It was Greek to me #nlpoli

After days of intense talks,  the Europeans apparently have finally reached a final deal to help Greece out of its latest financial misery.

Greece is broke.  With a gross domestic product of about US$238 billion, the country had a government debt of about US$346 billion.  Some of the country’s banks have very low reserves of cash.  People have already made a rush and withdrawn their money from them.  This has forced the government to impose a tight limit on withdrawals in order to avoid a bank collapse of the type that hit Newfoundland in 1894.

Under the new deal,  the European Union will place officials in key parts of the Greek government in order to ensure that the Greeks actually implement reforms that are part of the bail-out deal.

It’s a tough response, but then again the Greeks are in a tough economic spot.  The third tough spot, since 2009. For all that, though, there are people around the world who believe the whole problem is imaginary.  They believe that something called “austerity” is the real culprit.  If you just got rid of it, so this way of thinking goes, the Greeks could go back to the way things used to be.

Cripple you say? #nlpoli

Unnamed Conservative “insiders” have been talking about the Ches Crosbie nomination fiasco as if it was a rejection of a new Tory Jesus or something.

The way they talk you’d think people are waiting breathlessly for the pictures on Jane Crosbie’s Twitter feed of young Ches taking his first steps across Virginia Lake, just as his father and grandfather did at his tender age without getting so much as a bunion moistened.

Some of these nameless Conservatives   - to use the words from the CBC story – .”believe Ches Crosbie could have raised at least $100,000 by now for his run in Avalon. Many of those donors will now sit on their wallets rather than give cash to another candidate.”

Now that’s an interesting claim.

Overcooked Ambition #nlpoli

Nameless Conservative Party insiders predict that without Ches Crosbie as a candidate, the federal Conservative party will be crippled in Newfoundland and Labrador in the next election.

Supposedly Ches could have raised $100,000 dollars already.  But without Ches, they won’t raise a penny. Volunteers will stay home, too.  

But here’s the thing: 

CBC’s  story on Thursday is essentially more of the same completely preposterous Ches-the-Saviour-of-the-Conservative-Nation fairy tale that John and Jane Crosbie have been shovelling since Canada Day.

The long summer campaign #nlpoli

Liberal leader Dwight Ball kicked off a 10 week campaign swing around the province this week.

It’s basically a tour of the local festivals coupled that the party leaders do every summer.  This one is a bit different.  Ball has a few planned speeches mixed in there somewhere and Ball will be driving a white car with a big picture of him on the side.

As the Telegram’s James McLeod reported on Tuesday, Ball told reporters that the tour will “be about the economy and jobs. It’ll be about health care. It’ll be about education and many other things.”  Those are the top three issues with the public as identified by public opinion polls.

Mostly, Ball said, the aim is to have a “grassroots” summer of meeting with people and talking about the issues that affect the province — and talking about how the current government is letting people down. [Telegram]

Mostly, the tour will be about real consultation.

Confidence Builder #nlpoli

The public utilities board asked Liberty Consulting to review Hydro’s decisions in 11 projects.

Hydro is looking for a rate increase.  The board wanted to make sure the increase was justified.

Of the 11 projects, the consultant found:

• “Liberty found Hydro’s decisions and actions imprudent in seven of the eleven specific projects or programs set for examination by the Board. Liberty identified adverse cost consequences associated with six of these seven projects or programs, laying a foundation for consideration of the propriety of their recovery from customers. Liberty found planning and execution of the seventh project imprudent, but concluded that Hydro would have borne essentially the same costs even in the absence of such imprudence. 
• Of the remaining four specific projects or programs, Liberty found that Hydro had acted prudently with respect to three. Liberty did observe significant weaknesses in the supply planning process related to one of these projects, the new combustion turbine, but not to a degree that would constitute imprudence. For the fourth, Liberty concluded that while Hydro acted prudently in making its decision, some of the costs incurred were influenced by imprudent prior actions.
• The twelfth area of Liberty’s review consisted of an identification of 2014 actual capital costs and operating expenses that could be attributed to imprudence. This identification lays a foundation for later efforts that seek to identify any such expenses that may form part of Hydro’s estimation of a 2014 Revenue Deficiency of $45.9 million.”

