Dumb and Dumber, the fin min version

Reborn finance minister Tom “Marshall's challenge now is balancing declining revenues against increasing needs” to quote the Telegram story from today’s from page.

He said the key is "spending wiser, and spending smarter."

Okay, sez your humble e-scribbler, so does that means Marshall’s previous tenure as finance minister involved spending dumb and dumber?

Interesting line to take during a by-election, incidentally.  Cuts to spending by Marshall’s predecessor are what got the governing party into this by-election in the first place.  Jerome! Kennedy the high-pitched predecessor – now the higher pitched health minister – has been busily backtracking on the cuts Marshall, Kennedy and their boss approved in cabinet.

Curious.

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“Feeling queasy”: Is quieter better?

People in Newfoundland and Labrador must surely be looking with some puzzlement on the flap over federal Conservatives handing out government money as if it was their own.

In this province, their provincial Conservative cousins have the thing down to a science. The use of public money for partisan benefit is an old one in Newfoundland and Labrador but this current crowd have raised it to a fine  art. 

The House of Assembly spending scandal was – for the most part – a scam worked up to push free and untraceable cash that politicians could hand out to all and sundry in their district for any purpose the politician could think of approving.

So pervasive was the practice that a review by the auditor general found scarcely a single politician from any political party who sat in the House after the scam started in 1998 who did not use it to some extent. 

The review also revealed that the politicians elected after 2003 used it with an enthusiasm their federal cousins could only envy.  Of the top ten spenders as a percentage of their constituency operations allowance, six were elected after 2003 and all but one was a Tory.

As it turned out, one of the biggest supporters of the public cash for partisan benefit scheme was a former auditor general.  Ironically, she was the one the House management commission blocked from looking at some aspects of the scam while it was first organizing.  Beth Marshall also felt no qualms about handing out cash in small and larger amounts, nor did she feel any difficulty that there was a skimpy audit trail for the cash or that money was going to duplicate  existing government programs in some cases.

The use of public money for partisan purposes was not confined to individual members of the legislature and that’s where the parallel with the federal Conservatives really becomes apparent.  Since 2003, the Provincial Conservatives have worked to make sure that local partisan benefit came from any available pot of public cash:

-  As we found out when Tom Rideout packed it in, road paving and construction is over-seen by a political staffer in the Premier’s office.

Since 2003, it has been consistently managed in a way to maximise the benefit to Conservative districts and to punish those that voted for another party.

-  Fire trucks are a recent favourite for the spending announcement with the local MHA. With the recent by-elections and political upheaval, the fire truck announcements are coming about one a week.

The one they’ve consistently used is the small time cash being handed out by one department or another.  The money is from a legitimate departmental program but when the cash is handed out someone from the government caucus gets the credit.  It is inevitably called a “donation” or a “contribution” to make the free cash sound like anything but what it is.

There’s nothing new about it.  Back in 2007, Bond Papers linked to an old CBC news story that dates from the early 1970s that mentions the same practice dating back three or four decades and more.

But just because something is old is not a reason to think it is okay.  Not all traditions are fine or honorable.

Nor is it any better that it is done quietly in these parts as opposed to brazenly at the federal level.  The quiet nature of the local practice makes it all the more insidious.

Done loudly or quietly, though the practice is enough to make anyone concerned for the state of our democracy feel very queasy indeed.

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Paul Oram: busted

We knew Paul Oram’s comments the day he left politics were complete hogwash.

labradore refutes him, point by point.  And he adds the picture of Oram and his wife from 2006 that puts paid to the whole pack of nonsense Oram spouted about not wanting his family in the media.

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The positives of negativity

The much-feared inflation demon continues to shrink away.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, inflation hit  -0.9% in September 2009 compared to a year earlier, down from –0.7% in August.

The figures come from the latest Statistics Canada release.

Back just before the collapse last year, some people were speculating that it might be time to take action to fight the largely imaginary inflation demon. Subsequent events seem to have taken care of that little problem nicely.

Then again, there are other issues which some people seem hell bent on ignoring.

Kinda funny when the guy responsible for both the largest spending increases and one of the largest budgeted deficits in Newfoundland history accuses others of going on a wild spending spree.

And then re-appoints to run finance the guy who oversaw the real open cheque-book government in the first place.

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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.

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Python at 40

The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired 40 years ago this month on the BBC.

Taped first but according to some sources aired third was the original premiere episode titled “Whither Canada?”

It seems appropriate.

Curiously enough, this was also the title of the final major assignment at the National Defence College.  Maybe there was some thus far undiscovered connection.

The first episode aired October 5, 1969.

Graham Chapman died one day shy of 20 years later, on October 4, 1989.  

