What you can see at the horse race…

Horse race polls are the heights of political journalism* in some circles despite the fact they tell very little about what is happening in voters’ heads.

But since this is all there is, let’s look at the latest Corporate Research Associates poll and see what it tells us.

The provincial Conservatives are at 40% of respondents down from 44% in May.  The New Democrats are at 18%, up from 15% and the Liberals remain at 16%.  Undecideds are up to 26% from 23% in May.

The Liberals and NDP have swapped places but all of the changes are well within the polls horrendous margin of error of plus or minus 4.9%.

For those unfamiliar with the numbers, what you just got was the CRA numbers adjusted as a percentage of poll respondents, not as the very misleading percentage of decideds that CRA uses.

Let’s try some observations:

• All that Tory poll goosing – unprecedented in volume and timed to match CRA’s polling exactly – was a complete waste of time.
• You can also put the jack boots to any suggestion that the NDP had a Jack Boost and are on their way to replacing the Liberals as the official opposition. The Dipper torque machine will be in hyper drive but this is really nothing to write home about…yet.  The local NDP still have not produced the kinds of polling numbers you’d need to see in order to confirm any switching to the Orange as the leading opposition party.
• The Liberals experienced no change despite having a new leader for the entire polling period and attracting consistent news coverage for a week or so beforehand.  This poll should be a massive wake-up call for them. The only question at this point is whether or not they will hit the snooze button.

Now let’s try something a bit more complicated.

Even if you accept CRA polls, we know that there’s been a fairly steady slide away from the Tories for most of past 18 months.  Since Danny left, the slide stopped, reversed course and carried on downward again. 

We also know that CRA polling seems to pick up about 15 to 20 percentage points for the Tories that doesn’t show up at the polls.  Their Liberal and NDP numbers seem to be spot on or close enough for government work.

So here’s where the fun can start.  Shave 15 to 20 points off the stated Conservative number in the adjusted CRA poll results and you start to see Tory support down around 25% in May and 20% in August.

You can tell the Conservatives are edgy because of the orgy of politicking with public money they’ve all been doing.  Kathy Dunderdale has been campaigning already in areas where the Tories are perceived as being weak, namely the Burin Peninsula and central Newfoundland.  The Tories don’t have a lock on things in several places in the province and they know it.

So just for the heck of it, let’s imagine what might happen if the CRA results we see in August are pretty much what turns out in October.

Here’s one scenario run through an amazing, colossal supercomputing vote-a-tron machine kept hidden at a secret location, and offered here purely for entertainment purposes.

Using these most recent, corrected CRA results, you could still have the Tories forming a comfortable majority of more than 34 seats and as many as 37.  The Liberals would pick up seven or eight and the NDP could win as many as three or four.

Bay of Islands, Humber Valley, Isles of Notre Dame and Torngat Mountains would swing Liberal in that scenario.  The NDP could pick up Burin-Placentia West and Labrador West.

There could be close races in Grand Falls/Windsor-Buchans, Lake Melville, Placentia and St. Mary’s, St. Barbe and St. John’s East.

There’s still a long way to go before polling day and lots can change between now and then.  Voters appear to be ripe for a significant change.  Too bad none of the parties are offering one.

Just remember:  in the scenario we just walked through, the number of people staying home rather than voting would be at a historic high level.  No political party in Newfoundland and Labrador could crow about that.

Horse race polls - as they are normally used -  are no fun.

But if you look beyond the normal, all sorts of amusing things suddenly appear.

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Ya gotta chuckle update: CBC’s lede is classic:

The governing Tories are holding a strong lead heading into October's election, while the NDP is challenging the Liberals for second place, a new poll shows.

Gal-o-war is way out in front and Townie Pride is nose and nose with Western Boy for second.

Total crap, of course.

Like this line later on that adds more turds to the total crap offered up front:

The fact that the NDP, not the Liberals, are in second place appears to set the stage for a competition for the Opposition.

That would be true if it wasn’t for the fact that it is false.  The only way such a proposition floats is if having the second biggest number of decided respondents to a CRA poll question actually translates into seats.

It doesn’t, but that obviously isn’t important.  Twenty-four is bigger than 22 so the NDP must be in second and challenging for official opposition status.

To make matters much worse, CBC misrepresents CRA’s quarterly advertising poll as a tracking poll.  It isn’t. Tracking polls are repeated much more frequently than once every three months.  They are averaged over time to give a moving picture of trends.  As that 1998 link to a CNN piece notes, a daily tracker will show fluctuations for specific events on a daily basis.  A weekly tracking poll will wipe out some of those daily blips to show longer trending.

