Populism: the lesson from Venezuela #nlpoli

Born and raised in Venezuela,  Andreas Miguel Rondon is an economist who now lives in Madrid.

He wrote for The Washington Post last week on the lesson Americans should learn from the Venezuelan experience with Hugo Chavez.  Trump may be a capitalist and Chavez may have been a socialist but the populist formula remains the same.

The recipe for populism is universal. Find a wound common to many, find someone to blame for it, and make up a good story to tell. Mix it all together. Tell the wounded you know how they feel. That you found the bad guys. Label them: the minorities, the politicians, the businessmen. Caricature them. As vermin, evil masterminds, haters and losers, you name it. Then paint yourself as the savior. Capture the people’s imagination. Forget about policies and plans, just enrapture them with a tale. One that starts with anger and ends in vengeance. A vengeance they can participate in. 

That’s how it becomes a movement. There’s something soothing in all that anger. Populism is built on the irresistible allure of simplicity. The narcotic of the simple answer to an intractable question. The problem is now made simple.

The solution?

Not so simple, but worth considering no matter where or when you encounter a populist politician.

-srbp-

What is it about Quebec and mass killings? #nlpoli

Compared to the United States, there haven't been a lot of mass killings in Canada.

Period.  Full stop.

Canada is predominantly white and Christian and researchers tell us that across the world, men are usually the perpetrators of mass killings.  That's why what CBC's Neil Macdonald calls an inconvenient truth is really a penetrating insight into the obvious. Telling us that Canadian mass killers are white, male, and Christian is like saying that in Sweden, the mass killers are usually male blond protestants or that in China they are unlikely to be Africans.

Local news media in the post-factual world #nlpoli

Chris O'Neill-Yates is a veteran CBC journalist.  Like most people in her line of work,  Chris is on Twitter plugging both her own work and commenting on events in the world around her.

Not surprisingly, Chris has been fascinated  - appalled might be a better word for it - by events in the United States over the past year.  "Global media will face [a] credibility challenge in the next four years,"  O'Neill-Yates tweeted one day around Christmas. "There'll be those who report facts and those who report nonsense."

A Telegram editorial last week also chimed in on the issue of facts, in the way of even more recent events in the United States.

The message is clear: the media is now dealing with a situation where some believe they can simply make things up. 

We have to be more careful than ever to be accurate. We also have to be ready to clearly identify and call out both mistakes and lies for what they are, when they occur. 

We want you to consider the source, and not find us wanting.

Oh dear.

Duff in the hole encore #nlpoli

Oh dear.

The CBC has gone off to the mainland to get Duff Conacher to make a comment about the need for political finance reform in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Three observations:

1.  There is a desperate need for campaign finance reform in Newfoundland and Labrador.  SRBP has been writing about it relentlessly for a dozen years.  By comparison, the conventional media simply couldn't be arsed to cover the subject more often than not.

When they did notice something was amiss, as in 2006,  they were inclined to follow the line set by the government-of-the-day rather than have a look at the facts for themselves. What they would have discovered in the massive patronage scheme that ran here between 1996 and 2006, for example, was that the the level of misuse of public funds went *up* after 2003.

And after that they'd have found all sorts of other odd things.  Donations by companies getting hefty contracts from government?  Absolutely, a problem. Tired of writing about it.  Finance minister and later premier Tom Marshall financed his entire election campaign in 2011 out of a series of seven cheques from construction companies all of which did work for the government as Marshall shovelled cash into capital works at an unprecedented - and unsustainable - rate.

But what about political donations by town councils and the police?  Or what about a politician who ran a charity while he was in office that was funded by his government salary)?

2,  Conacher knows shag-all about what is happening here, as some of his previous comments have shown.  That actually weakens the case for campaign finance reform here since he is going to miss more than he hits.

Duff's good for the penetrating insights into the obvious - we need reform because it lends itself to corruption - but as with the CBC story his ignorance of the particulars makes him look like a bit of a goof at best or a blind nob at worst.  You see, Duff's been stonily silent on far worse things between 2003 and 2015 than anything he said before 2003 or since 2015.

3.  Stunned as me arse or what?  You really have to shake your head in disbelief at Dwight Ball's comments in the CBC story.  His election platform included a promise to change the campaign finance laws.  Instead of playing that up, Ball goes on the defensive making he look like he opposes finance reform.

That's the kind of stuff that must leave everyone outside of the Premier's Office banging their heads on the wall in frustration.  Inside the office, it's likely high-fives all around as the boss nailed another one to the wall.

