few weeks.

Incidentally, the guy who revelled in boosting spending beyond the levels that the economy could support is back in charge of the cash box.  He proudly noted for listeners of one local call-in show that the province currently outspends Alberta on a per person basis just as it has done for most of the past decade and a half.

Yet for all that, the province just shed 4200 full-time jobs between August and September 2009 and there are 3100 fewer full-times jobs this September compared to last.

All this should lead people to be a bit cautious about predicting the end of the recession and the quick return to happier times. 

Here in this province, the current provincial economy is sustained by huge levels of public sector spending.  But that just isn’t going to work given the anticipated drop in oil production over the next four years.  Even if the global economy rebounds, crude oil prices aren’t likely to hit levels double and triple what they are today:  that’s the sort of prices the provincial government would need to keep up its current spending.

No one should be surprised, therefore, that the premier and his new health minister – the guy who used to be finance minister – just headed out to a by-election and pulled a fast one on the locals.

Come help us figure out cuts to the building cost, they said, so you can keep lab and x-ray services.  What they didn’t point out is that the savings needed are not the $200,000 in annual operating costs but the millions in construction costs.

In Lewisporte, for example, estimated costs for the new combination seniors home and acute care clinic skyrocketed from $22 million to $42 million before they even got to thinking about putting the first shovel in the ground.  In order to contain costs, government scrapped the acute care bit for a saving of $10 million.

But do the math. 

In order to restore the acute care centre and its anticipated cost of $10 million, the locals in Lewisporte will have to cut out one third of the beds – at least – in the new chronic care centre in order to get laboratory and x-ray service back.

So where are those old people supposed to go?

That’s a very good question.

Too bad the current administration doesn’t have an answer even though the problem and a viable solution have been available  - but ignored - for over a decade.

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Darrell Dexter: sucker

From the Chronicle-Herald:

Premier Darrell Dexter had a private meeting Monday with the president of Newfoundland’s energy corporation in an attempt to have electricity from the Lower Churchill Falls hydro project go through Nova Scotia.

Dexter apparently thinks the project is going somewhere and that there is any intention to run a power line through Nova Scotia.

Danny Williams hasn’t even been able to convince Hydro-Quebec to take an ownership stake in the project currently valued – not at $6 billion as claimed by the Herald – but at more like $10 billion. Heck, he even got bitched slapped into an emergency session of the legislature after his legal drafters tried a childish bit of word-play to screw with the 1961 Churchill Falls lease.

On top of that, the province’s finances are apparently so tight they have to cut health care despite having billions flowing in oil revenues. 

There are no – that’s right:  no – customers for the project.  A potential deal with Rhode Island has been buggered up. And that’s something the Premier once described as being “very,very” crucial to the project.

The land claims deal vital to getting the project going is lost in the wilderness.

The timetable on the project has been pushed back repeatedly and there are even rumours swirling now the thing will be sent back for a major environmental overall because the first set of environmental documents submitted to the federal assessment process were grossly deficient.

And, most amazingly of all given Dexter’s efforts to get in at the front end, there just are no plans whatsoever to run a power line from Labrador anywhere near Nova Scotia. 

If the Nova Scotians is fronting any money for this thing or even thinking of dropping cash on the Lower Churchill, he is being snookered, big time.

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Coming soon: the book they tried to suppress

When you care enough to send the very best

As David Pugliese notes, the Americans are speeding up work on the Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

Basically, it’s a honking great non-nuclear bomb that buries itself in the ground before exploding.

It’s purpose to reach down to the big, underground concrete shelters of the kind you might find in places like Iran or North Korea.

Let’s just say that it would f*ck up the day of the people inside.

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coughsoundsfamiliarcough

Jeff Simpson sayeth:

In Alberta, swimming in oil and natural-gas revenues, the Conservatives after Peter Lougheed (an old-style conservative) put next to nothing into the Heritage Fund, spent like drunken sailors (as conservatives often do, rhetoric notwithstanding), handed out tax rebates and left the province on its fiscal knees when commodity prices fell.

