15 March 2010

Oveur and Out

Actor Peter Graves, whose career ranged from Stalag 17 to Airplane!, died of an apparent heart attack on the week.  Graves was age 83.

Graves was perhaps best known as the spymaster in the 1960s television series Mission: Impossible

Known for his serious roles, Graves lampooned them all successfully in Airplane!, a send-up of airplane disaster movies.  Graves played Victor Oveur, the pilot of a doomed airliner.

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Inherent weakness: a public sector-driven recovery

Newfoundland and Labrador showed weak job growth in February with an increase of a mere two tenths of one percent compared to January 2010 and 1.5% compared to February 2009.

Nationally, the job growth in February was driven almost entirely by the public sector.

That matches rather nicely with the experience in Newfoundland and Labrador where private sector job creation has been trailing off for a couple of years. As usual you can find great details on this at labradore: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

Here’s a chart – h/t  labradore – that should help you get a clear picture of what has been going on.

Three things to take away from this:

1.  What you just saw is absolutely, categorically NOT what you are hearing from the mainstream media, political circles and people in the local business community.  But it is real. The happy-crappy-talk coming from places like the Board of Trade demonstrates the extent to which the Board has its head up its collective backside or can’t understand simple numbers.

2.  The corollary to the private sector jobs-slide is that the jobs growth that has taken place – akin to the boom on the northeast Avalon – has been fuelled almost entirely by the public sector.  Since public sector spending is – as regular SRBP readers have known for years – unsustainable the whole thing is built on very shaky foundations.

It can’t last.

Therefore…

3.  Stand by for some serious adjustments.  The reckoning may not come in the next few months but it will have to come.

Of course, you will hear nothing but happy-crappy-talk from politicians who are looking to get re-elected in two years.  The pre-election campaign has already started.  What’s more, in a worst case scenario, some of those politicians may be looking to become Premier in a Tory leadership fight before then. Either way, there’s little hope that any political party in the province will be able to come to grips with the real economic issues and start taking action to set the right course for the future.

To steal the words of the Lucides:

Those who deny there is any danger are blinded by the climate of prosperity that has prevailed in … recent years. … That’s the peculiarity of the current situation: the danger does not appear imminent but rather as a long slow decline. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be any risk. But once it begins, the downward slide will be inexorable.

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14 March 2010

Saint-Saens – Symphony No. 3

Sunday morning listening pleasure:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2001 Moonbus in April from Moebius

You know you’ve been waiting for this.

Coming next month.

From Moebius.

For those of us who have the original Aurora release, this is still something pretty special.

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13 March 2010

The Zen of media intimidation

If a story goes unreported, did it actually happen?

In Mexico, as in post-communist Russia, pesky reporters sometimes turn up dead pour encourager les autres.

In other parts of the world, you don’t have to shoot people to stop things from being reported.

There are other ways.

And some of the the reporters will even deny that the lesser forms of intimidation even happened.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t intimidation nor does it mean stories  - sometimes really big and important stories - don’t get reported.

But if they don’t get reported, did they actually happen?

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Telly-torial goes home

A classic Telegram editorial consists of a summary of an issue concluding with a blinding insight into the completely frigging obvious.

This pattern reflects - as much as anything else -  the historic inability of the editorial board to form a collective opinion on any issue unless there is already such a staggeringly obvious answer staring everyone on the planet in the face that to deny it would be to look like a total idiot.

It also reflects another local media truism, namely that if “we didn’t break, they don’t have to add to it.”  In this instance, as with any other issue of considerable substance tied to an equally considerable controversy – like say anything to do with a certain someone’s unmentionable but potentially medically related travel – there is virtually zero chance the paper would explore any side angles or issues let alone weigh in along the same line.  No sleeping dog dare be disturbed. 

If nothing else that would open the chance that a political storm hovering over another media outlet might also come hover over the Village Mall, and that would apparently be a bad thing no matter what issue or principle might be savaged in the process. 

That sort of attitude is what makes a politician’s blacklist so effective.

Well that and the fact that if the Telly was ever blackballed – don’t hold your breath for that trigger event to occur in the first place -  they’d cave so fast you’d only know there had been any problem in the first place by the hole in time and space left by the Telly retreat. Speed of light?  They’d be faster.

Notice, to illustrate the point, the Telly history between 1997 and 2000.  Once someone started getting fed, they stopped asking tough questions about things like the Premier’s travel.  But once their source left office and his spoon stopped coming over regularly from the 8th, the intrepid Telly newsroom rediscovered the wonders of access to information.