Nailed his thumb more like it.

-srbp-

Mean Tweets #nlpoli

In the United States,  a late-night television program created a regular feature that has celebrities read the comments made about them on Twitter.

The comments are - to borrow the words of Constable Joe Smyth - "rude, inappropriate, [and] hateful". He was speaking about comments aimed at politicians but his description of many Twitter comments.

Americans laugh at them.  Some of the celebrities offer a pithy comment in return or flip the bird.  But most laugh.

On Jimmy Kimmel's show they call the segment "Mean Tweets".

Feehan, electricity prices, and the bigger problem. #nlpoli

Jim Feehan's proposal to change the way we price electricity in the province got some media attention -over the past 24 hours.

Feehan believes that we should set the base price of electricity in this province on the best export price rather than the current proposal to have electricity from Muskrat Falls sold in this province for a price wildly more than that.  Under Feehan's scheme,  the money to pay for Muskrat Falls would come from a reduced profit for Nalcor and hence a reduced divided for the taxpayers. As well, there'd probably have to be an additional tax created to cover off the rest of the costs.

As we noted here in a recent post, Feehan's suggestion doesn't represent any change from what is actually going to happen anyway. He just wants to present it to consumers in a different way.  That's not a bad idea since it is inherently more transparent.  You can see what is what.  Unfortunately, Feehan's idea misses entirely the core problem, which is the electricity policy inherent in Muskrat Falls in the first place.

Faroese fishermen skirting Canadian port ban via St. Pierre #nlpoli

Fishing boats from the Faroe Islands are getting around a ban on shipping through Canadian ports by unloading their catch in St. Pierre first.  franceinfo reported on January 20 that a total of five trawlers would unload their catch in St. Pierre by January 25.  The fish - mostly cod but with some halibut bycatch - came from the Flemish Cap.

Three quarters of the catch would go to the Faroes and Denmark, according to the franceinfo report, but the shipowners could sell 25% of their catch to foreigners.  The Danish fishing boats employed 30 French dock workers to unload their catch and repackage it in shipping containers. The first ship unloaded 150 tonnes of cod.  Eventually 30 containers would go to Halifax for transshipment, according to a spokesman for the St. Pierreais fishing company involved in the work.

In 2010, Canada banned Faroese boats from using Canadian ports to offload cod and other species following accusations that the Faroese were overfishing outside Canada's 200 mile exclusive economic zone.  The 2010 ban was the culmination of a running dispute with Denmark about overfishing.

The Faroes are a Danish-owned group of islands approximately half way between Norway and Iceland, and about 320 kilometres north northwest of Scotland.

-srbp-

Kevin, Donald, and Danny #nlpoli

A Forum poll released on Monday showed 27% of those surveyed thought celebrity businessman Kevin O'Leary would make the best leader of the federal Conservative party with Maxime Bernier a distant second at 11% and Lisa Raitt coming in at a mere seven percent.

Among self-identified Conservatives,  O'Leary's support climbs to 31%, according to Forum and with Conservative voters from 2015,  O'Leary is the pick of 49%.   Among Conservative supporters,  Raitt comes in second.

No one should panic just yet since this is still very early days and O'Leary has to win the leadership before we need to wonder if he might become prime minister.  Then again,  when Donald Trump started his campaign, no one thought the guy would last out the primaries, let alone take the nomination, and then win the presidency.

Since O'Leary's never shown himself to be politically active or to have a concern for public policy before, you have to wonder how he managed to enter the race in such a strong position.

Ratings trump truth: Justified edition #nlpoli

Updated (scroll to the -srbp-)

Someone in Gander Bay has been catching and selling quantities of smelt.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans received complaints,  conducted in investigation, and laid charges against an adult who they caught in the act of selling fish to a fellow who turned out to be an undercover fisheries officer.  The basis of the charge is that it is illegal to catch and sell fish without a licence.

Now that you have those simple facts , take a look at the way CBC presented the story.

Sovereignty #nlpoli

Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the very few countries on the planet that got itself into such a financial mess that it gave up self-government.  The people gave up their right and power to govern themselves. That is, they gave up their sovereignty.

They took it back in 1949,  no matter what sort of fairy tales some people continue to believe.  Now with massive public debt coming from chronic overspending and the crushing debt of the insane Muskrat Falls project, some people are raising the prospect that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians may once again see their sovereignty in jeopardy.

