So what’s Kathy’s problem? #nlpoli

So if Stephen Harper’s staffing problem is that “all the good ones quit”,  what is the story on the staffing problems in Kathy Dunderdale’s office?

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The Imaginary Nation #nlpoli

Look at the shelves in any bookstore around town these days and you will likely see endless copies of Greg Malone’s book Don’t tell the Newfoundlanders. 

The piles of books show that few people are actually interested in Malone’s malarkey.   Well, very few people beyond the crowd who – like Malone and open line regular Agnes – already had swallowed the load already, without question.  Malone’s book contains the sort of crap Malone and others have been getting on with for years.  Back in 2009, for example, the Canadian Press gave their  fact checker a day off and asked Greg some stuff about Confederation in time for a piece for the 60th anniversary of the momentous event. 

Drew Brown, he of the recent paper and public talk on nationalism, has a piece in The Scope this month that has a go at the conspiracy theory.  Not surprisingly, he trashes the notion completely. 

History’s Bitch #nlpoli

A half century ago, a bunch of very smart fellows – some of the smartest fellows of any generation ever – wanted to build a massive  plant in the middle of Labrador to make electricity.

One of the problems the project faced was a combination of costs and markets.  As Philip Smith recounts in Brinco:  the story of Churchill Falls,  the very smart men were concerned right from the start that nuclear power offered an almost unbeatable alternative to hydroelectricity for generating large amounts of electricity at relatively low cost.  The markets needed power and nuclear could do it cheaper.

Nuclear power also had a huge advantage hydro couldn’t match:  you can turn the plant on and off when you wish.  With hydro, you can make power only when you have the water.  Even with a massive reservoir, the generating output of the plant will go up and down during the year depending on how much water is available.

You got cash? They’ve got a party. #nlpoli

The party that brought the province its first and only election finance law in 1991 is currently in the midst of a campaign to select its own leader, but the race has absolutely no rules of any kind on campaign financing.
The Liberal Party’s constitution and 2013 leadership rules are absolutely silent on campaign finances except for setting the $20,000 entrance fee every candidate had to offer up to enter the race.

Candidates are free to spend as much as they want in any way they want without any rules requiring disclosure to anyone. 

And any potential donor – individual or corporation – from anywhere on the planet can give as much as they want to the person who will lead the party after the election and who could well wind up running the province in 2015.

Nut up or shut up #nlpoli

The Liberal leadership is not even a couple of weeks old and already reporters are getting inundated with the suggestions from anonymous turd-mongers wondering why they are not covering this angle or that aspect of one candidate

The Telegram’s James McLeod wrote a blog post about it on Tuesday, rattling off some examples of the stuff he’s been getting.  McLeod offers a few simple explanations of why reporters don’t cover the sort of crap that these tidbits of excrement.

In the process, he actually gives publicity to the stuff he says wouldn’t be covered for journalistic so there is a bit of a contradiction in there.  For the most part, what you can see are the sort of small-minded points offered up by people who have nothing much to say and on top of that don;t even have the stones to identify themselves.  The world is full of those sorts of sorry specimens of humanity;  politics just makes it seems like there are more of them attached to political parties.

On change #nlpoli

One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen might change the world, as Malala Yousefzai says.

The pen and book are of no use, though,  if the student and the teacher are not interested in finding things out. The horror of the Taliban is the same horror one finds in religious fanatics of any sort, or political zealots for that matter.  They do not wish to know anything.  They believe they have already been handed the complete set of answers to everything.  They fancy the information comes from God or from some local manifestation of some god but the root of their brand of evil is their belief that they already know everything.

They lack inquisitiveness.

What holds us collectively from changing the world is not the absence of a pen or a book. 

We are held back by a lack of inquisitiveness.

"The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know,” wrote Stephen Fry in the second volume of his autobiography, titled The Fry Chronicles.  “They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is."

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Learn Now. Pay Later. #nlpoli

A college or university education has an undeniable value both to the student and to the society as a whole.

But should either party bear a disproportionate share of the cost of the education? 

Of course not.  The challenge for policy makers in the provincial government and at the university and the colleges in the province is how to strike a balance between the two. The one that’s been in place for the past decade works extremely well for students whose representatives  – not surprisingly – are pushing for an even sweeter and sweeter deal regardless of the financial implications to the university and the provincial government. 

Free tuition is fundamentally unworkable.  There’s no reason to believe that free tuition would improve participation rates,  successful completion rates, or any other desirable outcome for society.  By the same token, forcing students to bear the full cost of tuition up front would likely serve as a powerful deterrent since few individuals and families could afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars post-secondary education costs these days.

