Weekly Traffic Drivers, June 7-11, 2010

1. Salma Hayek and Maria Bello freak out over snake (link to Huffington Post)
2. Harper and Williams share love of total message control
3. Five years of secret talks on Lower Churchill:  the Dunderdale audio
4. There are gulfs and then there are oilspill gulfs
5. Air ambulance controversy;  curious ATIP redaction may hold clue to full story
6. Playing the numbers (Part 1 of the 2006 polling goosing series. Also Part 2 and Part 3)
7. Arrogance never impresses (Charlene Johnson)
8. Live Blogging the Old Man at the Chateau
9. Vermont’s energy future…in Quebec
10. Counter-spinning negativity – Jerome! version

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Paul Lane – bigger ambitions?

Is Mount Pearl city councillor Paul Lane  - described by the Telegram recently as a long-time Conservative  - going to seek the Conservative nod in the next federal election?

Might be.

He turned up on Crap Talk Thursday speaking as a concerned citizen.

His topic:

Lighthouses.

Clearly, this is a big issue in Mount Pearl.  They are afraid of losing their lighthouse on the wharf right next to the Rolls Royce marine engine repair facility.

All sarcasm aside – Mount Pearl is land-locked -  when a politico turns up talking about something not related to his current political office, odds are good he is laying the groundwork for a run at another office.

Since there is no provincial election coming up with an available seat, the only logical conclusion would be that he is looking for the Connie nod against Siobhan Coady in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

Now that might be interesting if – as it now seems –  the Old Man will not be waging a jihad against his fellow Conservatives next time. That means all the local Tories who voted for Ryan Cleary purely as a protest over the Family Feud can go safely back to voting for their federal cousins.

That could be interesting in that the race would then be between Coady and Lane with Ryan bringing up the rear.   Ditto in a race where another staunch Conservative, like say Tommy Osborne, decided to get some pensionable federal time.

And for those who doubt the wisdom of the mighty political oracle known as Bond, just remember that everyone laughed at the prediction that Steve Kent would switch to the provincial Tories having previously supported both the federal and provincial Liberals and – if memory serves – the federal proto-Connies at one point.

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Counter-spinning negativity – Jerome! version

So there’s Jerome! trying to spin the Ottawa speech to Randy Simms over at Open Line.  Big crowd.  Sceptical at first but then slowly realising the truth until a giant standing ovation at the end.

Uh huh.

Right.

Actually, the audience was small, according to reports from some in the room.  Tables packed but a small number of tables spread out in a relatively small room at a hotel where the Canadian Club of Ottawa has been known to jam the place to the rafters for speeches by other premiers from the Far East.

The audience include a bunch of federal politicians from Newfoundland and Labrador, the majority of whom have a track record of jumping when the Old Man barks. They had to show up.

But no giant groundswells of editorial opinion one way or t’other. The media coverage generally was pretty light:  Reuters Africa. roflmao.

What did get coverage?

A fake lake and some ludicrous claim by a couple of people about a political merger conversation that never was.

Face it:  if four inches of water and David Dingwall’s former political staffer make a bigger news hit than a speech by a provincial Premier claiming all sorts of hideous things about another provincial government, you have the definition of a complete public relations disaster.

That’s why Jerome! was torquing so desperately.

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Gushue on blogs

Over at John Gushue’s Telegram column, you’ll find some wise advice and observations about blogs and blogging.

John’s been the force behind what may well be the province’s longest running and certainly the best blog: dot, dot,dot.  You’ll find John’s eclectic work in a link in the ‘Sir Robert Recommends’ pile on the left of by simply clicking here.  no one will be surprised to know that John is typically the most popular out-link from these parts.  People like to head from here to there and frankly, there really isn’t a finer place to go.

As John notes in the title of his post, blogging isn’t likely to be a source of income.  If you think blogging will make money or even bring in some business for you, that may depend on the market where you are.  Around these parts, blogging isn’t a money making proposition.

There are probably as many reasons for writing a blog as there are people writing.  Blogging is a personal thing, after all. John makes that point in several ways.

Take a look around the Internet and you can find a variety of blogs covering everything from hobbies to technology to politics.  If people are doing it or interested in it, then there is a blog out there somewhere about it.

That’s really the amazing thing about the Internet.  People can express themselves freely using whatever talents they have.  Some people may chose to be complete twits.  That’s fine: for every one of them, there is at least one like the people over there who Sir Robert Recommends.

If you’ve been thinking about blogging, just jump in.  The world can use more people like you online.

Just make sure you read John Gushue’s top-notch advice first.

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Salma Hayek and Maria Bello freak out over snake

Via HuffPuff:

Live blogging the Old Man at the Chateau

12:58 PM (Eastern):  It’s great when you can get the mainlanders to read stuff your publicists cranked out.  No fact-checking.