Energy analyst Tom Adams has raised the issue of sovereignty with Pete Soucy and Paddy Daly recently.  Muskrat Falls is likely to create such financial problems that the federal government will have to bail the province or Nalcor out, argues Adams.  And it is almost certain that the federal government would look for some "austerity measures", as Adams put it,  as part of whatever deal lets the money flow.

Another premier... same health care facility #nlpoli

A gaggle of provincial politicians representing districts along the west coast of Newfoundland turned up in Corner Brook on Friday for another one of the set-piece media events that government's uncommunications bureaucracy loves if only for their mind-numbing sameness.

The headline on the news release is simple:  "Premier announces New Long-Term Care Facility for Corner Brook".  Construction will start this fall, according to the very first sentence.

120 beds for long-term care.  15 beds for palliative (end-of-life) care.  Another 10 beds for rehabilitative care.

The second paragraph - all in bold according to the template so folks know it is a quote from the most important person - starts with the obligatory statement that every action of government and its employees from bowel movements to budgets is guided by the latest Roadmap to Salvation announced last fall in  hideously expensive media event.   As polls showed, no one was impressed by it.

Ratings trump truth #nlpoli

Sometimes the universe delivers you the magical set of circumstances you just can't ignore.

Danny Williams turned up at the St. John's Board of Trade luncheon on Thursday to deliver a speech the day before Donald Trump's inauguration as president.  As much as people might like to forget,  this was a great reminder of just how much Williams and Trump are the same kind of politician.

The board of trade booked Williams because he will sell tickets.  And in the same way, the local media turned out in droves for Williams.  They treated him just as they have always treated him and that's our story for today.

Williams delivers to electronic news media what Trump does: ratings. Fox and CNN adore Trump just like VOCM and CBC television followed every one of Williams' gaseous emissions.  He drew the audience.

The difference is that while CNN news anchors are routinely critical of Trump and even Fox might take the odd poke at the president-elect, the local media have typically  handled Williams and his most ludicrous claims as if they were holy writ.  Folks who think the Canadian media would fact-check a Trumpish politician out of office can look no further than the way the locals recited Danny's lines almost verbatim.

New French anti-terror measure impacts Newfoundland #nlpoli

A group of 35 young people traveling from St. Pierre to Corner Brook at the end of the month are going to be affected by a new French anti-crime and anti-terrorism measure, according to francoinfo.

The students will each need special parental authority in addition to any other travel documents.  The new requirement is called the Autorisation de Sortir du Territoire  or AST and came into effect on January 15.  All French citizens under the age of majority and unaccompanied by an adult with parental authority must have a special permit to leave the country. The permit includes both authorization by the parents and copies of documents such as passports for parents who are not French nationals.

The document could be valid for up to one year and covers travel outside France for any purpose.  The decree authorising the measure states that it is intended to fight terrorism and organized international crime.

-srbp-

Actions and Words (2016) #nlpoli

The provincial cabinet has known since January - at least - that the powerhouse at Muskrat Falls is only 15% completed despite a huge payout to the contractor.

That's what Nalcor reported to the committee of provincial bureaucrats named by the Conservatives to get a report from Nalcor every now and again.  They can't do anything else except receive the reports and pass them on to cabinet.  They still do it under the Liberals.

The company hired by cabinet to conduct yetanother review of information supplied by Nalcor that government already had included a little table of progress on major components at Muskrat Falls.  The powerhouse is a major component.

But it isn't on EY's table, shown at right and released earlier this month.  It's lumped in with "spillway" and shows it is supposedly almost 40% complete.

There's a lot of difference between 15 and 40.

A bail out, a bail out ... #nlpoli

Conversation about the province's financial state in the past couple of weeks have turned to talk of bailouts and threats to the province's sovereignty.  A Carlton University economist  told CBC in early January that the provincial government would need a bailout to keep the province from collapsing under the weight of electricity rates once Muskrat Falls arrives. Energy analyst Tom Adams talked about Muskrat Falls with Pete Soucy and Paddy Daly.

The talk about bail-out is related, in one sense, to a refrain some people have been singing for a while now that somehow the provincial government is hard-done-by because it doesn't get Equalization despite having this huge financial mess.  People who say those sorts of things don't understand a thing about Equalization.

Let's take a quick look at the province's finances and the idea of a bail out.  In another post, we'll look at sovereignty.

The Narrative War (2015) #nlpoli

The day after a massive Liberal victory in the general election,  CBC’s David Cochrane posted an analysis piece on the new administration.  CBC distributed it nationally.