CRA’s poll once every three months, with only three questions and with a margin of error that borders on the laughable tells you very little worthwhile. In 2007, CRA missed the vote result for the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points.

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We can always sell it…

You can tell the gang pushing Muskrat falls are having trouble meeting the arguments against their scheme to jack up power rates and the public debt.

They are now talking about selling it off.

Yes, you got that right.

Selling it off.

Someone named T.E. Bursey wrote an opinion piece for the Telegram that appeared last Saturday.  He wrote:

Others have complained our portion of the $6.2 billion cost will add significantly to our public debt, which is true, but what is not mentioned is the financial community consider hydro assets to have a long-term resalable value in addition to revenue generation.

Now for starters, T.E. Bursey talks about “our portion” of the debt.  The taxpayers of the province are on the hook for the whole shooting match, give or take. Given the likelihood of massive cost over-runs, $6.2 billion would be the very smallest amount taxpayers of the province will owe.

But look at that bit at the end.

Long-term resalable value.

T.E. Bursey thinks Muskrat Falls is a wonderful idea, so wonderful in fact that if it turns out to be a gigantic bust we can hock it.

After all that’s the only reason you’d consider selling it again.

Or, in the way T.E. Bursey is talking about it here, if the provincial government and Nalcor couldn’t keep up the payments on the Great White Retirement Elephant, the creditors could hock it and get their cash back.

Oh yeah.

Selling it off in the event we went bankrupt.

There’s a thought to warm your heart.

Sounds familiar though.

Someone very famous talked about fattening up Nalcor and then selling off the assets for cash.  He said it April 2008 in the House of Assembly but the local media didn’t report that for the rest of the world to know:

…This particular government wants to strengthen Hydro, wants to make it a very valuable corporation: a corporation that will ultimately pay significant dividends back to the people of this Province; a corporation that perhaps some day may have enough value in its assets overall as a result of the Hebron deal and the White Rose deal, possible Hibernia deal, possible deals on gas, possible deals on oil refineries and other exploration projects, where hopefully we might be able to sell it some day and pay off all the debt of this Province, and that would be a good thing.

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Election 2011 and the Resource Curse

During the current provincial election you are going to hear a lot about natural resources and the need to spend the money that comes from it on all sorts of things.

The province’s New Democrats wasted no time in bitching that oil money isn’t being poured into rural Newfoundland and Labrador:

"We have to have a plan in rural Newfoundland to make sure that our fishery is maintained as the backbone of rural communities," she said.

The Dippers are also hopped up on spending the cash on education, mostly likely to help Nova Scotians get a cheaper education.

Of course, the province’s Conservatives have been on a spending spree these past couple of years.  They’ve dropping dropping money on everything anything from road paving to hockey rinks.

The provincial Liberals are on much the same sort of kick, especially for the fishery. All three parties want to take over federal responsibilities like the dozen or so jobs at a coast guard marine rescue call centre.  The local pols want to buy the jobs just to keep them in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In fact, if you look at most major issues in the province, the only disagreement among the three parties is how much is enough to spend.  On any given issue and any given day, the incumbent Tories will announce cash for something.  The other two parties will scream:  “not enough!”

Democracy Watch: Duff’s guff #nlpoli

Let’s get it simply stated up front:  Democracy Watch is the most inappropriately named organization on the planet, bar none.

They don’t watch for one thing.

And on the specific issue of fixed election dates in some provinces, they are bitching about something, for some unexplained reason but it evidently has frig all to do with democracy.

Here’s the quote you’ll find in a CBC story on the Prince Edward island election.  it’s Duff Conacher, the guy who founded Democracy Watch:

"There's no good reason to have it so early in the fall. It also gives an advantage to the ruling party because it allows the ruling party to, sort of, come off a summer when people aren't really paying attention and get right into a campaign and have it over before people really have a chance to determine whether they want to question the ruling party's ongoing governing."

The Canadian Press story elaborates a bit:

The group says the elections should be set back to the last Monday in October or even early November.

It says parents busy getting children settled in school in September have little time to participate in election campaigns or even pay them much attention.

University students are also tied up in September and may have difficulty establishing residency at their school location until later in October, which keeps them from voting.

Voter turn-out and people getting involved in campaigns has been a problem for years.  Long before fixed election dates.

And the idea that Mom can’t think about anything as important  as an election in October because the kids are back in school the first week of September is just laughably silly.

Establishing residency ain’t a problem either.  Elections offices in the country have had rules in place for decades to handle the thousands of people who move in between elections, fixed date or moveable feast.

If Duff Conacher has a problem with fixed election dates, he needs to go back to the drawing board and figure out what the real problem is.

