tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30870284446176090722024-03-05T07:55:26.952-08:00KELLY LAMROCK'S RAZOR"Come, let us reason together."Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-48152559103053135092020-01-07T11:07:00.003-08:002020-01-09T05:29:21.365-08:00THE DEMOCRATIC RACE, ONE MONTH OUT<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u></u></b><br /></div>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">American
elections often seem to go on for years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Political types have been watching for over a year now, getting to know
the foibles and qualities of the many Democrats seeking to take on and replace
Donald Trump.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The reality
is that many voters are only starting to make their decisions now, as Iowa and New Hampshire enter
the last month before their nominating votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s because many voters, having lives that don’t focus on the
travails of Kamala Harris, only start tuning in now and really focusing on who
they think has the makings of a President.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Don’t
believe me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look at the history of late
shifts that alter the race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2004,
John Kerry was loaning his campaign money to stay afloat while the media went
ga-ga over insurgent frontrunner Howard Dean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In 2008, John McCain had fallen to sixth in some polls and was left for
dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2012, Rick Santorum wasn’t on
pace to win Iowa – he was a polling asterisk who’d lost his Senate seat by 18
points.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, of course, in 2008 and
2016, Hillary Clinton had 30-point national leads that quickly evaporated into
dogfights with Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, her husband Bill enjoyed nothing
like that in 1992 – he was running fourth and assumed to be buried under an
avalanche of negative stories about his personal life.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><b><i>Guys who didn't have a hope, one month out.</i></b></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">So, we
really don’t know what will happen as these candidates meet the voters’ full,
critical gaze for the first time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
we do have is some winnowing done by the media, the money, and the insiders, as
some candidates have found there just is not enough water in the pool to dive
in head first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of those – hi, Bill DeBlasio
– were never credible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some, like Julian
Castro and Steve Bullock – were serious candidates who just couldn’t meet the
moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some, like Kamala Harris, decided
early to spare themselves the effort to keep campaigning if they were unlikely
to win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some, like Cory Booker, keep
plugging ahead in the hopes that there’s a lottery ticket still to be
scratched.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">At this
point, there are four candidates with the money and polling to have a plausible
shot at winning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joe Biden, Bernie
Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg all have led at least some state
polls and have the resources to hang around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are three more names you may yet want to file away because they
have at least some of the virtues of past late bloomers – Amy Klobuchar, Cory
Booker and (for slightly different reasons) Michael Bloomberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest is just noise.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Here’s how
the path to victory would look for the big four, and what conditions might open
the door to a dark horse joining that club.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Joe
Biden</span></u></b><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Resume: Joined
the Senate at 30 and stayed there until tapped as Vice President in 2008 by
Obama</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Strengths:
Widely-known and liked, tends to perform best against Trump in polling</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Weaknesses:
His age, doubts about whether he has lost his fastball, unrepentantly not woke</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><b><i>Uncle Joe, looking avuncular.</i></b></span></div>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">
</span><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">For all the
sneering at Biden from the media, woke Twitter and comedy shows, he’s still
roughly where he was when he entered – numbers good enough to win, not good
enough to win easily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet for all the
odd stories and daffy uncle moments, Joe is holding on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, if anything, he’s more likely to win now
than he was three months ago.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Biden’s bid
can be likened to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign for the GOP nomination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Romney then, like Biden now, entered as a
presumptive frontrunner based upon his past efforts and name recognition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Biden, he was seen as an electable moderate
who would have to convince a party that had become increasingly ideological.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Biden, he had some personal qualities
that could strike voters as a little odd but was widely seen as decent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Biden, he was seen as the most electable
option against an incumbent president who his party’s base despised, and who
they had underestimated four years ago as too outside the mainstream to beat
them.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The
Republican Party that ultimately nominated Romney acted like it didn’t really
want to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Romney held roughly 25-30% of
voters throughout who were just fine with him. But he was surpassed by several
more “conservative” options and had to wait patiently while voters kicked the
tires on a bunch of other models before coming back to the steady, electable
choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before getting to Iowa, Michele
Bachmann held a national lead before crashing under the weight of her extreme
social views and general weirdness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
guy named Trump briefly took the lead based on his quest for Obama’s birth
certificate, but he backed out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rick
Santorum and Newt Gingrich both returned from the dead to win early states
before Romney buried them under negative ads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even after that, a bunch of folks like Rick Perry, Chris Christie and
even Herman Cain (!) took polling leads before backing out or being exposed as
lightweights on policy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(More ominously
for where the party was going, Perry’s crash was blamed on his “oops” moment of
failing to recall the three government departments which he would eliminate,
but at the same team Romney had attacked him for allowing some social services
in Texas to illegal immigrants, which may have actually been the cause of the
collapse).</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Ultimately,
Romney prevailed by convincing a sceptical party that he could be trusted to
beat Obama, and the others posed an electability risk no matter how much their
ideology and ideas were attractive to the party base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joe Biden seems to be winning that argument
as well.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Biden’s
message is simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does not seek to
launch a counterrevolution to Trump, or to use the chaos to bring about
structural change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He believes that the
country and its institutions are fundamentally good and that what is needed is
to beat Trump as soundly as possible so that the nation may return to “normal”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Normal”, in Biden’s world, means
incrementally more generous social programs and a foreign policy that aligns
with traditional western democratic allies.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">In fact,
unlike Romney in 2012, Biden has stuck largely to his guns even under
ideological attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Romney was forced to
lurch right to convince Republicans he was a “severely conservative” candidate,
and took stands on immigration, health care, gay rights and taxes that were far
to the right of his moderate time as Governor of Massachusetts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The man who once ran to Ted Kennedy’s left on
gay rights now embraced the Christian right’s positions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may have saved his nomination, but he got
savaged in the general by the Obama team, who used gay marriage and the DREAM
Act to wedge Romney on social issues and pounded him with ads depicting him as
a heartless, job-exporting capitalist.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Biden has
resisted the radical makeover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upbraided
for past votes that don’t hold up well in today’s more liberal Democratic
Party, he has often chosen explanation over apology, and has refused to join
the bidding war of social spending to appear more liberal than Sanders and
Warren.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while he’s had odd moments
of mangling syntax and metaphors, he’s still the nominal front runner.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Like
Romney, he’s watched two rivals have surges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kamala Harris roughed him up in the debates on his past busing votes,
but then struggled on that and other issues to explain what exactly she
believed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elizabeth Warren took the lead
by promising a plan for everything, but seems to have been pinned back by the inevitable
questions about the plan to pay for everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Pete Buttigieg is having a moment but seems to have subsided a bit with
new attacks on his fundraising and experience.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">As the
national debate turns to impeachment and foreign policy, that likely helps
Biden, whose campaign and experience give him an edge in defending institutions,
the rule of law, and traditional foreign policy.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Biden’s
advantage is that he has two paths to victory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The first is that he could win Iowa and New Hampshire and the momentum
kicks in – other moderate options leave the race and Biden begins to get the
deference stronger frontrunners have gotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The second is that he limps through respectable but not first place
finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, but those wins either go to different
candidates or to Sanders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In both cases,
Biden still likely wins South Carolina and establishes himself as the candidate
you have to rally around to block chaos (or Sanders, which to many Democrats is
chaos with a single-payer health care plan.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">How would
it look if Biden were in trouble?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
Iowa’s winner also gets the momentum to win New Hampshire and then gives him a
serious run in South Carolina, AND if that person is Buttigieg or a dark horse,
Biden is in serious trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Warren may
also be acceptable enough to put this thing away with an Iowa-New Hampshire
twofer, as she invites less resistance than Sanders among establishment
moderates).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He may also falter if the
first four primaries produce a mishmash of results and his gaffes and fumbles
continue as more voters tune in – that could open the door to a rally around
Buttigieg or Bloomberg to replace Biden as the “safe” choice to take on Trump.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">In short,
Biden has durable support among moderates and African-Americans (who, other
than Obama in 2008 and Jackson in 1984, have tended to support the centrist
establishment candidate in primaries), and he remains popular enough to
win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His weakness at times in debates
may be offset by the comfort that in past high-stakes debates as a
vice-presidential candidate, he has been highly effective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He defused Sarah Palin in a way that avoided
looking mean or condescending, and he demolished Paul Ryan after Obama lost the
first debate and re-energized the campaign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Bernie
Sanders</span></u></b><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Resume:
Started as Mayor of Burlington and built an independent political machine that
got him elected to Congress and the Senate as an Independent Socialist from
Vermont, caucuses with Democrats.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Strengths:
Has a devoted following that gives him volunteers and money to compete as long
as he wants, has authenticity that comes from having pushed his message for
years when it wasn’t as popular</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Weaknesses:
Seen by some as strident and risky, promises of economic restructuring may make
Trump seem safer in a good economy, has some odd and extreme past statements
that can and will be used</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>We need your vacuum pennies!!</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Sanders has
managed an incredible feat – in his seventies, he’s become the party’s best
source of energy and youthful volunteers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After 2016, when his propensity to analyze all issues through an
economic lens limited his appeal to African-Americans, he has listened and
improved his ability to appeal to Democrats across the spectrum.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The
fervency of Sanders’ supporters mean that he will have the resources to fight
to the end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With that floor comes a
ceiling, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many Democrats see him
as building his movement at the expense of the Party, and some even blame his
supporters and his tepid endorsement for Hillary Clinton’s narrow loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paired with any one opponent, he may struggle
to get to 50% support unless he can raise serious doubts about that opponent.
(It’s worth noting that Warren voters do not universally go to Bernie when
asked for second choices).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is still
seen as a risky general election bet, although it must be noted that he
generally leads Trump in hypothetical matchups by only a bit less than Biden
does.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The most
likely outcome at this point is that Sanders stays in the mix but gradually
falls back to where he was in 2016 – a strong minority voice in the party but
losing as the party chooses one alternative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What does a Bernie win look like?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He wins Iowa and New Hampshire on vote splits while Biden, Buttigieg and
Klobuchar all remain viable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They then
make the same mistake centrist Republicans made against Trump – they attack
each other assuming that Bernie will self-destruct and lose to the last
moderate standing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They keep shooting
each other while Bernie wins more states with 35-40% of the vote until his lead
becomes such that the pressure to rally around him becomes too much.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Elizabeth
Warren</span></u></b><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Resume:
Second term senator for Massachusetts</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Strengths:
Policy breadth and detail, a strong campaigner and smart debater</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Weaknesses:
Policy details often get her in trouble; like Sanders, may allow Trump to run against
risk of radical change in a strong economy</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
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<b><i>I've got a plan for that!</i></b></div>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"></span><br />
<div align="center">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">
</span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"> </span><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Warren is a
gifted campaigner and she can draw blood in debate with the best of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her relentless energy, boundless optimism and
endless selfies draw admirers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet she
wins election in liberal Massachusetts with less of a margin than the state’s
presidential lean, and that raises concerns.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Trump has
not done much to create a strong economy; after all</span><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">, the indicators were moving up when he inherited the economy from
Obama.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump polls well behind
where an incumbent should be in a strong economy, even as voters give him good
marks for the economy and jobs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
suggests that voters are either (a) sharing credit for the economy between
Trump and Biden (as an Obama stand-in) and/or some swing voters believe that a
good economy doesn’t excuse Trump’s erratic, cruel and authoritarian behaviour
as president.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When a candidate's platform suggests minimal disruption to the economy, as Biden's does, voters may take the good economy as a given and focus on Trump’s scandals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br />If so, t</span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">he risk with Warren and Sanders is not
necessarily that they are too “left”, but that they explicitly promise to
disrupt an economy that most voters think is going well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This allows Trump to run on the economy,
arguing (as he often has) that to keep the economic results you have to put up
with the chaos and scandal around him.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Warren’s
performance endears her to the party’s base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> If you think the Hillary Clinton campaign erred by pushing values over policy specifics, Warren is a great antidote to that particular failing. She sometimes campaigns in a way that alienates swing voters, as with her recent comments that voters who oppose same sex marriage probably can't find people willing to date them. The base loved the pluck, but some saw it as a needless provocation. Wh</span>en she’s been pushed, on her taxation plans and her past claim of
First Nations heritage to get into Harvard, she hasn't shown a great instinctual feel for a response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s at risk of being seen as an alluring
risk, but too big a risk given the stakes of the election.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Can she
turn it around?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If she wins Iowa, she can
get a boost in New Hampshire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If she
wins both, she’s in business – Sanders’ soft support may come to her and she
may start to pull away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that window
looks narrower than it did two months ago, and if she doesn’t do well in Iowa
she may be fighting Buttigieg for the bronze very quickly. Which brings us to....</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Pete
Buttigieg</span></u></b><br />
<b><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></u></b>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Resume:
Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Rhodes Scholar and veteran. Lost races for state Comptroller and
for DNC National Chair.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Strengths:
Articulate, likable, new. Probably smarter than you are. His husband Chasten is a social media delight.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Weaknesses:
Same amount of governing experience as Sarah Palin in 2008, not attracting
diverse support.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Warning: if you're over 40, this may cause you to ask what you've done with YOUR life.</i></b></div>
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mayor Pete
is an interesting option.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can
dismiss him, arguing that the stakes are too high to turn to a thirtysomething
who’s mayor of a town about the size of Saint John.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, here he is, raising more money than the
senators and vice president in the race, outpolling more experienced
politicians, and charming folks wherever he goes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And inexperienced or not, he has been one of
the best at hitting high points with his answers – grace notes on civil rights,
substance on foreign policy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Obama
in 2008, he is a high-risk, high-reward proposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with leads in some Iowa and New Hampshire
polls and a $25million quarter in fundraising, clearly some folks see the
reward.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">His numbers
are backsliding just a bit from their peak, and so scrutiny will continue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think he’s the easiest to handicap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he can win Iowa and New Hampshire, and
Biden comes third or worse in both – it’s his to lose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He then has to survive scrutiny enough to
hold off the Warren/Sanders challenge from his left and to keep Bloomberg on
the sidelines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suspect this will end
as an audacious audition for 2024.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
there is a winning scenario on the board.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Everyone
else</span></u></b><br />
<b><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></u></b>
<br />
As I said earlier, there are only three names worth mentioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order of plausibility, it’s Klobuchar,
Bloomberg and Booker.<br />
<br />
<br />
The basic question is this – is there enough oxygen for
someone who is more moderate than Warren or Sanders, but doesn’t have Biden’s
baggage or adventures in syntax?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right now, that
oxygen appears to be dominated by Mayor Pete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, there are three others making a bid for that space.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Amy Klobuchar</b> has won big majorities in a swing
state, and has a midwestern common sense and centrist politics that some see as
just the ticket against Trump.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is a
bit negative in her debate persona, which plays into the early cautionary tales
of her temper dealing with staff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
she’s smart, experienced and on the move in Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there’s a late-breaking candidate, right
now, it’s her.<br />
<br />
<b>Cory Booker</b> is a mystery to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Democrats keep asking for a candidate who’s
economically centrist, socially progressive, younger and more vibrant than
Biden, better able to reach minority voters than Klobuchar or Sanders, and has
a deeper resume than Mayor Pete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
this must be driving Booker a bit crazy, because it sounds like him and <i>he’s right here</i>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> His PAC even launched an ad pointing out that he's ALSO a Rhodes Scholar and mayor. </span>Maybe his tendency to overdo it a bit on the
drama, or his early efforts to scramble to the left, have hurt him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he actually has more congressional endorsements
than anyone but Biden, and he’s a plausible nominee, so I’m going to leave him
in play for the same model as Klobuchar – like Jimmy Carter and John Kerry, they’ll
have to get a big boost from Iowa, win New Hampshire or come close, and then
somehow monetize that in time to not get buried on Super Tuesday.<br />
<br />
Speaking of monetizing, there’s one guy left who doesn’t
have that worry.<br />
<br />
<b>Michael Bloomberg</b> is up above 5% in some national
polls, and he’s hired staff and bought ads at a frenetic pace because, well, he
can drop $50million the way you or I can book a vacation – it’s real money, but
not enough to make a dent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bloomberg isn’t
even on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire, so what’s his play?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bloomberg surely knows that if someone comes
out of Iowa and New Hampshire with momentum, he won’t matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suspect he entered because he’s genuinely
concerned that no one will come out of the early states looking like a
winner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span>
If Sanders is winning on vote
splits, Biden is looking frail, Buttigieg callow, and no one else does well
enough to carry on, some Democrats will panic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And Bloomberg’s pitch is likely simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“You may not love the idea of a billionaire technocrat buying this thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here’s the deal – I’ve succeeded at
everything I’ve tried.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sane,
competent, and reasonable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m rich
enough to run a campaign that can respond to Trump’s attacks and Putin’s
propaganda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I hire smart people and win. </span>Basically, I’m a real
business success, and Trump is a huckster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But he's a good huckster, and r</span>ight now, his B.S. will take down every option you've got but me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You want me to get rid of this clown, or not?”<br />
<br />
That doesn’t excite anyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But you can see a scenario where it might start looking good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The downside for Bloomberg is that it depends
on others trying and failing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s
not bad to have a $50million insurance policy, paid for by Mike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can afford it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>My prediction: </b>I think the Biden scenario – he does
enough in Iowa and New Hampshire, wins South Carolina and Nevada, and after
Super Tuesday it’s a binary choice between him and Bernie and he wins – things are
breaking the right way for that scenario.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But that prediction is worth what they all are a month out, and the only
thing I know for sure is I don’t trust anyone who’s too sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But today, if I had to bet the mortgage, I’d bet
the chalk and bet on Joe to do enough when the stakes are high.<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-37123953513019147892019-04-23T08:46:00.002-07:002020-01-07T16:29:35.776-08:00What I'll Be Watching In PEI's ElectionThe Green Party surge in PEI has caused a lot of non-Islanders to pay inordinate attention to tonight's election. I'm one of them. Islanders are no doubt a tad frustrated at come-from-aways now breathlessly proclaiming that PEI may have a Green government, a minority government, or both. After all, Peter Bevan-Baker's popularity has been a constant in polls for just over a year, so the 3-way battle is not new.<br />
<br />
If you're like me and watching tonight with interest, here's a few things I will be looking for that may tell us how this historic election will play out. Having followed the polls for a year, read the platforms, watched the leaders' debate and spoken with folks on a pre-election visit to PEI, I am going to try to write about Island politics without embarrassing myself. Islanders likely know everything here, but this is my guide for the rest of us who will be watching tonight.<br />
<br />
<b><u>The Polls Are Close</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
We've had 3 major polls in the last week, which shows unusual interest in a potentially-unusual election. All three agree on the order of the parties -- Greens out front, the PCs in second with some upward movement, and the incumbent Liberals third, but respectfully so. (The NDP has nearly vanished beneath the Green surge despite having a bright and likable leader in Joe Byrne).<br />
<br />
Mainstreet and Narrative (o.k.a. CRA) have almost similar results 35-32-29 for Narrative and 35-31-29 in Mainstreet. MQO showed a stonger Green result, pegging the race at 40-29-26. <br />
<br />
As the pros say, polling averages and trends can tell you more than any one poll. One can safely conclude from this that the Greens' pre-election numbers are holding and for real, that the PCs under Dennis King seem to be reclaiming at least their traditional vote and are moving up, and that Premier MacLauchlan's numbers seem to be stalled at a number that feels like floor and ceiling at once.<br />
<br />
Just today, Forum Research dropped a poll that was in the field until yesterday, and it shows the PC momentum continuing and allowing them to nip the Greens 35-34, with the Liberals falling to 26. It can be seen as an outlier, but it's consistent with the modest momentum that the PCs showed in the other polls.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Small Margins Matter in PEI</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
For a while, PC had a series of lopsided majority governments, both PC and Liberal. In part, that's a function of our First-Past-The-Post system and PEI demographics. In larger, more diverse provinces, the province-wide numbers can mask huge regional swings that allow for pockets of strength for each party. In Ontario, even a wide PC lead will still allow for Liberal and NDP strength in Toronto and other cities. Even New Brunswick can have big regional swings as in 2018, where close provincial numbers masked the fact that there would be huge Liberal wins in the North even as the party collapsed in rural Anglophone ridings.<br />
<br />
PEI has a relatively homogenous population. Demographics are pretty similar. The urban-rural divide is far less than other provinces, not only because Charlottetown and Summerside are small cities, but he Island is a commuter province where many people with urban jobs live in rural communities. The result of this is that the provincial number often is replicated in many ridings. Thus in the past, say, a 50-40 PC lead produced a lot of 50-40 riding wins and a huge majority, unlike the Ontario and NB examples, where a 10 point PC lead would not bother Liberal incumbents in Toronto or Caraquet.<br />
<br />
IF the MQO numbers were right (40-29-26), a Green majority would be quite likely -- an 11-point lead would likely produce a lot of 5-15 point wins. In a province with a more pronounced urban-rural divide, it could augur 30 point wins in Charlottetown and close losses elsewhere, but the Island's history and polling breakdowns I've seen don't show that. Charlottetown is a bit friendlier to the Greens than the rural East, but the swing is more modest.<br />
<br />
That said, the MQO poll has a couple of cross-tabs that raised my eyebrows. Bevan-Baker is a popular guy, but his 53% leadership preference number is high in the partisan late days of an election. If we see that one as a slight outlier, the Greens are hovering around 35% in the other three polls. That seems like a reasonable prediction, and one which then will be first or second depending on how the traditional red-blue vote arranges itself. If the Liberals slip and PCs gain in the last week, there could be a narrow PC win.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Is There A Green Machine?</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
When I ran as a Liberal for the first time, I was amazed by how many long-time volunteers simply showed up at election time and knew what to do to turn out the vote.. The phone banks and canvass procedures were second nature, and the data from head office helped. Running for the NDP later, I felt the lack of that machine. Now, the Greens have many strong organizers who have honed those skills in non-partisan, issue-advocacy campaigns. They are bright and driven. (No one who has run against David Coon, as I have, will underestimate the transferability of these skills). But in the more rural areas where the Greens will have to win to get a majority, this may stretch their resources thin. Organizing to win 20 seats is different than the old days, when the Greens threw everyone into the Leader's seat. As well, Green support skews younger, making them reliant on voters with fewer ingrained voting habits, sometimes fewer transportation resources, and harder to find through landlines. Even if the GOTV only matters 2-3 points, that could matter in some ridings.<br />
<br />
<b><u>The Liberals on Edge</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
Third parties have it tough in First-Past-the-Post, especially if they are running a campaign to appeal province-wide. The Liberals, when they fall to third, are at risk of losing a lot of seats because their support is so broad -- 26% provincially for them can mean they are always just short in riding after riding. Yet, even a small poll error and/or a good GOTV effort can put them over 30%. For third parties of broad appeal, 25% could see them reduced to 2-4 seats and 30% could out Wade Maclachlan in position to meet the House as Premier.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Early Signs To Watch</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
Given the Forum poll's suggestion of a late PC surge, I'd watch some ridings where PC incumbents were seen to be in dogfights with Green newcomers riding the wave. If ridings like Borden-Kinkora, Kensingston-Malpeque and Startford-Keppogh show PC incumbents cruising, then this augers well for Dennis King's team. If these incumbents seem to be going down in a Green wave, then the Greens may well ride the urban polls to a strong majority. I'd also watch Dennis King's riding in Brackley-Hunter River, where a strong showing may suggest that he's exited a tight battle and has real momentum.<br />
<br />
Liberal fortunes will hang on the ridings around the cities. If Premier Maclachlan struggles to hold off a Green challenge in Stanhope-Marshfield, and incumbents are down quickly in the Charlottetown central ridings, it could be a long Liberal night indeed. If the Premier looks safe and Charlottetown is a split, there's a good chance a minority government will happen.<br />
<br />
For the Greens, Summerside will tell the tale. If they are going to break out of Charlottetown into the areas that can give them government, they will need to win in Summerside and in the two leaders' ridings. If they are comfortable there early, a majority is in reach. If those results are mixed, then they will likely be looking at a minority government.<br />
<br />
<b><u>By-Election</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
The tragic death of Green candidate Josh Underhay, a bright rising star who would have been a great Minister, means that we will decide 26 ridings tonight with one to come later. If two parties tie, or one stalls on 13 seats, that will be a show. And.....<br />
<br />
<b><u>My Prediction</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. I predict tonight will return 12 Greens, 11 PCs, 3 Liberals and there will be a high-stakes race for the 27th seat. On the upside -- this has been an uplifting campaign. The platforms are all moderate and even the Greens and PCs have common ground they could use to make a divided House work. The harshest moment came when Bevan-Baker said that the Premier "had not done a terribly good job" on the immigration file. That was seen as an attack, but that's pattycake most places. Maclachlan Liberals have run on the red-hot economy, and that's a fair, positive argument. If it doesn't work, it will largely be because voters chose something they liked more in a positive way rather than the lesser of three evils. In this age, that's not unimportant, at all.<br />
<b></b><u></u><b></b><u></u><br />
<br />Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-49893406262032159072018-07-30T21:50:00.001-07:002018-08-02T10:32:48.325-07:00The Urgency Of Defeating Gallant (From A Progressive Perspective)<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brian
Gallant is showing every sign that he wants this election to be decided upon
ideology, not competence.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Pretty much
every Liberal ad, tweet, and scripted utterance has been built around a simple
theorem:</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We spent money on X</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Blaine Higgs might spend less on X</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;">Re-elect Premier Gallant, because otherwise
less money will be spent on things you care about</span></i><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;">.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now, the
“X” is usually something pretty good – the talented tap-dance team of health
care and education usually lead the list – so as a clash of political theory it
might well work for the Liberals.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It is
a common play for the Liberal playbook across Canada, because it not only
defines the choice with the Conservatives in a way Liberals like, but it also
forms the basis for an appeal to NDP/Green voters.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For voters on the left, the Liberal appeal is
usually that the blue menace is so great that one must accept the Liberals,
with all their flaws.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The central
question is, then, considering how Brian Gallant has governed for four years,
has he earned re-election on his proposition – that he will protect and further
progressive goals.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Here, I am
defining “progressive goals” broadly and from this perspective.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I believe that government has a role to play
in society, in particular, in programmes that provide equal opportunity and/or
a minimum safety net that allows people to remain connected to the economy and
society.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I believe it is legitimate to
ask those who do well to pay a little more for those programmes.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That does not mean that tax rates can be
confiscatory, or ignore realities of competition.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It does not excuse waste, or government
expansion into areas where the market does fine.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But there is a role for government.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That’s a
broad definition, and I accept that.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Likely
moderate Dippers, Red Tories, and many small-l liberals could nod along.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But that is the vision Gallant says he is
defending and the mainstream that he says Higgs is outside.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And by that vision – progressive taxes that
support a safety net and social programmes – how has Gallant done?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I actually
believe that Brian Gallant, and his enablers, have put our social safety net at
greater risk than any government in years.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>I further believe that their defeat is necessary to protect the social
safety net.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I am willing to explain
that.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Fiscal Oxygen</span></span></u></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">There are
limits on how much government can tax.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Eventually you run into one constraint or another – the competition of
nearby provinces and states, the mobility of business, the black market, or
just the political tolerance of citizens.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>For a while sin taxes were the one thing government could raise without
a huge outcry.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>After all, who could
oppose making it harder to afford cigarettes?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Then black markets appeared, and government had to reluctantly roll back cigarette taxes (and enthusiastically enforce laws to keep beer shoppers from driving to Quebec).<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A small province like ours can only be so far
out of synch with neighbours before diminishing returns kick in.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">At any time,
there is a small list of “plausible tax hikes” government could try if they
want to increase revenue.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Think of these
as the “In Case of Fiscal Emergency, Break Glass” tax hikes.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Gallant regime has seen broken glass
everywhere.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Pretty much every bit of tax
room has been used up to fund this premier’s four years.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/new-brunswick-deficit-budget-hikes-taxes-on-fuel-and-for-wealthiest-residents/article23717760/" target="_blank">Tax the wealthy</a>?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Done.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span><a href="https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/budget-blues-hst-hike-slated-for-new-brunswick-1.2760517" target="_blank">Raise the HST</a>? Sure.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Property tax
hikes?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yes, to the point of <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/tax-scandal-service-new-brunswick-1.4052233" target="_blank">scandal</a> and
overreach.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/new-brunswick-deficit-budget-hikes-taxes-on-fuel-and-for-wealthiest-residents/article23717760/" target="_blank">Gas tax</a>? Done.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Even after
all those taxes, our credit rating has been issued a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/standard-poors-credit-rating-new-brunswick-1.4720624" target="_blank">caution</a>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So the borrowing is also at the outer
limits.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Brian Gallant has deemed his
ideas, his vision for government, to be so vital that he has sucked up all the
fiscal tax and borrow room any aspiring progressive could use.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This is either an investment in the greatest
expansion of the social safety net in history, or an act of self-aggrandizement
by a premier so the thralls of the self that Emperor Narcissus would blush.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If he spent all the money anyone could use,
one would expect social programmes to be stronger.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So, what are the results?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spending Without Results</span></span></u></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Quick
challenge – name one statistical indicator on the social side which has
improved since 2014.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In education,
literacy scores are <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/literacy-reading-students-assessments-erin-schryer-1.3825569" target="_blank">down</a>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In health
care, wait times for everything from surgery to physician rostering are
up.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Enrollments in post-secondary
education are <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/university-new-brunswick-enrollment-down-1.3976392" target="_blank">down</a>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And this is in areas
where the government has bothered to keep tabs on results at all.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In several cases now in education, testing
simply got <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/test-assessments-liberal-government-brian-kenny-1.4500123" target="_blank">cancelled</a>, as it did conveniently around the student scores that
would have allowed for a comparison with immersion entry points.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I’ve tried
to generously think of a measurable social problem government has planned to
improve and improved.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/moncton-hospital-emergency-room-er-serge-melanson-1.4519923" target="_blank">Health</a> <a href="https://www.nbms.nb.ca/leadership-and-advocacy/improving-the-health-system/emergency-room-wait-times-can-and-should-be-shorter/" target="_blank">care</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/wait-times-new-brunswick-surgeries-1.4615646" target="_blank">access</a>? PSE <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/university-new-brunswick-enrollment-down-1.3976392" target="_blank">enrollment</a>? <a href="https://ca.news.yahoo.com/education-minister-downplays-shortage-school-135855534.html" target="_blank">Mental health professionals</a>? <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/3028899/literacy-levels-in-new-brunswick-middle-schools-not-making-the-grade/" target="_blank">Reading scores</a>? <a href="http://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/corporate/public_consultations/NBLiteracyStrategy/LiteracyRates.html" target="_blank">Adult literacy</a>?