1:00 PM:  The cash came from deals signed before 2003 and the debt remains the same.

1:01 PM:  The economy actually shrank 26% according to the provincial government’s latest budget.

1:02 PM:  The 2009 cash shortfall was a half billion with another billion forecast this year.  The net debt went up last year. 

1:08 PM:  Current cost estimate:  $14.7 billion to get it done.

1:08 PM:  It is straightforward except they have no markets and no money.

1:10 PM:  The Old Man spent five years trying to get HQ to take an equity stake in the Lower Churchill.  They just weren’t interested.

1:12 PM: April 2009:  NALCOR wheeled power through Quebec.  Its projects got done too.

1:12 PM:  NALCOR presented no evidence to bolster its claims.

1:15 PM:  NALCOR’s requests went to the Regie because NALCOR filed appeals.

1:17 PM:  NALCOR’S reputed price to New Brunswick:  16 cents per kwh, if the project ever gets built.  NB current consumer rate = 12 cents per kwh

1:20 PM:  Williams’ original ask to Ottawa 2005:  federal transfers equal to offshore revenues regardless of whether or not the province qualified for Equalization.

1:24 PM:  Imagine if they’d expropriated private property.

1:26 PM:  Will Jack and Iggy still cuddle Danny now?

1:27 PM:  Self-reliance, but only with hand-outs.

1:29 PM:  A fine rehash of the New York speech and every great 40-year old fable, delivered with the usual flat tone.

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Vermont’s energy future found… in Quebec

Sometimes it takes a while for news to reach your humble e-scribbler.

Still, news from this past March is topical.

Seems that Vermont and Quebec are working on a 26-year power purchase deal to supply the state with some lovely Hydro-Quebec electricity. A final deal is expected this month.

“I recognized then that Canada and Quebec would be critical to Vermont’s energy future, our border security and our economy,” said [Vermont Lieutenant-Governor Brian] Dubie. “So I visited the Canadian Embassy in Washington for a high-level briefing on our relationship. I learned that for a number of reasons, our official relationships were strained. So I made a commitment then to reestablish the lines of communication and repair those relationships.”

Observation1:  You don’t make friends being a perpetual anger-ball. 

Observation 2:  If NALCOR actually had markets for the Lower Churchill, they’d have money and if they had markets and money, they’d be building the Lower Churchill instead of wasting time and huge amounts of public cash using weak-assed arguments at Quebec’s energy regulator trying to stall running NALCOR’s [non-existent] Lower Churchill power through Quebec.

Observation 3:  Sparky speeches at the Chateau Laurier add up to a cup full of warm spit compared to a real contract to deliver power for 26 years.

Will anger-ball performance still work with mainland media?

The Old Man’s publicists decided to let the world in on his sooper sekrit speaking engagement in Ottawa with a media advisory issued at 9:00 AM on the day it takes place.

BP readers already knew about the gig from a post on May 27.

In the meantime, the mighty Ceeb is offering a live feed with “sparks promised.” Well, unless he’s planning on setting off some actual Roman candles in the ballroom of the Chateau, this will just be yet another tired rehash of the same old stuff.

This paranoid delusional ranting makes for good entertainment – slightly behind Friends re-runs -  but the locals in Ottawa might be just a wee be tired of the anger-ball thing.  What will be more interesting will be any scrum to see what questions the mob of reporters in Ottawa might pose. 

Especially considering the biggest unreported story in Danny-ville remains his five years of trying to get HQ to buy equity in the Lower Churchill.

Does the moustache tickle update?  Jerome! is in Ottawa with the Old Man.

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Air ambulance controversy - curious ATIP redaction may hold clue to full story

A briefing note prepared for the province’s health minister in early September 2009 may contain important clues to when a decision was taken to move an air ambulance aircraft from St. Anthony to Goose Bay.

In a section headed “Medical Flight Specialists”, the briefing note points to the problem of putting specially trained medical crews on aircraft outside St. John’s.  That’s the only place a medical flight specialist team exists since the provincial health department created the program in August 2007.  Before 2007, local medical staff accompanied patients being transported to another hospital inside or outside the province by medical evacuation aircraft.

As part of the relocation of one aircraft to goose Bay, the provincial government will train a new medical flight specialist team.  In the meantime, any staff needed for a medical evacuation from Goose Bay would have to originate in St. John’s or travel to St. John’s first and then return to goose Bay.  That’s exactly the problem identified in the September 4, 2009 briefing note regardless of where outside St. John’s the health department based an aircraft.

Note that the final four bullets in that section are deleted.  Three are deleted under a discretionary section of the province’s access to information law  about to advice to a cabinet minister or government body. There’s no indication what that information might be.