One of the real problems he might consider is that Duff doesn’t actually talk about problems with democracy across Canada.  Take a look at the Democracy Watch website.  Search for “newfoundland and labrador” or any combination of the words.  Duff’s taken a few e-mails about the shenanigans going on in these quarters over the past decade so he ought to know what’s been going on.

Not a peep from D-watch.

You can hear the crickets chirping and there are no crickets in Newfoundland and Labrador, at least on the island.

No Duff Conacher either.

Not a peep about the ludicrous changes to the provincial election laws in 2004 that created, among other things, a situation where people can vote when there is no election and where independent candidates are disenfranchised.

Not even a whisper when the premier of the province muses aloud about the need to wipe out free speech in the province’s legislatures.

Nothing that Duff Conacher moaned about to the media this weekend is an issue caused by or made worse by having a fixed election in October.

Duff’s out there about fixed election dates, but basically all he is saying is pure guff.

And maybe if he spoke up about real problems affecting democracy across the country, people might take this more seriously.

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The Politics of Cynicism: even worse than thought edition #nlpoli

If they accidentally accumulate enough credits to a form a government after the next election, the provincial New Democrats will keep taxing small business income at 14%.

What the provincial party announced last week was a very small reduction in the rate that applies only on the first $500,000 of business income.

So what was dishonestly torqued as a 25% reduction (a one percentage point reduction from four percent to three percent)  solely to make the policy appear to be much more significant that it was is actually even worse for what the release did not include.

Just to add to the crass manipulation the New Democrats engaged in last week, consider New Democrat candidate Gerry Rogers’ words at  the news conference announcing the NDP’s small business policy. 

Here’s the version from the Telegram:

“Absolutely, it’s important for the NDP to be seen as pro-business,” Rogers said.

“I think the NDP is clearly pro-business, pro-development, but only in as much as it’s good for all the people of the country.”

Yes, important “to be seen as”.

But not as important to actually be, it seems.

People wonder how the New Democrats would pay for the cut.  truth is they wouldn’t have to.  If the local economy grows at the optimistic rates forecast by some people – and business income grows along with it -  small business will fork over as much or more when they pay 14% on amounts over $500,000.

So what would a real small business policy look like?

Well, if tax cuts are your thing, you could increase the amount of income covered by the lowest rate.  Apply the four percent rate to the first $750,000 or even first million of small business income.

That would be a real tax cut, not the charade the Dippers offered last week.

Reduce red tape.  Don’t just engage in the charade the Tories did over the past seven years.  Seriously reduce the weight of unnecessary regulation.  The fishery is probably one of the finest examples of an industry almost breaking down under the weight of completely useless paperwork and restrictions.

The current system reduces thousands of people in the province to little better than wage slavery and perpetual dependence on government hand-outs to make a very meagre living.  Your humble e-scribbler highlighted that idea, among others,  a few months ago:

The third idea is for the provincial government to abolish processing licenses with the elaborate red tape restrictions that go with it.  The current system helps to keep too many people and too many plants working in an industry featuring low wages, limited capital for investment and with no prospect that new workers will enter the industry to keep it going.

The Dippers couldn’t do that, of course, since it would seriously shag up the fisheries union on which the NDP depends for so much support.  Since the provincial NDP is basically the political arm of the province’s unions, with a few other people along for the ride, there’s no way they could make a meaningful change to help everyday  people every day, whether they are workers or small business owners.

But the NDP will issue news releases that make it seem like they would to something.

Because, after all, it is important for politicians to be seen to be [insert the phony value of the moment here].

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BNL and BBT at ComiCon 2010

The Big Bang Theory Labour Day marathon is about to start!

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Looking beyond normal

labradore wasted no time in converting the numbers from Friday’s editorial in the Telegram into a chart to show the number of money announcements issued by the provincial government in each week in August for the past four years.

The Telegram editorial uses these numbers to refute Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s claim that:

“There’s nothing going on here now that hasn’t gone on every year since we’ve brought down a budget, no matter who formed the government,..”

She made the comment.  They counted the news releases.  Way more, finds the Telegram, so therefore “liar, liar pants on fire.”

Or words to that effect.

In defence of Kathy Dunderdale, there is nothing that her provincial Conservatives did in August 2011 that is different in kind from anything the provincial Conservatives did in any other one of the four polling months each year since 2004..

The fact that there are more money announcements in 2011 is really much ado about nothing.  Sure the whole thing is so outrageous in August 2011 that the local media couldn’t ignore it any more, but other than that this is just another Tory poll-goosing month.

And the fact this is an election year doesn’t really make the Dunderdale version stand out.  Scroll back through the archives list of these e-scribblers for the summer of 2007.