<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/3873078/1-in-5-new-brunswick-children-and-youth-living-in-poverty-report/" target="_blank">Poverty rates</a>? <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170906/t001b-eng.htm" target="_blank">Tuition fees</a>? <a href="https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/we-just-can-t-find-people-n-b-shuffle-focuses-on-elusive-population-growth-1.3575237" target="_blank">Population growth</a>? F<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/family-court-case-management-moncton-saint-john-1.4570154" target="_blank">amily court wait times</a>?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I mean, anyone can spend more money.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Inflation and collective agreements force it
on you even if you hide in your office.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>But what social cause seems to animate the Liberals’ quest for power? What are they passionate about fixing?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You can
even think more generally – what would be one case where government identified
a social ill, put forward a plan to fix it and provided a statistical indicator
to say “here is how you will know if it is working”?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If you’re struggling to think of one, that is
not some nagging academic concern.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That framework
– identify the problem, plan a solution, measure results – is the most basic
expectation of competent government.<span style="margin: 0px;"> Government plans are often <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4009542/nb-curb-hospital-wait-times/" target="_blank">hidden</a> when the money gets <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4150213/new-brunswick-nursing-home-plan/" target="_blank">spent</a>, or so vague they amount to picture books that say "<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/2916928/nb-government-releases-ten-year-education-plans-leaves-implementation-up-to-educators/" target="_blank">Things will get better</a>."</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That problem
– a lack of basic competence – has been this government’s Achilles Heel.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Too often, they have lacked the pretense of
having any core belief that lasts for more than 15 minutes.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Today, Premier Gallant brags of having
committed to hiring 200 new teachers, but he fired 200 teachers in his first
budget, and did so after <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/liberal-budget-contains-policy-flip-flops-1.3018008" target="_blank">pledging in Opposition not to fire teachers</a>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In Opposition, Mr. Gallant blasted the
Conservatives for rolling back Liberal tax cuts, but today enthusiastically
raises taxes and suggests that Blaine Higgs is a cruel Visigoth at the gates of
decency for expressing doubts about it.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>On post-secondary education, Minister Don Arsenault <a href="https://nbsa-aenb.ca/tag/new-brunswick-tuition-rebate/" target="_blank">cut</a> the tuition rebate program and rolled back the timely completion programs that were launched
in 2009 by…..Minister Don Arsenault.<span style="margin: 0px;"> A <a href="https://t.co/UjtDdqRKO3" target="_blank">programme review</a> was much ballyhooed, then shelved. </span>In short, one never gets
the sense that there has ever been any plan, principle, or policy that can
survive the lure of tomorrow’s shiny object.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>This isn’t the Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>They are the Gang That Doesn’t Know What To
Shoot At So They Shot Off Their Toe.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When social
problems have found them, where due to inaction or incompetence a problem grows
to the point where others ask, the cabinet has shown a curious lack of interest
in the problem.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Steve Horsman, the
Minister responsible for child protection, has repeatedly responded to
questions about children in his charge showing up neglected or worse with the
kind of<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/897614403887/" target="_blank"> glazed-over wonder</a> one would expect from a man who was just sent here
from an alternate universe, only to find he’s been made minister of something
against his will.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Minister Landry, asked
why the government made its tuition bursary programme less generous than the
Ontario programme it copied, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CBCNB/videos/10153512051336937/" target="_blank">literally ran</a> from the room.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Education Minister <a href="https://twitter.com/poitrasCBC/status/798626897936560128" target="_blank">rose in the Legislature</a> to state that he wasn’t worried about <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/brian-kenny-new-brunswick-education-assessment-results-1.3828911" target="_blank">declining student reading scores</a> because he himself had performed poorly in school, and here he was,
being a minister like a big boy.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This
was done with a straight face.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It would be
sad, if it weren’t so serious.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Even a right-wing
government of Liberal nightmares might, while neglecting the social side, leave
some taxing and spending room available for those who might come later.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In their rush to brag of having spent more,
the Gallant government has done absolutely nothing on the social side <u>and</u>
they’ve used up all the money that someone more passionate and useful could
have used.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That isn’t just wasteful – it
sets social progress back.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And, Actually, Not Much Spending</span></span></u></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Part of the
reason why the results have been lousy on the social side under the Gallant
government is because, in truth, they haven’t really been investing in the
social side of the ledger.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In many
cases, the things they attack Blaine Higgs for wanting to cut are areas where
they have a pretty lousy record.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">On
education spending, they delivered the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/1913393/brian-gallants-liberals-to-deliver-first-n-b-budget-since-taking-office/" target="_blank">largest <u>cut</u> to school districts</a>
in a quarter century in the 2014-15 budget, firing teachers and closing schools.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Their overall rate of s<a href="https://ca.news.yahoo.com/education-spending-depends-roger-melansons-203628653.html" target="_blank">pending on education</a> has gone up <a href="https://twitter.com/KLamrock/status/997505869687545858" target="_blank">far less</a> than
the Graham or Lord governments, and about the same as the Alward
government.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For all the hype about the “free”
Tuition Access Bursary, it was set to such a low qualifying point that 80% of those
eligible were <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3087028444617609072#editor/target=post;postID=5511181959872760877;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=16;src=postname" target="_blank">already getting federal bursaries</a> equal to “free” tuition.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In fact, the programmes and tax credits
<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/free-tuition-changes-tab-program-1.3573019" target="_blank">cancelled</a> at the same time took <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/free-tuition-policy-questions-1.3542233" target="_blank">millions</a> more away from <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/free-tuition-changes-tab-program-1.3573019" target="_blank">students</a> than TAB
gave.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Health spending is lower under
Gallant than under Graham.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The poverty
reduction plan has seen every element cancelled, and the Department of Social
Development received a real dollar cut under Gallant for the first time in 17
years.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The only anti-poverty announcement
of any significance has been a grant of $10million over 5 years for Saint John
policy groups to <u><a href="http://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/multimedia/mmrenderer.2017.05.2017-05-23_05.jpg.html" target="_blank">study</a></u> poverty – cruelly, this money will not actually
reach anyone living in poverty, so there will be a fair bit to study.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And on minimum wage, the Gallant government
has been more <a href="https://twitter.com/KLamrock/status/997505869687545858" target="_blank">miserly</a> than any government in my lifetime in terms of percentage
increases.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is not
to deny the fact that the government can claim to have spent more – much more –
in the last four years.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>They can claim
to have spent aggressively.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>They simply
have not spent much of it on health and education and social programmes, much
as those concepts have reappeared magically in Liberal campaign ads.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But if a
Liberal vote is not a vote for social spending, what spending are they really
defending?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">What the
government has spent on is clear from a review of the budget.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The largest growth areas have been
infrastructure projects and grants to private business.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Gallant government has managed the feat
of becoming more statist without actually being more progressive.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Money is not taken from the well-off and
provided to the less well-off.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Money is
taken from everyone and given to the politically connected in the form of pavement
and subsidies. The timing of projects is often political, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-capital-budget-2018-election-1.4392778" target="_blank">rising</a> and <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/2407336/n-b-government-scales-back-capital-budget-by-53-million/" target="_blank">falling</a> with the political timetable, and sometimes seeing <a href="http://phantom%20announcements/" target="_blank">phantom announcements</a> that don't align with <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/liberals-nursing-home-funding-announcements-1.4760539" target="_blank">any budget at all</a>.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As we saw
in the last fiscal update, government is growing debt beyond the rate of annual
deficits by expanding capital budgets.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>We have seen a rush of government spending announcements, released in
such a rush that they have come out before any infrastructure plan, and even
before the Legislature has actually approved them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In the recent case of nursing homes, there is
no pretense that government has even budgeted enough to build everything they
are announcing.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This isn’t
just a concern about contempt for Parliament (although it is that).<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It is a reminder that the spending the
Liberals have favoured is the most political, least policy-driven spending in
which government can engage.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Unlike education
and health spending, which takes place within certain parameters and has to
meet particular outcomes, infrastructure spending has often been driven by raw
politics and Cabinet whims.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If the
infrastructure spending has been opaque and mysterious, the corporate welfare
has been more galling.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In general,
corporate welfare has gone to two types of companies – those who don’t need it
(the TD Bank) and those who can’t compete in the free market (Sears).<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Under Gallant, we have been treated to a
culture of non-accountability for these grants, with Opportunities New
Brunswick officials smugly telling MLAs they have <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-onb-not-public-job-creation-numbers-1.4582952" target="_blank">no right to inquire of jobs</a>
promised at multimillion dollar ribbon cuttings have ever materialized.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>These questions seem more relevant than ever
when we have seen past grant recipients – <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-onb-not-public-job-creation-numbers-1.4582952" target="_blank">IBM</a>, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/bmm-testlab-gaming-1000-jobs-1.3898658" target="_blank">BMM</a> – gobble up their grants
and then cut or never create jobs.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In some
cases, we are bidding only against ourselves.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>We have seen the Gallant government lavish <a href="https://www.privateerholdings.com/blogmaster/2015/11/12/nedc-releases-tilray-economic-impact-analysis" target="_blank">money on marijuana </a>companies,
even to the point of giving one company financial <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/new-brunswick-announces-plans-for-supply-oversight-of-recreational-marijuana/article36280930/" target="_blank">help</a> to ensure a supply of
recreational marijuana.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You might ask
when it become a concern worthy of the public purse to ensure the supply of a
recreational drug when the free market is available.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You might ask, but the answer is rarely
forthcoming.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet, one of Canada’s
largest marijuana companies, Tilray in Nanaimo, British Columbia, chose that
location despite a <a href="https://www.privateerholdings.com/blogmaster/2015/11/12/nedc-releases-tilray-economic-impact-analysis" target="_blank">refusal by government to offer subsidies</a>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As a report prepared for local government
showed, Nanaimo won against places offering government funds by offering a
better business environment – something which would favour all competitors
equally but perhaps rob government of ribbon cuttings.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet the Gallant Liberals speed towards
subsidized companies offering product through a statist pot monopoly that will
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/legal-weed-delay-profits-new-brunswick-1.4726422" target="_blank">lose money </a>in the first year.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You might
not recall any public debate on the merits of reducing the public funds
available for schools so that access to recreational drugs could become part of
the public weal.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That’s because there
was no public debate, just a government communications plan where the mind and
soul of a government should be.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Again, the
lack of a plan is striking.<span style="margin: 0px;"> Premier Gallant used to call subsidies a "<a href="http://country94.ca/news/call-center-subsidies-debate" target="_blank">short term fix</a>", and not a real solution. Now, he hands out <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=brian+gallant+%22payroll+rebates%22&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=brian+gallant+%22payroll+rebates%22&sc=0-31&sk=&cvid=C6FD8FD24D2D4470B8CE5A997C3ECD0F" target="_blank">payroll rebates</a> like his political life depends upon it. </span>Grants often
seem driven by political timing or companies’ connections to the ruling
party.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>(One minister openly encouraged
businesses to purchase tickets to a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/liberal-party-meeting-fundraiser-1.3440942" target="_blank">Liberal fundraiser</a> to discuss their
business projects.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>While I am not so naïve
to believe that the Gallant Liberals are the first to sell access, they are the
first I’ve seen openly brag about doing it).<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Too often, entrepreneurs are deciding projects based upon what will please
the government rather than what will work in the market.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
orgiastic splurge has been driven by the worst kind of junk economic
analysis.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>From the 2014 campaign on,
government has continued to offer studies showing that throwing <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-votes-2014/brian-gallant-under-fire-for-liberal-infrastructure-plan-1.2749379" target="_blank">millions of borrowed dollars</a> at projects has “economic impact”, meaning that it gives
dollars to people who will likely spend those dollars.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Smart readers will notice that this is a low
bar – every project has some economic impact.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Throwing money off the back of a truck in the local parade, a la Eva
Peron, would have economic impact.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One
thing these studies never do, at least under the Liberals, is study the
relative impact of one spending project versus other uses of the same money – a
basic calculation before spending any finite resource.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet the Liberals continue to gorge as long as
some policy analyst can show an economic analysis, which is the public policy
equivalent of stating, at 1:55 a.m., that you will only go home from the bar
with someone if they can be proven to have a pulse.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s an existentially low bar.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The bottom
line is that since 2014, the number of public sector jobs has gone up by 10,000
and the number of private sector jobs has fallen by 5,600.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And now, more private sector employees are
now on the public payroll.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It does not
take a crystal ball to see the problem.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>If there are more people being paid through taxes, and fewer private
sector people paying taxes, AND government also starts paying private sector
employees to do work for private companies…..who exactly pays for teachers and
nurses and social workers and scientists and those who must do the public’s
work?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A progressive government that
follows the example of successful social pioneers would choose to fund social
programmes through fair taxes upon a roaring private economy.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Gallant government has chosen to
underfund social programmes to fund a patronage-driven, statist economy in
which teachers and nurses are squeezed out by a need to put private companies
on the public payroll.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If you care about
public services, there can be no greater urgency than the defeat of the Gallant
government before the contradictions collapse upon themselves.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If you see
government as a force for good, then you will care about the public trust and
political functioning of government.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And
it is on this question that the case is most urgent to defeat the Gallant
Liberals.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Our Trumpian Premier</span></span></u></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This
heading is designed to be provocative, so let me start by noting that Brian
Gallant has a number of public and personal qualities that deserve praise.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He is, as many of his generation are,
comfortable with diversity and welcoming in his actions towards all. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I fear no truck with the alt-right from this
premier, quite the opposite.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He is
generally polite and proper where Trump is a norm-shattering disaster.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And, of course, while Premier Gallant has his
political mentors, Dominic LeBlanc is a much more palatable handler than Vlad
Putin.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I can also say that on some
policy fronts – the recent changes to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Employment
Standards Act</i> and his recruitment of female candidates, the Premier
deserves some praise.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Yet the
damage Trump has done is by his wanton destruction of norms, institutions and
ground rules.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump is truly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sui generis</i> in his attacks on a free
press, judicial oversight, and the very idea of facts.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Yet Trump
did not develop in a vacuum.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He feeds on
the cynicism borne when people stop expecting any politician to play by any
rules.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>While I despise cynicism because
it winds up rewarding the most brazen liars and sleaziest backroom officers, I
do know that it grows when politicians are willing to bend the rules and
disrespect institutions for short-term gain.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If Brian
Gallant is re-elected, it will encourage more cynicism and move us closer to
the “biggest liar wins” rule of Trump.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>And Gallant has conducted himself in a way that is not politics as
usual, because he has broken norms that Premiers McKenna, Lord, Graham and
Alward did not.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Consider the following:</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "symbol"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt "Times New Roman"; margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Within
days of being sworn in, Team Gallant became the first government ever to
unilaterally change the rules of the Legislature without an all-party
consensus.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And the changes – giving New
Brunswick the fewest <a href="https://twitter.com/TJProvincial/status/998495295561453569" target="_blank">sitting days </a>of any provincial assembly – were done
brazenly to weaken an institution for the benefit of the government.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This was new.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Even Premier Lord, faced with a 1-seat majority and a difficult
Opposition, refused to move unilaterally to change the rules of the game.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Despite government’s Orwellian talking point
that it was “<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/proposed-legislative-rule-changes-spark-debate-among-parties-1.2874521" target="_blank">modernizing</a>” the Legislature, it showed a premier who saw decades
of convention as meaningless compared to his immediate political needs.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "symbol"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt "Times New Roman"; margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Gallant government has been more willing than its predecessors to resist the
independent oversight of legislative officers.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>The unexplained defenestration of respected Medical Officer Eilish
Cleary, with a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/eilish-cleary-health-settlement-1.4191543" target="_blank">severance package</a> that screams wrongful dismissal, is the most
egregious example, followed as it was by a revamp of public health that
apparently <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/public-health-september-election-1.4691975" target="_blank">no one wanted</a>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But the
attempted changes to the Ombudsman role, the surly underfunding of the
<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/2401915/im-not-asking-for-permission-n-b-auditor-general-to-do-second-atcon-report/" target="_blank">Auditor-General</a>, and even the Premier’s haughty dismissal of a court order to
stop a school closure as “advice” all point to a government which – from its
head down – struggles to accept objective truth and independent analysis. And this is without calculating the <a href="https://ca.news.yahoo.com/former-vitalit-ceo-rino-volp-200721180.html" target="_blank">severance packages</a> that seem to have a risen from firings that were simply partisan revenge, which have cost taxpayers millions.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "symbol"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt "Times New Roman"; margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
government visibly leans towards secrecy to a worrisome degree.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>When there are clear failings of government –
invented property tax assessments and contaminated beaches come to mind – the
Premier has often seemed to run interference more than he has shown
leadership.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The property tax imbroglio
saw a judge hired and given a mandate carefully crafted to avoid any study of
how the dishonest assessments occurred, only to see the judge leave when the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/property-tax-review-auditor-general-judge-1.4146283" target="_blank">Auditor-General</a> offered to run a more fulsome review. And court time and
lawyers’ fees have been used to hide basic details, from severance packages to <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/3713621/new-brunswick-private-management-health-programs/" target="_blank">health care </a>contracts, from the public.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "symbol"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt "Times New Roman"; margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
ethical standards to which the Premier holds Cabinet have declined.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I once saw Shawn Graham red the riot act to
his team about avoiding false statements and checking pronouncements with
officials.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Premier Gallant watched CBC
show a cabinet minister making <a href="https://twitter.com/CBCNB/status/827670593696849921" target="_blank">5 false statements in 55 seconds</a> without doing
anything but sending him out to obfuscate the next day.<span style="margin: 0px;"> Government charts are <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/economic-growth-worst-among-provinces-2018-1.4530882" target="_blank">fudged</a>. The discovery of obvious <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-higgs-attack-ads-gallant-liberals-1.4668292" target="_blank">factual errors</a> in ads just lead to the Premier doubling down. </span>Most ministers cannot explain at the most
elementary level the reason for policy decisions, and this has led to continued
public frustration of <a href="https://twitter.com/mchardie/status/1022789196103262208" target="_blank">reporters </a>who cannot get <a href="https://twitter.com/mchardie/status/1023891655995412480" target="_blank">interviews</a>, and the sad
spectacle of apolitical <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-student-assessments-cancelled-1.4502782" target="_blank">public servants</a> being sent out to defend policy
decisions to a degree unforeseen in past governments.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "symbol"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt "Times New Roman"; margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Politics
has never been pure of motive, but the triumph of politics over evidence has
been notable under Gallant for just whom the government is willing to ignore to
get its way.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Most notable have been
decisions that affect children – the moving of mental health services to
Campbellton over the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/bernard-richard-slams-choice-of-location-for-youth-facility-1.3068913" target="_blank">objection</a> of every professional and the disgust of former
Advocate Bernard Richard, the cancellation of school tests and refusal to await
results of Grade 3 immersion before changing the programme (which was then
promptly shown to have <a href="https://twitter.com/KLamrock/status/1004006497716723712" target="_blank">raised</a> test<a href="https://twitter.com/TJProvincial/status/1007617674476703744" target="_blank"> scores</a>), and the closure of schools without
economic savings being proven all stand out because, usually, even hardened
pols hesitated to pursue petty politics when kids were involved.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That was a good norm.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Gallant broke it.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Conclusion</span></span></u></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The ads will
tell you that Premier Gallant is running as a champion of progressive
government.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet the values government
needs to survive – evidence-based policy, truth-based public debate, and a
respect for basic principles of good government – have been under attack in a
way that would have drawn bipartisan censor twenty years ago.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Further, by being loose with public money while
redirecting it away from social programs and into pork, patronage and pavement,
Premier Gallant has put social programmes at greater risk than even the