There might be an alternative.

Antle changes dynamics of Liberal leadership race #nlpoli

Last November, it was easy to dismiss Paul Antle as another potential Liberal leadership candidate who lots of people talked about but who sounded more like he had better things to do.

Two things in July changed that.

First, Antle raced around at the last minute and joined the leadership race.

Second, and more importantly, Antle delivered the best campaign kick-off of the lot.

Telly exclusive on SNC Lavalin???? #nlpoli

Screaming headline across the top of the front page of the Saturday Telly:

SNC-Lavalin shut out of Hydro-Quebec projects

And right underneath,  the claim that it is a Telegram exclusive.

That would be right except for the fact someone else reported it months ago.

The problems first surfaced in April, as reported by Radio-Canada.

And La presse had the specific Muskrat Falls angle in early May. The recent decision on the Romaine project reported on Saturday by the Telly is just the same as the La Presse story…only much later.

Where’s the exclusive?

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Yvonne - math #nlpoli

Liberal member of parliament Yvonne Jones is pissed off.

She told VOCM that “there are 1,016 people that are payrolled  [sic]under the Muskrat Falls project. 201 of those are Labradorians. So we have less than 10 per cent of Labrador people employed as part of that project.”

She said that was unacceptable.

Someone forgot to point out to the mathematically challenged politician that 201 is a teensy bit shy of 20% of 1,016.

Not less than 10%.

But about double that.

19.7% to be super-accurate.

So if someone pointed out to Jones that there are twice as many Labradorians working at Muskrat Falls as she thought, would she be only half as pissed off?

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Jerome Kennedy: ace hole digger #nlpoli

Score another one for the Telegram’s James McLeod.

He interviewed finance minister Jerome Kennedy and wrote a story that centred on Kennedy’s contention that his party’s 2011 election promises weren’t really promises at all but a general blueprint or platform intend to implement depending on the cash available.

The story caused Kennedy such problems that he took to the Thursday morning open line show to claim he was misquoted and that the comments were taken out of context.  Later on he issued a news release that claimed the Conservatives had actually delivered on 43% of their promises.  The short release include a long list that someone apparently cut and pasted from the original list of Conservative not-promises.

Kennedy just made a bad situation worse.

Highly Diffused Government #nlpoli

By now, plenty of people in Newfoundland and Labrador have likely heard finance minister Jerome Kennedy’s comments about his party’s last election platform.

“You used the word promise,”  Kennedy said to the Telegram’s James McLeod.  “I’m not sure that the Blue Book can be described as a promise.”  Kennedy said that the platform contained a bunch of what he called “initiatives” that his party planned to implement between 2011 and 2015.  Everyone had to bear in mind that “there’s always the caveat that the commitments will be made having regard to the fiscal situation of the province.”

Make out of that what you want.  Some people have already made fun or harrumpfed through the odd Tweet or two.  McLeod noted in an story on Wednesday that Kennedy’s new warning about calling them “promises” is at odds with the Conservative during the election.

What’s more interesting thing to what McLeod might call a political uber-nerd is what the transcript reveals about how the Conservatives operate.

Autonomy for Memorial University #nlpoli

One of the things about writing SRBP is that posts sometimes show changes in thinking as your humble e-scribbler gains more information.

Over the last few posts and on Twitter, some of you may have seen a comment to the effect that you could replace the government subsidy to the university with a tuition hike and be cash to the good.  Well, that just is’;t the case.  As Tuesday’s post showed, the government grant covers about 71% of the university’s operating revenue every year.  Tuition covered about the same percentage (11%) as it did in 1977.

Taking a hard look at the current numbers showed that tuition and fees from the 18,700 graduate, undergraduate, and distance students  at the university, full- and part-time brings in slightly less than $60 million annually.

What hasn’t changed, though, is the starting point of this mini series from last Friday:  the university needs cash.  The question is how to get it.

Paul Antle’s Opening Shot #nlpoli

Here’s the e-mail that’s making the rounds:

I am running for Leader of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador. I have no confidence in the current government. We've come too far to go backwards. I love this place and I understand its DNA. Our province has no leadership. That's about to change.

Please join me for the launch of my Liberal Leadership Campaign on Thursday, July 11th, 12:00 noon.