Summer of Love.  On August 18, your humble e-scribbler note that the Tories seemed to be inventing excuses to issue happy-news releases.  25 additional campsites at a provincial park, for example.

Toward the end of July 2007, you’ll find a post about the spate of announcements comparing July to previous Julys:

Note, however, that cash announcement in the 25 days of July 2007 already done are already at the same level of 2004 and they are double those of 2005 and almost quadruple those of 2006.

The post starts off with a quote from Danny Williams that will look awfully familiar:

Flanked by two Progressive Conservative candidates in Bay Roberts, Premier Danny Williams told reporters on Wednesday that what government has been doing over the past couple of weeks is just government "carrying on business."

What really stands out in the Telegram figures is the big jump in 2010 and the larger jump in 2011. Poll goosing and the pre-election impetus – the Telegram’s point – are just penetrating insights into the stunningly obvious. Something else is going on.

It’s the trending that shows up when you look beyond the polls as most people misinterpret them. In May this year, your humble e-scribbler pointed out that the Tory polling numbers have been slipping pretty significantly.

This chart shows CRA polling as a percentage of actual respondents not of “decideds”.  That second hard point from the right shows the results of last August’s jump in cash announcements.  And the reason for it is the slide the quarter before.

But then look what happened over the next three months before Danny Williams left abruptly.

Big slide.

And in the months since then, the Tories have continued to slide downward.

They were at a point in May where losing a raft of seats in October looked like a very real possibility.  As noted around these parts last May, if the trends continued the Tories would be even weaker in August.  The leader numbers could also continue their downward trend to the point where all three party leaders shared the same distinct lack of interest from voters.

So if you were the incumbent party headed into an election with public support apparently weakening,  you’d pretty much be guaranteed to do the only political thing you know how to do:  take as many spending announcements as you can type up and e-mail them out to try desperately to stop the spiral in the polls.

As far as Kathy Dunderdale and her crowd are concerned this is normal.  For the rest of us, though, you have to look a little beyond the obvious to figure out why their “normal”  is even more “normal” than usual.

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Traffic Flow: August 29 – September 2, 2011

1. Robots in dead heat (poll goosing)
2. NL ratepayers to carry full load for Muskrat falls plus more
3. The Politics of Cynicism, NDP style
4. Uniting the Left:  a reminder
5. Nalcor royalties:  yet more information
6. Muskrat Falls:  lost opportunity
7. Court docket now online
8. Paving the way (political donations by paving companies)
9. Political Reporting 2011
10. About SRBP

 

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Grand Riverkeepers call Joint Review Panel Report “victory” for Labradorians

 

From the Grand Riverkeepers news release:

HAPPY VALLEY-GOOSE BAY, LABRADOR, NL – “The Review Panel’s report reflects what we have been saying all along,” said Clarice Blake Rudkowski, president of Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. “The Lower Churchill project does not make economic sense, and environmentally, it’s simply and clearly too destructive.”

“Labrador doesn’t want this project, and Newfoundland doesn’t need it” says Grand Riverkeeper Roberta Frampton Benefiel. “Given the high transmission costs, the initial cost of Muskrat Falls power on the Island will be just as high as Holyrood, and the cost will keep going up for decades.” She added that there are almost certainly better alternatives, including conservation, on-Island wind, and other options, including offshore gas to fuel Holyrood for backup. “As the Panel pointed out, Nalcor sees the project as an end in itself, so it has never really looked for alternatives,” she said.

The Panel looked in detail at the justification for the project, alternatives to it and the many environmental concerns raised by participants in the public hearings. It found that “Nalcor’s analysis that showed Muskrat Falls to be the best and least cost way to meet domestic demand requirements is inadequate,” prompting it to call for a formal financial review and an independent analysis of alternatives before the project could proceed.

In its report, the Panel determined that the Project would have several significant adverse environmental effects, and concluded that Nalcor did not carry out a full assessment of the fate of mercury in the downstream environment. It stated that, in the event of dam failure, Nalcor “should assume liability” for all personal and financial losses, regardless of cause. And it concluded that, if alternative ways of meeting Newfoundland’s electricity needs in a way that is economically viable and environmentally and socially responsible, the Muskrat Falls project as proposed should not be permitted to proceed.

Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. participated in all of the Panel’s hearings in the province and, along with other members, made 21 separate submissions. It engaged several experts, including Philip Raphals of the Helios Centre, an expert in energy policy, to analyze the need, justification and economics of the proposal. The Review Panel retained many of his findings and recommendations concerning the inadequacy of the analysis presented and need for careful assessment of alternate supply strategies for Newfoundland. As well, our scientific advisors successfully challenged many of Nalcor’s assertions.

Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. calls on Nalcor and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to respect the Panel’s findings and follow its recommendations. Specifically:

• It calls upon Nalcor to modify the Project in response to the 70 + recommendations concerning the biological and social environment;
• It calls upon the Government to consult with stakeholders, including both supporters and opponents of the Project, as to the best way to proceed with the independent financial and alternatives assessment that the Panel called for, before governments decide on whether or not the project should proceed; and
• It calls upon the Provincial Government, Newfoundland Labrador Hydro, Newfoundland Power and the Public Utilities Board to move forward with implementing an Integrated Resource Planning framework within the province, as called for by the Panel.

Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. first came together as a concerned citizens group in 1998 to challenge plans for a mega hydro dam project. In 2005,  they became affiliated with Waterkeeper Alliance  joined some 200 other Waterkeepers worldwide. The purpose of Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. is to preserve and protect the water quality and ecological integrity of the Grand River watershed and its estuary, through actions of public awareness, monitoring, intervention and habitat restoration. It actively promotes economically and environmentally sustainable ecosystem management approaches that will maintain the heritage and intrinsic value of this river for present and future generations.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, please contact: Clarice Blake Rudkowski, President, Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. 709-896-9530, Roberta Frampton Benefiel, Grand Riverkeeper & VP, 896-4164 or 897-4241 or Philip Raphals, Helios Centre, Montreal, 514-849-7900.

The Old Blue Goose

When the three posts on the provincial Conservatives’ communications strategy first appeared here in August and September 2006,  people who had never heard of it thought the ideas were preposterous.

The relatively small number of people in the province who knew what is going on  - politicians, political staffers and some media types - tried to dismiss it as irrelevant or as old news.

Five years later, the basic ideas are known to anyone who follows political stories in the local conventional media.  Once someone pointed out the patterns, others started to notice them too.

Then two professors at Memorial University did some research and confirmed the pattern of calls to open line shows and other aspects of the strategy.

Essentially, the three posts boil down to this:

• The government party times its media activity to coincide with the polling periods of its own pollster.  Four times a year, the provincial government’s communications office pour out news about new projects, road paving and government spending.  “Playing the Numbers”
• All newsrooms are not equal. News media coverage plays a key role in selling the party in power to voters.  The provincial communications strategy favours news media that will offer the best chance of getting their messages out as often as possible and with the least amount of filtering.   “The media and the message”
• Government uses public opinion polls to help shape public opinion, not measure it.   The government party floods radio call-in shows with partisan supporters, including cabinet ministers, during polling periods to generate positive coverage during polling months.  The polling results then become part of the effort to suppress dissent:  the government is right because it is popular and popular because it is right.  The polls say so. “The perils of polling”

August is one of the months in which the government’s pollster is in the field.  Not surprisingly, the current provincial governing party has been heavily pushing its happy-face news releases.

Also unsurprisingly, when asked about it, the leader of the governing party dismisses the idea the storm of news releases and spending announcements is about anything but informing the people of the province about government initiatives.

She promises the whole thing will stop at the end of August She doesn’t mention that the government’s pollster has stopped or will shortly stop gathering data so she and her political friends are done with poll goosing …for now.

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The Politics of Cynicism, NDP style #nlpoli

One could hardly imagine a better way to bitch-slap the carefully fabricated Legend of Jack Layton than Lorraine Michael’s news release announcing a 25% reduction in something the provincial NDP leader calls a “small business tax”.

“Small businesses employ most of the workers, contribute to their local economies, and continue to create most of the new jobs in this province,” Michael said today. “A focus on small business in Newfoundland and Labrador became an important part of our platform preparation. Consultation with small business owners helped us identify some key ways to give them a break.

Problem Number One is that Lorraine doesn’t bother to tell anyone what small business tax she would like to chop.

Perhaps it is the Small Business Income Tax.

Problem Number Two is that the current rate is 4%.  The New Democrats will drop that to 3%.

Whooppeee friggin’ ding. This is a non-announcement.

The release has absolutely no detail in it at all, in keeping with current New Democratic Party practice.

That means you can’t really tell what they are promising and as such you will have a hard time holding them accountable later on should they accidentally compile enough credits to form a government.

For those keeping score, we are up to problem Number Three.

In that same theme, this lack of accountability is exactly the opposite of what the Dippers did in Nova Scotia.  Over there, Darrell and the crew issued a simple statement of goals and had all sorts of details that you can use to tell if they did it or not.

The province’s New Democrats are running a very aggressive campaign that is centred primarily on their steady stream of candidate nomination announcements.  They are getting plenty of media coverage for it.