stingiest right-winger could. We have used up credit, tax room and a <a href="https://twitter.com/SaillantRichard/status/1023929186484973568" target="_blank">good global economy</a> while improving neither <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/economic-growth-worst-among-provinces-2018-1.4530882" target="_blank">economic growth</a> or the social safety net. We are now very vulnerable to a downturn unless we change course..</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Progressives
must not rally to the Gallant government’s aid.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Those that do are, by innocent error or institutional interest,
mistaking statism with social policy and spending with results.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Those who want to preserve the vital role of government in society should deny their vote to this
wolf in liberal clothing.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What I make of
the alternatives is for the next missive.</span></span></div>
<div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /></blockquote>
</div>
Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-74056143288089074932017-10-03T13:38:00.001-07:002020-01-09T12:19:44.484-08:00The Best Of Everything -- Thanks, Tom Petty<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He always got the first line right. So acknowledging that, right there, is how I’ll use my first line. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Petty nailed more first lines than any songwriter I can name. His vignettes, usually about romantics who were chasing a dream, screwing one up, or trying to keep one alive, never crept into focus. They slammed right in to view, telling you right where you were. You knew where you stood with a Tom Petty song.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The displaced Southerner of “Rebels”, who we meet already hollering “Honey, don’t walk out/I’m too drunk to follow”. The boyfriend, whistling past trouble in “Listen To Her Heart”, who tells you the straight up deal is that “He thinks he’s gonna take her away with his money and his cocaine”. The wistful loner who recalls “It was nearly summer, we sat on your roof. We smoked cigarettes and stared at the moon” tells you immediately what kind of song “Even The Losers” will become. And the women in Petty’s world come into the narrative fully formed, too, whether they are good girls who love their mama; they work in a night club ‘cause that’s what her mama did, or were an American girl raised on promises.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs06MJZ9f8N4KBciD3XieL8C6n6AGQ2ugXLjv_j6374Ec48kfbDFCmXOvTzdvMy_-2qzaqSyOssB467M8u8CqGTt7es9zRW2l1GQdJgG1jDzfB8jMKmFS5pWfvo0Eu4_D7I6RYTaIKY3M/s640/blogger-image-1138619192.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs06MJZ9f8N4KBciD3XieL8C6n6AGQ2ugXLjv_j6374Ec48kfbDFCmXOvTzdvMy_-2qzaqSyOssB467M8u8CqGTt7es9zRW2l1GQdJgG1jDzfB8jMKmFS5pWfvo0Eu4_D7I6RYTaIKY3M/s640/blogger-image-1138619192.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What we do when those promises come due, and how we deal when they are denied to us and become hard promises, is a whole big part of who we are. Your teachers call that “character”. In many ways, it’s life – figuring out what’s out there worth chasing, running it down, and dealing with the obstacles in our way. Most of our life, on the quiet days, we are in the process of doing one of those things. And that’s where we find Tom Petty’s music jangling along. If he shows up on almost everyone’s “soundtrack of my life” list, it’s probably because that’s what he writes about.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That’s why he’s been my favourite artist since I was nine years old. That’s why I’m coming too damn close to breaking my rule that it is stupid to cry over losing celebrities you didn’t really know.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">My generation is at the age where our rock stars die. Maybe it hits us so hard because the art form allows us to know them so well. Singers who write their own songs develop a voice and a personality that gives us an intimacy with them. When they express what we are feeling before we even know it ourselves, they become part of our lives. They aren’t our parents. But they are that cool older sibling we can talk to, the one who’s got enough years on us to get our respect but is still enough of a peer to get <i>us</i>. Even if it’s a one way conversation, that voice can be as comforting as if they can hear us. After all, they write like they already did.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So, no apologies. I feel like my cool older brother Tom died, and I’m sad about it. I’m going to tell you what he said to me over forty years, and why it stuck with me.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Petty was classically stoic. The ancient stoics believed that we never lost anything, because nothing was ever really ours. If you lost your house, or your money, or even someone you loved, they were simply restored to wherever they were when you didn’t have them. Petty, raised in a difficult home and a town where he was a perpetual outsider, always seemed to keep the same emotional distance. His protagonists were a resilient bunch. They faced down all manner of heartache. They screwed up what they had chasing something they couldn’t even know. You could be kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom in “Refugee”. Maybe your mother was in a clinic and your father had no job, like the “cute little dropout” we meet in “Zombie Zoo”. You could be stuck in a One Story Town. As Petty sang on a quirky little “Hard Promises” cut, you could put up with it for a little while, as long as you were working on something big.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For a while in my twenties, I was struck by how obstacles in Petty’s world appeared without explanation or analysis. They were just….there, they appeared, and you dealt with them. For a while, I used to think this made him a more simplistic songwriter than his fellow heartland rockers Springsteen and Mellencamp, whose work was more overtly political and explored causes. Mellencamp knows what went wrong when the Farmers’ Bank foreclosed in “Rain On The Scarecrow”. The Boss always told you who was closing down the textile mills in his hometown. With age, I began to see that Petty’s lack of explanation for life’s obstacles were not the result of being incurious, but a world view that told you that hard times were part of the journey. You didn’t spend time wondering why times were hard. You just kept running down a dream, you learned to fly, you didn’t back down even if they stood you up at the gates of hell, because these obstacles were transient. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As he tells us on a quietly powerful “Mojo” track, “There’s something good coming. There has to be.” And when you know that, what kind of explanation do you need? In Petty’s world, the nobility comes from the struggle itself and even defiance when it’s called for. That always made his work powerful for me. In a world where we all read motivational books and need daily affirmations to know why we keep going, Petty tells us that perseverance is its own reward, and that life is about kicking back even when it’s hard. Hell, drop the “about”. Life IS kicking back when it’s hard. Tom told me that.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In love, Petty’s work was equally accepting of hard times and hard promises. He was not Don Henley, whose beautiful “Heart Of The Matter” finds acceptance by analyzing the breakup, chalking it up to “pride”, “self-assurance” and times that are so uncertain. In Petty’s world, love doesn’t owe you an explanation. One of his best album cuts is “Straight Into Darkness”, where he tells us “there was a moment when I really oved her, then one day the feeling just died”. In “Letting You Go”, he opens with a similarly blunt “I used to think that when this was all over, you might feel different about me”. At no point does he demand an explanation – the object of his affection just didn’t feel different after all. It was as if he took to heart the counsel of the lover who left him one album earlier on the underrated hit “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)”. After she laughed in his face and told him goodbye, she advised him “Don’t think about it, you could go crazy”.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Again, it is possible to take a critical view of this approach and attribute this to a kind of incuriosity, when so many spurned musical lovers take great pains to understand WHY love has been denied them. But Petty’s take on love is not because he doubts its power. When love smiles upon him, he can tell the whole wide world, shout “here comes my girl”. Even just the potential of love animates “A Thing About You” with a dizzying crash of guitars that simulate the swell of a new crush. And Petty knows what it means when love dies; one of his crowning achievements is the opener of his post-divorce album “Echo”. On “Room At The Top”, Petty’s voice quavers like never before as the song builds to a quiet “I love you. Would you please love me?” before the singer withdraws behind a wall of sound to find some equilibrium. And arguably the best song he ever wrote is “Insider”, which has nursed many a Petty fan through a hard breakup. When he describes his ex-partner’s personality and muses “I’m the one who oughtta know/I’m the one left in the dust”, he tells us a lot about the price you pay for letting someone close to you in an uncertain world. With Petty, one should never mistake acceptance for detachment.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It struck me as meaningful that Petty closes “Into The Great Wide Open” with three tracks – “You And I Will Meet Again”, “Making Some Noise”, and “Built To Last” – that pay tribute to the constants of platonic friendships, rock and roll band mates, and romantic partners. An album that opens with him starting out “for God knows where, guess I’ll know when I get there” ends with odes to the joys of loyalty to people in your life even as places and things change. In Petty’s world, the redemptive power in love does not come from understanding it, it comes from giving it even through dark times. Love is mysterious, but when it perseveres through hard times it is powerful and redemptive. Like life itself, love gathers its power through resilience against the odds. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And love is sweeter in Petty’s world because women are strong personalities who can make their own choices, not just objects for pursuit. They can pay your tickets and leave you out in the thicket when you’re a screwup, like in “Rebels”. And make no mistake, Petty may sing “Here Comes My Girl” with pride and joy, but it’s her who “looks me in the eye and says ‘we’re gonna last forever’”.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As I grew older, Petty’s work began to add an important element to its theme of determination and grit against long odds. Petty’s later work addresses disappointment and preaches benevolence and acceptance as a way to deal with the times when the struggle falls short. The benevolence you see creeping in on “Southern Accents” with its eulogy of an album closer “The Best Of Everything”, when he calls out to a lover past “Wherever you are tonight I wish you the best of everything in the world”. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> In the criminally-underrated “Square One” he has reached a place of peace with the ups and downs of life. Summarizing failures and successes, he simply stands at square one and invites a lover to “rest her head” on him. As the chords keep a quiet constancy, Petty purrs “took a world of trouble, took a world of tears, took a long time to get back here”, but the tone does not hint at a triumph over adversaries as much as an acceptance of the sum of wins and losses, and a peace with wherever the end point of the journey was. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By the time an older Petty puts out the second Mudcrutch album, he is able to counsel that “people are what people make ‘em, that ain’t gonna change” before asserting at the end “I forgive it all”, hinting that this Petty protagonist, at least, has found enduring love and the rest requires only benevolence toward the rest of the world. Even if you did do him like that, or if you got lucky when he found you, anger at some point gave way to peace.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I hope that Petty, the restless romantic of my youth, found that same peace himself as he wound down his final tour and went home. It would be foolish to think I know him because I know his art. He surely had his demons – who doesn’t? – but the Petty who spoke to me deserves the peace he counselled me as I got older and youthful dreams became hard-won wisdom. Whether the real Petty held that kind of benevolence and loyalty I do not know. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> I do know that when I saw him live, I found it genuinely affecting when he thanked the audience for holding up lighters through a ballad. “I never get tired of that”, he told us, putting himself in our place as a fan even as he was also the star. Certainly his life, whether withholding an album from his record company until they rolled back a price hike and speaking of his enjoyment of hearing how we experienced his music, seemed to show a genuine connection to his fans. Indeed, “The Last DJ” is widely seen as his weakest album in part because he could not shake his pedantic anger at those who lose sight of the music for profit. If the connection was only image, it was cultivated far better than any other part of his persona.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the end, in the reality of his fans, an artist is his work. And as the cool older brother I adopted through a child’s early fandom, Tom Petty taught me well. We could do worse than to learn that there are promises out there for all of us, even the losers; that to chase those promises down is its own reward; that setbacks are inevitable but that perseverance is its own virtue; and that when the struggle ends we should strive towards peace with ourselves, loyalty to those that stuck by us, and acceptance of everyone else. If that was the soundtrack to my life, I could have done a lot worse.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And, Tom, wherever you are tonight – thanks. I wish you the best of everything in the world, and I hope you found whatever you were looking for.</span></div>
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Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-25096603430759472392017-06-28T09:09:00.001-07:002017-06-28T09:13:09.935-07:00Explaining Well-Meaning Failure -- NB Second Language Training Edition<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The news that only 32 people took advantage of the government’s $1Million programme to provide free second language training to unemployed New Brunswickers last year has been met with surprise from some quarters.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In particular, the minister responsible seemed disappointed, stating “You can’t just stay there and complain that you can’t get a job opportunity because you don’t know the second language but you are not doing anything about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Let me say at the outset that, while Don and I famously have our differences, I think his support for bilingualism is heartfelt, sincere, and admirable. This is not a hit piece.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But his statement confirms what the numbers suggest – Don doesn’t understand, on a human level, what the reality is for unemployed people. Or for Anglophones who have not mastered a second language.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Often, our second language training in New Brunswick is terrible. And I think it is because we design programmes for their symbolic value rather than their educational value. We ask “Will this show we support bilingualism?” rather than “Will this make more actual people bilingual?”. And we should be mature enough to break that bad habit, because bilingualism is here to stay. We have to stop fighting the ghosts of the 1960s.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">To understand the failure of this program, we have to understand one fundamental thing about what it is to be unemployed. If you want to know what path an unemployed adult will choose, first ask the question “What will most quickly get this person into a job?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For example, if I offered free philosophy degree courses to unemployed New Brunswickers, there would be low take up. Even though statistically people with arts degrees, even in Philosophy, earn more than those with no degree at all, it would be a tough sell. It takes four years to learn enough philosophy to get a degree, and even then the skills are general – there is no automatic job afterwards. Some doors open, but that is the most that can be said with certainty.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But isn’t that also true, for most, of second language training.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If your skills in French are minimal today, learning a second language is not a quick solution to needing a job. Because you are not three, six or even twelve months away from speaking French at a level that opens up any jobs. (I had access to Arabic language training for six months last year. Do you think I will be applying for any jobs classified Arabic-essential?) Basically, if you lack the ability to have a basic conversation today, you are years from the point where you will learn French well enough that you can actually use your new French skills to apply for jobs that require French.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is a great thing, of course, to be able to have basic conversations in Caraquet in French. But that doesn’t get you hired.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And many unemployed New Brunswickers do not have even minimal French to start with. (Remember that before Intensive French was introduced in 2008, 98% of non-immersion graduates lacked the ability to use even one sentence spontaneously, and fewer than 10% of graduates completed Immersion). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Also, that is a number of years needed for the average learner. Statistically, there would be a higher number of people who struggle to learn languages among the unemployed than there are among the general population. (There most certainly are high-skill unemployed here, but it is also true that a higher percentage of unemployed adults report having struggled in school than the percentage of employed adults). That means that many unemployed New Brunswickers likely doubt that, even with time and effort, they will master a second language well enough to make it a certified, employment-related skill. If you struggle with first language skills, how plausible is it that you will master a second before your EI runs out ( or social assistance rules force you to take the first job available).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So if we understand that unemployed people desperately need jobs because they have kids and mortgages and basic desires to work, and second language training takes years to help an unemployed person get a job, and the government doesn’t help with living expenses while you get “free” training -- why are we surprised that the programme tanked?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For most adult learners, that is the calculation that adult responsibilities force upon us. The question we ask when deciding whether or not to learn French is not “Would I like to know French?”. The question is “what professional benefit does that bestow compared to other things I could do with the same time and effort?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you are a unilingual worker at a private sector company, you could learn French in 2 to 3 years. You could also get an MBA and qualify for jobs that don’t require French and pay more. What will you do?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you are a Grade 12 student who wants to be a doctor or scientist, you could take Advanced Math in French. But if you know you go a bit slower in your second language, and you’ll be competing in university for scholarships and med school spots, don’t you have to choose mastering the Math over polishing your French?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you’re on social assistance and you left school in Grade 10, should you do your high school equivalency first, or learn French?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">See the problem?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Many francophones underestimate the struggle for Anglophones to learn French, just as Anglophones underestimate the risk of assimilation. One group has the second language so present in their lives they need to create spaces away from it, the other struggles to find places to use it and learn it informally. Neither completely gets the other, which I think is why we see Don Arsenault defaulting to blaming people without jobs for not jumping all over the chance to take a French course instead of asking questions about what these people need.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If we are serious about bilingualism, we wouldn’t do it the way Minister Arsenault did it. Instead we would:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">1.<span style="line-height: normal;"> </span>Fund universities and colleges to offer co-curricular training in French for free while students are already forgoing income to learn. Make these opportunities free and available outside the programme.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><o:p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">2.<span style="line-height: normal;"> </span>Offer French training when it fits an employment plan, but commit to assist learners with student aid and income support to pursue the programme for the time it takes to gain actual certification.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><o:p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">3.<span style="line-height: normal;"> </span>Don’t limit programmes to those with the urgency of being unemployed. The people who will actually learn French are likely those who have the comfort of a paycheque and will take the course for the long-term benefit. Waiting until someone is unemployed to offer free French training is like waiting until someone is having a heart attack to offer them a free gym membership.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><o:p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">4.<span style="line-height: normal;"> </span>Of course, the best time to help as many people acquire a base in French is when they are young and already free to go to school all day. If starting immersion in Grade 1 is leading to 10% who learn a lot of French and 90% who learn almost none, see if delaying the entry point will allow a broader cross-section of people to graduate knowing enough French that they can quickly get professional certification. Like, maybe starting in Grade 3 would lead to higher immersion enrollment …..wait, what?....someone did that? Well, I am sure that the government would build off that, since they want more bilingual people. That’s here to stay!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 36pt; line-height: 15.546667098999023px;"><o:p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In all seriousness, bilingualism is not helped if it is simply a way to create an Anglophone elite and it is not available to all in programmes that match reality. Offering programmes symbolically without asking how learners actually can learn is a waste of time and money.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And blaming unemployed people for government’s failure to act strategically is not good. Minister, a little more thought and a little less lecturing would be welcome.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </o:p></p>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-35169370676110992202016-11-09T07:46:00.001-08:002016-11-09T07:46:20.567-08:00You Can Say It's A New Normal. I Won't.<div>A last thought before I swear off political talk for my vacation. I see some friends today recasting what we saw as a rejection of "elites", a cry for "change" or about "forgotten voters". I understand that urge. There are swaths of America that are hurting, and many corporations who moved for profit and cared little for communities left behind have put the system at risk.</div><div><br></div><div>But before we all recast this as some cry for change and inclusion, let's remember that we should not normalize that which is cruel, harsh and wrong. To speak of this as only some anti-establishment retaking of government is silly -- as if there were no Hillary supporters in her diverse coalition who haven't known poverty, pain or racism. Surely the Khan family and Trayvon Martin's parents are not to be recast as elites, or blind sheep to the status quo. And some Trump voters seem to have no tale of woe harsher than having "Happy Holidays" on their Starbucks cup.</div><div><br></div><div>No, we can't sanitize this, normalize it, squeeze it into some narrative of change. People didn't just cry for change, they chose THIS change. They saw a man mock a disabled reporter with their own eyes, and were willing to accept it. They heard a man say judges of Mexican origin were biased, they heard him attack a Gold Star family in language that good people call indecent and mock soldiers who get captured, and they watched him run on a platform that involved using his office to lock up his opponent. These should be disqualifying. People chose to make them acceptable. </div><div><br></div><div>Bruce Springsteen once wrote that a flag stands for what we will do, and what we won't. And America just erased a lot of what used to be "what they won't do". Those rules of decency and humanity mattered. And rejecting them can't just be cast as a vote for "change". </div><div><br></div><div>And they had so little respect for government that they granted a dangerous learning curve to a man who couldn't explain what NATO was or name a constitutional amendment without coaching. That's not snobbery -- these are understandable omissions in many people, but not for a man who applies for a job like President. </div><div><br></div><div>Don't blame the media. Don't blame WikiLeaks. And don't even blame Clinton. Worse campaigns have won. (Trump's was shambolic). </div><div><br></div><div>Trump's basic ignorance of policy and meanness of spirit were clear for anyone who wanted to see them. No one kept it hidden. And indeed, polls show that when his grotesqueness was active, he fell. If he shut up for three days, people forgot. And if so, they wanted to forget. They wanted something he was selling. </div><div><br></div><div>None of this is a call to delegitimize a fair vote. He won. His voters should be engaged as citizens and not mocked or dismissed. But deep down inside, people knew he was too ignorant, too unstable, and too mean for the job. And they chose not just change, but his kind of change. That means there is something ugly they wanted, on some level. And I beg you, don't intellectually normalize things that should remain deviant. That's how stable countries fall down rabbit holes, and you can now see a rabbit hole from here. </div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-64227167807546643312016-10-24T09:54:00.001-07:002016-10-24T10:00:57.522-07:00Higgs Wins -- What It Means, and Free Advice<div>Well, I called the plot twist, but got the ending wrong. I may have predicted that there would be a surprise endorsement from a Central NB candidate for Monica Barley that would take her to a 3rd ballot win over Mel Norton. But the win, and congratulations, go to Blaine Higgs. </div><div><br></div><div>When Cleveland Allaby and Margaret-Ann Blaney chose Bernard Lord over Norm Betts, they delivered nearly 70% of their delegates to a bilingual Dieppe lawyer with a fresh face. Jake Stewart and Brian MacDonald had, together, nearly 21% of the vote, and less than a fifth of it followed them to Barley, a bilingual Dieppe lawyer with a fresh face. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4rzmynWosBwUIZJpaVCzIaxWejRtszmhjpOYI9EyyHiaQ4pdrPme1ZWiIqBXbMdwIRjYhegVYllBi4m0hNbA6M7MdhDvk2F-wAfhuALWdEBblR0WZrda_arSCxRvpPG2rxqxCl2UulX8/s640/blogger-image--109251151.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4rzmynWosBwUIZJpaVCzIaxWejRtszmhjpOYI9EyyHiaQ4pdrPme1ZWiIqBXbMdwIRjYhegVYllBi4m0hNbA6M7MdhDvk2F-wAfhuALWdEBblR0WZrda_arSCxRvpPG2rxqxCl2UulX8/s640/blogger-image--109251151.jpg"></a></div></div><div><b>"So, if Monica has 940 votes, and we have 1200 votes between us, after our endorsement she should have....860 votes? Are you sure that's right?"</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div>I'd predicted that type of endorsement because in party contexts, it makes sense. It is the perfect meeting of self-interest and party’s interest. Parties are broad coalitions, and they need leaders of their most divergent factions to join together. And the leader least able to speak to a given faction needs that faction’s leaders more than anyone. The establishment of the party needed Jake Stewart to embrace Monica Barley and bring their people together. And for Jake and Brian, it made sense – they might have more in common with Mike Allen, but for the same reason, Mike Allen doesn't need them as key lieutenants like Monica Barley does. </div><div><br></div><div>This will be a column of threes, and let’s start with THREE REASONS THAT THIS TIME, THE PARTY ESTABLISHMENT COULDN’T PULL IT OFF – “it” being the shotgun wedding between Team Jake and Team Monica.</div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Parties should get used to grassroots rebellions. From Trump to Corbyn, party members are less likely to follow traditional power-brokers. Tory voters aren't immune from this global trend, and when Jake Stewart tried to turn his followers’ passion for issues to personal trust, he found out that voters don't follow so easily anymore.</div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The language divide is broader. This would be the most worrisome Tory trend. In 1997, the PC electorate was reflective of the language demographics of New Brunswick (after all, the Valcourt election results were bad, but evenly bad across NB). If the party membership has become disproportionately Anglophone, members may feel less inclined to compromise for the electoral necessity of a leader who bridges the divide.</div><div>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>No trend, just timing. Of course, it might have all been about this particular moment. After all, in 1997 Tories had been thumped three times by McKenna and might have been more willing to consider compromise to win than now, two years removed from power and believing that Gallant may fall on his own. And Lord was a cagey political savant, and handled those divides more easily than Barley seemed to in her impromptu comments on the language commissioner. </div><div><br></div><div>Before the vote, I said Blaine Higgs was like the veggie tray at a Christmas party, in that everyone thought he was good for governing but feared his baggage and dislike of kowtowing to political expediency/necessity (depending on your view). His colleagues find him smart but inflexible, and he has the brand of a smart, straight shooter who also bears scars of Irving employment, CoR membership and pension reform anger. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNeUlKdM-CLNKOQe_a3XhbC13SoH-xDRl0BFd-WPZiOkFa4JMMbkNBmEi4J9x9WZH95iRiiZLu3Jy44YhVFhcoU2wYmJWc-9Gi5-BGizj-TgupNqxT2lDs_SklV6pFKa7riANitplAezE/s640/blogger-image-266772391.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNeUlKdM-CLNKOQe_a3XhbC13SoH-xDRl0BFd-WPZiOkFa4JMMbkNBmEi4J9x9WZH95iRiiZLu3Jy44YhVFhcoU2wYmJWc-9Gi5-BGizj-TgupNqxT2lDs_SklV6pFKa7riANitplAezE/s640/blogger-image-266772391.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><b>Some veggie tray, Lamrock. Don't doubt me again. </b></div><div><br></div><div>Yet, he prevailed – and he prevailed over a field that had at least two plausible versions of the Lord/Graham/Gallant floor model, a new face with a certain ideological flexibility and limited baggage. So, I might bring forward THREE THINGS THAT HIGGS’ VICTORY MEANS.</div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The experience pendulum is swinging back. A series of short-lived governments led to parties following a bad beat with a new leader who couldn't be tied to the last gang. As governments fell more quickly, that meant parties were discarding past generations of ministers very quickly and the talent pool was increasingly shallow. Higgs reverses that trend – he managed to sell the idea that he would still represent change if he were the boss, instead of a senior minister. There are ominous signs here for Gallant – the opposition didn't think “we need to find our own Gallant”. They thought – “we need to offer up something that doesn't look at all like Gallant”. We shall see if this reflects a good read on the electorate or just PC opprobrium for the Premier.</div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The bilingual test has been suspended, pending outcome. Ever since John Crosbie flamed out saying that he could deliver for francophones even if he couldn't talk to them, there has been a minimal standard of bilingualism required to be considered for the big job. It may be a sign of the times and tensions that a majority of Conservatives were willing to set that aside, buying Higgs’ argument that he could learn French faster than a bilingual neophyte could learn how to govern.</div><div>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Parties don't just want to win once. The flip side of getting a leader without baggage to have an easier win seemed to exact a price – leaders who had no experience and promised to simply “consult and listen” arrived in office unprepared to make decisions. When inevitably the world moved on without them, the economy and public services suffered and they grew quickly unpopular. Blaine Higgs may be a tougher sell for a first term, but if he wins, he will have a clearer mandate and be more ready to deliver. After a few weak governments, Tories seemed to be thinking of governing. </div><div><br></div><div>Every new leader changes the political landscape, and so the amateur strategist in me has THREE PIECES OF POLITICAL ADVICE for the parties. First, for our new Opposition Leader. </div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Find something you care about beyond the bottom line. Higgs speaks passionately about the need for government to make smart business decisions, and there is an understandable hunger for managerial competence and common sense right now. But one shouldn't let arrogance set in – just as a minister of health can't take over a large company and know everything, a business leader can't assume everything is the same. A government balance sheet isn't the end in itself – good fiscal management is what allows government to do its vital tasks like health and education well. I'd advise Blaine to not only be passionate about accounting, but to find one big public goal like literacy, senior care or poverty reduction where better management can also make a difference. Talk about this as well. If the Liberals are incompetent, but the only party that cares, that's an even fight. If they're less competent even when delivering liberal goals, then you'll have a big advantage. </div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Build a team. People trust you, Blaine. Some don't like you or agree with you, but they think you are smart and sincere. This will horrify you, but take a page from Jean Chrétien and Shawn Graham, two likeable, down-to-earth politicians who weren't afraid to be told their weaknesses and find lieutenants who reassured people. The presence of Paul Martin, John Manley and Marcel Masse next to Chrétien in 1993, and the presence of Mike Murphy, Roland Hache and, well, me, by Shawn Graham’s side in 2006 were not accidents. Some of Gallant’s advertising has echoes of a messiah complex – the leader handles all big announcements, the leader alone is in the ads. You have smart francophone lieutenants, some solid progressive conservatives, some emerging young people to draw from. Trust me, when your opponent has Don Arsenault as his most visible minister, you can win the team battle.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGUHXINawE5ed6NS2yc31ozf7TzQQHiJkhiAeXX0xKwchAJzJuZ5lR3kbDP3sc_HPEwLNJpSZ5_7FSdIq9X-IhP-0HgMTwebTt7DfONZEcAfo3MP-uF_t8qqc5J6h8ydF0YYRBikn67sY/s640/blogger-image--1669002544.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGUHXINawE5ed6NS2yc31ozf7TzQQHiJkhiAeXX0xKwchAJzJuZ5lR3kbDP3sc_HPEwLNJpSZ5_7FSdIq9X-IhP-0HgMTwebTt7DfONZEcAfo3MP-uF_t8qqc5J6h8ydF0YYRBikn67sY/s640/blogger-image--1669002544.jpg"></a></div><b>The Liberal Team, both of them.</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Define yourself quickly. You won't be able to use the dodge that Alward and Gallant used when their opponents began to implode. You can't just promise to consult on everything. It isn't you, and you won't be good at it because you know better. But the Liberals are already going through your public utterances, ready to describe what makes you different from them. These wedges won't be to your advantage. So you need to define yourself. You need a quick, simple answer on language questions, even if it's a shield and not a sword. If you are going to blast their deficit spending, you need to quickly find something – corporate welfare, local project pork – that you will do differently. You do have baggage, like anyone who served and tried to actually do something. They will want to frame every cut you'd make as something that people lose. Be ready to frame anything you'd cut as something that allows you to do something they haven't, such as balance the budget or fund education.</div><div><br></div><div>Now, three unsolicited tips for Liberals</div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Don't overplay the language card. This election may come down to a few swing ridings, likely suburban anglophone ridings. These voters will be afraid of an election that is wholly polarized on language lines, and they will notice your opponent’s unilingualism on their own. But if they see you venturing into demonizing him for it, or suggesting that no accomplishment is worthy of respect if the person doesn't know French, they may decide that you're polarizing things. The early shots at Higgs were too strong for a government that already has a perception problem. Trust Swing voters to weigh all this. </div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Curb your appetite for pork. You've got a federal cousin who wants to help. No doubt you've envisioned ribbon cuttings galore to help win a second term. Just be aware that, if your MLAs give in to a natural politician’s wont to serve your own ridings first, there will be an unbecoming geographic imbalance there. Someone will be adding up roads paved, schools closed, businesses funded, cuts levied – and those already have some serious imbalances that may look like an attack you didn't intend. You also have an opponent skilled at making an example of the first wasteful project you greenlight and using it to undercut your leader as too green and weak to say no to anyone. You may have to say yes to good projects in Tory ridings even if it ticks off a minister or two with a pet project. Remember that it may put the government at risk if you only say yes to your own. </div><div>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Get ready to choose. Somewhere, there's an old memo from me to the 2010 Liberal campaign team urging the party to embrace a left-right campaign. The thinking was, if two-thirds of people want your leader gone, issue divides are your friend. David Alward did this in 2010 – having won power as a guy who would consult and find consensus, he ran as a premier taking a tough-if-divisive stand on fracking. It was smart – fracking was a 50/50 issue, which was a better focus for the PCs than just asking voters to re-elect a premier with a 29% approval rating. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyLiM6tnCWAz_kTzfbTpyGeem01f1nBB6JguEgKGR_grxhv7MCPt80qEjnCjNnaeQ_ojpMW7vKe0fVCG7bUOFhJv1H4H-aQ3wYaaVsYRpNm8fKWnj0gwNqtItLfgrwUCgu95eVJrLeAUo/s640/blogger-image-367208756.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyLiM6tnCWAz_kTzfbTpyGeem01f1nBB6JguEgKGR_grxhv7MCPt80qEjnCjNnaeQ_ojpMW7vKe0fVCG7bUOFhJv1H4H-aQ3wYaaVsYRpNm8fKWnj0gwNqtItLfgrwUCgu95eVJrLeAUo/s640/blogger-image-367208756.jpg"></a></div><b>2010 was "Say Maybe". 2014 was "Say Yes". 29% approval ratings do that. </b></div><div><br></div><div>The Liberals have tried to indulge the dream of being beloved by all. In a time when people generally don't like their governments, incumbents need to embrace the fact that elections will be 60-40 fights, and to choose to focus on issues where they have the 60%. If there's a weakness right now, it's that the Liberals haven't defined themselves enough to give people something they'll fear losing if they turf the government – at a time when voters love to turf governments. </div><div><br></div><div>Finally, it bears repeating that New Brunswick had a record-high third party vote last time, and polls still show that holding (if not growing) right now. I have pointers for third parties too, but you'll have to guess what those are by what lies ahead. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-24641746979601397532016-10-22T09:43:00.001-07:002016-10-22T09:43:12.455-07:00PC Leadership -- What'll Happen and Why<div>The speeches are over at the PC leadership convention. It looks like a good, well-run convention. The numbers are excellent and they have drawn a field of strong candidates, each with a resume that warrants consideration. </div><div><br></div><div>The focus today will be on the speeches. I love that part, and I've even written a few of those for various leadership candidates. But they matter least of all at a typical convention – just ask Prime Ministers John Crosbie, Jean Charest, and Ken Dryden, all of whom gave epic speeches at the end only to find that there weren't enough undecided delegates to matter. That said, in a seven-way race, a great speech can change someone’s second-ballot plans, and a few votes could decide which long shot breaks out of the pack and gets to a final ballot (like Stephane Dion beating Gerard Kennedy by two votes to get to third place and ride their pact to an upset win). </div><div><br></div><div>The speeches also show the rest of us what Tories have been seeing, hearing, and thinking about. They will also be dissected in Liberal back rooms for clues about where the new leader is strong, where they are weak, and what internal pressures will make certain issues uncomfortable straddles for them. Today will make the ballot question between the two old-line parties a bit clearer. What will the Tories say the next election is about, and which leader best exemplifies that message. </div><div><br></div><div>The elephant in the room is the language divide, of course. Both 2010 and 2014 were change elections, but they were very different along language lines. Unlike the language-balanced caucuses that emerged from two close Lord-Graham elections, we moved to polarized caucuses. The NB Power fallout meant that the Liberals were competitive in francophone NB, but 2010 was a killing field in anglophone ridings that saw the proposed sale as not just a mistake, but a betrayal. The result was a PC government that didn't have a lot of voices to explain French NB to their leadership, and it showed – the 2014 election was two elections. In English NB, Brian Gallant’s rookie mistakes led to an unpopular premier roaring back to win most seats. In French NB, it was never even close, and only Mado Dube’s status as a political Loki in Edmundston saved the Tories from a wipeout. </div><div><br></div><div>Now the Liberals have a caucus that seems tone deaf to anglophones. Just by reversing the close losses in English seats the Tories can win a slim majority. This leads to an internal tension – PCs in the south see the challenge as scooping up anti-Liberal voters in a few ridings, and avoiding a split of anti-government votes with the “good government” appeal of Dominic Cardy’s NDP in the cities and the blunter language appeal of Kris Austin in the rural areas. They want a race focused on jobs with attacks on Liberal spending, debt and bailouts, and aren't anxious to water down that message to lose Tracadie by 3000 votes instead of 5000. Other delegates see ridings they held not long ago and want desperately to return them to the competitive ridings they were under Bernard Lord, fearing that accepting two consecutive blowouts will restore the old Liberal hegemony. </div><div><br></div><div>That's the real split – those who fear the lesson of 1991 because the Anglo PC coalition shattered versus those who fear the lesson of 1991 is that you can't spot the Liberals an 19-1 lead and win. Behind this are a few issues, such as spending, corporate welfare, which economic sectors are priorities, etc – that also draw sharp regional differences. </div><div><br></div><div>Few candidates have broken out of their local silos. That isn't necessarily fatal – the supporters of Mike Allen and Blaine Higgs aren't divided by any unsolveable breach as much as simple friendships and familiarity – but they do show there is no obvious saviour figure for them. Also, I've spoken with a lot of Tory friends who are also weighing not just who can win, but who can govern well. After all, we have seen a lot of one-term governments because the baggage-free face that can win has become the experience-free premier who can't win twice. Tories would like to win twice, this time </div><div><br></div><div>There appear, from my many chats with Tories and my wild-ass guesses from experience, to be three possible winners. Monica Barley and Mel Norton seem to have the most support beyond their natural constituency. The third, unknowable choice, is whichever guy emerges from the Higgs-Allen-MacDonald-Stewart knife fight/alchemy contest to assemble that central NB vote. If it grows enough to get a final ballot showdown with Barley, there is a path. </div><div><br></div><div>There was a lot of similarity in the speeches. They all believe in hard work, team work, public service, and presumably good hygiene and keeping your desk tidy. But there were moments in the cliches that speak to the deeper choice. Having seen the speeches, here's how the pitches go.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Jean Dube</b> is a thoughtful, experienced politician. He entered late and seems to lack the resources to break out. He is running to give the party a northern voice, which is a public service we should all thank him for. He has done well enough to give himself an ongoing presence in that role, if he wants it. That is a win for him.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Mike Allen</b> is attempting something difficult – to become a leader after being part of an unpopular, defeated government. His weapons are deep roots in the party, a highly likeable personality, and a record of occasional dissent from Harper that would be modest in many governments but heroic in that government. His leadership would be a personality contrast with Gallant – a likeable, human face on traditional NB government instead of the packaged, distant Gallant. He would focus on Gallant’s record. Gallant might mention Harper now and then. There would be few surprises. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Jake Stewart</b> has added a lot to the race. Because he wasn't a front-runner, he has been willing to speak to policy and values beyond the cliches. No one’s supporters seem more passionate about their choice than Jake’s, and I suspect he could deliver more of his supporters to someone else if that moment came. His “OneNB” pitch, with echoes of Dief, speaks at a frequency many traditional Tories love to hear. He can excite a base. His speech needed to show he can also build a winning coalition. He's grown impressively as a speaker, but that is the question that was less clear. If he wins, there is an opportunity book of inflammatory quotes you will likely hear in Liberal ads a lot before he gets time to introduce himself. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Brian MacDonald</b> showed why he is the most polished political performer of the pack, and the stagecraft of his introductions and Lord-throwback jacket removal show he has watched the game well, to his advantage. He's sneaky-good on policy, and there were some moments of insight in his speech. In an era where people distrust government, he may simply repeat some of Gallant’s strengths and weaknesses – a bit too smooth, a bit inscrutable. But if Tories are simply looking for someone who can stay as smooth as Gallant and scoop up some southern seats, he made a strong pitch. My Liberal friends tell me the government takes him seriously, but they have a deep oppo folder on him. His fight with Gallant would likely involve two smooth pols trying to shatter the other’s image in what could become negative, quickly. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Blaine Higgs</b> is like the veggie tray at the office Christmas party. Everyone knows they should like it. People are proud of the fact it's there, because it shows they considered good choices. But somehow, the meatballs and sweets, with their short-term rush, go first. There's often this kind of candidate in New Brunswick. Bernard Richard came third in a hall of delegates all whispering that he probably deserved it. Every crowded field has a Higgs, a guy everyone says is smart and honest and would be fine but….he doesn't really get politics. Higgs speech showed a hidden strength -- he's a great orator when he speaks about what he believes. The downside is that he's a lousy orator when he has to play politics. That makes most normal people like him a lot, and many local fixers convinced he can't win. He also makes enemies, in that unfair way politics makes honest people polarizing – because he sincerely believed in pension reform, he defended it passionately enough that opponents remember him more than the many career pols who just mumbled party talking points. This is called “baggage”. For all that, there has been a late surge towards him, and if he can assemble second ballot votes and squeeze Norton for the final ballot, he has a path. Liberals will attack his past as a COR member (which he has disavowed, but still) and record in the Alward government. But if he rope-a-dopes Gallant into packaged attacks on the past while he speaks bluntly about the future, it could get fun. This is a high-risk, high-reward pick. He reminds me of what one Tory strategist said of Bob Stanfield – “I don't know how the hell we get him in there, but if we do they'll never get him out of there”</div><div><br></div><div><b>Mel Norton</b> is from Saint John. Next to Fredericton, that's been the hardest place for a guy to win the leadership from, because they both stir up a bit of resentment (and are the hardest places to get re-elected). As mayor, he made municipal politics more like C-SPAN and less like Big Brother. He's calm, competent and the kind of candidate urban Tories like. He makes Liberals in urban areas anxious, and Liberals don't have a lot on him. His campaign has been a bit safe and traditional, mostly taking stands on reversing things in safe Tory ridings that Liberals did because they were only unpopular in safe Tory ridings. His campaign would likely be professional, smooth, and pick a few more things to change that impact a bigger variety of swing ridings, including some in the North. He has spoken with passion and depth about some issues like poverty that will allow him to get centrist votes in the urban seats they need. Watching him and Gallant square off will likely be a chess match – no passion and big themes, but a strategic battle for the fifteen seats that will settle the election. There's a reason the Liberals tried to hand him tough files at the end in Saint John – they don't want to face him. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Monica Barley</b> – A fluently bilingual Moncton lawyer known in the party back rooms but with no political experience, backed by numerous veteran operators? Have we seen it before? Sure. Of course, you're seeing it again because it worked for the PCs in 1999 and the Liberals in 2014. Her speech showed that there is a long way to go in political skills, as she was scripted and stilted. But she can hit her marks, and her appeal to put every seat in play is at the heart of her candidacy. She is the candidate most likely to battle Gallant everywhere, within appeal that could be provincial. She has also scooped up a lot of former Liberals in Moncton, and those who are still on the Gallant/LeBlanc enemies list have found a home with her. She is known as a formidable court presence as a lawyer, and her one-on-one meetings are widely seen as impressive, which is why many believe that the policy and political communications lessons will be learned quickly if she wins. Her strength is that she reminds people of 1998 Bernard Lord. Her weakness is that she reminds people of 2012 Brian Gallant. If she wins, expect Liberals to look at the Alward playbook against Gallant—take a few key stands, make her choose a side or get hit for straddling, try to communicate that whatever Galllant’s early struggles, she represents nothing but a restart of the learning curve. The interesting thing about that strategy is that it all comes down to her – if she performs more like Lord than Gallant, the results could look more like 1999 than 2014. So,yes, you've seen this movie – but it always comes down to the lead actor. </div><div><br></div><div><b>My prediction</b>: There's always a bias toward the least interesting outcome. MacDonald and Higgs will fight for third, but at least one of the also-rans is going to see an opportunity by helping Barley grow. This will be because she has an opening for southern lieutenants, and because there is a LOT of pressure from party sages on the guys in the middle of the pack to avoid a southern coalition ganging up to stop Barley. There's real fear about the optics of Mike Allen and Blaine Higgs teaming up to stop Barley (that isn't fair, but I can tell you it has been said often these last 2 weeks). Someone will surprise with a Barley endorsement, and it will mean she and Norton head into a third ballot already knowing what the math says – Monica Barley over Mel Norton on the third ballot.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-12526188452865027112016-10-03T13:55:00.001-07:002016-10-03T13:55:33.323-07:00EFI : Just The Facts, Ma'am. I Promise.<div>So after all that, what do we know?</div><div><br></div><div>As you know, I've been pretty quiet since 2010 on the French Immersion issue. That's because I had my say when I was Education Minister, and I thought it was best that the debate happen with other voices. Plus, frankly, there are many other issues. </div><div><br></div><div>Now that the decision has been made, I'm going to dedicate three blog posts this week to the issue. Not in debating it, but hopefully adding a couple of dimensions to the public debate from someone who got a crash course in it when that report hit my desk in 2008.</div><div><br></div><div>Later, I will look at where it fits in the broader language debate, and what issues the government will have to look at in the transition back to Grade 1. This post will look at what we know after ten years worth of students starting EFI in Grade 3, and what we don't know yet. I thought it might be helpful because the government hasn't really explained the thinking behind the change – what they thought wasn't working, what they hope to achieve. I think we are in a post-persuasion era in politics, where our ministers minimize appearances so as not to antagonize us with arguments. Still, there is a void in reviewing facts, and as much as anyone I was interested in what we found out. </div><div><br></div><div>ISSUE ONE: PARTICPATION IN EFI</div><div><br></div><div>One issue is the availability of immersion programming. If too few people have access to immersion, then it becomes a source of tension and inequality. These numbers surprised me – with Grade 1 immersion, there was a consistent rate of about 29-31% of anglophone students taking EFI. That's been steadily growing, hitting a high of 42% of students taking the new Grade 3 immersion programme.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypsuNS9kkWfoyvkdO0TYn56COQ5hnmlanl50p0_1eUm3VStOx8hvjYv1aEzDDXA-BqjSfbhNi60fFN56sV-syx3syFnOnKhklK583gAs85pKKzE7SlTRcUTzGLmVDdh_wOjad8a6rKvI/s640/blogger-image--996101838.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypsuNS9kkWfoyvkdO0TYn56COQ5hnmlanl50p0_1eUm3VStOx8hvjYv1aEzDDXA-BqjSfbhNi60fFN56sV-syx3syFnOnKhklK583gAs85pKKzE7SlTRcUTzGLmVDdh_wOjad8a6rKvI/s640/blogger-image--996101838.jpg"></a></div><br></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Why? Well, literacy experts did tell us that they thought that many students were struggling in unequal classrooms – since very few students with special needs or from poor families took EFI, we were basically skimming off the top third of learners and leaving behind non-immersion classes where a very high percentage of students had learning challenges. The theory was that leaving classes unstreamed until Grade 3 would help more learners get individual help and be more comfortable taking EFI in Grade 3. </div><div><br></div><div>Of course, this has a spiral effect – the more marginal learners choose EFI, the more numbers go up, and with higher numbers comes more communities where the number of students taking immersion is high enough to offer EFI. So this may not just be individuals – we may be seeing more communities get Grade 3 EFI than got Grade 1. This will be a statistic worth tracking when we change back.</div><div><br></div><div>ISSUE 2: Sticking with EFI</div><div><br></div><div>The biggest surprise was here. Before, we always saw some big declines as students struggle in EFI and drop into the non-immersion stream. There are some reasons for this. While many argue persuasively that struggles in literacy can be dealt with just as well in the immersion setting, many parents respond to struggles by removing the child from EFI. This isn't totally irrational – there are few trained intervention workers in EFI, and unilingual parents feel sidelined from helping at home if instruction isn't in English. </div><div><br></div><div>As we can see, the old Grade 1 programme lost about 16% of students after two years, and about 21% of kids by Grade 5. The new programme, starting in Grade 3, had that attrition rate down to 8.93% in the last measured year, 2015.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixSBmxFA60M8NXM1b4fKqIeNA8Vb6_EPYGBf90sqd2ENlDwx8ezvewbRcA3d0f8bCSv7LDLnJNS1NcubMO432-FMUHRvy3KeJtN86IjDh_FR5jjb4ZbL0sdZ3k4IGPho9iRBS5wY5UfXA/s640/blogger-image-716437952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixSBmxFA60M8NXM1b4fKqIeNA8Vb6_EPYGBf90sqd2ENlDwx8ezvewbRcA3d0f8bCSv7LDLnJNS1NcubMO432-FMUHRvy3KeJtN86IjDh_FR5jjb4ZbL0sdZ3k4IGPho9iRBS5wY5UfXA/s640/blogger-image-716437952.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Why? Assuming students leave EFI if they struggle, it may be that giving teachers two unstreamed years to work with students made them more ready to learn a second language, or just more confident in general. I'd love to learn more about why this is happening from experts. </div><div><br></div><div>So we can say that delaying the entry point to Grade 3 meant more students taking EFI and staying with it. Of course, that leads us to the big question….</div><div><br></div><div>ISSUE 3: FRENCH LANGUAGE ACQUiSITION</div><div><br></div><div>This was the big tradeoff. The thinking in waiting to Grade 3 was that we could get more students learning to read and write their first language and thus ready to learn, and this would compensate for the delay in starting immersion. There were smart people who were skeptical. Because the first Grade 3 immersion class hasn't been tested yet, we simply don't know how their French skills stacked up to their Grade 1-starting peers. </div><div><br></div><div>You can debate whether or not government should change without testing how the current system was working. I'm sticking with facts, and we just don't know. But of course, over time, we will have ten cohorts of Grade 3 immersion students and we will know. </div><div><br></div><div>ISSUE 4: Teacher Support</div><div><br></div><div>You know this one. When the change was made, an NBTA survey showed 67% of teachers supported the move to Grade 3. Then-President Brent Shaw explained that, in deference to the strong contrary sentiment among EFI teachers, the Association stayed publicly neutral. And we all know that the NBTA has not been neutral this year – the Teachers’ Association supported staying at Grade 3 having been the ones to implement it for eight years. </div><div><br></div><div>ISSUE 5: Impact on English Literacy</div><div><br></div><div>The biggest reason for the change was that eliminating streaming might help our low literacy rates. In a system where up to 40% of kids enter school with learning challenges and 98% of them don't take EFI, that meant non-immersion classes where over half the room struggled. </div><div><br></div><div>This still is misunderstood, which you can blame on the minister who was explaining it. People asked why we thought waiting to Grade 3 would help improve the results of learning French. We thought it would help most with English, because struggling learners wouldn't get lost in classrooms where teachers had too many students with high needs. </div><div><br></div><div>So, I had a look at the Grade 2 literacy results before and after. And, the results were interesting but unclear. Sorry about the self-serving table. I'm not a detached observer, but the numbers are the Department’s and not mine. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpBRM6G7_Cfo1vlIeDd5qk0IIeK2NO7ptifRu3i9Mffh9ypEuwLcUjMhbOznouiPZvNa-l6S7lSXW4K09hgpWXIki7UzqJNSXwH8FPS6PUkoIqY99WtktemX965tGYymv-wUHK9A1KiAs/s640/blogger-image--1083519514.