The video - shot by a KCBS news helicopter - shows what seems to me a missile fired from the ocean offshore Los Angeles and heading out to sea.
But so far no one knows what it was.
The United States Air Force insists it didn’t launch anything from nearby Vandenberg air base and the United States Navy is also denying any launches.
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In the United States, the National Labor Relations Board is accusing a company of illegally firing an employee over a comment she made on Facebook.
From the New York Times:
The labor relations board announced last week that it had filed a complaint against an ambulance service, American Medical Response of Connecticut, that fired an emergency medical technician, accusing her, among other things, of violating a policy that bars employees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves.
Lafe Solomon, the board’s acting general counsel, said, “This is a fairly straightforward case under the National Labor Relations Act — whether it takes place on Facebook or at the water cooler, it was employees talking jointly about working conditions, in this case about their supervisor, and they have a right to do that.”
According to NYT, this looks like a straightforward case of free speech, as protected by law.
However,
employees might cross the line into unprotected territory if they disparage supervisors over something unrelated to work — for instance, a supervisor’s sexual performance — or if their statements are disloyal.
Courts often view workers’ statements as disloyal when they are defamatory and are not supported by facts. Mr. Babson cited a case upholding the firing of airline workers who held signs saying their airline was unsafe. But, he said, if employees held signs accurately saying their airline or restaurant had been cited for dozens of safety violations, that would most likely be protected.
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Premier Danny Williams is promising a Lower Churchill deal before the end of the year and one way he could finance the project is by offloading the cost onto American and Canadian taxpayers.
Some American politicians are trying to redefine state environmental subsidies that currently don’t include hydro megaprojects like the Lower Churchill. In Massachusetts, Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker not only advocated for big hydro as part of the state’s energy future, he also favoured giving big hydro projects the “renewable” status that would make them eligible for state subsidies.
According to the Boston Globe, the subsidies in Massachusetts alone could be worth as much as six cents a kilowatt hour.
Incumbent Democratic governor Deval Patrick - who won re-election last week - opposed the idea:
“It does not make sense to give renewable energy incentives to a foreign-owned enterprise for something that needs no subsidy,’’ Patrick said in a statement to the [Boston] Globe. “It would amount to a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars for Canadian ratepayers at the expense of Massachusetts customers.’’
That doesn’t mean the idea is dead in Massachusetts, though. Energy giant Hydro-Quebec is lobbying hard for the “renewable” status for its own projects. Earlier this year, the company won a battle in Vermont to make hydro eligible for subsidies. That’s all part of HQ’s push to take its share of the New England energy market from 8.5% to upwards of 12%.
Lowering the cost of Lower Churchill power by six cents a kilowatt hour could make Muskrat Falls financially viable, especially if NALCOR left the American marketing to a private sector partner and let that company keep the subsidies. NALCOR already sells power at the Quebec-New York border to Emera. Under a deal announced in 2009, the Newfoundland and Labrador company apparently gets about the same rate per kilowatt hour it got from a similar deal with Quebec that expired in 2009. Any other financial details, like profits from seasonal price fluctuations, seem to flow to the private sector. It’s hard to know for sure since details of the 2009 detail are confidential.
And while Danny Williams claimed last week he’d lay any development deal for the very expensive Muskrat Falls version of the project in front of the public, he hasn’t lived up to similar promises yet on other projects. Many of the key details of the 2007 Hebron deal remain shrouded in secrecy. Amendments to the province’s open records laws in 2008 shield the publicly owned NALCOR from disclosure of its financial dealings even though it receives public funds to run the company and its subsidiaries.
Foreign tax credits aren’t the only way NALCOR could subsidise the cost of building Muskrat Falls.
Under the most recent version of the Lower Churchill described recently by Premier Danny Williams, 40% of the power from Muskrat Falls would come to eastern Newfoundland. NALCOR’s environmental submissions on the project make it clear, however, that the island portion of the province doesn’t need the power now or in the foreseeable future. The company also plans to keep its diesel generators at Holyrood running even after it builds any new lines to the island from Labrador.