Whether that’s enough to cause a massive break through in seats in the province remains to be seen, but if past history is any sign, voters in this province aren’t that stupid.

At some point, voters will pay attention to the candidates and the party platform.  What voters will see at that point is pretty striking.

The first thing voters will see is that the New Democrats want to see the Conservatives back in office.  Lorraine is in her last campaign – most likely – so they don’t have any bigger plans at the moment.  They are hoping the Liberals will collapse but the Dippers aren’t doing anything substantial to move themselves forward.

The second is that their campaign “platform” is just a thin series of statements like this one on small business taxes.  The releases sound vaguely interesting but on closer examination, they turn into puffs of smoke at best.  At worst, they advocate policies that benefit people outside the province more than those who are actually going to pay for it.

Like, Muskrat Falls.

On Muskrat Falls,  the NDP stand firmly behind the provincial Conservatives. Their position is that they back it, if it works.  Well, the thing will “work” because local voters will be forced to pay the whole shot for it even though Nalcor and the provincial Conservatives ignored cheaper alternatives.  Either the New Democrats haven’t paid attention to what is happening with Muskrat Falls or they don’t give a shit about local voters. 

The third thing the voters will notice is that the New Democrats have turned from a party of ideals to a party of intense  - and pretty blatant cynicism.  Their position on Muskrat Falls is perhaps the best illustration of that.  Their positions on gasoline tax cuts and home heating fuel are examples of aping Conservative retail politics while mouthing words about ordinary Canadians, helping people and protecting the environment.

If that doesn’t add up to some pretty blatant cynicism, it’s hard to know what else would.

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* Link added.

Our plastic history revisited

One of the earliest posts among these e-scribbles dealt with a proposal – in 2005 – to rework the Colonial Building. 

The plan was to fix the place up, set up some displays to “interpret” some parts of the province’s political history for visitors and turn the rest of the building into offices.

The plan is striking for its ability to reduce the significance of our historic seat of government to yet another mouldering artifact of the past. The language of this discussion paper is sterile: "The Colonial Building is one of the most significant heritage properties in Newfoundland and Labrador." It is said to have heritage character-defining elements.

The plan is also striking since a committee of government-appointed experts from government and the local arts, cultural and heritage associations has determined the fate of the building, now vacant with the absorption of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador into the bland collective known simply as The Rooms.

The Colonial Building is to be restored in some fashion and turned into offices for arts, cultural and heritage organizations in the province. There will be the obligatory charade of "stakeholder consultations", but the Colonial Building will continue to be what it has been since 1959 - home to yet another group of technocrats.

In 2005, the whole thing was supposed to cost a little over $3.0 million, with the bulk of that going to restoring the building.

The original post raised a few hackles on someone involved in the whole plan.  He fired off some odd e-mails.

And then the whole plan vanished off the face of the Earth.

Like so many plans, strategies and other Great Initiatives of the current crowd what is running this place, people just stopped talking about it.

Stopped talking about it, that is, until the last day of announcements in the Summer of Love 2011 Great Orgy of Spending Announcements by the provincial Conservatives. These announcements have absolutely nothing to do with the pending election or the fact that the provincial government’s pollster is in the field this month.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale and federal intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue pulled off a mega-announcement in St. John’s of federal and provincial cash totalling more than $60 million for three projects. 

The two governments will get together with the City of St. John’s to drop $45 million into expanding the St. John’s Convention centre.

Another chunk of cash will go to turning an old industrial site in Paradise into a municipal park paradise sort of thing.

And the balance will go to the Colonial Building project.

There’s no dollar value on the Colonial Building project in the official news release, but odds are it is considerably more than the $3.0 million the whole thing was supposed to cost six years ago.*

Our plastic history, inordinate delays and massive cost overruns.

Plus ca change.

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Holy Frack Update:  According to the Telegram:

Premier Kathy Dunderdale also announced $8.6 million from the province (to be matched by the federal government) to complete the restoration and modernization of the historic Colonial Building, which used to house the provincial legislature and archives. That funding will be added to $4.4 million previously committed by the province and $625,000 from the federal government.

Clicking and clacking the old calculator gives us $22.225 million.

That would be seven and a half times the projected cost for the whole she-bang in 2005.

Et maintenant, le deluge…

In his regular column in the Wednesday edition, Telegram editor Peter Jackson succinctly explains why Kathy Dunderdale’s Muskrat Falls scheme is a very bad idea:

Reading the review panel’s comments, one comes to the conclusion that the rationalization for the project is circular. The Muskrat project is a given, and the statistics that are gathered only justify its existence. Statistics that fall outside the project — that of alternative sources — are sparse and poorly developed.