Boy.

That sounds mighty familiar.

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The Yiddish of Newfoundland Politics: the chutzpah of political hackery

Tory MHA Ed Buckingham reads a prepared talking point on CBC Radio praising Jerome Kennedy and attacking – of all people – the politically deceased John Efford for his comments about recent events in the province.

And Buckingham calls Efford a political hack?

That’s chutzpah.

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The Yiddish of Newfoundland Politics: the chutzpah of monkey-tossing

According to CBC, health minister Jerome Kennedy is saying the by-election in the Straits is bringing to light issues and concerns about health care.

Kennedy says this like he never heard of the issues and concerns before.

But it’s the job of the elected member and his political staff – in this case former cabinet minister Trevor Taylor and his constituency assistant Rick Pelley – to make sure the issues and concerns were known by people like Kennedy.

So basically, Kennedy is saying that Pelley – now the Tory candidate – wasn’t doing his job before now.

Nope.

Kennedy and his boss may have decided to chop health service as part of the budget process but the fact people didn’t like that is really something he never heard tell of before.

And so it took a by-election for Kennedy and his boss to  discover  - oh my Gawd, they’re upset? - that their decision to cut health service Flower’s Cove might cause a bit of consternation for the people in the area.

That’s chutzpah for you.

A result of a  financial decision Trevor and Rick didn’t make is actually is Rick and Trevor’s fault. And no one mentioned this local anger to Trevor before.

Didn’t he read the letter from Labrador-Grenfell?

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Simms in PACSW’s gun sights

Popular and influential talk show host Randy Simms is now firmly in the gun sights of the provincial government’s official advisory organization on women’s issues.

The Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women is planning an opinion piece for the province’s newspapers and is encouraging people on the PACSW e-mail listserv to join in by writing pieces of their own for local papers and calling both Simms and Bill Rowe on air to voice their opinions.

The controversy centres on remarks Simms made Tuesday to Long Harbour deputy mayor Ed Bruce which didn’t make a headline until Simms was challenged on Wednesday, on air, by newbie St. John’s councillor Sheilagh O’Leary.

An e-mail Thursday from PACSW communications director Elaine Condon described her having the “unfortunate task” of listening to Simms’ show Thursday and hearing what she described as “blatant sexism rear its head over and over.”

The e-mail also included the text of a front-page Telegram story by Alisha Morrissey. That’s not online but an earlier BP post linked to an shorter version of the story that appeared yesterday.

What the Telegram story on either day didn’t make clear is that O’Leary was working on the basis of a half-baked version of Simms’ remarks posted on a local blog. 

But as it turns out, the Signal writer also got a half-baked version of events:

I didn't hear it myself and heard it from a third party I trusted. I had never done that before, even for a blog, and I definitely learned my lesson.

Anyway, the transcription is up on Signal now, with a little apology.

And indeed the correct version and an apology has been posted.

The only question that remains is whether or not the half-backed version of Simms’ remarks fed to Signal and O’Leary was an honest misunderstanding in the first place or a deliberate misrepresentation to advance some unknown political agenda.

Simms may well have earned the hatred of some locals for criticising an event featuring only women municipal candidates in the middle of the election. He pointed out that such an event gave an unfair boost some candidates based solely on gender during the campaign and was clearly not in keeping with an effort to encourage more women to come forward as candidates.  Simms might now be targeted for payback as a result of his earlier criticism.

The 11 members of the PACSW governing board are appointed by the cabinet under the Status of Women Advisory Council Act. Under the Act, its permanent staff are covered by the Public Service Pensions Act.

The minister responsible for the status of women is natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale.

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But what does Get to Half mean now?

h/t to I.P. Freely.

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A political object lesson

Not-yet-sworn-in city councillor Sheilagh O’Leary got off to a very rocky start to her political career on Wednesday as she called Open Line Show host Randy Simms to give him an on-air lecture for comments he supposedly made yesterday.