“Liberty found that the costs that Hydro could have avoided in the absence of the instances of imprudence found by Liberty were:

• Actual 2014 capital costs of $10.9 million (as reported by Hydro)
• Actual 2014 operating expenses of $13.4 million.
• Estimated 2015 operating expenses of $2.6 million.

With that sort of report, you just know that Nalcor has just gotten everything exactly right at Muskrat Falls.

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Canadian Forces recruiting centres and demographics #nlpoli

The Canadian Forces is planning to move its three full-time recruiting staff out of the office in Corner Brook and move them elsewhere.

From now on,  recruiting on the west coast will take place like it does pretty well everywhere else in Canada:  via the Internet.  The military recruiting system will send staff out to Corner Brook a few days a month.  They can always travel to high schools or job fairs to promote the Canadian Forces as they do now.

Documents leaked to David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizen  last month said that the Corner Brook office has one of the lowest numbers of recruits in the Canadian Forces system.  The Corner Brook office, along with the one in Sydney Nova Scotia and Oshawa Ontario are affected by the changes.

Impotence and weakness #nlpoli

If you take John Crosbie’s version at face value,  the Conservative Party rejected his son Ches as a candidate for the party in Avalon because of the intervention of David Wells.

Wells,  the son of retired justice Robert Wells,  is a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador.  He is also an influential Conservative, the sort of fellow who normally goes about his business largely out of the public spotlight.  .

Thanks to Crosbie, Wells is in the public eye.  According to Crosbie, Wells didn’t  “want Ches to be elected as an MP in the district of Avalon or any federal district because he would be too independent-minded and [Wells] wouldn't be in control as he has been now for a couple of years of most of the transactions between Newfoundland and the federal government.”

What the venerable Conservative was doing with that accusation was telling us less about the specific events that led to Ches’ rejection and more about a bigger story behind the scenes in Conservative politics.

Way behind schedule #nlpoli

The reports you will likely read in the conventional media all peg the Muskrat Falls project as behind schedule.

That’s what the latest project update from the provincial government and Nalcor says.

The media reports are also citing an overall number that has the project modestly off schedule.

You need to look at the whole report.

Through a glass, darkly #nlpoli

Imagine that Newfoundland history is enclosed inside a gigantic room.  Inside the room everything is pitch black.

Every now and again,  someone opens the door and goes inside the room to take a look at an event somewhere in the past.  They don’t have much in the way of light to help them see.  When they get to whatever spot they are looking for, they take a picture and bring out with them to tell the rest of us the story of what they saw in the dark room.

If you had hundreds or even dozens of people going in and out of the room,  after a while you might build up a really clear picture of all the stuff inside.  Unfortunately,  only a few people have gone in.  Some of them have come out with nothing more than sketches.  Some of them brought cameras and a couple had the sense to get short movies.

For anyone who wants to understand what happened in our collective past, you can see what kind of a problem there is.  Not only have we only had a handful of people go in, a lot of them go to the same place over and over again.  In some cases,  people interested in the local history don’t even go into the room  any more. They just describe to us the sketches and out-of-focus snapshots taken by others.

John Crosbie and the Last Crusade #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Every story told thus far about Ches Crosbie and the riding in Avalon has the unmistakeable odour of bullshit about it.

The latest twist, namely that Senator David Wells was scuttling a potential rival as The Biggest Conservative in Newfoundland and Labrador, is a bit more in the realm of plausible but it still doesn’t quite ring true.

Jihad against people who dissed Harper?

The Great War and Newfoundland Political Memory #nlpoli

“It is sobering to think,”  historian Sean Cadigan wrote in the Telegram on Tuesday, “that the memory of the casualties of war has been used partially for later political purposes for almost a century.”

Cadigan was recounting the history of the ceremony on July 1 that started in 1917 to mark the anniversary of the battle in which hundreds of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians died in a few short minutes.

It is possible that, in the process of "remembering," we may be in danger of forgetting the real aspirations of the men of 1916 when we gather on Memorial Day tomorrow.

Sobering though it may have been,  Cadigan had no trouble using the corpses at Beaumont Hamel for his own purpose and that is where we begin. 

Forget-me-not #nlpoli

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Forget that Orange Wave Thing #nlpoli

Two-thirds of respondents to the most recent Abacus-VOCM News poll said they believed the Liberal Party will win the next provincial general election.