Shipping power to a part of the province that doesn’t need it would give the public utilities board the legal basis to offset any losses from sales to Nova Scotia or into Quebec by offloading them on local ratepayers. That’s because provincial laws require that the public utilities board to set rates that protect NALCOR’s financial position from its entire operations. But that rate-setting power only applies to domestic rates. PUB doesn’t regulate export prices. By using Lower Churchill power in the province – even when it isn’t needed - NALCOR could use local ratepayers to subsidise power exports.
Taxpayers could get hit another way on the deal as well. Any NALCOR debt for the project – likely to be at least $6.0 billion – will wind up on the balance sheet of the provincial government, one of the most indebted provincial governments in Canada on a per capita basis.
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Texas governor Rick Perry won re-election without relying on conventional news media.
Perry shunned editorial board meetings, for example. Those are sit-down sessions with the entire editorial staff. It’s a traditional way to garner an endorsement and that is traditionally seen as a key part of any major political campaign.
The reason is pretty simple politics:
Mike Baselice, Perry's highly skilled pollster, acknowledged Wednesday at a public forum sponsored by The Texas Tribune that the campaign asked primary voters in Texas whether a newspaper endorsement would make them more or less likely to vote for Perry. Only 6 percent said an endorsement would make them more likely to support Perry, while an eye-popping 37 percent said it would make them less likely (56 percent said it made no difference).
In other words, for all the energy conventional thinking would have you put into sucking up to editors, the average Texas voter didn’t really give a rat’s derriere one way or the other. And with almost 40% taking an endorsement as a bad thing, that pretty much clinched the deal.
Predictably the news media slagged Perry. That only increased his standing in the eyes of voters, especially the 37% who said they would look unfavourably on a candidate who had a news media endorsement of any kind.
Perry also didn’t do the usual things associated with a conventional campaign, like lawn signs or direct mail. Instead, his campaign used social media, paid television and “field operations” – face-to-face work by campaign volunteers.
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Gordon Campbell resigned suddenly last week as Premier of British Columbia. Campbell’s been under considerable political pressure resulting fro introduction of the harmonized sales tax in the province.
The Globe this weekend is taking a look at the impact not only of Campbell’s departure but the abrupt way he left the political stage. The quote Bob Plecas, a former Campbell advisor:
Any serious contender to replace Mr. Campbell, whose unpopular harmonized sales tax has crippled the party, would have to be free to differentiate himself or herself from the current policies, he added.
“But what he’s asking them to do is stay on the Titanic and keep rowing,” Mr. Plecas said.
It’s not exactly the same situation at the other end of the country. Campbell left suddenly and pretty much unexpectedly. Danny Williams, by contrast, has already made it abundantly clear he’s in the later stages of his political career in this province.
In fact, Williams first talked about quitting politics in late 2006. Not surprisingly, one of the things he was moaning about at the time was the weight of the office he volunteered for. The backstory on his winter and spring full of discontent, at the time, probably had much more to do with the collapse of Hebron talks and revelations about gross overspending and criminal activity in the House of Assembly, some of which continued until 2006, rather than any real annoyance with the life in the political goldfish bowl.
Fast forward four years.
Williams’ most recent version of the 12 minute rant at every Goldstein he could think of seemed to be much more about his frustration with the Lower Churchill, the budget and other matters than about liberals and the media. After all, he finished up by urging people not to pay attention to the “bullshit”. That would be, of course, the same “bullshit” he just spent 12 minutes obsessing about.
Doesn’t make sense, does it?
Not really.
Then again, it seldom does.
Maybe he was offering excuses for failure.
“Imagine how much I could do…” or whatever the exact words were. Your humble e-scribbler has made the same point many times before. Maybe a lot more would get done if only the current administration didn’t spend so much time - and public money - manipulating public opinion or obsessing about the three people in a coffee shop in Deer Lake who muttered misdemeanour words about the Old Man.
Maybe Williams was just venting his considerable frustration - yet again - again with the job he volunteered for and that no one is forcing him to keep. It’s just that those outbursts seem to be coming a bit more frequently lately. His last Great Whine Session was in August, the last polling period.