John Cleese delivered what has become a legendary eulogy for his old writing partner at a memorial service held in December that year.

He very quickly manages to change the tone of the event, as can be seen by the crowd shots as he begins speaking and then hits the jokes.

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The shrimp industry explained

Derek Butler in the Telegram.

As usual there’s way more to the issue than meets the eye.

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The search for a university president: compare and contrast

At McMaster, they started hunted in January and 10 months later came up with a winner.

At Memorial,  it has already taken almost 10 months just to go through the bullshit at the front end designed solely to get people to forget the sheer sh*t-wreck made of your humble e-scribbler’s alma mater in the first go- ‘round.

The only way the Memorial University search committee will find a president before the end of this year is if John Fitzgerald  - Our Man in a Blue Line Cab, seen left, hard at it on the diplomatic circuit - tells Danny he wants out of Ottawa pronto.

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If only they’d read their briefing materials…

While health minister Jerome Kennedy busily backs off decisions he took only a few weeks ago on health care, there is something obviously haphazard and chaotic about the way the current administration is approaching virtually everything they do.

Your humble e-scribbler has noted this before in other policy areas. Equalization is the most obvious subject and, as it turned out, that was a post that was extremely popular.

But in the case of health care, word of the on-again and possibly off-again review of some services makes one want to turn back the clock to 2002.

That’s the year a provincial government with no cash to speak of - and certainly far less than the billion dollar surpluses Jerome! and his buddies have turned up – laid down a simple set of practical guides to health care delivery across the province.

Healthier Together (2002) was touted as a strategic health plan for Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s still available on the health department website. Read together Along with regional profiles produced the following year, you get a very good picture of the health issues in each part of the province and the solutions needed.

If you want to get a sense of how the document could help the government of today, take a look at the section on the organization of the health care regional authorities:

Newfoundland and Labrador is a large geographic area with a highly dispersed population where regions often have different circumstances and needs. This is partly the reason why the province has 14 health care boards.

It is not possible to compare the diversity of this province to the relative uniformity of Winnipeg or Edmonton, where populations which exceed that of Newfoundland and Labrador are serviced by a single health authority. However, if the number of health boards in this province create barriers to proper patient care, then re-examination is needed.

One of the problems both the Premier and the current health minister pointed to was a lack of accurate information they had when making decisions.

Well, the 2002 approach affirmed that decision-making authority on delivery of service belonged to the regions, not to people far removed from where the service was delivered. It also noted that the number of boards allowed gave a system that could take into account the local issues that could get lost in a larger system.

But when you turn to the section on where services would be located, there’s a simple model for health care that could work very easily today. After all, this thing was drafted only seven years and and, as it notes, the health care system currently in place goes back 20 and more years:

Primary health care sites will be the common denominator of service for the whole province. These sites will provide a cluster or network of basic services, plus public health and social services consistent with the mandates of the health and community service boards. Each site will serve a defined geographical region designed to ensure the right number of health professionals to service the population. For example, a minimum of five family physicians will be needed in a primary service site so that coverage can be provided 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. Therefore, a region should contain no less than 6,000 people and the site should be located so that 95 per cent of the population within that region are within 60 minutes driving time to the site. Depending on the geographic shape of a region or the remoteness of some communities, additional facilities may be located outside the main primary health care site to be serviced by a small complement of staff or by providers who make routine visits to the area.

Doesn’t that sound just a wee bit like Lewisporte?

All this makes you wonder if the turn-over at the senior levels in the current administration has served to rob the government of much-needed corporate memory, the kind of memory that would serve a cabinet well in tough economic times.

That turn-over didn’t come as a result of retirements and normal job changes-over. Rather there seems to be some other force at work producing a parade of ministers in some departments and the ping-ponging of others (finance and justice) while at the public service level there is an equally high level of change. All of it must surely make it very hard to implement a coherent and sustained set of policies over time.

And when people making decisions don’t have a clue about what happened relatively recently or when it is official policy to denigrate everything that occurred before October 2003, it makes the job of running government all that much more difficult.

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Will Danny expropriate this one too?

Kruger is talking cuts and concessions at the major private sector employer in the premier’s own district.

So far, not a peep from the provincial government.

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The Alberta Deficit Fighting Strategy

Where would Albertans be without such sound guardianship of the public purse?

In 2008, give yourself a 30% wage hike.

In 2009, set spending to run a deficit of 11%, later jumping to 20%.

Later in 2009, cut your own salary by 15%.  Cut cabinet pay by 10%.

Freeze the salaries of top civil servants.

Preach restraint.

Easy enough when you are still looking at a net gain of between 15% and 20% on your own pay.