Manuels River Hibernia Interpretation Centre//7 Conception Bay Highway//Conception Bay South, Newfoundland [sic]//A1W 3A2

Paul

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“China is already so yesterday” #nlpoli

Memorial University’s dean of graduate studies wasn’t so keen on China as a source of students in February 2011.  In a post on her blog Postcards from the edge, Noreen Golfman wrote;

The point is that Memorial, if it is to play seriously in the realm of international recruitment, cannot afford merely to be part of the bandwagon. It has to get ahead of it. China is already so yesterday.

The academics even invented a word for the trend – surprise, surprise  - at universities to seek more and more of their student population from other countries.  They call it “internationalization”.

The motivation is simple:  money.  Golfman acknowledged that point up front in the same blog post.  The available pool of young people is getting smaller, thanks to the fact that birthrates are dropping off in the developed world.  As a result, universities have to go on a hunt for students to keep everything operating:

And, so, yes, the motivation has been, in the first instance, largely economic.

None of that is a surprise.  Nor would anyone be surprised to find that by November 2011, Golfman was in China on a student-hunting safari. She was back there again in 2012.

Some inconvenient truths: goring some educational sacred cows #nlpoli

Friday turned out to be Post-Secondary Education Day with a post here on the impact of the freeze on tuition fees and a fascinating Telegram article on the Conservatives’ 2011 campaign pledge to replace student loans with needs-based grants.

Tuition was a bit of an issue in the 2011 provincial general election.  The Tory pledge is basically a variation on the New Democrat campaign platform plank in the same election to make wipe out tuition altogether. 

Supporters of the low or free tuition argument claim that by charging a tuition fee at all, “we are basically discriminating against poor people and the middle class.”  The Canadian Federation of Students likes the current tuition freeze and is loving up the idea of grants that would make tuition even cheaper or free.

The local rep commented in the Friday story in the Telegram that the current system “is the envy of people across the country.”

Really? 

VOCM more like Fox and Sun #nlpoli

VOCM’s newsroom is taking a massive step downward with a headline on the Liberal leadership.  On Friday, Dwight Ball stepped down as interim leader.  The caucus will decide his replace – officially – at a meeting they’ll hold in a couple of weeks.

The entire VO story consists of these few sentences under the headline “Liberal Party Leaderless”:

Dwight Ball has submitted his resignation as lnterim Leader of the Liberal Party.  Ball is joining business leaders Paul Antle and Cathy Bennett, MHA Jim Bennett, and former MHA Danny Dumaresque in the race. Party president Judy Morrow says the process should ensure a strong, united party in the next general election.  Voting will take place in November.

So either VO is now openly employing the Sun and Fox News stylebook in the newsroom or someone at VOCM is applying for a job as a government communications director. 

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Great Political Quotes: Tax Shelter edition #nlpoli

“We lost, but that passion for fighting the injustice of a retroactive law change — that passion I will bring to the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, and to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador…”

Liberal leadership hopeful Paul Antle

CBC reported on Friday that a “Federal Court of Appeal judge ruled in 2010 that a trust set up in the Caribbean by the wife of Liberal leadership candidate Paul Antle was a ‘sham’ used to incorrectly shield [sic] more than $1 million from capital gains taxes.”

That sounds like a great campaign slogan:

Paul Antle:  fighting for tax shelters

His team has their work cut out for them.

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The price of subsidy – MUN Tuition

In early June, a CBC investigation revealed that Memorial University is charging special fees for some international graduates students. That was just one of a series of problems with the international student programs noted in the report. 

Some of the students were Chinese.  As it turns out, 36% of [all] Memorial’s grad [international] students are from China.*  That’s a figure that turned up in a news release on June 27 that came out of the recent junket by the Premier, a couple of her retiring ministers, Ed Martin from Nalcor and Memorial president Gary Kachinowski.

One agreement signed on the trip set up “the China Scholarship Council and Memorial University of Newfoundland Joint Funding Program, which will support up to 20 qualified doctoral students who will be jointly funded by Memorial University and the CSC to pursue doctoral studies.”

A long way from best in class #nlpoli

Cathy Bennett’s leadership launch event was organized as one would expect.  Her speech was scripted and, hand gestures and all, well rehearsed.

From the start there was the flush of jargon that one expects these days from business people getting into politics.  A “decision process’ had led her to this spot.  The province must be “best in class”.  Things must be “actioned”.  We must “start a conversation.”  Energy, passion and fire -  especially passion – occurred in the speech with  as much frequency as “strong voice” used to turn up with others.

She pledged to be “open and accountable” as well as honest and persuasive.”

Bennett didn’t offer much beyond stock phrases on anything, though,  except on three points:  increased immigration,  full-day kindergarten, and Muskrat Falls.