As these bitch sessions seem to come closer and closer together, it seems appropriate to wonder how and when exactly Williams will finally give us all the wave from the Cessna door as he heads off to Florida more or less permanently.
Will he go before October 2011 or has his caucus roped him into one last kick at the cat? What happens if the polls shift and it looks like he won’t reclaim the seats he has right now let alone score all of them? Danny Williams hardly seems like the kind of guy who would stick around and settle for being in exactly the same spot again. He needs to go for something bigger. But what happens if he couldn’t hope to sweep all 48 seats in the House?
Will he struggle along and wait until 2013 or 2014 before pulling pin? Will he give plenty of lead time and hang around while his successors duke it out or will he pull a Campbell and walk out one fine January afternoon?
No matter what happens, we know that Danny Williams is in the final stages of his political career. Go back to April and you can see a list of some of the contenders and pretenders to the throne who are already campaigning for his job. Maybe it’s time to think now about how he will finally slide out of his current job and when.
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Crude oil finished the week on a high, with Brent coming closer to US$90 a barrel than at any time since October 2008.
That’s good.
Right?
Well, maybe.
Certainly, in the short run it brings in some extra cash. The provincial government low-balled production estimates in the spring budget but the actual production level only offset prices below the forecast average of US$83. in the end, the forecast oil revenue will likely not be far off the actual budget projection of $2.1 billion.
Don’t be surprised if it is more like $2.5 billion. if that’s the case, then the current budget is the first one in a long while where the provincial government gave figures that were close to the actuals.
Unfortunately, the budget forecast a cash deficit of around $900 million.
Two things will help bring that number down. First, production at Voisey’s Bay – even allowing for a strike – might start pushing government’s mining royalty back up to where it was before the recession.
Second, and perhaps most likely, the provincial government could be way off in its capital works spending. This is – you will recall – a government that has a real problem getting the job done. If someone could come up with a little blue pill for it, these guys would buy it by the container load. We are talking projects announced in one year, forecast to end in a couple and they only get around to tendering the thing at the end of the two years. Delays and massive cost over-runs are routine.
Things would be a lot clearer if the provincial finance minister issued a mid-year financial update in September as he should. That’s halfway through the fiscal year. As it is, he will say something in December. If last year is any indication, he’ll toss a load of sheer bullshit into the public mix in the hopes of keeping people lined up at the counter spending cash for Christmas.
The we just have to keep an eye on crude prices. Oil is still the biggest revenue source the provincial government has. Things are fine as long as oil stays where it is now. But when the markets can show an eight dollar a barrel increase in as many days, they can equally show a drop if the factors come together in the right way.
If the provincial government plans to unleash a year of election spending at the same time as the markets start to sort themselves out, this could prove to be a very interesting year indeed, right up to the next provincial election.
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‘In Newfoundland politics,” wrote Bill Rowe, “you haven’t lost your political virginity unless you’ve knifed your own party in the back and crossed the floor of the House of Assembly at least once.”
At the time he wrote that – 1984 – Rowe was a lawyer, columnist, radio show host and the author of the splendidly titled Clapp’s Rock and The Temptation of Victor Gallanti. he was also the former leader of the provincial Liberals, a job he lost in the wake of a political scandal involving leaked police reports.
In 1985, Rowe tried to run for Brian Peckford’s Conservatives. He lost the nomination fight.
In 1993, he carried the Liberal banner in the provincial general election and got a solid drubbing by the local Conservative candidate.
Fast forward a decade. Conservative Danny Williams tried to lure Rowe back into politics as a Conservative. Rowe held out for an appointment to a job as Williams’ personal ambassador to Hy’s. He took up the job in 2004 and held it for a few months before packing it in to return to St. John’s.
Rowe is now touring the country, incidentally, flogging what is purported to be an insider’s account of things he was outside the room for during that brief sojourn on the Rideau. According to reports, the mainlanders are lapping it up. The softcover book has hit the Globe and Mail’s hardcover best-seller list.
You could not make this stuff up if you tried.