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpBRM6G7_Cfo1vlIeDd5qk0IIeK2NO7ptifRu3i9Mffh9ypEuwLcUjMhbOznouiPZvNa-l6S7lSXW4K09hgpWXIki7UzqJNSXwH8FPS6PUkoIqY99WtktemX965tGYymv-wUHK9A1KiAs/s640/blogger-image--1083519514.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">So what do we get from this? First of all, Bernard Lord was underrated – big improvements happened under the Quality Learning Agenda. I'm even happier we kept his testing regime instead of tearing it up to be partisan. </span></div></div><div><br></div><div>On EFI? It's inconclusive. Supporters of the Grade 3 point can indeed note that the best literacy score in NB history was the first class to not be streamed. There is a jump there. </div><div><br></div><div>Supporters of the Grade 1 point will note that things have gone down again to where they were back in the days of Grade 1 EFI and early streaming. Now, there are a lot of other changes – government also began cutting in 2011 and has been cutting since, and other things like literacy mentors and teacher innovation funds were specifically cut. You could argue that not streaming helped and is still making it better than it would be, but programme cuts are bringing the rate down. Of course, you could also argue that in 2008 there were good programmes and more money, and these “good Kelly” programmes caused the rise, not the “bad Kelly” change to the EFI entry point. Or maybe kids learn better when education ministers are over 6’4”. (Doubt it). </div><div><br></div><div>We will likely know more by tracking these after the change. That will tell us a lot more about what caused the rise from 2007-10. Governments haven't been reporting these with as much fanfare, so I hope citizens and journalists will ask. </div><div><br></div><div>CONCLUSION</div><div><br></div><div>Obviously, I have a dog in this fight, and I've tried to avoid argument here. Like all of you, I want the system to work, and that is most likely when we start by acknowledging the facts we know and the ones we need to find out. I've hoped every day that the decision of 2008 served kids well, at least as many as possible. And I hope the new policy does, too. This is too important to worry about ego. Let's all try to get it right.</div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-82505611589317718442016-07-26T15:46:00.001-07:002016-07-26T15:48:07.528-07:00Beyond Strategy: The Moral Case To Stop Trump<div>I've never cared much for the phrase “strategic voting”. It suggests a dichotomy that doesn't really exist. There are times when voting for the candidate closest to your views who can win is a principled decision. And there are times when withholding your vote from the leading candidate and giving it to a long shot is perfectly good strategy. </div><div><br></div><div>My friend in Alberta who was a lifelong Liberal, but voted for the NDP in their last provincial election was strategic, in that the Notley surge meant that in his riding the NDP could win. But it was also principled, in that he believed that ending one-party rule would lead to better, more accountable governance in the long-term.</div><div><br></div><div>By the same token, I met Green voters in the provincial election in ridings where they had no hope who had thought strategically of the need to build a party long-term that was unequivocally against development in a number of areas. The fact that I didn't agree with them didn't change the fact that, long-term, the money and credibility that came with votes would help their party long-term and was also a strategic choice. </div><div><br></div><div>Today, many US progressives are wrestling with this kind of choice, as the “Bernie-or-Bust” wing of the Sanders movement is resisting calls from their peers and their own candidate to support Hillary Clinton to stop Donald Trump.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1sFExPFqiROpYNFth4WIgyxBjRgMCvnAA01O_aitPX9dzKBoPx0hydzThk3EZgKjRp_-92DWKrsi2ta6HGPCRbs_RHINHzIqmDRP9LqhYM1MoA0-SFO2Kb70WhHYv3KgVAnjM-dIGuxA/s640/blogger-image-988232364.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1sFExPFqiROpYNFth4WIgyxBjRgMCvnAA01O_aitPX9dzKBoPx0hydzThk3EZgKjRp_-92DWKrsi2ta6HGPCRbs_RHINHzIqmDRP9LqhYM1MoA0-SFO2Kb70WhHYv3KgVAnjM-dIGuxA/s640/blogger-image-988232364.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>I'm not going to engage in any Sarah Silverman-like cries of “ridiculous” here. There are genuine frustrations among Democrats, like this one…</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidluI9V4KHbu9b8D8oDGDs5TJXtTiMngkOqyZSfu9dxe-lHuDSqt_ku2qkJa285xn7kMQu1T7rIa3I5U70I0F4UkFKdPlHWX5tEwAnMLGJZnEVIHXcZA_rdLsWNbUOsXfUWfc7BrMKhKI/s640/blogger-image--1214997475.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidluI9V4KHbu9b8D8oDGDs5TJXtTiMngkOqyZSfu9dxe-lHuDSqt_ku2qkJa285xn7kMQu1T7rIa3I5U70I0F4UkFKdPlHWX5tEwAnMLGJZnEVIHXcZA_rdLsWNbUOsXfUWfc7BrMKhKI/s640/blogger-image--1214997475.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>But I'm prepared to grant that not every Democrat difference is as trivial as the taste of colas, and not every Republican will be as awful as self-immolation. As I've argued before, the power to withhold your vote is important. If parties just want to win elections, the Democrats could nominate Jeb Bush, because if all Dems supported him, he'd surely steal enough GOP votes from Trump to win. But in the long-term, we'd all be signing up for a long line of conservative presidents and rewarding Republicans for moving to the crazy right. So the power to say “no” to your own party is meaningful. </div><div><br></div><div>Me, I'd be in the middle of the Democratic fight. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was beautiful to watch, and built a movement I didn't know America had in her. I do believe that it will be necessary to halt the movement of jobs and capital with impunity, to ensure fair taxation, and have a social safety net and public services that provide a more equal society than we have now. (I even believe that Trump’s destructive campaign is partly the result of thirty years of business leaders being willing to create a lost underclass of voters, but that's another thing).</div><div><br></div><div>Yet, while it isn't trendy to say it, I respect and like Hillary Clinton. I see the flaws. She is a plodding campaigner and sometimes is too quick to see politics as the art of the possible without testing the limits of what can be done (like on gay marriage). I also think that she has been the victim of 25 years of Republican scandals that throw endless excrement without ever really coming out with proof or a coherent accusation of wrongdoing. (Quick, tell me exactly what they are accusing Hillary of in Benghazi, without falling into a word salad of labels). In a world of tweeted policy and empty celebrity, I have some patience for policy wonks with five point plans. They matter. And those who knock her compromises in the 1990s are often ignorant of the realities of what it took to end the Reagan/Bush era with the whiter, more conservative electorate that existed then. </div><div><br></div><div>I would say this about so-called strategic voting….it’s fine to withhold your vote if you believe (a) the difference between the leading candidates is not as important as (b) the future benefit of withholding your vote, through either building another option or influencing an existing one. I also suggest looking at this unromantically – a candidate who will reluctantly do what you want often produces the same result as someone who passionately does what you want.</div><div><br></div><div>There are big differences between Bernie and Hillary. She would pursue a more hawkish foreign policy, which has sometimes gone wrong (Libya, Iraq). She is less skeptical of free trade. She is more concerned with deficits and has more connections to Wall Street that may influence her. (Bernie has practically no oligarchs with him that he could lose). </div><div><br></div><div>There are similarities, too. Both will protect Obamacare. Both will retain President Obama’s protections for undocumented immigrants and their kids. Both will appoint Supreme Court judges who will defend personal liberty, choice, affirmative action, and don't see unlimited money in politics as a right. </div><div><br></div><div>This is no small thing – both are basically decent on issues of race, religion and inclusion. Compared to Trump, they are saintly. </div><div><br></div><div>Which leads me to discuss the alternative. I sometimes hear debates over whether Nader voters “cost” Al Gore the election. To which I would say this –it is legitimate to withhold your vote from the leading candidates. It isn't legitimate to deny that your choice has consequences as much as voting for one of them does. </div><div><br></div><div>Al Gore lost Florida by 537 votes. Ralph Nader got over 90,000. It is true that not every Nader vote would have gone to Gore as a second choice. It is true, by studies and Nader’s own admissions, that 60% would have (many would have not voted or voted for Bush). But even allocating those votes 60-40 flips Florida and, thus, the election. </div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf</a></div><div><br></div><div>Some people argue that voting for Nader over Gore doesn't mean you own the result because (a) Gore could have been a better campaigner (b) Gore could have won his home state and carried the day (c) Gore also got screwed over by a flawed ballot design in Broward County. </div><div><br></div><div>These arguments are actually ridiculous. First, just because other things could change the result doesn't absolve us from our own actions when, but for those actions, the result would be avoided. If I drive drunk and hit you with my car, it doesn't absolve me of fault to argue that you forgot your lunch at home and thus arrived at the crosswalk later instead of missing me altogether. Maybe Al Gore could have done other things better and changed other factors….but he also could have won with all those flaws had voters who preferred him to Bush chose him over Nader. If we buy those dumb arguments Nader voters use, then it would also follow that Bush voters in Florida aren't responsible for Bush, because if Gore had won Tennessee their votes wouldn't have mattered either. </div><div><br></div><div>Bottom line – I will defend your right to withhold your vote from the Democrat if you sincerely believe that the benefits outweigh the risks of those missing votes electing the Republican. I won't defend your right to deny that votes have consequences, because that's what comes with getting to vote like a grownup. You're allowed to argue that the benefits of punishing Hillary are worth the statistical risk of President Trump. You aren't allowed to deny that you alter the statistical risk. You have to calculate that too. That's not fear-mongering…it’s simply part of the burden of voting. </div><div><br></div><div>I further accept the words of Sanders and his key campaign people that the emails stolen from the DNC show a clear bias toward Clinton but show no fraudulent actions that change the fact that slightly more voters chose Hillary Clinton (although Bernie’s campaign was far better). </div><div><br></div><div>All this is to say that I understand the differences are important and worth pushing. In the end, I still tend to believe the moral and strategic choice is to vote for Hillary Clinton. I have three reasons. </div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>If there was a more mainstream Republican, like McCain or Romney, I could entertain objections more easily. Trump is genuinely dangerous – in his willingness to apply religious tests to government programs, to make Muslims register with their government, in his vague promises to restore law and order by any means necessary, in his clear promises to place American in a police siege to round up illegal immigrants, in the casual cruelty with which he treats people who disagree with him, in his praise of dictators even when given examples of murderous behaviour, in his debt to Russian financiers and praise of Putin, and in his unstable temperament and the strange, narcissistic speeches he gives rambling through snarling at his enemies and lauding his own glory. No sensible person can equate Hillary or Bernie (or even Mitt Romney) to Trump. </div><div><br></div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There are minimal upsides to pursuing Bernie’s platform with a President Trump. I can see how organizing in midterm elections and taking direct action can push Clinton to sign progressive bills if they are passed. If you can see how anything gets easier with a Trump presidency and three Trump appointees on the Supreme Court, you see something I don't. </div><div><br></div><div>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hillary stops the repeal of ObamaCare health benefits and the mass deportation of 11 million people. Many Bernie or Busters are too privileged too be affected by this (I would be too), but I do believe that there is a strong moral case that compassion requires us to weigh the pain caused to millions of less fortunate people by those two Trump actions alone against any benefit to be gained by withholding votes from Hillary (especially when you can threaten to challenge her in the 2020 primaries from the left). </div><div><br></div><div>So that's my case for voting Hillary. It may be strategic, but it is also based on values and the moral imperatives before the electorate. Like most votes, it is strategic and moral.</div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-4992618601854773992016-07-25T17:31:00.001-07:002016-07-25T17:31:46.070-07:00Hillary's goals, 100 hours from now.<div><br></div><div>Events have overtaken this a bit, of course. The theft and leaking of DNC emails has created some real tension about how Bernie Sanders’ team will act. I'm going to leave that mostly alone, because (a) it goes without saying that Team Clinton needs to bring the party together and (b) it's too early to say how this will play out. Let's see how the Monday night schedule –fortuitously built around people the Sandernistas either love (Warren, Bernie) or respect (the First Lady). It's also unclear how much the Russian angle will play out here – Trump’s fawning love for Putin and financial debts to Russian financiers are getting picked up by the media and this may yet be a thing. </div><div><br></div><div>But going into the convention, there are three goals that will be key for Hillary Clinton. And believe it or not, they don't involve tearing Donald Trump a new one. </div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><b>Tell your candidate’s story. </b>I was at the 1992 DNC convention. Bill Clinton came in to that week third behind Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush. When he and Al Gore left New York, he was ten points up and Perot was gone. A lot was due to the brilliant job people did telling his story –growing up in a poor, single-family home in Hope, Arkansas and becoming a Rhodes Scholar and governor. It was wrapped up in a great biographical video that ended with Bill intoning “I still believe in a place called Hope.” Hillary is now more familiar than Bill was in 92, but she isn't beyond reintroducing. She is a guarded person who has been vilified by Republicans for years, and does not easily speak emotionally. Many younger Sanders people didn't know the days when she was the left-wing, progressive bogeyman the neocons hated, and her work on human rights, anti-war causes and children’s law will be news to them. More importantly, they need to show what makes Hillary Clinton tick.</div><div><br></div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><b>Make substance matter.</b> One critique I have on the Clinton campaign is that they are still acting like the Center can be defined by what it isn't –not Trump, not radical change –than what it actually is. By the end of the week, there needs to be some clear things that President Clinton is for, not just things they won't let President Trump do. This is doubly important because Trump is a know-nothing on policy. It has surprised me that they haven't made him respond and react to policy debates (where he can't match Clinton) instead of value challenges (where he has some cunning and strength she lacks). There are lots of ideas more compelling than a wall….but the fact I can't name what her signature policy is suggests a problem for the “substance” candidate. </div><div><br></div><div>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><b>Pick your narrative on Trump.</b> One reason why Trump has had some Loki-like qualities this campaign is because he makes so many crazy statements. Many candidates screw up once, and then let the media chew on that topic for a week before something more interesting comes along. Trump throws crazy into the conversation like chum in the water, and often no one thing sticks. Having 16 opponents in the GOP primary kept there from being one devastating critique. Trump is good (not as good as the media thinks, but good) in picking one tiny flaw in his opponents and sticking to it, while goading his opponents into attacking him through a laundry list of weirdness. Clinton needs to choose from the pu-pu platter of crazy and pick a narrative on Trump. We will know by the speakers’ list if they have managed it. In essence, they need to decide if Trump is dangerous because things aren't so bad and he is unstable, or if things are bad but Clinton’s stability is the right antidote. Getting caught between the two may be fatal. </div><div><br></div><div>Again, there are still unknowns here. But the basic goals remain the same. Trump’s bounce this week is not worrisome because he can't be reined in – ask Presidents Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry and Romney what the value is of getting a lead before the incumbent party replies – but he is hitting numbers that show that the universe of people willing to consider him is high enough to win. He set a narrative –the world is falling apart, and he is change and Clinton is the same old insider politics. This is the best chance the Democrats will have to fix a narrative of the campaign that draws a distinction that favours their candidate. </div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-81857506087245734652016-06-04T04:25:00.001-07:002016-06-04T04:28:13.467-07:00Still The GreatestMuhammad Ali was always an aging fighter to me. I was born in 1970, so I missed the early fights, where his speed and talent announced itself with a flourish in the heavyweight division. I missed a lot of the politics as well; Vietnam, the name change, and the social statement made by an African-American champion who replaced the quiet dignity of past trailblazers with a pride, wit and bravado that demanded respect.<div><br></div><div>The Ali I knew was an athlete who was deeply human. Ali was unique, but this struggle was universal. There is something deeply compelling about watching how a person deals with that moment in life where they are defined not by the talents God has given, but by the things time has stolen. </div><div><br></div><div>I was lucky to have a father to watch those fights with who loved boxing for the strategy and the lessons more so than the violence. We watched a physically diminished Ali teach us. We sawthe strategy and impulse control it took to let the dangerous George Foreman punch himself out. We saw the value of sheer will as he outlasted Joe Frazier. We saw cunning, too, the way he used the energy of the crowd to demoralize and wear down a younger Leon Spinks, and the way he summoned up the magic footwork of old to take the angles away from a hard-punching Earnie Shavers. </div><div><br></div><div>If he stayed too long, well, he gave us lessons there too about the dark side of passion and pride, how even our greatest strengths carry in them the potential to lead us wrong. In his later years, he got to see the world change. The issues of race and war where he had been the most polarizing of icons now we're settled in his favour, and he became a symbol of accepted truths. If he was reduced by Parkinson's to the quiet dignity he once so powerfully refused, certainly he now had that luxury. The Greatest had earned his silence. Today, The Greatest has earned his rest. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmyKxp6tVo9x2PKRT5OcZkqosPQ-GUYP18oNnb7Z39fobPpLrg71IuGWxSd81uaJ0iHXO8nDgdok8KVoX7d6pSm5ayVcmM5Jp1q4zeJ3cL8ceQLAhKezdKyssGi9Gl9_tmOxqJeS71og/s640/blogger-image-391538902.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmyKxp6tVo9x2PKRT5OcZkqosPQ-GUYP18oNnb7Z39fobPpLrg71IuGWxSd81uaJ0iHXO8nDgdok8KVoX7d6pSm5ayVcmM5Jp1q4zeJ3cL8ceQLAhKezdKyssGi9Gl9_tmOxqJeS71og/s640/blogger-image-391538902.jpg"></a></div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-69600681295128465392016-05-26T06:37:00.001-07:002016-05-26T09:43:21.142-07:00OK, So About That CBC Story....<div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Jacques Poitras of the CBC was rightly aggrieved that I had not read his full story before a critiqued his setup Tweets. He was doing a story on the allegations that Ministers Horsman and Arsenault had made unsubstantiated allegations against members of the judiciary and, in so doing, breached judicial independence and abused their offices. When he tweeted links to his research that day, he cited cases of ministers resigning over privacy breaches. I noted, perhaps too sarcastically, that this would be like assessing the fairness of drunk driving by examining the fate of shoplifters.</span></div><div><br></div><div>Jacques felt that I should have waited to see the whole story before commenting. And, it was premature. I'm currently overseas, running a few hours ahead of New Brunswick time, and those dark skies blinded me to the possibility that there might be more to come. So I acknowledged that I hadn't thought of that, and should have, on Twitter as he cited his displeasure with my quick whistle. </div><div><br></div><div>I did not delete my tweets because I still felt it was a worthy question –“why are you looking at those?—even if I shouldn't have offered it as a final critique. If my daughter came in the study and said, “I'm doing a report on mammals. How much does an iguana weigh?”, I might well ask why she thinks that's relevant. If she tells me to settle down and wait for the report, well…fair enough. But I'm still allowed to wonder why, pending final review. </div><div><br></div><div>Of course, the story came out today. http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/new-brunswick/horsman-minister-resign-1.3599867 And I still think the research into privacy breaches was irrelevant. But now I know better where I disagree with the story. </div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The question is over-broad. Asking “When do ministers resign?” is a bit like asking, “When do people go to jail?”, or “When are players suspended?”, or “When are there consequences?”. It’s a quick way to allow a question to get muddied by distractions and non-sequiturs, which appears to be exactly the government’s strategy here. As I noted yesterday, if someone accuses you of stealing company money, it is not really relevant to yell “well, Tommy didn't get fired for talking back to the boss!”. Maybe not, but at some point you need to address whether or not you stole the money. </div><div><br></div><div>After all, if you really want to explore reasons why ministers have resigned, the report could have added extra-marital affairs, leaving briefing documents around, letting your department sign off on tainted tuna, expensing really pricey orange juice, treasonous behaviour, visiting a strip club, wrongly telling people eggs were tainted, and in a different era, being gay. If you wanted a list of things some opposition member, some time, demanded a resignation over, we could be here all day. None of those are things these two ministers are accused of doing, so the consequences for them seems of dubious relevance.</div><div><br></div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Because the question is over-broad, the reporter is led into an area of false relativism. The CBC report leaves the reader with an unsettling conclusion –that really, the reasons ministers resign are hard to isolate and people can never agree on them. “Who can say?”, we are invited to ask, as Homer Simpson might cite our crazy world with its new-fanged technologies.</div><div><br></div><div>Except…ministers resigning over judicial interference is not controversial at all.</div><div><br></div><div>There are genuinely grey areas in the area of ministerial conduct. This is true. But because some areas are grey doesn't mean they all are. It is a grey area when a baseball player should be suspended for a hard slide. But if I covered the Alex Rodriguez steroid trial and cited the debate over Jose Bautista’s hard slide, and concluded by saying “Well, when we suspend is a grey area!”, there is an obvious problem.</div><div><br></div><div>Looking at the list of reasons ministers have resigned, we can see lots of grey areas. But that doesn't mean they are all grey areas. When a minister should resign over expenses is a grey area. When the principle of ministerial accountability should kick in is a grey area when it comes to leaks of information, because departments have grown so big and complex. (It is not a grey area that a minister should resign when they personally release information. When a staffer does it, that is a grey area.)</div><div><br></div><div>But they aren't all grey areas. It is quite clear that treasonous behaviour is grounds for resignation. iT is just as clear, in 2016, that being gay certainly is NOT. To know these areas are settled, you'd have to look specifically at those areas without importing less-settled questions to the study. </div><div><br></div><div>The trouble with asking over-broad questions is we can start to engage in moral nihilism, deciding that nothing is settled so everything is permitted. But some things are known, even if not everything is known. We can debate if it's bad etiquette to text during during a wedding reception, but I do know it's bad to text during your own wedding vows. We can debate if marijuana use should be a crime, but I do know that beating people up is. It is a very grey legal area as to how far the state can go in ensuring informed consent to end your life, but it is not unsettled that the right now exists at law. You can always find disagreement if you draw the parameters of the debate broadly enough, but that can obscure important lines. </div><div><br></div><div>It seems to be a better question to ask “Given that judicial interference consistently is grounds for resignation, is there agreement that Horsman and Arsenault’s actions amount to judicial interference?”. I would be very interested in hearing lawyers and former judges on that point. That would also lead to debate over some relevant questions the piece raises, such as the fact that the Justice Minister claims judges initiated the conversations in his case, and a few it misses, like the levelling of unsubstantiated accusations against the judiciary.</div><div><br></div><div>To sum up, I don't say any of this because I think a journalist has bad intentions or has anything less than a solid career. I follow this journalist on Twitter and have appreciated their work many times. Just as Jacques can question the wisdom of politicians’ decisions on his podcast without ignoring their many good deeds and qualities, I do the same here. Journalists often help us know what questions we should think about, and so their choices in phrasing even implicit questions are worth public debate. I also note that I noted and corrected my error in calling his setup tweets a “story”. Some acknowledgement from Don Arsenault that, yes, he shouldn't have suggested that there is an improper plan to move Madame Justice Blais to Moncton without proof was kind of a bad thing would likely give this story fewer legs than the petulance currently on display. </div><div><br></div><div>In this case, I do think my scepticism was justified (if premature). Reading the piece, I was reminded of George Carlin’s famous admonition, “I hate it when people say ‘ya never know’. Cause sometimes, ya know.”</div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-20985629473714358902016-05-24T08:08:00.001-07:002016-05-24T08:15:14.640-07:00THE MEETING AND THE DAMAGE DONE<div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Bill 21, the Gallant government’s bill to limit the ability of the Court of Queen’s Bench to manage the placement of judges, is a brief piece of legislation that raises a number of questions.</span></div><div><br></div><div>Those questions are, specifically, “What the hell?”, “Why?”, and “We need this because….?”</div><div><br></div><div>To those exclamations of bafflement, we may now add a fourth, courtesy of two cabinet ministers Stephen Horseman and Don Arsenault. That question is “What were they thinking?”</div><div><br></div><div>Let's recap recent events, which have done nothing to enhance the already-shaky reputation of the Gallant government for being able to pick its hindquarters out of a police lineup surrounded by holes in the ground. </div><div><br></div><div>Near the start of the legislative session, the government introduced Bill 21. The Bill proposed an end to the power of the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench to move judges to new judicial districts and require them to establish residence within 50km of their domain. From now on, should the Bill pass, a judge could only be moved if the Minister of Justice and the judge themselves agree. </div><div><br></div><div>The problem arose when the Chief Justice of the Court, Mr. Justice David Smith, stated that he had not been consulted on the Bill and that he considered it an affront to the principle of judicial independence. The government had consulted with the acting Chief Justice in his absence, but the Chief Justice’s reaction was clearly negative.</div><div><br></div><div>The curious part of this chapter is the complete and utter inability to articulate why the Bill was needed. The Chief Justice articulated his concerns with the Bill so that, whether one agrees or not, one can know why he has arrived at his position. For the government’s part, it appears that Bill 21 somehow made it through drafting, cabinet, committee and three readings without anyone caring about it, a kind of Immaculate Legislation. The Justice Minister allowed that he could not think of a single example of where he would use these new powers to override the Chief Judge, and no one from the government seemed eager to provide a statement of why the Bill was needed. </div><div><br></div><div>When governments are determined to have a Bill pass over serious opposition, but won't say why, people get suspicious. It is like having your teenage son ask repeatedly if you'll be out of town any weekend soon, but when asked why he cares says “Oh, no reason.” It gets people on alert. So the Bill was already under a spotlight when the Legislature reconvened for a rare event which old people will someday fondly recall as “legislative sittings, before that young Gallant took over.”