That’s an important question because recent American research suggests it is a good indication of the actual vote result than the traditional “which party will you vote for?” question.

There’s another reason why this question is important.  Look at the contrast between NDP and Conservative supporters.  More than half of New Democratic supporters think the Liberals will win. 

Only  28% of Dippers think their own party will win the next election.   A majority of provincial Conservatives think the Tories will win. But get this:  37% of Tories think the Grits will come out on top.

People who think there is some kind of NDP wave about sweep the universe can think again.

Rex, re-districting, and getting it right #nlpoli

Rex Hillier:  the first political victim of the bill that redrew the political map in Newfoundland.

Simple story.

Easy peasey.

And complete crap.

The not-so-rare leap: @abacusdata June 2015 #nlpoli

Two different polls from two different pollsters using two different polling methods have shown basically the same thing:  the New Democrats and Conservatives are duking it out for second place, both of whom remain well behind the Liberals who hold a massive lead in provincial politics.

Corporate Research Associates (May) showed the Conservatives still slightly ahead of the New Democrats.  Abacus Data’s most recent poll for VOCM shows the New Democrats slightly ahead.

Abacus’  David Coletto described the NDP  jump as “rare”, but that’s not really the case.

Porter makes history #nlpoli

Steve Porter made history on Thursday night.

He defeated an incumbent in the House of Assembly  - Rex Hillier  - in a party nomination fight.  This doesn’t happen very often, mostly because political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador have seldom held nomination contests at the district level involving incumbents.

That isn’t a function of the lack of interest among prospective politicians. It’s just been the practice to grant incumbents a lock on the district once they win the nomination the first time. That’s one of the reasons why local politics can’t really be considered to be highly competitive.  The parties restrict the opportunities for challengers to enter the fray.

Porter tried for the nomination before and lost to Hillier in a squeaker.  He didn’t put together a strong get-out-the-vote operation the last time and wanted to give it another go. This time around Porter had some help from experienced campaigners.  It made a difference.

Aside from the specifics of this particular situation, contested nominations are an important way of refreshing a political party.  The competition keeps everyone on their toes.

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She's a class act all the way #nlpoli

The House of Assembly closed on Tuesday, likely for the last time before the next election.

Sure,  Premier Paul Davis said he may call the House back in the fall for a quick amendment to a law, but for most members, Tuesday was the last day of the session.

And for some members, like George Murphy, it was their last day in the House of Assembly, period, full stop, end of story.

They all got a few minutes to say a few words and get emotional.

And after all the formal proceedings were done,  the three party leaders got to speak.  It’s fascinating to see what they said about their colleagues, as recorded by Hansard

Purity Factories' advertising no treat at all #nlpoli

Venerable local food manufacturer Purity Factories has a new advertising campaign featuring its delicious cream crackers.

On a billboard in the east end of St. John’s,  the line in big letters opposite a shot of the product says “not gluten free.”

The tag below it right next to the company logo is “Treat yourself.”

If all you know about gluten is the current bullshit diet fad based on junk science, then you might think this is a clever ad.

But for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians with celiac disease,   there’s no treat in eating food with gluten.

George Murphy quits politics #nlpoli

Whenever anyone runs down politicians as a group,  remember George Murphy.

And then give the boor who ran down politicians a lash in the arse.

That’s basically all that sort of person is good for:  a target for your boot.

We need more people like George Murphy in public life,  not fewer. He is a fundamentally decent, generous, and thoughtful person. While there are plenty of people like George in public life, thankfully, and in life in general, we can never have enough.

Tree Politics #nlpoli

From your humble e-scribbler's yard,  the province's political parties as revealed by trees.


First, we have the Conservative Party.

Knows it's a tree

Lots of branches down below.   Up at the top, a few little shoots who some times look like they are on top.

The truth:  no matter what it looks like, there remains only  One True Leader.

Second, we have the Liberal Party.

Knows it's a tree.

Lots of branches down below.

But a bit of a mess up on top with a  bunch of different branches trying to be the leader.

Third, and last, is the New Democratic Party.

The same tree as the rest,  just a lot smaller, and a bit heavy on one side.

Thinks it's a rose bush.

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