One of his regular talk show callers these past few years has been a decent fellow named George Murphy. He has garnered some local notoriety for his ability to forecast retail gasoline prices with some accuracy. Murphy is a staunch supporter of the government’s gas price-fixing scheme, among other things.
Murphy’s gained some extra notoriety lately by being the latest local politician to carry on the fine tradition of crossing the floor to the other side. Murphy very loudly and very publicly renounced the Liberal party and headed for the New Democrats. Murphy was cross that the Liberals did not hire him for a job, picking instead Craig Westcott, a journalist of some considerable experience who did a bit of work for the provincial Conservatives and whose only foray as a candidate was for the Harper Conservatives in opposition to Danny Williams’ Family Feud in 2008.
So far only one local journalist - Telegram editor Brian Jones - has accurately captured the essence of former Liberal Murphy’s current position, that of New Democratic candidate in a by-election likely to be called next week for a seat formerly held by the Conservatives:
…Murphy didn’t like it that a Tory became a Grit, so he bolted. Murphy, a former Liberal, is now an NDPer.
He is seeking support from NDP members to win the party’s candidacy in the upcoming byelection in the district of Conception Bay East-Bell Island.
But by Murphy’s own logic, NDP rank-and-filers should be aghast. A former Liberal is tainting their pure gene pool, as it were.
Perhaps Murphy knows something the rest of us don’t — that changing parties is unacceptable for some people, i.e., Westcott, but entirely acceptable for others, i.e., himself.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I’ve read that Telegram story three times and I’m still left thinking, let me get this straight…
You could not make this stuff up if you tried.
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No, folks, this is not a summary of Cecil Haire’s morning traffic reports on CBC Radio.
But something is going on all the same. Traffic in the past couple of weeks is up. It’s currently running at 18% higher than the same time last month.
Here are the Top 10 stories, as determined by what people are reading:
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You can find the Premier’s remarks at the annual Conservative Party fundraiser online at cbc.ca/nl.
He’s been down this road many times before but never this intensely. And he finishes by telling us how much money the government spent.
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The 2008 report on schools from the provincial education department is a wealth of useful information on one of the most important government service areas.
Chapter 10 is about school leavers. In light of the Statistics Canada report on drop-outs, it’s worth taking a closer look at the way the drop-out rate dropped in this province.
As we know from the Statistics Canada report, 19.9% of young people dropped out of school in Newfoundland and Labrador, on average, in the three years 1991-1993. By 1996, that figure had declined to 16.7%.
By 2006, that number was down to 8.9%. The rate was lower in 2003, continued downward for the next two years and then jumped up in 2006. The current rate - 7.4% - is actually about what the rate was in 2005. The table is taken from the provincial government report.
Media reports indicate that a higher percentage of males than females dropped out in this province in 2009 (103% versus 6.6%). That’s a change from a decade and more ago when the male rate was dramatically higher. According to CBC, “while rates have declined for both sexes, the rate of decrease was faster for men, narrowing the gap between the two.”
The provincial education department has another statistic, though. It compares rural versus urban rates of school-leaving. Here’s the provincial government table comparing the rates for all provinces and for the country as a whole.
This sort of statistic doesn’t bode well for economic development in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. And it doesn’t get any better when one considers the trend in the Eastern district, for example, that shows those graduating high school in rural areas are more likely than urban students to leave with a general pass. n other words, they aren’t necessarily more likely to enter post-secondary education or training.
If a provincial government could only focus on one area in order to produce economic and social benefits to individuals and to the community as a whole, improving educational performance would be it.
Now it is interesting to pick up on comments on the other post on this report. Both noted the possible influence of the cod moratorium in 1992 on the decline. On the face of it, the answer seems to be that the moratorium did influence the rate. Young people in rural areas, especially males, tended to leave school since they could make a living in the fishery or other similar work with a limited education. Without the cod fishery they might have stayed in school.
Maybe.
The idea is worth exploring but the answer is likely to be more complex. Don’t forget that about 70,000 left Newfoundland and Labrador in the aftermath of the moratorium. While the drop-out rate declined dramatically in the period between 1993 and 2005, the persistence of a high drop-out rate in rural Newfoundland suggests there might be other factors at work.