</div><div><br></div><div>As the Bill was being debated, the government decided that Energy Minister Don Arsenault should speak. This was a curious choice. Not only is his portfolio miles away from the matter at hand, but Don is not known as a politician with a deep appreciation for the subtleties of legislation. </div><div><br></div><div>However, Don Arsenault began to address the historical tradition of judicial independence. Asking him to do this is like hiring Tinsel, the Balloon Animal Clown, for your kid’s party and then asking him to juggle meat cleavers. He's not had much practice, and there is significant downside. </div><div><br></div><div>Mr. Arsenault launched into what can only be described as a screed. He read a list of the 13 transfers of judges’ locations that have happened on Chief Justice Smith’s watch, predictably said this harmed the North to the benefit of Moncton. He seemed particularly to focus on judges appointed by Conservative governments (which I hasten to add, is not the same as “Conservative judges”). The Minister then added a truly bizarre twist, claiming that Madame Justice Marie-Claude Blais may wish to move from Moncton, and that this would likely be arranged “between friends” as the other 13 moves had been. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDtOD8-XB-S3_NrEe1RXRABLze3271ay1MpTLQwqszi7whZ4_2BUs5kp6dUYAY43u8qLh-YpYm1ghP5Nsh3Udb2OVRtk-j1hRIdoRLv9m1nNfMryoOVRvgZROZfahvdkF8R_mEpgzfL_0/s640/blogger-image-1166572764.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDtOD8-XB-S3_NrEe1RXRABLze3271ay1MpTLQwqszi7whZ4_2BUs5kp6dUYAY43u8qLh-YpYm1ghP5Nsh3Udb2OVRtk-j1hRIdoRLv9m1nNfMryoOVRvgZROZfahvdkF8R_mEpgzfL_0/s640/blogger-image-1166572764.jpg"></a></div></div><div><b><i>Where friends meet, some say. OK, Don Arsenault says.</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>If there was any proof of any of this, it remained within the fevered mind of the Minister. A lawyer representing Chief Justice Smith soon pointed out that this seemed to be a lot of defamation without proof. He also corrected the record on a few fronts, including the fact that the Minister claimed that the Acting Chief Justice had approved of the changes when she actually had warned they might be unconstitutional. </div><div><br></div><div>Two days later, in Question Period, the Justice Minister added another bizarre chapter to the saga. Asked about the Bill, he noted that the government was finally "including judges” and that a number of judges had called him with their support for the bill, out of fear of being involuntarily moved. </div><div><br></div><div>Later, as questions began circulating about the propriety of speaking with judges, the Minister called at least one reporter to say that he had “been unclear” when he claimed that judges had called him, and that no judges had ever called him. Some unnamed judges had, however, approached him at unnamed social functions to express their delight at Bill 21.</div><div><br></div><div>And this is where the sage ends for now, with Ministers tying themselves in knots to pass an absolutely essential bill that will avoid an unspecified harm and be used in situations that it's sponsor cannot imagine. </div><div><br></div><div><i><b>The Facts On Judicial Moves</b></i></div><div><br></div><div>The CBC’s Jacques Poitras helpfully reported on the 27 instances in a quarter century where judges have moved judicial districts. Breaking these down may help separate fact from spin. </div><div><br></div><div>To understand this, know that there are eight judicial districts in New Brunswick, as fixed by regulation (which means cabinet could change this without legislative approval). To be a judicial district is to be assured, by legislation, that at least one judge must be assigned there and by law establish a residence within 50 kilometres of the court in that city or town. The 24 full-time judges of the Court of Queen’s Bench are right now broken down between the 8 judicial districts as follows: six judges sit in Moncton and Saint John, four sit in Fredericton, two each in Miramichi, Bathurst and Edmundston, and one each in Woodstock and Campbellton. </div><div><br></div><div>When there is a vacancy due to a departing judge, the federal government may appoint a judge. The appointment will generally specify a judicial district. </div><div><br></div><div>If we look at the 27 judicial moves we could think of a region “gaining” or “losing” a judge, in one sense. If you wanted to do that analysis, for instance, in the case where Mr. Justice Bruce Noble was moved from Saint John to Fredericton, you could say that Fredericton “gained” a judge and Saint John “lost” one. </div><div><br></div><div>If you did that analysis, you would find that almost every judicial district had gained and lost a judge at some point. The largest net “gainers” would be Moncton (+6) and Fredericton (+4). However, contrary to the government’s expressed concern for Northern New Brunswick, the outflow is not from the Campbellton, Bathurst or Edmundston centres. The largest net “losers” are actually Woodstock (-4) and Miramichi (-3). In fact, the most common moves are Woodstock to Fredericton and Miramichi to Moncton. </div><div><br></div><div>You will also notice that I put “gain” and “lose” in quotation marks. This is because almost none of these moves (I can't find one for sure, but I can't trace every move) actually alter the number of judges in a district. The Judicature Act already protects smaller districts because they must have a judge. So if a judge moves from Campbellton to fill a vacancy in Edmundston, the result is that now the new judge will be appointed in Campbellton. </div><div><br></div><div>Of the changes that have occurred since I joined the bar in 1998, of 50% appear to be “repatriation” moves, where a judge is returned to the place where they lived prior to appointment. For example, the fact that Mssrs. Justice Noble and Morrison moved to Fredericton seems to simply be a case where they were appointed by the federal government to a place where they did not live, and they moved back to Fredericton once a vacancy appeared there. Far from any great conspiracy, it seems to be usually quite simple. When vacancies arise, there may be judges that are high on the list of the federal government. To get them into the judiciary, they will often be appointed wherever there is a vacancy, serve in that new center, and then ask to go back to their original home when there is a vacancy. </div><div><br></div><div>This is not a bad thing. For one, it allows new judges to start in smaller centres and then go to the larger districts as they gain experience. Most (though assuredly not all) complex litigation will be filed there, if only because that's where larger businesses and governments exist. As well, lawyers are even more concentrated than the general public in larger centres. That's not to say that good lawyers come from big cities, only that many good small town lawyers still prefer to go where the potential clients are. And the lawyers who like to do the work that often (though not always) predicts an interest in becoming a judge often wind up in government, at universities, or at big firms that allow complete specialization are even more disproportionately in the big cities. </div><div><br></div><div>Again, that's not to say there aren't excellent lawyers and potential judges in small centres. There are. They are just disproportionately clustered in big centres, and if all lawyers are equally good, the place with five times as many lawyers will have five times as many lawyers who would want to become judges. </div><div><br></div><div>So, to conclude, changes never really result in a region losing a judge. They may see a more experienced judge go to a bigger centre to either return home or expand their professional challenge, and a new judge gets appointed to fill the old vacancy. It's hard to see the public harm in that. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Judicial Independence</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>You may reasonably ask why everyone is so big on judicial independence. Put simply, it is a hallmark of a functioning democracy. To keep disputes from being settled by force, systems need a way of settling them that is credible, so that even when we lose we accept the process. People who come before judges need to believe that they will have their cases heard on the merits. Part of that is how the judge comports themselves – judges avoid comments or interference in politics so that we do not perceive that they may be judging based upon ideological or partisan interests. As an example, look at the recent school closure cases. The judges took great pains to explain that their decision had nothing to do with whether the government made the right policy choice, only if the rules were followed. That is how it works.</div><div><br></div><div>The other part of this is that politicians need to do their job and stay the hell out of situations where they can be perceived as influencing judges.</div><div><br></div><div>When I was Justice Minister and Attorney-General, I often got calls from people asking me to step in, to see that charges were brought against someone, or that a custody hearing went their way, or some bad decision be set right. It didn't always make me popular, but my job was to make it clear that I could not do this. While it may be tempting to think of an all-powerful minister who sets things right, this can destroy the system long-term. If you get charged with a crime or lose custody of your child because the complainant lives in the A-G’s riding or threatened to go to the media, that will destroy faith in the system. So I would explain their rights, offer any advice I could on getting legal help, and even tell them how to complain to the Judicial Council of they felt a judge was unfair. </div><div><br></div><div>In other words, ministers have to take care not to give the appearance of trying to influence judges. This includes using their ability to get media – you cannot give the appearance that you will open a judge up to public attack or ridicule if their actions displease you. </div><div><br></div><div><i><b>The Dangers With Don’s Words</b></i></div><div><br></div><div>While Minister Horseman has made the more easily-understood breach, Minister Arsenault’s intentional trashing of the Chief Justice raises more serious issues.</div><div><br></div><div>For starters, the Minister abused his parliamentary immunity in the extreme. I see nothing in his statements that looks like even an attempt to offer proof for what are serious allegations that the Chief Judge has improperly managed the judicial system based upon improper considerations, “among friends”. He has made allegations that are demonstrably untrue on the facts regarding judicial transfers. And he has impugned Madame Justice Blais by suggesting based on no proof at all that she is angling for a move and conspiring with the Chief Justice, which could undermine faith in her ability to adjudicate disputes in Saint John. </div><div><br></div><div>If the Minister has proof of this, he has the duty to raise the matter with the Judicial Council, a neutral body that can hear complaints where actual proof and argument can be made. If he is too cowardly to take his words there to be evaluated, he must withdraw them fully.</div><div><br></div><div>If he will not do this, it is a tacit admission that he has tried to intimidate the Court. He sent a message that if a judge displeases him, he will use his legislative immunity and public profile to launch attacks on that judge. For judges who may hear cases involving the government, knowing a minister may do this with impunity could be perceived as having a chilling effect on the courts. I don't expect Don Arsenault to learn this at this point in a political career that has largely been built upon not knowing things that might make him a less-willing attack dog. But Brian Gallant and Serge Rousselle have professional duties to change his actions, if not his mind. He has embarrassed them, or at least they should be embarrassed. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZdZbEHIp9hJOe8k30CeWmgpdCfnp9gwwpFRYqhCfgMyQFny2hLPJ6qCmuf32Vh983FXT7Rcb7wVsSjMpFgruYBVyALwwqt81ijJFo3WPHSl9gH0VIrbiN-KkjbDD5vy8MOs8ijo9eTI/s640/blogger-image-592201616.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZdZbEHIp9hJOe8k30CeWmgpdCfnp9gwwpFRYqhCfgMyQFny2hLPJ6qCmuf32Vh983FXT7Rcb7wVsSjMpFgruYBVyALwwqt81ijJFo3WPHSl9gH0VIrbiN-KkjbDD5vy8MOs8ijo9eTI/s640/blogger-image-592201616.jpg"></a></div><b><i>If there are politicians named Donald who don't make up accusations, please come forward.</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>Minister Arsenault has also failed in his fiduciary duty to the government he is part of, because he may have singlehandedly given courts a reason to overturn his government’s law. Minister Horseman may not be able to articulate a motivation for Bill 21, but Minister Arsenault did. However, the one he articulated is not a proper one. By raising Madame Justice Blais’s name, he suggested that the point of the Bill for him is to make sure that a former political foe cannot move if she wants to. He didn't articulate why the would be a public interest in this, either, it seems simply to be based on personal and political animosity. This is, of course, a completely improper reason for a bill, and legislative immunity does not mean that it cannot be introduced as evidence in a court challenge. </div><div><br></div><div>If the Premier is too weak to fire this Minister, both for undermining the justice system and blowing up his own government’s legislative agenda, then he is not really in charge of government. </div><div><br></div><div><i><b>The Curious Case of Minister Horseman</b></i></div><div><br></div><div>Everyone gets the obvious problem with Minister Horseman’s comments. It was false. You don't need me to explain that saying you got more than one supportive call from judges is a lie if you actually got zero calls from judges. You also can apply your own test to his later claim that he was simply “unclear”. To be unclear means that your words can bear more than one interpretation. I do not know of another meaning for what the Minister said. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9dTOTRSVbEXeoQ__s7Y99-HC3cFLTH8oo2tTjHkvdcWJ1Fv4FhX3HmPONvefXQQy3kKaMllkdoTRME5BmAu-s8k8f0v711Lk1OOEckSBGrkyOYNEbhyphenhyphenrutICGvm0U1CTkNPKrPWHCb4/s640/blogger-image-764388365.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9dTOTRSVbEXeoQ__s7Y99-HC3cFLTH8oo2tTjHkvdcWJ1Fv4FhX3HmPONvefXQQy3kKaMllkdoTRME5BmAu-s8k8f0v711Lk1OOEckSBGrkyOYNEbhyphenhyphenrutICGvm0U1CTkNPKrPWHCb4/s640/blogger-image-764388365.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>In the Parliamentary tradition, members are given immunity from being sued for libel, but this isn't a free pass. The price is that they have a high duty to not deliberately mislead the House. The reason rules don't allow a member to accuse another of lying in debate is because it is a serious breach of a member’s responsibilities, and can must be raised and reviewed by a Committee on Privileges for discipline. (The reason you can't just say it in debate is the same reason Arsenault can't just accuse the Chief Judge of misconduct in debate – in both cases, if you're not ready to raise a formal complaint and prove it, don't throw the accusation around).</div><div><br></div><div>It would be hard for Speaker Collins to rule against an Opposition privilege motion that the Minister misled the House. </div><div><br></div><div>But we all know a lie. What may be less obvious is the breach of duty that Minister Horseman committed as Justice Minister. </div><div><br></div><div>In the parliamentary system, Chief Justices speak for the Court on administrative matters and he and the Minister may rightly discuss those matters. Ministers should not be engaging in discussions with judges otherwise. To discuss the Bill with judges other than the Chief is to engage in interference with the operation of the Court. To speak of its merits could be seen as improperly engaging judges on a matter that might be the subject of litigation. The U.K. a ministerial guide makes this clear.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1oXf4h04RW0z24VFtPefTVrjeEjxfzwx_iFbNzBHa0UhFwQqIA98jq5W7vIF_TDH5CKTxhJE5P0VyxlGpQCa2sQBoqWRNfuMWzQgvbZ6bxWTt3P5_IRuOO-OZ-Mb1rVOCaXTTSO3GrY/s640/blogger-image-1350812720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1oXf4h04RW0z24VFtPefTVrjeEjxfzwx_iFbNzBHa0UhFwQqIA98jq5W7vIF_TDH5CKTxhJE5P0VyxlGpQCa2sQBoqWRNfuMWzQgvbZ6bxWTt3P5_IRuOO-OZ-Mb1rVOCaXTTSO3GrY/s640/blogger-image-1350812720.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKVngVDE6hRRNL4PfMHoXqYfoenB0lqll9hRzUAIsVH31NXT7lyHBf3rbtfLBulo2itPJ1GA6a-IATOmR-84rP0Qwl1pBzE0oJ0oKrojH8CIJnAM1Zg_WLZgxWlvyLE06QNjXefdcEG-s/s640/blogger-image--1057508719.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKVngVDE6hRRNL4PfMHoXqYfoenB0lqll9hRzUAIsVH31NXT7lyHBf3rbtfLBulo2itPJ1GA6a-IATOmR-84rP0Qwl1pBzE0oJ0oKrojH8CIJnAM1Zg_WLZgxWlvyLE06QNjXefdcEG-s/s640/blogger-image--1057508719.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>A number of Canadian ministers, and others in the Commonwealth, have resigned due to phone calls with judges on improper matters. Jean Charest, David Collennette, John Duncan, John Munro, Irish Minister Bobby Malloy – all resigned to be honourable after making a mistake and calling judges.</div><div><br></div><div>If the Minister thinks that changing the talk from a call to a conversation changes that, he is wrong. After all, it isn't the phone that mattered in those cases, it is the improper conversation. If someone was discussing a bribe, for instance, it doesn't matter if it is by phone, in person, over Skype or by passed notes. It is the substance that is wrong. The same is true here. The Minister should have ended those conversations, not cited them. </div><div><br></div><div>Further, it is hard to believe a judge would start that conversation, because legally-trained people know better. The Minister has not only accused judges of starting potentially-improper conversations, by refusing to provide details he has impugned all 24 judges. </div><div><br></div><div>The Minister needs to provide details of these alleged encounters promptly. And if he indulged those calls, he should step down at least briefly. If he lied about them, he should step down for quite some time. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>A Question of Honour</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>These rules can sometimes seem harsh, when a generally well-meaning person like Stephen Horseman is involved. But ministerial resignations for serious breaches are a tradition because they recognize that a minister’s ambition cannot be more important than the integrity of the system. Duties to protect private information, respect judicial independence, keep budget details secret to protect investors – when these are breached a minister steps down even if they didn't mean any harm. As Bernard LeBlanc said when he resigned after a staffer used his personal account to send private information, it is a question of honour to show respect for the system.</div><div><br></div><div>It is tempting, in a partisan atmosphere, to try to dodge consequences. But governments are not supposed to care only about the game, but about the integrity of democracy. They are guardians of something bigger than themselves. </div><div><br></div><div>The Premier has watched his members applaud colleagues for what are attacks on the judicial system. It is not clear he understands or opposes this, because he has dodged the issue thus far. Yet if he does not act, or if he tries to shuffle the two men to new cabinet jobs without consequence, he will be telling us volumes about his character. Even in the heat of politics, democracy depends upon respect for certain lines that should not be crossed.</div><div><br></div><div>History has a way of outlasting ephemeral power, and this premier is young enough that he will live to read early drafts of history’s judgement of his charge. If he stays silent, this episode will someday be a prominent exhibit in the story of a premier too callow and too weak to defend the rule of law he took an oath to uphold. His name will likely be a cautionary tale of one leader who forgot the warnings of Alexander Pope for those who try to ignore ethical lines.</div><div><br></div><div><i>Fools! who from hence into the notion fall </i></div><div><i>That vice or virtue there is none at all.</i></div><div><i>Is there no black or white? Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain</i></div><div><i>’Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.</i></div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-57517799618990995242016-05-24T06:12:00.001-07:002016-05-24T06:18:02.466-07:00The Curious Need To Make Ruth Ellen A Victim<div>I<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">'ve long since lost any illusions about our ability to view every political issue through a partisan lens. Partisans will praise their side for principled and worthy stands when in Opposition, and then view the exact same behaviour as pointless obstructionism once their side is in government. It happens. I'm pretty sure it happens to me too, though I try to be aware of this. </span></div><div><br></div><div>The minor fracas in Parliament seemed to have reached a conclusion that all but the shrillest partisans could live with. The Prime Minister accepted the collective wisdom of parliamentary experts and journalists that, in a moment of frustration, he had crossed a line that should not be crossed. In losing patience with the Opposition and pushing through a crowd of chatty MPs to drag the Tory Whip to his seat, he had behaved in a way that prime ministers historically have not. </div><div><br></div><div>Mark Twain once remarked that intelligence is the ability to entertain two conflicting thoughts at the same time. Intelligent people could conclude that the Prime Minister was right to apologize and to show good faith by retracting rule changes that would limit debate. Those same people could also believe that, once that apology was issued, that the Opposition parties would have been well-served to show their sincere interest in the right to debate and examine bills by actually debating and examining bills and moving on from the whole kerfuffle.</div><div><br></div><div>One person who seemed truly innocent in all this was the MP for Berthier-Maskinongé, Ruth Ellen Brosseau. She was the MP who the Prime Minister, as he reached through the crowd, elbowed in the chest. She said it hurt quite a bit, and between the pain and the gravity and chaos of the moment, she needed a few minutes and missed a vote. He, in turn, said he was sorry and especially regretted not watching out for her. </div><div><br></div><div>That would be a fine place to leave it. But then idiots got involved. </div><div><br></div><div>Some Liberals tried to go back and justify what Mr. Trudeau agreed was not justifiable, elevating the little coffee clutch of chatty MPs in the aisle as some kind of blockade or obstruction that threatened democracy itself. As veteran Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells noted, if you don't think MPs chat in the aisles in a break, you clearly have never been in Parliament. (Or, I can assure you, in the New Brunswick Legislature). Or you can believe eminent parliamentary historian Michael Bliss, who confirmed that chatting in an aisle in a break, or even slow voting, is very ordinary and physical dragging MPs through them is not. Or believe Gord Brown, the Tory MP who has confirmed that he wasn’t at risk of missing a vote or in need of prime ministerial rescuing. Bottom line – if that was a blockade, I get blockaded at the farmer’s market samosa booth every weekend. </div><div><br></div><div>And some NDP and Conservative MPs seemed way too glad to finally have an opening to slam Mr. Trudeau, who has had one hell of a political honeymoon. The Conservative motion speaking about “molestation” of Ms. Brosseau was clearly over-egging the pudding. More justifiably upsetting to many Canadians was the tendency of some MPs to slip into the language of condemning violence against women, speaking of “safe spaces” and likening Ms. Brosseau’s plight to the struggle of women facing violence to be heard. One NDP MP suggested getting “victim impact statements”, which understandably caused a collective “oh, for Pete’s sake” among level-headed observers. And word of Tom Mulcair raising Ms. Brosseau’s gender in yelling at Mr.Trudeau seemed a bridge too far – while the Prime Minister had copped to a carelessness that could have led to hitting someone, his carelessness had no basis in gender or even intent. </div><div><br></div><div>One point must be made here. Exactly NONE of those statements came out of the mouth of Mr. Brown or Ms. Brosseau. Mr. Brown said simply that he needed no help and hadn't appreciated the Prime Minister pulling him where he was quite capable of getting on his own. Ms. Brosseau said that she got elbowed in the chest and it hurt, and the whole thing overwhelmed her long enough that she missed one vote. </div><div><br></div><div>So, intelligent people can likely entertain certain conflicting thoughts here. They can think the Prime Minister acted like a bit of a jerk and did well to apologize, yet does not deserve any attribution of intent or sexism in his careless elbowing of Ms. Brosseau. And we can also think of cases where we can think of someone meaning us no harm and having no ill intent, but managing to hurt us anyway. (Fellow actors who do dance numbers with me have been elbowed and will be elbowed again). </div><div><br></div><div>There are certain things that intelligent, decent people do not think to do. They would not be motivated to start reviewing the tape like the Zapruder film in an obsessive effort to reach a diagnosis as to whether Ms. Brosseau actually felt pain or not. They would not begin speculating that she likely tried to provoke Mr. Trudeau to elbow her in the chest. They CERTAINLY would not swarm Ms. Brosseau’s Facebook and Twitter feeds to call her things like “a waste of skin”, “hysterical bitch”, “lying twat” and “drama queen”, urging her to resign for the crime of having suggested that catching a stray elbow from the Prime Minister might have been less than an honour. </div><div><br></div><div>There are a number of reasons this is silly.</div><div><br></div><div>First, let's all have some humility about watching a silent video filmed at a distance. I don't know how much that contact hurt. Neither do you. Neither does any prize dipstick on Twitter claiming to have conducted an analysis of facial expression and nerve endings by video. If a doctor tried to reach a conclusion on pain threshold based on that silent video alone, that doctor wouldn't even get to take the witness stand in court. </div><div><br></div><div>I do know that this is a young single mother who supported her child by working in a campus bar. I've been in campus bars, and even that campus bar. Getting jostled isn't new to her, and if she was prone to make it up, we would know it. It all appears to be a quick and spontaneous set of events to me. If you can grant that the Prime Minister acted without calculation or intent in causing the contact, you really have no good reason not to extend the same presumption to the recipient.</div><div><br></div><div>Second, it is ugly in the extreme when people on social media start saying she shouldn't have been in the aisle, or ask why she didn't move away. She was also blocked in by MPs and desks around her (because they were all hating). And even if she was slowing down a vote to show her disagreement (as Mr. Trudeau did to Mr. Harper in the day), that isn't asking for an elbow. </div><div><br></div><div>Third, some people seem to have lost all self-awareness in their need to attack her. Ms. Brosseau’s last two Facebook posts were regarding a festival in her riding and some issue advocacy with MP Guy Caron. Neither mentioned the elbow. And at last look, 644 people had left posts asking why she was milking the incident. I find it hard to believe that many people are dumb enough, or wilfully blind enough, not so see that if a woman posts on an unrelated topic and you respond by screaming that she needs to move on from getting hit -- you're the one who can't move on. </div><div><br></div><div>But what is bothering me most, as a citizen and a guy about to turn a daughter loose on this world, is how unequal and unnecessary all this vitriol and plain old meanness has become. If other MP’s, even of the same party, have said dumb things that are unfair to the Prime Minister, the normal course of reply is to contact and refute the MPs who actually said those things. All Ruth-Ellen Brosseau did was say that an elbow to the chest hurts, and an elbow from the Prime Minister that gets everyone yelling is especially rattling. </div><div><br></div><div>In fact, Mr. Brown has received NONE of the same vitriol or attacks, despite the fact that his party brought the molestation motion and he also said he didn't appreciate the Prime Minister pulling him. Ditto Peter Van Loan, the middle aged man who moved a motion describing what the Prime Minister did as physical “molestation”. Even when John Oliver mentioned this weird word choice, no trolls set upon him the way they did on Ms. Brosseau. Even Speaker Geoff Regan described it as “manhandling” MPs. No man has faced the online hate or the depth of name calling that Ms. Brosseau has, which raises an ugly question about why some people seem so angry at a woman saying she got hurt and it shouldn't have happened. </div><div><br></div><div>This is especially true because it is completely and utterly unnecessary to attack her to defend Mr.Trudeau from the more ridiculous attacks. He's already apologized for being careless, and asked us to believe he is sincere, so it does him no good to argue that he has nothing to be sincere about. As for the over-the-top suggestions about violence against women, the argument that completely exonerates him is that the contact was accidental and gender blind. Given that this is true even if Ms. Brosseau is honest in saying she felt pain, what is the pathological obsession with making her a liar? Can we not like the Prime Minister and support him without flying into a rage at the suggestion that his elbows are pointy and can hurts a collision?</div><div><br></div><div>This is no partisan screed, because no elected Liberal has attacked Ms. Brosseau in this over-the-top way. Some, like Minister Catherine McKenna, have even called the haters out, and good for her. But what is happening makes me sadder. A lot of our fellow citizens seem so genuinely resentful of a woman saying she got hurt and didn't like it that they will repeatedly watch a video and lie about what they can glean from it. They will attack that woman with nasty names and threaten to take her job from her. They will attack her for the comments and actions of others, but leave those people alone. And they are quite willing to send her a message that, once a woman complains about being hurt, that incident will brand her and define her even when she tries to move on to other topics that engage her in her job or as a citizen. In short, there is something that seems to drive some of us to attack and destroy a woman who complains about a man’s conduct, even if she doesn't really complain very much. We have an unhealthy and pathological need for Ruth-Ellen Brosseau to be a liar, even if that doesn't change what Mr, Trudeau did, and even if it inspires us to name-calling and attacking. </div><div><br></div><div>What Justin Trudeau accidentally did to Ruth-Ellen Brosseau was an accident and bears no relevance to violence against women. What some of our fellow citizens are doing to Ruth Ellen Brosseau afterwards is ugly, intentional and tells us a hell of a lot about why women who are victims of real domestic violence don't come forward. </div><div><br></div><div>For the love of God, people, stop.