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Randy Simms can relax

So if Randy Simms can get himself into a load of hot water with some people, then we can only wait and watch to see what will happen to Gene Simmons for uttering these bon mots  - among others - about his partner, Shannon Tweed:

Look, it’s the 21st century, and the thing women have been clamouring for is finally upon us: you’re free. You’re no longer indentured slaves. You no longer have to be in the kitchen, or leave the smoking room so the men can talk. And the greatest asset Shannon has is that she’s a modern woman. Besides being stunning, six feet tall and, of course, a Newfie, I worship the ground she walks on. But part of the relationship is that it’s no-nonsense. We don’t call each other “honey” and “sweetheart” and all those clichés. That’s television talk, just a paint-by-numbers relationship. When I talk to her, it’s straight ahead, like an equal partner, and she to me.

Apparently, Gene is smitten because:

This is the hottest woman on earth. And she’s an alpha female. She doesn’t talk about whether the vacuum cleaner works or not. Doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Has a strong moral centre, no drugs, no booze. No whining. No bad hair days.

This should be interesting.

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Fuzzy Logic, cabinet ministers version

Just to recap:

So the Lewisporte health care centre started out as a chronic care and acute care centre at a cost of $22 million.

Then it ballooned to $42 million even before anything got built.

Paul Oram told us all before he quit that government – i.e. cabinet, which presumably includes Jerome and Danny – chopped out all the acute care bits and cut the building cost to $32 million.

That acute care bit included lab and x-ray.

And because the building cost of the project mushroomed and then got cut, the same people decided to slice $200,000 out of the operating budget.

So basically, even before anything got built, lab and x-ray would disappear and would stay disappeared even if nothing got built at all.

And now, even after slicing the building cost to $32 million by eliminating all the acute care stuff, one of the guys who made the cut decision in the first place is now asking the local concerned citizens community to help him find another $2.0 million in cuts so that maybe he’ll give them back the $200,000.

Uh huh.

So the whole thing comes down to finding $2.0 million in savings in a project which already went 110% over budget before anyone could blink and which is still 50% over budget.

Riiiiight.

And so when that $2.0 million disappears in further cost over-runs, what happens then?

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Prissy politics

Anyone ever see a letter to the editor from Dr. Noel Cadigan taking a politician to task for referring to someone as a traitor?

Doubtful you’ll find one.

But Cadigan found a problem with the use of the word “crackie” in reference to health minister Jerome Kennedy.  For those who don’t know, a crackie is a common enough term in colloquial Newfoundland English for a small, yappy dog.  It’s also a common-enough term in Newfoundland politics.

All in all, it is relatively benign.

So benign in fact it that a letter from anyone complaining of its use – save from an elderly maiden aunt who was born in the reign of Queen Anne – stands out.

Cadigan isn’t that pompous, most likely, nor is he quite as sensitive as the letter suggests.  Rather he is using  the coded language of current Newfoundland politics.  Note the lecturing, condescending tone of the letter in the fashion of a prissy school master lecturing an errant lower form boy in a public school. 

Note as well the pointed reference to what the Telegram ought to be doing instead of offering critical commentary in an editorial.

Sound much like Paul Oram?

You get the picture.

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Another tumble coming

People may be cheering the rising loonie.

Some people may be rubbing their hands with glee at the current and forecast prices for crude.

Gold is wonderful, if you own it already.

But, note the references in those articles to “weak fundamentals” and the fact there haven’t been many “signs of a pickup in the underlying oil demand in industrialized countries”.

The same sort of underlying weakness  - particularly in the American economy  - is what fuelled the surges in oil prices before the peak in mid-2008.

Remember what happened after that, right?

Well, get ready again.

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The result of fisheries mismanagement

Once upon a time, Fishery Products International built a state-of-the-art shrimp processing plant that would have provided employment to its work force 48 weeks out of 52.

The project was contingent on the provincial fisheries minister showing some sense in handing out shrimp processing licenses.  It depended on provincial politicians not trying to shift all the displaced cod and other plants with which the province remains grossly oversupplied onto other species like shrimp.

And, as it turned out, it also depended on provincial politicians not actively collaborating with efforts to smash the company that ran the plant and then sell off the bits and pieces – including the highly successful brands and the marketing arm – to anyone who wanted to scoop up the remains.

All it needed was a plant able to complete internationally run by a local fishing company big enough and well enough established to compete successfully around the globe.

That didn’t work, did it?

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Ya got four years, Kurtis

Ralph won this one and he ain’t giving up the seat for  a second try.

Odds are extremely good, though, that this will be his last kick at the political cat.

Bide your time.  Brush up your pitch.  Get some experience under your belt.  Give it another go.

At least you aren’t recycling yourself at the school board.

Ya got four years, Kurtis: 

Use the time wisely.

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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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