Still, these numbers bear further consideration.
Especially considering the literacy and numeracy rates in the province.
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As labradore has it, the panel conducting the environmental reviewing the Lower Churchill project is asking NALCOR - the provincial government’s energy company - to submit a raft of new documentation now that the Premier has decided to completely revise the project.
Not surprising.
Not surprising at all.
Nor would it be surprising to find that both the panel and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency are privately spitting nickels in frustration at the twists and turns they’ve gone through to deal with this project.
Last January, the panel explained to NALCOR that the company’s submissions up to that point didn’t justify the project, as presented. You got it. NALCOR could not justify the project. They also couldn’t demonstrate things like the claimed greenhouse gas emission reductions. That’s because they don’t have any customers to show how the hydro juice will actually displace fossil fuels used in electricity generation anywhere on the planet.
NALCOR spent eight months - until August 2010 - revising and revamping stuff, sending it along to the panel and then out to the interested parties for detailed review.
The Innu picked up on the fact that NALCOR and the provincial government were now substantially revising the project – the smaller dam and a whole new transmission routing – and said exactly that in their response filed with the environmental review panel.
Based on the Premier’s comments at the end of October, the panel had to get the whole thing sorted in order to comply with the panel’s terms of reference. Specifically, they are asking NALCOR to document:
a. Changes to the project description, construction (including schedule) and operation;
b. Transmission interconnection lines;
c. Changes to accommodation facilities;
d. New cost estimates;
e. New socio-economic data and timing, particularly employment, work scheduling approach, labour requirements, goods and services;
f. Changes to reservoir clearing and impoundment and validity of model results (mercury, flow, ice modeling, etc.);
g. Harmful alteration, disruption and destruction of fish habitat and implications for the proposed Fish Habitat Compensation Plan;
h. Potential aquatic and terrestrial impacts;
i. Traditional land use and Aboriginal issues;
j. Any other relevant information.
This is going to take another year or two, at least and the whole review is going to get way more interesting.
The project the panel has right now consists entirely of two dams and a connection back to Churchill Falls so the power can head out through Quebec. The line to Soldier’s Pond, near St. John’s is entirely within the province so that isn’t part of the federal review. But that’s it. All that NALCOR is pushing is the same project Brian Tobin pushed in 1998.
Until now, the line to Nova Scotia simply didn’t exist except as a political throw-away line. Events of the past two months have changed all that. If NALCOR really intends to ship power to Nova Scotia – as discussed just within the past week - they will now have to lay that on the table, in detail. There will also be new interested parties looking for a say in what happens in the line from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia and then maybe in whatever connections will happen in New Brunswick. An already complex project just got a whole lot more complex.
Don’t forget that this project was supposed to be under construction right at this moment. NALCOR was supposed to sanction it in 2009.
This latest bad news comes on top of other setbacks and a reminder of the biggest inconvenient truth about the legendary project. Substantial chunks of the Innu community aren’t happy with the project. And if that weren’t enough, an analyst at the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council thinks the province needs to get its fiscal house in order before thinking of adding at least $6.0 billion to the public debt load.
But perhaps the biggest setback of all for Danny Williams’ plan was one entirely of his own making. After rejecting a proposal to develop the deal with Hydro-Quebec and Ontario Hydro, Williams then spent five years - entirely in secret - trying to get HQ to take an equity stake in the project. He even offered to set aside his political commitment that he would only sign a Lower Churchill deal if HQ provided redress for the 1969 contract. HQ just wasn’t interested: they’d already moved on to other big projects.
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The opposition leader makes a splash with a simple call for earlier breast cancer screening for women.
The cabinet minister issues a long-winded news release reciting all the stuff his department is doing about breast cancer.
And it predictably finishes with a recitation of how much money the current administration has spent.
Which one was more effective?
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The Government of Ontario is creating 75 scholarships aimed at attracting top graduate students to Ontario universities.