It was left to mainland media to tell us about The Source’s free-wheeling travel budget.

Plus ca change.

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Study-in-contrasts Update:  Meanwhile, the editorial board at the province’s other daily newspaper never seem to have trouble speaking what they see as truth to power.  That’s even more amazing when you consider the editorial board lives in the city that has been the home seat to more premier’s than any other:  Joe, Frank, Clyde, Brian One, and now Danny all represented seats in Corner Brook.

Here’s their take on the same issue that Telly publisher Charlie Stacy  - on behalf of them all - wussed out on.

12 March 2010

RBC Economics: Imaginary project to drive NL economy in 2010

Sometimes you wonder if these guys actually have a clue:

The recent Public and Private Investment Intentions survey revealed that growth in non-residential capital investment in the province will be the fastest in Canada, surging by an impressive 31.2%. This increase will be fuelled by stronger investment in mining, oil and gas extraction,
utilities (related to the Lower Churchill Hydro development project) and the provincial government’s aggressive infrastructure stimulus plan.

Lower Churchill Hydro development project?

Since no one will be spending money on a project that doesn’t exist it’s going to be pretty hard for that gigantic imaginary project to drive economic development in the province.

It’s like the Matshishkapeu Accord, appropriately named around these parts after the spirit of the anus, the flatulence god.  Because that’s pretty much what the whole LC project is right now:  so much hot air that hits your nostrils with a pretty ripe odour.

Then there’s this piece of sure shite from the boys at the bank:

Employment in the province fell by 5,200, causing the unemployment rate to rise during most of the year; however, outside of energy and mining, the rest of the domestic economy fared surprisingly well.

Sure.

Surprisingly well indeed, if you don’t mention that the fishery is down 22% in landed value.

And let’s not forget that forestry, as in pulp and paper making, is in near complete friggin’ meltdown.  Mills closed.  The one remaining mill has one machine going instead of two and is slicing off workers and costs in a desperate effort to stay afloat.

The province’s finance minister admits they’ve shagged up government spending so badly that current spending patterns are “unsustainable.”  But the fin min say recently that if it wasn’t for oil – thanks BP, CKW, BT, and   RG – he and DW would be shagged up royally?  good thing there were all those give-aways before 2003 of they’d be up the creek.

But sure sure thing, there, RBC economist guys.

Everything in Newfoundland and Labrador is just wonderful.

Protected by a magic bubble.

Friggin’ loons.

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11 March 2010

Yep, that’s unscathed alrightee

The province’s fishing industry saw a 22% drop in the value of fish landings in 2009.

So much for coming through the recession protected by some sort of magic bubble. Then again, some of us mocked that idiotic idea the moment the words slipped out of someone’s mouth.

Now you know that when a provincial politician talks about coming through the recession better than most you know they were only talking about themselves, personally. 

They sure as heck weren’t talking about their constituents.

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10 March 2010

The seven percent solution

Mark Griffin, former traitor, spouts the new government policy for rural development which is, to be sure exactly the same policy as other every other government before (save one) that didn’t have any idea what to do to develop the economy successfully either:  shift public service jobs into town and create new public service ones.

Send us a prison says lawyer Mark and quickly too before all that “political capital” is burned up.

Mark.

Bubbie.

We are in a pre-election period.

It could be we are in a pre-leadership period on top of that.

Over the next two years there’ll be no shortage of political will to distribute scarce tax dollars around on any scheme  - no matter how useless, no matter that it has been tried and failed before - that might pay for a few more votes.

Forget a prison.

Dream big.

Think of a gigantic greenhouse for growing things like cucumbers and tomatoes.

Just because it failed before doesn’t mean it can’t be useful again to get that last seven percent.

Mark Griffin, former traitor, may well have hit on the way to get that last seven percent of people fully satisfied.

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Wonderland

 

--and then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out) “Who roar for the Sub-Warden?” Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting “Bread!” and some “Taxes!”, but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted.

Once upon a time, as all good fairy tales must begin, one could explain how to pronounce the name of the place by saying that it rhymed with “understand”.

But since “understand” has gone out of favour both as a word and an idea, one must now try and find a replacement.

What better choice than “Wonderland” for a place that these days most resembles the love child of Tim Burton and John Waters after consuming a truckload of the Peruvian marching powder reputedly popular in local junior high schools these days.

After all, this is a province where cabinet minister after cabinet minister admitted over the past six months that they shagged up public finances – spending is “unsustainable” – and the public response is to give them the highest satisfaction level in the history of polling anywhere in Atlantic Canada.