But a fourth bullet is deleted because it relates to “plans that relate to the management of personnel of or the administration of a public body and that have not yet been implemented or made public…”.  The province’s access to information allows the head of a department the discretion whether or note to censor that information.  In this case, the department head decided to censor the information.

These deletions are important since they relate to a dispute over when the provincial government decided to move the air ambulance. Both provincial Tories and the Grit opposition have tied the move  - directly or indirectly  - to last fall’s by-election in the district formerly represented by provincial Tory cabinet minister Trevor Taylor.

Taylor resigned unexpectedly last fall.  The provincial Liberals won the by-election held in October. Health care was a major issue in the by-election. In a letter to a local newspaper in the district in May, Taylor tied the by-election to the ambulance relocation.

While the Premier and health minister have denied the connection they have also hinted strongly that further protests by people in Taylor’s former district might lead to other cuts.

Paul Oram, the province’s health minister in September 2009, resigned suddenly in early October, citing ill health.

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Enviro minister of denial

Charlene Johnson, by some accounts the province’s environment minister, answering a question in the House of Assembly about a potential oil spill in Placentia Bay where tankers travel daily to a refinery and an oil storage facility:

Mr. Speaker, there is one thing that she has right, and that is that we have the jurisdiction in the Department of Environment and Conservation should the oil, in the unlikely event, that should the oil reach land then it does come under the Department of Environment and Conservation, Mr. Speaker. [Emphasis added]

And there’s no way she’d ever expropriate a polluted paper mill either.

Who ya trying to impress, Charlene?

‘Cause if it’s no one you are doing a fine job.

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Working mills versus a catastrophe

As part of its restructuring efforts, AbitibiBowater just announced the company has offloaded four mills and some other wood products plants to another company.

The new owners are excited about using the mill and the timber to make things and employ people.

Just imagine people in central Newfoundland working in the woods industry with a new company that had bought assets from AbitibiBowater.

Perish the thought.

Just imagine the mess there‘d have been if the provincial government hadn’t swooped in and seized all the stuff AbitibiBowater was ready to sell to another company just so they could create jobs with them.

Chaos, for sure.

Thank God the Old Man was brilliant enough to opt for catastrophe instead.

There are gulfs and then there are #oilspill gulfs

labradore explains in graphic detail the gulf between the Old Man’s bland assurances that such things could never happen here and what an oil spill of BP magnitude in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (centred theoretically on Old Harry or a field near it) might look like.

The Premier focused his attention on current production wells which are a couple of hundred miles offshore.

But there is another offshore that isn’t quite so far away.

Bear in mind this isn’t based on an analysis of currents and so forth.  it’s just what you get if you lay a map of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in another oil rich Gulf.

What opens, as a result, is not so much a gulf but ye olde chasm of credibility that swallows the Premier’s assurances whole.

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Harper and Williams and message control: the second parts

The second part of Canadian Press’ expose.

And for good measure, the second part of the 2006 BP series on the local version of the same idea.

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Harper and Williams share love of total message control

Steve has Message Event Proposals.

Danny just controls everything.

The first in a series by Canadian Press (h/t @stphnmaher) and a three-parter (here’s the first one) from your humble e-scribbler, circa 2006.

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Weekly Top Traffic Drivers: May 31 – June 4

1. Lower Churchill decision up in the air, indefinitely
2. The World the Old Man Lives In
3. Lower Churchill cost estimates skyrocket
4. Lower Churchill costs: now up to $14 billion and counting
5. Rumpole and the Phantom Judges
6. Like we told you:  “Lower Churchill decision…”
7. May Stat Porn
8. How not to do social media
9. The pictures tell another oil spill story
10. Physician heal thyself:  Dunderdale edition

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Famous Comments by Telegram editors

1892:  ‘I’m certainly not buying any argument the city will burn to the ground.”

1894:  ‘I’m certainly not buying any argument that the country is bankrupt.”

January 1934:  “I’m certainly not buying any argument that the country is bankrupt.”

1969:  “I am certainly not buying any argument that this is a bad deal with Hydro-Quebec.”

1988:  “I am certainly not buying any argument that this cucumber factory will be a big waste of money.”

2009:  “I’m certainly not buying any argument that government spending is unsustainable.”

2010:  “I am certainly not buying any argument that the Premier should tell us he is having heart surgery.”

2010:  “I’m certainly not buying an argument that the provincial government expropriated the mill, even by mistake.”

2010:  “I’m certainly not buying any argument that NL simply botched its case.”

Plus ca change, as they say.

The tradition continues (read the comments section).