Right off the bat, O’Leary displayed some questionable judgment since she effectively embarrassed Simms on the air.  Had he done something, she could have taken the route of calling him off air.  Simms would have then had the chance to offer a mea culpa on his own, thereby saving a huge amount of face.

As it is, O’Leary put Simms in a corner and he responded according.  The exchange was heated with Simms at one point referring to O’Leary’s comments as bullshit.  O’Leary evidently wasn’t prepared for any push-back and as the thing went on her voice got evidently more tight.  In places she came across as condescending and, contrary to her denials, as an advocate for political correctness of the worst possible sort. 

It’s not where she’d want to be at all politically, as many of the comments on the Telegram story would attest.  Outside of a very small and very narrow group in this town, O’Leary’s attack on Simms will seem to many to be off base and poorly handled.  Most of those those who voted for her may wind up wondering what they got for their efforts if this is the way she goes off right at the start.

And they’d be right.

Those of us who heard Simms’ comments initially could not have taken offense at them.  Anyone who has listened to Simms would understand his sense of humour.

But you don’t have to take the word of your humble e-scribbler.  The Telegram was good enough to give the entire exchange:

“There are two men and five women. Oh, my son you have my sympathy (laughter). You and Gary are not going to get your way on anything, you know that don’t you (laughter). It’s just going to be like being at home, buddy (laughter). We’re being nasty to your lady councillors aren’t we (laughter). No, you’re going to have a good crew out there.”

The problem for O’Leary comes from the fact she got her version not from the horse’s mouth but from a local blog.  They didn’t link it but here’s the post from Signal:

“Five women and two men on your town council? My sympathies go out to you, buddy. You’ll never get anything done; it’ll be just like home”

Big difference when you make the edits, isn’t it?

Sheilagh didn’t take the minute to double check the information or to call Randy and give him the chance to back down on his own.

She launched into him live, on the air and without warning.

Bad move.

It’s a political object lesson for the newbie councillor in how to handle issues and political relationships.  This is especially the case, as here, where the thing involves someone who is potentially a very influential and supportive ally in provincial politics. 

You see, the couple of people who gave O’Leary this story may have been heartened by her call but in the long run this sort of thing can damage the chances of achieving their goals.  An experienced politician might have handled it differently. 

An experienced politician would have recognised that it is far more effective and far more desirable to have Randy Simms promoting – for example  - getting more women involved in the elected side of politics.  There may be other issues on gender or access where Simms’ support would carry a lot of way. 

It isn’t a question of compromising principles but rather of sacrificing a first blush and admittedly amateurish impulse in order to achieve a larger goal.

O’Leary  - understandably – made the noob mistake.

The sensible thing for her to do would be to call Randy publicly and sort the thing out quickly.

And the next time think before picking up the phone to a call in show.

Oh yes, and here’s a big one.

Find someone she trusts who has more experience in politics who she can rely on for advice.  She’s at the start of what could be a long and promising political career.  If she settles in, that will be the case.

O’Leary’s voters were looking for a Shannie. If she does more of what her voters heard on Wednesday, they might wonder if they instead got a politician more along the lines of …shall we say… the opposite of Shannie.  And Heaven knows St. John’s had enough of that kind of politics before it got a better paying job.

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Kremlinology 6: the curious last days of Paul Oram

On September 10, 2009, then health minister Paul Oram gave a version of the health care cuts decision that contradicted what his boss was saying.

On September 21, 2009, then health minister Paul Oram said that his own administration had boosted spending to levels that were unsustainable.

That was an amazing admission that the province’s finances were in such a horrendous state.  Until then virtually every cabinet minister had claimed the opposite.

Paul’s talk of cuts prompted your humble e-scribbler to remind the universe of a previously unsuccessful health minister whose daughter now works for the Premier and of the current Premier’s own phrase when talking about a previous administration.  But that was just fun.

On September 29, 2009, then justice minister Tom Marshall turned up on a local call-in show to discuss the province’s finances.

Marshall said a whole bunch of things that tended to affirm Oram’s statement, although Marshall – who had been finance minister for the highest of the high-spending years never actually said the word “unsustainable.”