93%.

Higher than flag stomping time.

Higher than the January 2005 handout cheque victory.

Higher than not one but two back-to-back record surpluses that put more money in public coffers than the entire provincial budget 20 years ago.

Even higher satisfaction than the poll taken after the October 2007 election.

Without any apparent reason, people suddenly decided to be hugely satisfied.

Ah, but it was Danny’s bum ticker getting sympathy, some of you smarties are saying.

Take a look.  In a question in which people could show love for Hisself alone, he could only manage to go from 79% to 81%. Less than half the margin of error.  Hardly a thing worth noting at all, let alone label a surge. Were the Telegram story signed it could have been a job application to the Ministry of Truth.

And if you deconstruct the CRA poll numbers, it is even more bizarre.  After 24 months of steady decline, support for the provincial Tories shot up enough to beat the poll taken right after the 2007 election.

But that’s not all.

Even with satisfaction levels that Sarah Palin and George Bush The Younger could only dream of, still 15% of the people polled actually want someone other than the current Premier to be Premier.  In fact, half the people who want Yvonne Jones running the place instead of Danny Williams actually think that Danny Williams’ crowd is doing a completely or mostly satisfactory job. or maybe all 15% of them do which is even weirder.

Such is life in Wonderland.

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09 March 2010

Penashue bails; Matshishkapeu Accord in trouble

Peter Penashue decided to pack it in as deputy grand chief of the Innu Nation.

That leaves the Matshishkapeu Accord in even more doubt than before now that its chief champion is gone to the sidelines. The Accord is crucial to development of the Lower Churchill.

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90 or more Club

The result of just a quickie google scan on politicians with a voter approval of 90% or better:

1.  Sarah Palin (Republican), former Governor of Alaska.

2.  Jon Huntsman, (Republican) former Governor of Utah.

3.  George W. Bush, (Republican) former President of the United States

4.  Hisself.

Interesting.

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And if Glenn Beck says it…

Well ya know it must be true.

Glenn likes Danny, too.

 

08 March 2010

Way freakin’ spooky

Danny likes Canada’s health care system and goes to Florida for surgery.

Sarah Palin rants and raves against socialised medicine but admits that her family has come across the border for care.

They’ve been known to share an interest in reading, too.

Interesting.

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Ron Silver: No More.

Rest in peace.

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Financial shorts – Second Monday in March edition

1.  Crack whores rebel:  Icelanders voted against a US$5.3 billion package to deal with part of the country’s financial mess.

“This is a strong no from the Icelandic nation,” said Magnus Arni Skulason, co-founder of a group opposed to the deal.

“The Icelandic public understands that we are sovereign and we have to be treated like a sovereign nation — not being bullied like the British and the Dutch have been doing.”

Sovereign Icelanders may be, but they are also broke.  If they don’t like it when people come looking for their money back – it ain’t bullying, BTW – then maybe they shouldn’t have been running the financial equivalent of a crack-house.

2.  More hidden cash turns up:  There may be a few million extra in provincial coffers when the financial year ends.  This isn’t a windfall or a gift.  It’s just what you get when you compare the actual amount of federal transfers in the current fiscal year - $1.264 billion – to the $988 million reported in Budget 2009 last spring.

Well, that’s if you use the Estimates which gives different numbers than the ones in the budget speech. The numbers in the budget speech are pretty much dead-on the actual federal transfers.

Someone should ask the finance minister to explain why he feels the need to keep two sets of books.

3. Counter-intuitive.  Okay.  Crude is up.  Gold is up and silver is is up as well. US dollar is down.  The American economy shed jobs but not as many as expected.  Some news media are reporting this as a good thing.  Basically, it’s more of the recovery-is-here-yada-yada crap they’ve been fed since this time last year.

If the dollar is down, and oil and gold are up, that’s a sure sign that not only is the US economy not in recovery, it’s virtually a guarantee it won’t recover while prices for things like crude oil are that high.

The American economy needs oil prices to be about half of what they are currently in order to see a recovery tale hold.  And when a recovery does start, it won’t keep going if oil prices shoot back up to their current levels.

In the meantime, stand by for an “adjustment’ sometime in 2010 or early 2011.  The “correction” won’t be as big as the collapse in 2008 but it will hurt.

It will especially hurt any government that doesn’t have its financial house in order.

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07 March 2010

She’s funny even if she doesn’t try

Let’s just say that Google's translator didn’t quite get the subtle nuances of a French-language story on Sarah Palin’s speech in Calgary.