Meanwhile, in another province, the university not only faces declining enrolment but also a freeze on funding for graduate students thanks - apparently - to some management cock-ups rather clumsily spun as a good thing.
On the upside, the provincial government’s research and development corporation announced on Wednesday it would provide funding over three years to support work by eight doctoral, 12 masters and two bachelors students at Memorial University.
“World-class research is at the heart of Memorial University and I’m delighted that 22 of our students have received RDC’s Ocean Industries Student Research Awards,” said Dr. Christopher Loomis, Vice-President (Research), Memorial University. “Graduate students are an essential part of Memorial’s research success. The competitive funding provided by this scholarship program will enable them to conduct research that is important to Memorial University and critical to the future prosperity of the province.”
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In his battle against Reform-based Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper over Equalization, Reform-based Conservative Party leader Danny Williams didn’t have any political friends left.
Not surprisingly, Williams failed.
Ditto, the family Feud, known to some as the ABC campaign.
Senior political reporter and columnist Chantal Hebert made the point rather bluntly in her column in the Wednesday Toronto Star:
At the federal-provincial table, Williams is ultimately a loner.
You can see that very point as far back as October 2004. Remember the famous storm-out? Well, let’s just say it had less to do with negotiations and more to do with a potential dressing down from other Premiers who had finally cottoned on to the federal transfer deal Williams was trying to finagle.
By contrast, though, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall just got Stephan Harper’s Conservatives to turn down a hostile take-over bid by BHP of Potash Corporation.
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The drop-out rate for Newfoundland young people reached 7.4% between 2007 and 2010, according to Statistics Canada, down from an average of 19.9% in the period between 1991 and 1993.
The rate fell most dramatically in the period between 1993 and 2005 when the rate fell from 19.9% to between 8% and 10%.
That’s also the period when Newfoundland and Labrador eliminated denominationally-based education. Prior to educational reform under the Liberal administrations of Clyde Wells and later Brian Tobin, control of education as divided among seven Christian denominations.
The provincial government eliminated denominational education in 1997 following two referenda. In the second vote, an overwhelming majority of those holding educational rights voted to abolish the system.
Education has a smaller share of the current provincial budget than it was in 1995.
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An analyst with the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council told a conference in St. John’s that the provincial government “has to get its fiscal house in order” before it makes an investment in any version of the Lower Churchill energy megaproject.
Fred Bergman said the province’s net debt to gross domestic product ratio remains among the highest in Canada at 41%.
Bergman is quoted by the Telegram [page four story, Wednesday November 3, not on line] as saying:
“Get your fiscal house in order, get your debt-to-GDP ratio down, get your budget balanced and then you can afford to tackle something like that.”
The Williams administration ran a half billion cash deficit in 2009 and budgeted for a $900 million cash shortfall in 2010. Budget projections released in spring 2010 do not include any forecast for balanced budgets.
Finance minister Tom Marshall has previously consistently rejected balanced budget legislation.
In its various configurations, the Lower Churchill project could cost anywhere from $6.0 billion to $14 billion.
The following charts show the provincial government’s liabilities and net debt. The vertical axis is in millions of Canadian dollars.
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Related: “The Fragile Economy: staying the course”
The federal government couldn’t impose a ban on offshore drilling in the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore area unless the provincial government agreed, according to briefing notes for the federal natural resources minister obtained by PostMedia.
Under the 1985 Atlantic Accord, such a decision would require the agreement of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. A federal-provincial agreement with Nova Scotia contains similar provisions. In the absence of such an agreement, the Government of Canada has reportedly entered into informal talks with other coastal provinces where offshore drilling could take place.
Newfoundland and Labrador is also different from other provinces in that its provincial jurisdiction does not end at the low water mark. Under the 1949 Terms of Union, the provincial government governs the same territory as it did prior to Confederation. Court decisions have upheld the view that this extends to three miles offshore, the territorial sea limit recognised internationally in 1949. As a result, the provincial government in newfoundland and Labrador has exclusive jurisdiction on offshore drilling within three miles of the shoreline.
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Related: Drill, baby! Drill! – Dunderdale rebuffs concerns about border, offshore oil spills