Cochrane described Dwight Ball as a man “unlikely” to be Premier:

Four campaigns. Two losses. Two wins.  By a combined 75 votes.

Cochrane’s account leaves out relevant context.  When it comes to describing how the Liberals won,  Cochrane focuses not on anything the Liberals did but rather a string of Tory blunders that  - according to Cochrane  - made it easy for the Liberals to win the election essentially by accident.

And now, as Cochrane’s story goes, Ball The Unlikely will have to face enormous financial problems using a plan that Cochrane claims “was greeted with enormous scepticism in the final week of the campaign.”

In the supper hours news, Cochrane then reported on information leaked to him by someone with access to highly confidential government  information.  Their purpose  - quite obviously – was to maximise the the damage to the new administration before it even had a chance to take office.  The information fit quite neatly with Cochrane’s ongoing narrative and so, he naturally, had no hesitation in using it. 

The last man on the moon

Gene Cernan died on Monday.

He was many things in his life but Cernan will be best known as the last man who set foot on the moon during the Apollo missions.

Cernan's official website contains all you will need to know about the man who went to the moon twice: once as lunar module pilot on Apollo 10 and later as commander of Apollo 17.

His memoir - The last man on the moon - became a 2014 documentary of the same title.

-srbp-

Cognitive Dissonance (2014) #nlpoli

People like things in life to fit together.

When things don’t fit together, people get upset.  They get fidgety.  They try to make things fit together.

It’s an idea regular readers know from other posts.  Take this bit from a post from 2012 as a good example of how some people react when faced with a situation where what is happening doesn’t fit with their preconceived notions. The context was a decision by then-Premier Kathy Dunderdale to refuse to meet with the parents of a boy who had  died tragically.

Our friend the open line caller did exactly what people tend to do when confronted with this cognitive dissonance.  He made up a completely fictitious set of claims.  Kathy Dunderdale was the victim of a plot.  Some unspecified crowd called “they” had set a trap for her with this meeting.  When they tried to spring it, Kathy foiled their nefarious plot. 

The media have been pounding away at this  because they just love misery.
And the root of it all was the end of the sectarian school system almost 20 years ago.  Since the evil Liberals did away with sectarian schools, we have been set on just this course.  Politics in this province is gone down to the lowest level with this sort of mean-spirited attacks on good people, besmirching the good name of lovely people like Kathy who are only trying to do good for the world.

A muskrat by any other name... #nlpoli

Memorial University economist Jim Feehan proposed in the December issue of Canadian Public Policy that the provincial government should change the way electricity is priced in Newfoundland and Labrador once Muskrat falls comes on stream.

Now to be clear,  the way government prices electricity will already change for Muskrat Falls.  The project is so financially odious that the only way its proponents could get it off the ground in the first place is to force local taxpayers to bear the full cost of the thing, plus profits to everyone involved except themselves.  That's what will happen.

The provincial government used to have a policy to ensure we had the lowest cost electricity possible. No any more.  With Muskrat Falls, we get the most expensive electricity possible and may well wind up with the most expensive electricity in Canada.

Now Feehan is suggesting that we price electricity  based on the external markets in the fashion that the pricing will be set for the Nova Scotia block.  Unbundled transportation costs and let people see what they are paying for that.  And allow other costs of providing electricity,  like fluctuations in oil prices, show up directly on consumer electricity bills.

The Keystone Kops Ride Again (2013) #nlpoli

We already knew that the provincial cabinet had abandoned their budget before the document had been debated in the House.  That happened last week when the Premier ordered the justice minister and the attorney general to abandon the cabinet-approved cuts in the justice department.

Less than 12 hours after meeting with the same officials justice minister Darin King consulted before cabinet approved the cuts, King and attorney general Tom Marshall (right, not exactly as illustrated) told reporters that whatever those officials had said would now be the policy.

The change of policy is breathtaking enough.  Not only will some of the laid-off court security officers be rehired, but cabinet has also lifted the hiring freeze to allow the High Sheriff to immediately hire more staff.  Someone will also be appointed to conduct operational reviews of the three divisions – High Sheriff,  legal aid and Crown prosecution service – involved in the cabinet flip flop.

But that’s not the truly striking aspect of this abrupt change.

Watch the video of the media briefing posted by CBC

At 40 seconds into his remarks, King confirms that the direction to abandon the cuts came from the Premier herself last week.  The Lady indeed was for turning.