Here’s the original:

L’ancienne gouverneure de l’État américain de l’Alaska et ancienne candidate républicaine à la vice-présidence, Sarah Palin, a fait salle comble samedi soir à Calgary.

Here’s the google version.

palin packed

Ummm.

Not exactly.

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KGB Connections

While some may have viewed it as politically incorrect, CBC followed up on its expose of organized crime in Canada with a documentary on Soviet espionage in North America.

KGB Connections aired in 1982 and doesn’t appear to have aired since. The thing is now in the public domain and the whole program is available on youtube.  local audiences will be interested in the reference to one Soviet spy dropped off in St. John’s when a fishing vessel arrived to change crews and pick up supplies.

This version is in black and white but the show originally aired in colour. A colour version, slightly shorter in length, is also available on youtube.

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Firds of a bleather: legislature edition

The second Monday in March.

That would be this Monday, March 8.

Why is that an important day?

Well, under the standing orders of the House of Assembly, the legislature is supposed to sit:

“in the Winter-Spring from the second Monday in March to the Friday before the Victoria Day weekend with a break from the end of the sitting day on Maundy Thursday to the third Monday after Easter…”.

Seems pretty clear.

And yet, for some completely inexplicable reason the House of Assembly is not being called back into session on Monday, March 8, it being the second Monday in March.

Anyone care to suggest a rational, sensible, plausible and/or very good reason why the House likely won’t be sitting again until two weeks after it was supposed to be back?

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05 March 2010

Innu vow to protest, continue caribou hunt

After a while, some of this stuff gets repeated so often you could be reading the news with an early undiagnosed case of dementia and not really know for sure that slowly you are losing your grip on reality.

Penashue.

Hickey. 

Innu. 

Protest.

Caribou.

Is it 2010 or 1987?

The answer  - at least for the old Canadian Press clipping below -  is 1987.  The first clue the story is older is the reference to “Innu Indians” and if you managed to slip by that one, the dead give-away is the mention of protests at a military runway.

Other than that, the rest of the story could be from events of the past six or seven years.  A group of Innu, protesting an issue they believe involves their aboriginal rights, decide to kill a few animals from an endangered herd.

A Penashue from Sheshatshiu, in this case Greg, speaks on behalf of the protesters:

''People ask us why we don't sit down and negotiate with government,'' said Greg Penashue, president of the Innu association. ''Well, that's not something I foresee in the near future.

hickeylabradorian6Meanwhile, there’s a prediction of dire consequences from someone regular readers of these scribbles will recognise as a local favourite:

However, John Hickey, [right, shovelling something else in 2009] president of the Mealy Mountains Conservation Committee, said the illegal hunting could escalate into a full-scale slaughter of the herd.

''What's probably going to happen next year, in my estimation, is Metis hunters and hunters from other communities are going to start operating in there and we're going to have one big massacre in the Mealy Mountains,'' he said.

Now aside from the novelty of seeing the old story recycled in this way, there are a few other lessons to be drawn from all this.

Firstly, the Innu  - whether from Quebec or from Sheshatshiu – are past masters at using caribou hunts in sensitive areas as a way of attracting southern media attention for their political cause of the moment.

Second, the caribou herds involved have been used like this for more than 22 years and so far the herds have not been decimated.  There is good reason to doubt either the scientists views or, by referring back to that first point, what is actually going on.  Innu aren’t stupid people, individually or collectively.

Third, the same cannot be said for the white folks who – each and every year - fall for the same schtick without fail.  In that light,  John Hickey’s prediction of a “massacre” 22 years ago is laughable.  But he is basically no different than the crowd who have played the reflexive, knee-jerk white redneck role in the Annual Media Caribou Frenzy every year since.

What’s especially sad is that some of the biggest parts in the 2010 edition of the annual knee-jerk follies are played by a bunch of politicians who are supposed to be or who should be a heckuva lot smarter than they evidently are.  Felix, Danny and Kathy should know better than to get into the racket.  They aren’t being played for saps;  they have re-written the script for themselves and in the process done absolutely nothing to defuse the situation, strip the protest of its political value or advance the Lower Churchill land claim.

Rather, with their claims that charges might be laid they are showing themselves to be extraordinarily stunned.  As lawyers of some experience, Felix and Danny should both know that the aboriginal people of Canada have a constitutionally guaranteed right to hunt, fish and trap subject only to laws about safety and conservation.  In this case, showing any conservation issue is going to be highly problematic.  The facts speak for themselves.

rideout toque In the end, if Danny and Felix try a politically-driven prosecution  - a la FPI and yellow-tail flounder, right - they can only lose as a matter of law.  They may secure the redneck vote and grumble about the friggin’ courts but that’s going to be of little use once the Innu have a much stronger political position as a result of pure stunnedness. 