But notice that it was Marshall delivering the message.

Not Jerome Kennedy, the guy actually holding down the title of  finance minister at the time.

But Tom Marshall, the former finance minister, calling from his ministerial office in Corner Brook.

This was the day Danny headed off for a gigantic swan hobnobbing with the international environmental hoi-polloi that ran from the 30th of September to October 2.

On October 1st – and despite his previous insistence that the cuts at Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte were carved in stone - Paul restored at least some of the previous cut in Flower’s Cove.

Danny got back on the weekend.

On Monday, Paul told Danny he was leaving.  That’s by Paul’s own version of  the timing.

Paul heads off to Buchans for an emergency town meeting, called very hastily by the provincial government Tuesday morning.

The next morning, Oram ends it all, politically, in front of the House of Assembly.

Of course, Oram has some cock and bull set of talking points about health issues and the pain his family suffered and the evils of the CBC none of which explained why he was not only bailing out of cabinet but hauling ass out of politics altogether.

Oram was slitting the wrists of his own political body and yet he was blaming someone else for wielding the blade.

One of the examples Oram cited as painful was having his wife’s name on the television news in connection with the family business.

Odd that Paul Oram backbencher had no trouble with his wife’s picture and name being in a Labrador newspaper when she and her husband travelled to Labrador west talking about opening a new personal care home in the area.  Anyone got a picture of that to share for posterity?

But that’s to get away from the real oddity here namely the appearance of the former finance minister a week or so before he got the job back again to tackle a finance issue when there was a perfectly serviceable finance minister more than capable of sorting out the whole issue.  And to really add to the oddity, the formerly serviceable finance minister has now become the health minister.

The timing and the comments all seem a little curious.

One of the Premier’s most loyal foot soldiers leaving politics so quickly is highly unusual in itself.

The context might make it more unusual.

And if that’s the case, then Paul’s reference to Danny Williams as having been a father figure to him? 

Well, that’s just likely to give a body the heebie jeebies. 

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Jerome! gets his dream job

Jerome Kennedy is the new health minister.

There was talk a year or so ago that Kennedy was anxious to move into the high pressure job as a way of proving himself on the way to the Eighth Floor.

He didn’t get his wish at the time, what with the Premier stuffing him in finance instead.

Well, a short while later Jerome got his dream job.

And he won’t have quite the same commute as his predecessors did when cabinet meetings were on.

Interestingly enough, the Premier didn’t take the opportunity to replace Trevor Taylor who quit last week.

Instead, the acting minister of transportation will carry on.  Tom Marshall will go back to finance and Felix Collins will get the minister’s job in justice.

There won’t be a permanent replacement for Trevor until some unspecified time later, apparently.

Curious.

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No slack for Oram from reporters

Paul Oram left politics entirely today blaming ill health and the news media who apparently hounded him and his family.

That second one never lasted a second as reporters quite rightly pointed out that oram himself and his boss have said far worse about their political enemies than any reporter ever said about either one.

Watch the scrum down the right hand side of the cbc.ca/nl website.

The reporters cut him no slack, in other words and nailed his bullshit about the media for what it was.  He mentioned the coverage of his conflict of interest, in particular during the scrum. 

There are still many questions left by Oram’s sudden departure.

Why did he leave so hastily, leaving the Premier so little time to lash together a replacement scheme that he couldn’t even replace Trevor Taylor properly?

Why did Oram opt to quit entirely when he could have asked for a temporary leave from cabinet until he got his blood pressure under control?

Why did Oram leave politics altogether?  The back bench is not a hard spot and Oram could have taken the pause to get his health in order. 

As with Trevor’s departure there is much more to this than meets the eye.

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Breaking: Oram to commit hara kiri?

Embattled health minister Paul Oram is holding a newser in 15 minutes to discuss his political fate.

That’s usually code for announcing his resignation.

If he resigns quickly that would cause another by-election before Christmas but it would certainly be the second high profile cabinet minister to resign unexpectedly within the space of two weeks.

 

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