And simple considerations — like the impact on consumption of the trend towards energy efficiency — are ignored.

Jackson hits the nail squarely on the head in every respect, including his warning that the whole thing could cost us very dearly if the assumptions on which the project is based on turn out to be junk.

Verily, these must be the end times foretold by prophecy.

Well, by prophecy or the words muttered last fall as someone scurried out the Confederation Building side door:

“Apres moi, le deluge…”

Stand by to get your feet damp.

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Summer Polling Month Top 10

The weather may have been da pits but this was the sweatiest Summer of Love pre-election poll goosing month in recent Conservative Party history.

And if it wasn’t the steam coming off the overheated Tory news torquing machine it was the sweating in Liberal circles as one leader left and another arrived.

Along the way, the province got its first story where the reporter admitted he “broke” the story from a bar stool. 

Not surprisingly, that story wound up inspiring what became the top post here at Ye Olde Scribble Pile for the month of August.

Very much a surprise was the number two story. It is the tags “Soper Inquiry”, a series of posts that contain the first report by Judge Lloyd Soper in his 1979 inquiry into the leak of police reports into a fire at Elizabeth Towers.

One of the leading figures* in the inquiry – and the leaks – has a new book out, incidentally.  No word on whether he is offering Lysianne Gagnon a cut of the sales given that one of the columns in it seems curiously similar to Gagnon’s column on the first volume of a biography of Pierre Trudeau.  Your humble e-scribbler point out the similarities in 2006 in another post that was popular at the time.

Another surprise is the third place story for the month.  As part of the changed layout, your humble e-scribbler crated a page about the blog itself.  A lot of people found that interesting.

The rest of the top posts are predictable bag of political stuff from the Liberal leadership to Muskrat Falls.

1. If Rick Hillier really runs for the Liberal leadership…
2. Soper Inquiry
3. About SRBP
4. Sun TV/Fox News wannabe?  VOCM hits new low
5. NDP avoids straight answer on Muskrat Falls
6. The continued taberization of political reporting in Canada
7. Westcott packs it in
8. Changing the game
9. Court docket now online
10. Bloc NDP MP backs Tory Premier Dunderdale

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*Add word eaten by wonky Microsoft software

Jay Rosen on Political Reporting

The problem with horse-race reporting and an alternative approach.

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NL ratepayers to carry full cost of Muskrat Falls plus more #nlpoli

If there is anyone left who doesn’t understand who will pay for Muskrat Falls, let him or her read the joint review panel report:

The Panel notes that the main driver for the Muskrat Falls projected cash flow provided to the Panel comes from Nalcor’s projected Island domestic rates that continue to escalate by two percent per annum even after Project debt payout. There are also questions about the regulatory treatment of Muskrat Falls by the provincial Government and the Public Utilities Board. It is not clear how much of the overall Muskrat Falls cost would be permitted to be passed on to the Newfoundland rate payer and what the implications are for the ability of Muskrat Falls to generate a long-term revenue stream for the Province. [ Emphasis added p. 24]

If you use electricity in Newfoundland and Labrador, you will pay the entire cost of Muskrat Falls and its transmission lines to the island and tidy “return on equity” that actually will exceed the original forecast.

Not bad at all, if you aren’t one of the people who will be forced to pay for the project.

 

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Political Reporting 2011

As we slide into the fall general election’s open campaign period, some of you might find it interesting to ponder Jay Rosen’s recent post about the current state of political reporting in the United States and Australia.

This is more a thought post than anything else.  Your humble e-scribbler started chewing over some observations about politics and political reporting a while ago.  The ideas are still swirling around and sometimes it is useful to just post them as part of a thought-exercise in progress.

Rosen is a journalism prof at New York University.  He’s been blogging since 2003 about journalism, so yes, folks that makes him a very early adopter of the form.

Political reporting is off track, Rosen argues.

So this is my theme tonight: how did we get to the point where it seems entirely natural for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to describe political journalists appearing on its air as “the insiders?”  Don’t you think that’s a little strange? I do. Promoting journalists as insiders in front of the outsiders, the viewers, the electorate…. this is a clue to what’s broken about political coverage in the U.S. and Australia. Here’s how I would summarize it: Things are out of alignment. Journalists are identifying with the wrong people. Therefore the kind of work they are doing is not as useful as we need it to be.

Rather than suffer through a short-hand version of Rosen’s post, take a second a go read it for yourself.  It isn’t very long and Rosen does makes his points rather neatly.  If you’ve got the time, wander through some of the links he offers up at the end.

There are a bunch of ideas running through Rosen’s post and the links.