On the other hand, now that Danny and Felix have built up an expectation that charges will be laid against the Innu – presumably knowing there is frig-all chance of a conviction – they are going to look like eunuchs if they decide that a prosecution is a waste of time and don’t lay charges.

They got into this mess, one suspects, for a very well-known habit of one of three  - Danny, Felix or Kathy - to shoot from the lip before the brain engages.  Henley v. Cable Atlantic is just one of many such examples. The people of the province have seen it countless times since 2003 and  - contrary to popular mythology – The Lip has cost taxpayers dearly indeed.  This case will likely prove to have a similar high price-tag attached to it.

Either way, the Innu will be stronger as a result of this little escapade. Building up sympathy among the southerners is a time-honoured part of their strategy and it will work now just as it did 22 years ago.

One potentially huge difference in the political response to the Innu outside Newfoundland and Labrador now versus earlier has to do with the level of interest of other governments in the whole affair.  If the feds were as attached to the Lower Churchill  as they were to low-altitude flight training in the 1980s or if the Lower Churchill project was more than a load of hot air, the federal politicians would be less susceptible to the political pressure that is likely to be applied to them very shortly.  There’s no way of knowing for sure – at this point – how they will react.

At the same time, these recent protests and the strong words being tossed highlight the huge cleavages within the Innu communities north and south of the Labrador-Quebec boundary. The white folks in this end of the province might want to consider that in a worst case scenario, there’s no guarantee “our Indians” will side with us against “their Indians.”  None of that bodes well for the Lower Churchill.

And if nothing else, all this highlights the sheer idiocy of believing that history started in 2003 and that – in an of themselves – the current lords and ladies ruling this place are inherently smarter than any average bear that went before.

If they were, then they wouldn’t have volunteered so eagerly to play the horse’s arse – yet again - in the pantomime that is Labrador hydro development.

April 22, 1987

Canadian Press

Innu Indians, locked in an escalating battle over native hunting rights and provincial laws, set up tents yesterday on the runway of a military airport.

Five tents were pitched at Canadian Forces Station Goose Bay by members of the Naskapi Montagnais Innu band to protest against the resumption of low-level flights by NATO fighter jets.

The Innu, who believe the flights disrupt the migratory patterns of caribou, were also protesting against the imprisonment of band members arrested on charges of illegally hunting caribou.

The tents, which were not disrupting airport activities, come after a winter of defiance by Innu from the central Labrador community of Sheshatshit.

The Innu, non-status Indians native to Labrador and Eastern Quebec, say they have killed at least 50 caribou from the protected Mealy Mountains' herd on the south coast of Labrador. The Innu consider the area part of their traditional hunting ground.

Six band leaders and Rev. Jim Roach, a Roman Catholic priest, are in jail awaiting a court appearance next week on charges of illegally hunting or illegally possessing caribou meat.

''People ask us why we don't sit down and negotiate with government,'' said Greg Penashue, president of the Innu association. ''Well, that's not something I foresee in the near future.

''How can they guarantee us rights when they throw us in jail virtually every day for practicing our traditional way of life?'' The Innu claim the right to roughly 300,000 square kilometres of land in Newfoundland and Quebec, saying the tribe was hunting caribou as its way of life before Newfoundland existed and has never signed a treaty giving up its rights.

However, John Hickey, president of the Mealy Mountains Conservation Committee, said the illegal hunting could escalate into a full-scale slaughter of the herd.

''What's probably going to happen next year, in my estimation, is Metis hunters and hunters from other communities are going to start operating in there and we're going to have one big massacre in the Mealy Mountains,'' he said.

Other native peoples in Labrador have also claimed traditional rights in the Mealy Mountains. The Innu receive government assistance in the form of subsidized housing, social services and hunting trips.

''If you get right down to it, the Innu went into a section of Labrador which is traditionally used by the Metis people,'' said Joe Goudie, president of the Labrador Metis Association.

''They have impinged on our land without consultation, without anything.''

The Mealy Mountains and the nearby Red Wine Mountains were closed to caribou hunting after the herd dwindled to less than 200 in 1975 from about 2,500 in the 1950s. The Innu are allowed unrestricted access to the George River caribou herd far in the north, whose numbers have mushroomed to more than 700,000.

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