</div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-70207201394588829532016-05-19T08:17:00.001-07:002016-05-19T14:48:28.577-07:00POLITICAL ETHICS AS RORSCHACH TEST<div>My take on the Trudeau thing...because I've been involved in parties on "the left", I have more FB friends who favour "progressive" politicians. And I'm seeing a number of them try to defend or minimize what happened (which, taking what is uncontested from the news, is that he was frustrated with the opposition being slow to vote, pushed through a group of MPs to pull the Conservative Whip through a crowd until that MP told him to get his hands off him, and in doing so accidentally elbowed Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who left the Chamber as a result). </div><div><br></div><div>So, I'm gonna ask....how did you react to the video below when it happened? </div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://youtu.be/QB1dJeMtb08">http://youtu.be/QB1dJeMtb08</a></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div>I <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">went back and checked...there was NO accusation that this collision was anything but accidental contact on Ford's part, but it was a politician becoming careless by acting to a heated political situation in a break. If anything, Trudeau's breach is a bit more egregious, because he admits he went there to make physical contact with at least the Tory Whip.</span></div><div><br></div><div>One of the things that worries me in politics these days is that we are losing firm lines of behaviour of what we should never do. And part of the problem is we let our own side away with stuff that used to be beyond the line. I see friends who decried Harper the autocrat giving Gallant a pass on shutting down Legislative debate and ducking media. Friends who call Kathleen Wynn a liar will excuse absolutely bizarre conspiracy peddling by Donald Trump. And don't get me started on the "everybody does it" stuff -- it's often a lazy way of saying that, because every politician makes mistakes, we can stop decrying truly undemocratic behaviour. </div><div><br></div><div>You want to say this isn't the only basis on which to judge Trudeau? Fine...I actually agree. That his apology closes the issue? Fair enough. But don't spin it or excuse it, please. Opposition MPs slowing down an inevitable closure vote in protest has generally been in the bounds of discourse (open to criticism, sure, but not beyond the pale). Losing your temper and putting hands on people is not. That line matters. And if you're giving one guy a pass because he's on your team....you're part of the problem.</div><div><br></div><div>UPDATE: After the Prime Minister offered a true apology (not an "if I offended anyone" apology) that rose above the spin his more hyper partisan supporters are trying to sell, I offered the following (unsolicited and likely unwelcome) advice to the opposition:</div><div><br></div><div><div>In keeping with my earlier post about holding the party you support to the same standards of behaviour as the others....</div><div><br></div><div>Now that the PM has apologized in a clear, unreserved and decent fashion AND withdrawn the motion to limit debate in the Commons, the Opposition would do well to show that it will use its right to debate constructively. This would involve withdrawing the motion to keep debating Trudeau's mistake, debating the assisted suicide bill with substance and seriousness, and avoiding any description of the fracas with a tone and language that sounds like you actually witnessed a colleague being devoured in a zombie apocalypse.</div><div><br></div><div>Avoiding these steps for another 24 hrs may cause Canadians to revise who has the moral high ground here.</div></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-92160755276611692622016-04-20T14:23:00.001-07:002016-04-21T03:00:26.528-07:00NEW BRUNSWICK, I'VE SOLVED YOUR PROBLEMS<div>Today, I am pleased to announce a disruptive innovation designed to enhance our client service experience, refocus our holistic approach upon mission-critical priorities, and resist the outdated modalities founded upon silo thinking.</div><div><br></div><div>The attitudinal shift inherent in our priority groups (founded upon a creative, collaborative, non-hierarchical, and vertically-integrated community of thought leaders) flows in an ethics-centred, paradigm-shifting, results-oriented manner from our strategic review of promising practices, social licences, and deep-dive stakeholder engagements. </div><div><br></div><div>We are not just reinventing, rebranding, repositioning, revisioning and returning to cornerstone values. We are outside the box, on the runway, and poised on the bleeding edge of organizational culture shifts. We have put our institutional blinders through a gender lens through a singular focus on crowdsourcing. Our deliverables are now shareable, and we are delivering takeaways across multiple platforms. We are inputting our outsourcing, overstating our understandings, at the on ramp of offshoring, and bringing cold fusion to hot markets (with the warmth so central to our competitive brand advantage).</div><div><br></div><div>By consciously uncoupling from singular exceptionalism, our new passionate, nimble, buzzword-compliant, future-oriented priority units will leverage our capacity to see beyond the low-hanging fruit, and challenge ourselves to benchmark new opportunities in emerging markets where aspirational startups can break barriers and conquer new frontiers. </div><div><br></div><div>Of course this will only happen if New Brunswickers are, like us, fully engaged in this singular moment to seize the initiative and win the future. We can provide transformational leadership, but only if citizens are prepared to push the envelope and join us in a new normal of differentiated instruction, multiple intelligences, higher-order thinking, embedded synergies and digital literacy, but as we unpack our mission, we believe that you are. </div><div><br></div><div>By focusing on our shared, universal desires for wellness, innovation, security, sustainability, opportunity and excellence, we can create a win-win future with our holistic new approach. </div><div><br></div><div>Also, we bought a shipyard. Think of it as an exit strategy with upside. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-71217858619611624432016-04-19T10:59:00.001-07:002016-04-20T02:09:07.902-07:00FOLLOW-UP FROM THE TUITION DEBATETwo folks who read the previous blog post, Matthew Hayes and Nathan Hanscom, took issue with the limits in one of the assumptions I made around the 3000 or so students who already got the maximum bursary and thus, had free tuition already. <div><br></div><div>My working assumption was (and is) that people who get a small federal bursary, then borrow $11,000, and then still have enough need for the $4,000 bursary very likely do so because they need the money that year to afford to pay bills and go to school. While they may appreciate the non-repay ability down the road, the driving factor is that they need the cash. Therefore, the fact that the new bursary comes before the loan won't matter to them, because it's the same total award. </div><div><br></div><div>Nathan and Matthew make the point that now students at least have the option of taking the bursary money and then not even asking for a loan. You don't have to borrow money to fill out a form and get your tuition bursary. Matt further makes the point that this may keep students from working two jobs and cutting corners on learning. We share the experience of teaching at STU and we both agree that would be a good thing.</div><div><br></div><div>I admit that I am unconvinced. In my time (admittedly ten years ago) as an administrator at STU who handled student emergency assistance and financial advising, my experience was that most students who work and borrow do so because of financial need at the time. There were a few who worked only to reduce their reliance on student loans, but most students borrowed and worked because even after paying tuition they had to pay rent, food, transportation and yes, some of the small joys of socializing and going to movies. The debt that accumulated was worrying to them and reducing it would make them happy, but the behaviour was driven by short-term need. </div><div><br></div><div>Changes to family contribution rules would allow more access to the bursaries that are still on the back end and help these students. I'm just unconvinced until I see it that the student who needed to max out their loan won't still need to do to pay eight months of living expenses. </div><div><br></div><div>But time will tell, and Matthew and Nathan brought a scenario to my attention that is worth more consideration than I originally gave it. I hope lots of students who can afford to take the bursary and no more do so. And I love the feedback and hearing angles I may have missed...that is the fun part of writing these analyses so keep it up.</div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-55111819598727608772016-04-18T03:43:00.001-07:002016-04-19T04:52:19.217-07:00TABBED FOR FREE TUITION : CUTTING THROUGH THE NOISE<div>So, after a few hours of shared celebration, the government’s new tuition proposal has become controversial. You know the basics by now. The government announced it would be providing free tuition for those whose family income is $60,000 or less. Then, as news came out more slowly of other programs cut to pay for it, a debate arose over whether or not it was worth it.</div><div><br></div><div>There's nothing I enjoy than a good policy argument. And, like Sheldon Cooper says, I'd like to do the math. So I reviewed the government’s plan and found the real numbers – and a few surprises. To help the debate over the good and the bad, let me share some numbers with you.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPyTTgyUnDOua7J6H2Q4Y5JSv2BKMcTE6F8rhzruEOW0m6SzTgAZnp-A2gk6OeG6tCbzoizSAh4dbgtY7v3fFmp57E3GPqZmUgZRWl1QQ_or6qTNIhcWheiQdJ1vLz0KEpFdRGg-NTGUA/s640/blogger-image--1925659222.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPyTTgyUnDOua7J6H2Q4Y5JSv2BKMcTE6F8rhzruEOW0m6SzTgAZnp-A2gk6OeG6tCbzoizSAh4dbgtY7v3fFmp57E3GPqZmUgZRWl1QQ_or6qTNIhcWheiQdJ1vLz0KEpFdRGg-NTGUA/s640/blogger-image--1925659222.jpg"></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>All the education, just one calorie of debt? Let's do the math on the TAB.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br></b></div><div>One important thing to note is that this is a little more complicated than the government simply paying tuition for everyone whose income is under $60,000. The tell is this – the government estimated that 7,200 New Brunswick students would get the Tuition Access Bursary, or “TAB”.. Since the median tuition fee is just under $6,000, that would be a $42Million program. Yet the government costing is $25million for the program. So, what explains the difference?</div><div><br></div><div><i><b>There are two wrinkles here.</b></i></div><div><br></div><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>To provide “free” tuition, the government will first claw back the federal bursary for low and middle income students. Because they fund only the difference, it is not quite a full tuition bursary. </div><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hundreds of low income New Brunswickers already had “free tuition” by the definition of the program, and so there is no new money spent on them.</div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Free Tuition – A Little Surprise</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>Just so we are clear, we already had free tuition for low-income New Brunswickers. Many other provinces do to, if we use the definition in this program. </div><div><br></div><div>Of course, tuition is not free in New Brunswick for anyone. Students pay their tuition fees as always. What the government defines as free tuition is that students now receive a non-repayable grant (or bursary, if you like) which is worth what they have to pay in tuition.</div><div><br></div><div>Calling this free tuition is not a problem, in my book. It isn't free tuition the way Bernie Sanders means it, where PSE is like the K-12 system, where we all enrol without user fees and pay for it through taxes. But if Brian Gallant told me to go buy a car and he'd send me a cheque for the cost, and I didn't have to pay him back, I'd let him claim he gave me a free car. </div><div><br></div><div>However, if what we mean by free tuition is government grants equal or greater to tuition, we had that. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Here's why. </i></b></div><div><br></div><div>Each year many students qualify for maximum student aid. The government operates student aid this way. They figure out how much money you need to pay tuition and live during the school year they figure out how much money you should have between your earnings and the money you should get from family. Then they give you the difference. They first give you loans -- $350 per week of study, or $12,600 for a 36 week programme. If after you've borrowed the maximum, you still have need, there's a New Brunswick Bursary of $130 per week, or another $4,680 that you don't have to pay back. </div><div><br></div><div>There's also a federal bursary if you are low or middle income by their standards (which is based on the size of your family, but generally the cutoff is between $40,000 and $85,000 of pretax income. If you are in that group, there will be between $1,000 and $2,500 of bursary from the federal government as well. </div><div><br></div><div>That's how it worked before the New Brunswick government made their announcement. Did you catch why we already have free tuition?</div><div><br></div><div>As you can see, if you maxed out your student aid because you had high need and little money, you already get $6,700 of bursaries. Unless you go to Mount Allison, tuition fees at colleges and universities are less than that. So low-income students already had bursaries equal to their tuition fees. That's what we are now calling free tuition, so we need to note that it existed already.</div><div><br></div><div>The number of students who already had free tuition is not inconsiderable. Studies show 18% of New Brunswick’s roughly 13,800 student aid recipients maxed out their bursary and still had some unmet need, so that means 2,760 students. Of the remainder, a number of others still got bursaries, and if this larger group averages $687 of bursary, that likely means the lowest-income among them got most or all of their bursary. Therefore, in a typical year, about 3,000 New Brunswickers were already getting free tuition. </div><div><br></div><div>That is important, because of the cuts to other programs are meant to target resources to the lowest-income New Brunswickers, there is a logical contradiction here. The lowest income borrowers share equally in the cuts, and so if they didn't gain anything the only change is a negative one. </div><div><br></div><div>For the highest-need (and presumably lowest income) students, they gained nothing with government’s announcement. After all, the fact that the Tuition Access Bursary (as they are calling it) is targeted at low-income New Brunswickers means little, because the people receiving full bursaries were by definition low income. For them, their bursary got a new name. They may even lose a bit, because the tax credits that got cut to pay for it were universal, and at the very low end, it's unclear if the Tuition Access Bursary has replaced their slightly-more-lucrative New Brunswick Bursaries. As well (and this is important), the New Brunswick government is not giving them a bursary for the amount of tuition, but for the difference between the federal bursaries and tuition. So, the New Brunswick government does claw back your federal bursary in order to pay for your “free” tuition. </div><div><br></div><div>(This group will include a few more “partial” winners, because a slightly smaller cohort would have received some bursary award to meet their need, but less than the full amount. Because the new Tuition Access Bursary appears to be all-or-nothing, in that it covers you to your tuition fee if you're covered, they will get a smaller boost. Judging by the costing, this doesn't greatly alter the framework of this analysis, but I should note their presence).</div><div><br></div><div>In fact, we've had even more far-reaching free tuition programs before. The Millenium Bursaries and Timely Completion Grants of the Graham government, given tuition fees at the time, were also free tuition grants by the Gallant government’s definition. And yes, Tories can argue that the cancelled Tuition Tax Credits were free tuition programming as well. If you maxed out your bursary while in school and claimed all your tax credits after, you would have had more money from government than you paid in tuition. They don't keep numbers on how often those two things overlap, so we can't tell how many people got free tuition, but some likely exist. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCy5f8TtJrCV9Qvt0BFoU6_OLEqBr2rSG_6HWuEDEHN6rc8sOgs7eQJIphdcy_aNMhYRC2pBHq7VCnsTr_qDOz_PvDzQt1AWbiL6Z6SIYr9meKu6DUw7UTU5PEm-yrvdKBX4VYg7jo6lM/s640/blogger-image--2098124156.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCy5f8TtJrCV9Qvt0BFoU6_OLEqBr2rSG_6HWuEDEHN6rc8sOgs7eQJIphdcy_aNMhYRC2pBHq7VCnsTr_qDOz_PvDzQt1AWbiL6Z6SIYr9meKu6DUw7UTU5PEm-yrvdKBX4VYg7jo6lM/s640/blogger-image--2098124156.jpg"></a></div><b>By the new definition, meet the first premier to deliver free tuition. Surprised me too.</b></div><div><br></div><div>So, to summarize, for 3,000 low-income New Brunswickers, this is a new name on the same help—and tuition was already free. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>So, What Changed?</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>That isn't to say that nothing happened last week. Some students will definitely benefit from what government did. The government estimates that 7,200 students will benefit from the new Tuition Access Bursary. That's likely true, and here's who they are. </div><div><br></div><div>There were a number of students who have family incomes below $60,000 but did not get a bursary. For them, after summer jobs and family contributions, their financial needs could be met by that $350/week of loans they could borrow, and under the old rules, you don't get a New Brunswick bursary until you max out your loans. </div><div><br></div><div>The new Tuition Access Bursary goes on the front end, and since this group wasn't qualifying for maximum aid before, we can assume many will be getting the smaller middle-class federal bursary. They still have to contribute their modest federal bursary, but if their family income is under $60,000 , they probably get about $5,000 in bursary that used to be a loan, and that will make you happy. (If you go to Mount A, that's over $6,000 in bursary. If you're the person who eats only crab legs and prime rib on the buffet because you want to make the house pay, consider Sackville).</div><div><br></div><div>One reason I suspect this is the cohort the government has in mind is that if the program helps 7200 students, there were 3,000 who already got the same help, so there's no new money there. Giving 4,200 students bursary help of roughly $5,000 gets you to a number pretty close to the $20-25million government says they'll spend. </div><div><br></div><div>So, there are your winners in last weeks announcement. If you want numbers, roughly 4,200 of New Brunswick’s 29,000 students have a new bursary of between $4,500 and $5,500. That's about 16% of students. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyo_64GYpCe_IAl_CpKdihszubAHIavFdDHeK26aRPJV1A4rEEOIGqVw6ugg5TtZjhBHGEkd5SWLwOyWSs8KRe5MfMu8-4a9zl47-C0UWnDKf8a_Asb8Nf7pxtUfFyJzaqcg3CIuJCYQ/s640/blogger-image-1260897131.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyo_64GYpCe_IAl_CpKdihszubAHIavFdDHeK26aRPJV1A4rEEOIGqVw6ugg5TtZjhBHGEkd5SWLwOyWSs8KRe5MfMu8-4a9zl47-C0UWnDKf8a_Asb8Nf7pxtUfFyJzaqcg3CIuJCYQ/s640/blogger-image-1260897131.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>But this premier brought in free tuition too. They have that in common. </b></div><br></div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Who Loses?</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>It has to be said that the net result of moving all this money around is that government is spending less to support students than was the case under the Alward government. In their first budget, the cancellation of the Tuition Tax Credit cut $22 million from student debt reduction. And the cancellation of the Education and Tuition Tax Credits takes another $11 million away. Government has alternately said each program was cut to fund more targeted assistance. Assuming this is it, they didn't return all the money. </div><div><br></div><div>To quantify, each student (including low income students) lost about $560 with the loss of the federal Tuition and Education Non-Refundable Tax Credits. The slightly less-valuable provincial version is likely about a $400 hit to each student. That's 30,000 small losses.</div><div><br></div><div>The Tuition Tax Credit was worth up to $2,000 per year, but only students who stayed in New Brunswick benefitted. How many was that? The Canada Student Loan annual report generally shows about 11,000 students still in student loan repayment in New Brunswick. Extrapolating that time period to tax credit eligibility (about half of the student loan repayers would be in that window, and about half of graduates have loans to repay) would land you pretty close to government’s estimated cost of $22million to offer the credit, or 11,000 people losing out on $2,000.</div><div><br></div><div>So, let's sum up who is up and who is down. </div><div><br></div><div>About 11% of students, the very lowest income, get the same bursary they had before but lose a tax credit. They may or may not have also lost the value of their federal bursary, depending on the answer to this question -- has the New Brunswick Bursary been rolled into the TAB, or does it still exist after student has been awarded the TAB and a full student loan?</div><div><br></div><div>Another 16% of students lose a small tax credit and gain a bursary 10 times larger, which is a definite win, and a significant number of students. </div><div><br></div><div>The other 73% of students lose a $400 tax credit and get no new help.</div><div><br></div><div>Of the 84% of students who don't get new help from this announcement, about 60% of them will lose a tax credit after graduation worth $2,000 per year. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Is It Worth It?</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>Cynics will say that the government has rebranded an existing bursary as “free tuition” and added a few new recipients to help the bigger cuts slide by. And, I'm sure, this public relations advantage was discussed. </div><div><br></div><div>However, the new program isn't just a triumph of political branding. Studies have shown lower income students tend to be more affected by risk and uncertainty when deciding whether or not to go to school. The old programmes were less certain and, as the New Brunswick Student Alliance correctly notes, often only offered rewards in a longer window than when students are actually deciding to attend school. Making a simple pitch –if you're income is this, you get this help—has a positive public policy component to it that can't be dismissed just because it is somewhat helpful to the political messaging too. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHjMOXN7jTdYytWpUYBb6XBg0kU47iKGqOX_fo3R1tluWTVAWcB9a2oRMR8Pmys606Z64gis0LL1C7zI1dOEOclAorjcmh1fdySfzqL5pwNwyjyP6ayIBQqfkDZvmFfvemdpJ5t8uWmKA/s640/blogger-image-1758373805.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHjMOXN7jTdYytWpUYBb6XBg0kU47iKGqOX_fo3R1tluWTVAWcB9a2oRMR8Pmys606Z64gis0LL1C7zI1dOEOclAorjcmh1fdySfzqL5pwNwyjyP6ayIBQqfkDZvmFfvemdpJ5t8uWmKA/s640/blogger-image-1758373805.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>STU's scholarship guarantee is now widely imitated. Because certainty matters in PSE.</b></div><br></div><div>On the flip side, the sum total is to favour new students over recent graduates. The Tuition Tax Credit was a retention tool to help keep young families in New Brunswick even if our wages are lower. High debt loads push people out of the province. If the graduates of 2020 leave on large numbers, we may have punished young workers who chose to stay in order to train a new crop of grads who will work elsewhere. The best-case scenario is that students who study here to get the new bursary have roots here that help -- it is too soon to tell. </div><div><br></div><div>The government also needs to provide more concrete answers about its new Education and New Economy Fund, which is the fund that provides funding for the new TAB. This is unusual, because instead of building the money into the budget of the Department that administers student aid, the funding is coming from this new Fund which only has three years of funding commitments. Because the cuts to other programs were permanent, this is a curious decision which is hard to evaluate because basic questions of the ENE Fund governance are still unanswered. At the very least, students embarking on a four year degree should be told if the funding is only guaranteed for three.</div><div><br></div><div>The loss of the tax credit does impact mid-career and part-time students who try to upgrade their skills. Whether the financial impact is enough to matter, or whether it is mitigated by new programmes, is still unknown. </div><div><br></div><div>In the end, government asked 41,000 New Brunswickers to take a cut of between $400 and $2,400, so that 4,200 New Brunswickers can get a new $5,000 bursary. Where they used to get a $5,000 loan. The debate will now go on over whether that trade off is fair, and if it will improve access. </div><div><br></div><div>But I will bet if they phrased it that way, it wouldn't have gotten as much traction as suggesting it is a new “free tuition” program. Now, with the right numbers behind the labels, let the debate proceed. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Author's Edit: My friend Alex Usher of Higher Education Associates, weighed in yesterday with a number of points of agreement but one challenge to my use of "lowest income" to describe those who were already maxing out their bursaries and thus, already getting "free tuition". He notes that while being very low income is one way to have far fewer resources than needs and thus get a maximum award, these students are (in his considerable research) more likely to live at home and thus have lower assessed need. He suggests that these students may be "independent students"...those who meet the definition of having been out of high school for four years and thus free from parental contribution requirements. </i></b></div><div><b><i><br></i></b></div><div><b><i>Now, this speaks to the identity of that group and not the fact that "free tuition" was a reality for them. And it then raises the question of whether a 22 year old with a low income but from a better off family should be called "low income" (since they still may have more in common with groups who traditionally have high participation rates). It doesn't change the points here of the size of groups who benefit or don't. But it is an important dimension to debating the policy outcome, and with thanks to Alex I note it here. </i></b></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-9172028520601116512016-04-11T08:34:00.001-07:002016-04-12T03:05:59.702-07:00A CALL TO NEW DEMOCRATS: Let Us Reason Together<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It should be made clear that the NDP has decided to look before they leap. The LEAP Manifesto, a vision document launched by a who’s who of Canadian celebrity activists, has been forwarded on to the party grassroots for debate and discussion. The authors and supporters of the Manifesto are to be congratulated for this, and it showed confidence in their ideas that they did not press their convention floor advantage to end the debate. </font></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></font></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><font style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrhIXwDgqwTsV96NiIRXXP2fgV44cVeS0bcpl86atPMcHwzQTrVNrMwcjQh-nVQZ9GxkFoezFR6vGBECAoqTt3r4D_nOYhGS2oO0sd-AKLNhZYoOvLZO2BU69jQiJqYgSiSUdEGyim-Zc/s640/blogger-image-1465267022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrhIXwDgqwTsV96NiIRXXP2fgV44cVeS0bcpl86atPMcHwzQTrVNrMwcjQh-nVQZ9GxkFoezFR6vGBECAoqTt3r4D_nOYhGS2oO0sd-AKLNhZYoOvLZO2BU69jQiJqYgSiSUdEGyim-Zc/s640/blogger-image-1465267022.jpg"></a></font></div><font style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></font><p></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The LEAP Manifesto certainly tries to live up to the parting words of Tom Mulcair that the NDP will dream no small dreams. It imagines a completely clean economy by 2050, spurred on by a screeching halt to subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and a carbon tax where polluters pay more. The Manifesto challenges the Liberals’ acceptance of further trade agreements and calls for greater emphasis on building local economies and agriculture. It calls out the price of austerity agendas and calls for a living wage and guaranteed annual income for Canadians, with public sector job growth in caregiving, zero-emission jobs like teaching, child care and social work and an ambitious retraining agenda to aid workers through the economic shifts.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Politically, this document would give the NDP a clear identity, although the breadth of its appeal is open to debate. It would give Canadian progressives their own version of the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders showdown, except in a two-party structure rather than the internecine battle the U.S. Democrats are waging. Winning progressive parties, it must said, manage to speak to both of those strains of believers, and therein lies the challenge. </span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It would also mark the end of one era in progressive politics and begin a new one. In that, it will bring a close to the three decades of a progressive approach that ranges from Bill Clinton’s breakthrough to the final victories of Barack Obama and Jack Layton.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is a tendency, in this debate, to view the past outside of its historical context. To understand the very real merits of what is happening in the LEAP Manifesto and its international equivalents, it is worth understanding why the Third Way was ascendant in the first place.