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Oil’s down, budget pucker factor up …again

When you project an average price of oil at US$83 and forecast a billion dollar budget shortfall on that basis, having oil at US$71-ish must make the old sphincter twitch a notch tighter than it used to be.

Heaven only knows what other economic news does.

Kinda makes all that effort spent on poll goosing seem…well…a tad bit…silly.

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Physician heal thyself: Dunderdale version

Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale displaying her now-usual level of unjustified arrogance:

I advise the Leader of the Opposition to pipe down now and learn a few things. Hold your tongue and open up your ears and learn something so you can stop making a fool of yourself.

She was trying to explain something she clearly didn’t understand, namely open access tariffs for jurisdictions that sell electricity into the United States.

One thing Kath didn’t notice was a crucial part of the provincial government’s argument in front of the Quebec energy regulator. You see, the provincial government’s energy corporation argued that Hydro-Quebec Transmission didn’t follow the rules. 

And that was the sum total of their argument.

They said it.

As the Regie reported and as NALCOR’s lawyers dutifully translated the French:

[386]…NLH did not call any experts to testify on these technical questions or to contradict witness Deguire.

That’s right.  They did not present a single piece of evidence to support their claim or to refute HQT's witnesses.

Now you have to bear in mind that NALCOR’s argument on this was that HQT had failed to do a complete assessment of the five routes along which they theoretically wanted to ship power and five loads they wanted to ship using a direct current intertie as required by the open access transmission rules.  [paragraph 376]

At the last minute, just as NALCOR’s time to option a route was about to expire, they accused HQT of not doing a complete review because direct current intertie was just a NALCOR preference. [paragraph 379] HQT demonstrated pretty easily with documents signed by NALCOR officials that DC was more than just a preference and that it also made a huge amount of technical sense.

[388] NLH did not any tender [tender any?] technical evidence to contradict witness Deguire. In reply, it restricted itself to arguing that it was not required to submit evidence to establish that
the impact study was incomplete and that it sufficed to refer to the wording of section 19.3 of the OATT for a finding that the study did not contain the essential elements required by that regulatory provision.

Just saying it was supposedly good enough such that no evidence was required.

And what about when HQT was able to show that NALCOR’s argument on some points – like say the issue of DC intertie  - was more than a preference?  Well, that apparently really doesn’t require much comment either.  The foolishness of it is readily apparent.

At this point, sensible people are likely wondering not only why NALCOR was pursuing all this but who allowed the lawyers to make such a weak-assed presentation.

Well, that would be either the folks at NALCOR or folks like Kath and the Old Man or both.

Maybe the next time Kathy gets some idea about keeping mouth shut and learning something, she might want to take her own advice.

Quite frankly, that display of breathtaking incompetence in the Regie hearings has succeeded only in making the people of this province out to be complete idiots, not just mere fools.

And she’s ultimately responsible for it.

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The pictures tell another #oilspill story

Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale, as quoted in a recent Telegram editorial:

Mr. Speaker, in terms of an oil spill offshore, the greatest vulnerability will exist to the bird population.   Mr. Speaker, based on 40 to 50 years of wind study, it is shown that oil, because of the wave action and the coldness of the sea, Mr. Speaker, breaks up and disperses. ... Mr. Speaker, we had an oil spill in 2004 on the Terra Nova. Mr. Speaker, that oil dispersed, broke up, and went away. Ocean floor studies have been done, Mr. Speaker, there is no evidence of oil from that oil spill on the floor around our Terra Nova project.

From the same editorial, a quote attributed to a Chevron report on drilling in the Orphan Basin:

The report notes a spill could cause 'relatively few' to a 'very large' number of seabird deaths. But overall, it concludes a spill 'will not result in any significant residual impacts' on animals.

And when you’ve digested that, take a look at some pictures from the Gulf of Mexico.

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Very lucky indeed

The Old Man Hisself, in the House of Assembly this week, speaking of the $14.7 billion Lower Churchill project, arguably one of the most expensive hydro megaprojects on the drawing boards of North America today:

…from an economic perspective we are in a situation where we have enough information to really sit down and talk with any industrial developer at any point in time.

Yes, NALCOR is ready to talk about building this project any time at all, just as they have before now.

And just for comparison sake, from last fall, energy analyst Tom Adams has a different take:

Just as natural gas from the Mackenzie delta is now recognized as uneconomic in light of foreseeable market conditions, the factors that have driven down power prices in Northeastern North America make the economics of Lower Churchill development unviable for the foreseeable future. Newfoundlanders are lucky that Nalcor, their Crown energy company, is not out in the market the trying to sell high cost power right now. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, the people of this province are lucky indeed to have people looking after the Lower Churchill who’d be smart enough not to try and flog a project estimated at upwards of $15 billion in a depressed energy market.

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