There are the three ideas Rosen holds as part of the problem he sees in current political reporting:

1. Politics as an inside game.

2. The cult of savviness.

3. The production of innocence.

Politics is an inside game and some reporters present themselves as insiders – as savvy – and as people who can get inside the deepest recesses of political campaigns and bring audiences an informed, accurate and detailed discussion about the strategy and tactics.

Interesting concept.

Except that, with very few exceptions nationally and none locally, the reporters can never get inside, have never been inside. 

They only know what people who genuinely are inside will tell them. 

And given that none of the reporters have ever been inside a political campaign as a campaign participant, they can’t authoritatively discuss what is going on authoritatively based on experience..

And yet some reporters do it.

At the same time, the same reporters will insist they are merely observers who have no stake, or role in the politics and political process at all. 

That’s the innocence Rosen talks about.

Now Rosen has his own conclusions about how journalism ought to be done.  That’s all fine and good.

What savvy news consumers reading this might want to think about is that how the news gets reported to them can affect their perceptions about the political process generally and about the particular campaign.

While reporters are discussing strategies, tactics, how many candidates have been nominated or about a particular parties debt problems, there might well be other things they aren’t reporting.  Those other things could be as important or even more important to public perceptions of the campaign.

Rosen also offers a little graphic representation people can use to plot reporting.

And the way Rosen describes the four sectors:

Bottom left: Appearances rendered as fact. Example: the media stunt.

Top left: Phony arguments. Manufactured controversies. Sideshows.

Bottom right: Today’s new realities: get the facts. The actual news of politics.

Top right. Real arguments: Debates, legitimate controversies, important speeches.

Here’s one example from the local political scene to get you started.

Manufactured controversies:  Danny Williams and Quebec.  That one pretty much screams contrivance, right down to the complete misrepresentation of what the Quebec energy regulatory decided on Nalcor’s wheeling application and what the wheeling application was all about.

What would you put in the other sectors?

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Random Post in Latin: People Called Romans, They Go the House

 

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Uniting the Left: a reminder

So with the Liberal meeting in Ottawa, the idea of uniting the left is coming back around again.

Not surprisingly, Liberal leader Bob rare is pissing on the idea.
Now Bob’s reasoning may be somewhat different than the one your humble e-scribbler offered last June but the point still holds up:

Meanwhile over on the left, the New Democrats united with the other left wing party – the Bloc – and became the official opposition. Now they’ll basically face the same sort of question the Conservatives already addressed.  There’s no guarantee how they’ll answer it nor is there a correct answer.

… 

Do they head toward the centre, as other successful left-wing parties have done, or will they continue to embrace their ideological base and potentially kiss power good bye? 

Put another way:  Is Jack Layton going to emulate Tony Blair or Michael Foot?

And that’s really the point.  The left wing in the country is already united.  The Bloc and the NDP merged even if the Blocists weren’t willing partners to the political marriage.

Put another way, the Bloc NDP essentially pulls together the ideological left in the country.  At the same time, the NDP is well on its way to morphing from being a national party with representation in all the regions of the country to a party representing regional interests nationally.

Meanwhile, the Liberals remain a coalition party that has, historically, shifted ideologically from the centre left to centre right based on the dominant trends in the country.

So if Denis Coderre wants to frig off to join the Bloc NDP, he can certainly go ahead.

But since the ideological left is already united, why would the Liberals – a federalist party of the political centre that long ago rejected reactionary politics of the left and right – ever want to join with the Dippers or the Connies, for that matter?

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*  edit to eliminate repetition.

Muskrat Falls: lost opportunity

 

The claim: 

Nalcor stated in its final submission to the Panel that without the Project the Province would lose an opportunity to create long-term revenue to fund social programs. [Joint Review Panel, final report, Page 18]*

The reality:

Further, Nalcor indicated at the hearing, … that the shareholder [i.e. the provincial government] might forgo dividends so that not much of a revenue stream is expected from Muskrat Falls for distribution. [Page 24, Emphasis added]

The only ways the provincial government can make any money from Muskrat Falls is if it takes dividends from Nalcor, if it claims rent from the water lease, or if it taxes electricity production.

The provincial doesn’t take dividends from Nalcor at the moment.  Odds are it won’t if the provincial government carries on with the Muskrat Falls project.

So far there are no plans for electricity taxes.

And while the details of the water lease aren’t public, the provincial government could also simply let Nalcor have the water rights with a very small rental charge, if it imposes any rental at all.

So how – exactly – will Muskrat Falls create “long-term revenue to fund social programs”?

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Note:  the full report doesn’t appear to be online. The executive summary is available for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

*  Update:  The full report is online.  No fewer than three e-mails (including one comment) gave the link.