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When the 1980’s wound down, the political right was having an extended moment. Ronald Reagan retired undefeated and was able to bequeath power to his Vice-President. Brian Mulroney had overcome massive personal unpopularity to not only win, but ratify a free trade agreement that was anathema to the left. Margaret Thatcher declared there was no such thing as society and started a war over islands, and was winning majorities. Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl won comfortable victories.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The left wasn’t just losing power. We were losing ground. These wins by the right led to massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the loss of social programs and universal benefits, and draconian approaches to crime that destroyed families.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The climate that allowed these policies to win had been sowed by what came before. In the 1970’s, left-wing parties were governing. The New Deal era and very real victories had given way to an economic recession that shook faith in government. Governments were finding that there were limits to how regularly governments could run deficits and raise taxes, and families got hurt. Interest rates, driven up by the demand government borrowing placed upon the money supply, exceeded 20%. (To imagine what that’s like, imagine having to put your mortgage on your credit card). Investment and risk-taking dried up and jobs were lost, and inflation began to cycle. </span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">At the same time, new technology, communications and efficient transportation expanded the ability of companies to move outside of national economies and regulations. If the 1950”s and 60’s had seen governments make regulation national to keep companies from leveraging local governments, by the dawn of the 1980’s companies were threatening international moves to leverage national governments.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For conservatives like Reagan and Thatcher, this was a perfect storm. The working class, unionized households that had bolstered the left through the New Deal and Equal Opportunity eras were hurting, and they were ready to vote for change. Reagan and Thatcher and Mulroney essentially argued that the problem was not that big business was exploiting the new international game, but that incompetent leftists were trying to resist and cling to higher taxes, environmental regulations and unionized work. Play the game, they urged, let companies benefit and the benefits will trickle down to all of us.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The gambit worked beautifully, and in some ways, the excesses of the left in ignoring economic reality let them get away with it. Taxing and borrowing with ease had led to an ability to avoid some basic issues of public management and our own excesses created the conditions for a counteraction.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of course, the right quickly began to give in to its own excesses. After a burst of good times gained by rolling back the most excessive taxes and regulations, the flaws of conservatism showed. Tax cuts did not, in fact, pay for themselves with economic growth and so deficits ballooned. As deficits ballooned, public services like health and education were cut back with disastrous effects upon families and the economy. The expansion of free trade without any safeguards for local economies decimated communities. When the situation grew desperate, the right fell back on blaming the victims of economic change, creating draconian laws to deal with alleged career criminals and welfare cheats. This probably reached its nadir in the cruel last days of the Mike Harris government, where one pregnant woman died of heat exhaustion while under house arrest for a minor case of welfare fraud, and the overstretched and underregulated local government in Walkerton poisoned its residents with tainted water, killing seniors and children.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As the right lost lots claim to good governance, they won a few final elections by scaring people about the still-remembered folly of the left. Figures such as Ed Broadbent, Neil Kinnock and Mike Dukakis saw their window of opportunity close with vicious campaigns focused on the issues where we did not yet have voters’ trust – taxes, crime and trade.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Which led to the rise of the Third Way. Left-wing parties would stop denying the reality of the economic change that had occurred. There were limits on taxing, spending and borrowing, they would say, and they could be trusted to manage these new realities more gently and kindly than the right-wingers who cruelly embraced them. They would focus on responsibility and community to make collective social goals possible, they would focus on smaller regulations such as family leave and small minimum wage hikes, they would live with the need to reduce tax bills but would focus the benefits more on the middle class and less on the plutocrats. Where they would push for large new social investment, it would be in areas where many businesses would see a competitive benefit to the expense – education, training, R&D and infrastructure.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By accepting some limits on their left flank, progressives like Clinton, Blair, Schroeder and Chretien won elections and did indeed roll back the worst excesses of the right. It must also be acknowledged that, for a while, the result was economic growth. The right had surely underfunded important economic services like education and infrastructure, they had sidelined too many potential workers through poverty and illiteracy, their deficits caused by reckless tax cuts had made capital too expensive. The balanced budgets, community-minded left did create a boom of jobs, investment and start-ups by re-embracing the role of government in the economy. In fact, Al Gore did fight for funding for an obscure DND project called the internet, which needed public money in its incubator until the private sector saw a way to make money off of it. He did take the lead in the invention of the Internet, even if the awkward phrasing would haunt him.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is highly dubious that an ideological approach that sought to return to the tax rates and borrowing of the 1970s would have worked. I recall in 1993, squeezed by the Liberals, the NDP ran an angry black-and-white ad raging about free trade and austerity. We won 9 seats, while the avuncular Chretien and his red book marginalized the NDP for a decade.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Today, as many rush to embrace the insurgencies of Sanders, Corbyn and the LEAP Manifesto, they see only the modern limitations of the Third Way. They forget, or never knew, the context of its rise – that there was a very real need to accept the excesses of the 1970’s in order to beat the right and stop the damage of the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney years. This is why many of us who fancy ourselves genuine progressives have a softer view of the Clinton/Blair/Chretien years – because we remember what came before and why it beat us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsT54oFBSHLPMo1lnYOdqai8iVoRhgHBwanPmn4z9S64mdP5s9lIBf7ywy0yJ8RDk9X1pYqwXOu8Jb2XbL76W2AIFV_AFHA83ejvwwQ6EDVKJcHXmL6t2w7VdUvklsaJEq0iN8BifCLNk/s640/blogger-image-1574539415.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsT54oFBSHLPMo1lnYOdqai8iVoRhgHBwanPmn4z9S64mdP5s9lIBf7ywy0yJ8RDk9X1pYqwXOu8Jb2XbL76W2AIFV_AFHA83ejvwwQ6EDVKJcHXmL6t2w7VdUvklsaJEq0iN8BifCLNk/s640/blogger-image-1574539415.jpg"></a></div><br><p></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9C_Xtm89oyHJVIpSIMWiNzQLPeiTUjdL1WWn72s8wW1eI5S_iHssHQi0zgjkp6CdTkyI-T_x2HMRgw6jQTwyUIIOmgxfWlZvtOWdygyQLELBe1jka9E0yi26OB8UslILvNnGA6L2l0ts/s640/blogger-image--1000368.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9C_Xtm89oyHJVIpSIMWiNzQLPeiTUjdL1WWn72s8wW1eI5S_iHssHQi0zgjkp6CdTkyI-T_x2HMRgw6jQTwyUIIOmgxfWlZvtOWdygyQLELBe1jka9E0yi26OB8UslILvNnGA6L2l0ts/s640/blogger-image--1000368.jpg"></a></div><b>The difference here may be less about the politics, more about the possible.</b><p></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If that sounds like a set up to trash the LEAP Manifesto, I am about to surprise you. Like the Sanders insurgence, I think it is a positive development and worthy of good faith discussion by all Canadian progressives. That is not to say very troubling questions -- about affordability, about the narrowness of its vision, about its regionally narrow view in a big, diverse country -- should be ignored. If LEAP fans are to be party builders and not iconoclasts, they will have to see questions like these as opportunities rather than hostilities. But for all that, there are aims here that resonate with many willing to work for the NDP, and that must also be heard. </span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Third Way gambit was worthy because, if we were honest, there was no real plan to combat the global movement of companies and capital. Even if we accepted the moral critique of what was happening, there was not a good answer for the fear that excesses in taxation and regulation would drive companies away. History tells us that there is always a lag time between big business’ ability to move beyond government’s ability to regulate, and government’s reaction. Companies used to threaten local and governments with moving to other cities, driving down taxes and leaving many small centers with substandard schools, hospitals and social programs. The New Deal/Equal Opportunity era saw government began to work provincially and nationally to rein in these excesses. The occasional proposal like the Tobin Tax aside, government had not yet figured out how to react to the fact that business could move internationally and government could only act nationally.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of course, the first step to an international arena where government insists on fair trade, living wages and decent social programs starts with a consensus among national governments. In a way that was unimaginable when I watched Bill Clinton get nominated in 1992, there is some hope for international standards and collaboration. If the Third Way was an acceptance of the best idea we had at the time, the LEAP Manifesto appears just when there is hope of something better. That is the best reason of all to start a new era.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The LEAP Manifesto envisions a Canada where the Liberal Party pursues progressive goals within the same system, where free trade, mobile capital and hedge fund managers operate with minimal government oversight, while New Democrats question and challenge the limits of the system itself. </span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlP6797fIOZTz8GMthCzkKun4_qkKL4x7pj2v6NYba7M1ZiC71zUzMM8izMBRxNAbMXBesWEx_qsjzuHvpdmH8yJ81Xmdr-MLA6hEA3iLyYC_MxpBpbCKbDySTJhRWX93ufPokoep6_E/s640/blogger-image-1250867762.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlP6797fIOZTz8GMthCzkKun4_qkKL4x7pj2v6NYba7M1ZiC71zUzMM8izMBRxNAbMXBesWEx_qsjzuHvpdmH8yJ81Xmdr-MLA6hEA3iLyYC_MxpBpbCKbDySTJhRWX93ufPokoep6_E/s640/blogger-image-1250867762.jpg"></a></div><b>Dotage, my ass. That was the speech of the year. </b><p></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is not a bad thing. Stephen Lewis’s critique of Justin Trudeau resonated because it was fair – while Trudeau has mastered the symbolism of a break from Harper by embracing Syrian refugees, transgender rights and marijuana legalization, he has not really broken from Harper when it comes to actually transferring money from haves to have nots. The lack of hard action on child care funding, First Nations programs, environmental regulation and foreign aid matters more than all the Twitter #BecauseIts2015 mentions will. His willingness to run deficits may prove less progressive if it is spent on politically driven road projects and corporate bailouts and does not leave behind a stronger, renewed social safety net.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The LEAP Manifesto clearly goes beyond hashtag activism, and deserves credit for focusing our discussions on goals like First Nations rights, environmental sustainability, income inequality and a guaranteed national income. As millennials face life in the Uber economy, renewal of the social safety net is an essential discussion of we are not all to be standby labour for big business. A call for universal early childhood education is simply a recognition of what the science of human development has been telling us for 20 years – because it’s 2015, indeed.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If any of this is to matter, the debate must keep our coalition together, the coalition that Jack Layton built. And that will require discipline from all sides.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For those who were supporters of Layton and Mulcair for their centrist appeals, we must keep an open mind that maybe the Overton window has opened for a more activist state, and not let the caution of battles past close our minds to the growing expressions of willingness to address some of the structural problems in the economy that are still leaving too many families behind and goals unfulfilled.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For those who have already signed on to the LEAP manifesto, I can only encourage them to continue to invite debate and to accept thoughtful critiques on the journey to their goals. Do not dismiss those voices that fought in different eras, but seek to address them. When Naomi Klein tweeted that the motion to accept the Manifesto was a victory of “hope over fear”, I admit I recoiled. Using the same language that described the defeat of Stephen Harper to summarize a debate among friends is dangerous indeed.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAm4nZYXY_7rvq0mT_X_C7PxQ3r4t-nx7mXoj8YnURI3FLjIm8iATRof1MyYcKv2zzQ69L_JcpKBR3M_eMTq9bTW0AP0vkp2VvUlytMt5JzTCFfed18IFTzv0x12on6nn9RbRVM7IVvX8/s640/blogger-image-1399163740.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAm4nZYXY_7rvq0mT_X_C7PxQ3r4t-nx7mXoj8YnURI3FLjIm8iATRof1MyYcKv2zzQ69L_JcpKBR3M_eMTq9bTW0AP0vkp2VvUlytMt5JzTCFfed18IFTzv0x12on6nn9RbRVM7IVvX8/s640/blogger-image-1399163740.jpg"></a></div><b>Political advice, Ms. Klein: don't attack your friends with the words you aim at your enemies.</b><p></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair (and for that matter, Darrel Dexter and Rachel Notley) grew their coalitions by reaching a large group of progressive swing voters, those who choose between Liberals and New Democrats (I will claim to understand these voters, for reasons that are clear). These voters often choose the Liberals when they find the NDP too fixated on complaints and not enough upon solutions. They will return to the NDP when the Liberals’ pragmatism veers too close to entitlement and political calculation. If we use our renewal process to find solutions together, we will win.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Reading the LEAP Manifesto, legitimate questions come to mind. </span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">1. The authors call for jobs in approved sectors such as caregiving, education and the arts. As a philosophy major and educator, I have no doubt that these are legitimate economic drivers. Yet surely people can aspire to be engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs, pipe fitters, investors, and many other things too. And surely, to grow these public sector drivers will require some economic activity where taxes are not just a percentage of a public salary. We cannot create cronyism of good intentions, where we narrow our focus of job creation to a point we ignore the dreams of many Canadians.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">2. As an Atlantic Canadian, I felt uneasy at what sounded like a too-flippant tone to the displacement of workers in economic shifts. Our emotional rejection of the Harper Conservatives flows in part from a sense that they always saw Atlantic Canada as little more than a source of surplus labour for the oil patch if we could be pushed to move. There is a need to understand that, for many small towns with their own community institutions and local economies, retraining and public transit alone will not answer the fear and unease that comes from being torn apart by grand economic shifts. We cannot simply treat Alberta the way Harper treated, say, Cape Breton. We are better than that.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">3. The need for income security has never been greater. The LEAP Manifesto has the right instincts in addressing living wages and guaranteed annual incomes. However, it falls back into an outdated false dichotomy that suggests we are all workers or corporations. In fact, entrepreneurs and investors are increasingly those who need income security so that they can take risks and grow the economy. Simply adding money to old programs may not be as effective as asking what income security means in a new economy. This debate can be an opportunity for our party if we come to grips with it – because local entrepreneurship increasingly stands as an antidote to multinational dominance. In other words, small businesses and startups should be part of our coalition.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">These can be seen as critiques, or opportunities to collaborate on new ideas. I challenge my NDP colleagues to see them as the latter. In his eulogy for Rob Ford, his former chief of staff Mark Towhey reminded us all of Torontonians whose hearts don't flutter at public art installations or the shifting of paradigms, but simply work too long for too little money and want their calls returned, potholes filled, and streets safe. Ford won because he remembered them. Because our ideas are better, we only lose to the right when we forget them. I can introduce you to voters who want plans, not manifestos. Jack reached them. We still can. </span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTZO4uhcfUiIo9AhhkigqN2SS3FdlaYBPAjfzF1v2cdES0Y1sPUnH8imMfpKCsGtynJ9FVCJOFXRlXCiNwJb9LOhsK4nLznkhneQXnVrPSxYGBfYwY4pvbC0e4hFt6cWHdlcpp49Xd-7k/s640/blogger-image-45265590.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTZO4uhcfUiIo9AhhkigqN2SS3FdlaYBPAjfzF1v2cdES0Y1sPUnH8imMfpKCsGtynJ9FVCJOFXRlXCiNwJb9LOhsK4nLznkhneQXnVrPSxYGBfYwY4pvbC0e4hFt6cWHdlcpp49Xd-7k/s640/blogger-image-45265590.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn3zsm2uBfFG3HYUAsLXkk9HbKQJQNKfWQ3xUlylXETvmYC9C1W1WAjp_j4Bym2oj_XEnWjghsGI0NZKxOgngrK8o111Hgn-0yrcnnb86D_tSkofVKm-E1gWQDbj7ojB-Q8Blpv5PyFag/s640/blogger-image--1015447634.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn3zsm2uBfFG3HYUAsLXkk9HbKQJQNKfWQ3xUlylXETvmYC9C1W1WAjp_j4Bym2oj_XEnWjghsGI0NZKxOgngrK8o111Hgn-0yrcnnb86D_tSkofVKm-E1gWQDbj7ojB-Q8Blpv5PyFag/s640/blogger-image--1015447634.jpg"></a></div><b>Forty-four seats doesn't get you the sugar it used to.</b><p></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As Tom Mulcair once said, the ceiling is now the floor for the NDP. Not long ago, a leader winning 44 seats would have been a conquering hero. Our expectations have grown, and that is a good thing. But with big goals must come big tents. The NDP kept this growing coalition together through two leaders; Jack Layton through force of personality and Tom Mulcair through the prospect of power. Now, both leaders are gone. Coming out of this weekend, we can either shrink or grow in their absence. Each of us has the potential to be a leader in keeping our coalition together.</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the weeks ahead, the media will likely remind us of the risks – the 52/48 leadership vote, the Trudeau honeymoon, and the loss of Stornoway. If we insist upon seeing ourselves as two camps, if we buy their paradigm, we will risk seeing our coalition return to the pre-Layton days. </span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But if we truly open our hearts and minds to each other, if we accept that we all are prepared to dream big dreams, then this weekend may be the start of a new era rather than the end of our quest to govern. To mix icons of both sides of this vital debate, ‘tis truly not too late to make a better world if we have the courage to reason together.</span></p><div><font face="Calibri Regular"><br></font></div><font face="Times New Roman" style="font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></font>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-6914352148155997332016-04-05T05:12:00.001-07:002016-04-05T07:20:59.460-07:00CAN THE GALLANT GOVERNMENT DECIDE THAT OVERSIGHT JUST ISN'T THEIR
THING? IT'S UP TO US.<div><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Is democracy still a sexy issue?</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There was a theory, popular among the most cynical members of the political establishment, which says that voters don’t care about process. When Stephen Harper was proroguing Parliament, blocking independent officers’ inquiries, stuffing omnibus bills through Parliament, many jaded journos yawned and said that it wouldn’t really matter because nobody cares.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yet, when Justin Trudeau won, there was a general sense in the land that maybe people did care, that Harper’s cynicism and manipulation wore out his welcome and made Trudeau’s open spirit seem even more refreshing when it arrived. Maybe people really do care about making sure that politicians respect the ground rules of democracy, transparency and decency.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">All right, New Brunswick. It’s your turn to weigh in.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Because if Bill 27, introduced by the Gallant government this week, doesn’t make you mad enough to fight back once you know what’s in there, not much will.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you don’t get mad when your government guts the Auditor-General’s office, you’ll prove the cynics right.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you don’t get mad when the Ombudsman and Child Advocate, with their proud history of raising issues of how government can hurt those without power, get silenced, you’ll fire up all the ‘told-you-so’s’ of the cynics.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you watch your government become the only one in Canada to throw the <i>Inquiries Act </i>out the door so they don’t have to tell anyone the truth in real time, and you decide it’s fine as long as the roads get paved, you will not have a government fear your power of protest again.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If they can get away with this, governments will know they can get away with anything.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Here’s what is happening in Bill 27.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For years, through successive administrations, governments have lived with the idea that there are offices that hold them and their officials to account. The Auditor-General can ask departments if they are delivering results with the millions we give them, and followed the rules when spending our money. The Ombudsman can ask if citizens got treated fairly. The Child and Youth Advocate can ask uncomfortable questions when young offenders die in custody or children don’t learn in school.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s no fun when one of these independent voices says you could have done better. I know. I got slammed hard by one, once, when I was a minister. But I accepted it, like Frank McKenna, and Bernard Lord, and Shawn Graham, and David Alward did. Because in a democracy, people have a right to let the facts come out so they can question you. Because in a democracy, you do better when you know you’ll have to explain yourself. It pushes you to do better.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Here are the facts about this Bill 27.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It practically shuts down the ability of the Auditor-General to do performance audits. Each year, the A-G puts out a report detailing what happened when she showed up and asked departments if programs were actually delivering what they were supposed to. She could ask for any document, demand an interview with anyone, and make you answer.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Not anymore. The government has taken away her powers under the <i>Inquiries Act</i> – the law that lets investigators and officers get documents and interviews when they feel it is necessary. Her powers to enforce a summons (Section 5), to require answers (Section 6), run meetings (Section 7), gather evidence (Section 8) – those are gone. </span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In particular, the elimination of Section 8 is a big loss. Before, if the A-G thought something might be necessary to get at the truth, she was entitled to it. The onus was on government to show there was some exception, like privacy rights, that applied. Now, the A-G only gets documents if they would be admissible in court to you and I. The onus is on her to go to Court and get the documents, and she has to prove admissibility even if she hasn’t seen them. She doesn’t even have the disclosure process of an ordinary citizen to know what to ask for. It is, essentially, a bill that creates a maze of delay for the A-G to ask even basic questions.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As well, Section 13 of this Bill limits the few powers they leave her – to request documents and take it to court if she doesn’t get them – to “audits”, which the Definitions section limits to those following accounting principles. What that means is, if the A-G is not reviewing balance sheets and accounting, she has no power to get information. Her ability to do “performance audits” – to ask about loans gone bad, programs that don’t work, contracts given without tender, patronage gone mad – that is effectively gone.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When you hear a government spokesperson reply that the A-G can still go to Court and get documents, remember two things. First, they’ve changed those rules. Second, the Minister hiding the information gets represented by the lawyers in the Attorney-General’s office. The Auditor-General doesn’t have a lawyer unless she hires one out of her office budget. And the people who decide if she gets a budget to hire lawyers are….the Cabinet.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That should slow down the pace of documents going to the Auditor-General, no?</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn04ONv0KRv-7m_vja3DjKujHhf6QlfEg2vSac3EmGRfxNITOXWSJV4zSHD-zGDsEUBYM-qtuotFPROga3EWO0th0icjqw9AZqTG8Qsw51KsJK8OXoTTUlK-DSnvfmHZ7kNInvfDWalvM/s640/blogger-image--982183554.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn04ONv0KRv-7m_vja3DjKujHhf6QlfEg2vSac3EmGRfxNITOXWSJV4zSHD-zGDsEUBYM-qtuotFPROga3EWO0th0icjqw9AZqTG8Qsw51KsJK8OXoTTUlK-DSnvfmHZ7kNInvfDWalvM/s640/blogger-image--982183554.jpg"></a></div><b>We may need a new slogan.</b><p></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">To sum up. The Auditor-General can’t enforce her right to get documents and answers without going to Court. And they’ve changed the rules for going to Court. And she can’t have a lawyer to help her go to Court unless the guy hiding the information agrees.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It gets better.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you read the rest of Bill 27, you will find that almost every other independent watchdog has had their powers limited to get documents. The Ombudsman. The Consumer Advocate. The Child and Youth Advocate. Even the Appeal Board that reviews things if the Minister of Education pulls a teacher’s licence, and tribunals that review treatment of mental health payments. </span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of interest, they’ve specifically limited the powers of the Ombudsman to get documents on Section 33.2 complaints under the Civil Service Act -- the part where complaints can be made that government bypassed the hiring process. That area of focus for a government is intriguing, at least.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In most cases, the only applicable parts of the <i>Inquiries Act</i> are now limited to Sections 13, 14, and 17 of the <i>Inquiries Act</i>.<i> </i>Now, things get extra sneaky.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Because those sections don’t restore all the powers that existed before. Hearings, publication, the old Section 8 evidence rules are still circumscribed. Most importantly, their enforcement powers are still gone, reliant upon court intervention where the onus and expense is on them, and your tax dollars will be supporting the lawyers defending the government's right to secrecy. So the powers of independent officers and tribunals are limited to sections that confer no powers of enforcement, and no legislative guarantee of resources to enforce. </span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">It's also worth noting that the new Inquiries Act is ambiguous about whether a Court can order the government to hand over the information. With the <i>Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act</i>, there is explicit language making the head of a public body subject to a court order to hand over a document. The new <i>inquiries Act</i> doesn't explicitly say that. Our independent officers appear to be left to tangle with government as any private litigant. Against private citizens, they can get orders and contempt findings. Often, these remedies are not available against the government, or Crown. You can get a declaration that they are breaking the law, and that has moral weight, but an order can't happen. The new Act seems to leave it open for government to argue these points, which will let government slow things down at best, ignore them at worst. After all, if we let them pass this bill, why would they think we would get mad if they ignore a court finding?</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why bother amending their powers to sections they cannot enforce? Why send disputes back to a court system already underresourced? Was there an outbreak of Ombudspeople and Auditor-Generals, dragging documents out of people cruelly and capriciously? There is no reason for this other than to deceive. The Attorney-General has introduced a Bill that is deliberately drafted to hide its true intent – the repeal of the broader <i>Inquiries Act</i> powers and the termination of independent government oversight by independent officers and tribunals.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If Bill 27 passes, it will be unprecedented in Canada. No government has dared to be this brazen in simply shutting down oversight by people they cannot control.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Gallant government has only been in office 18 months, roughly. In that time, we have now seen the following steps:</span></p><ul style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; direction: ltr;"><li><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The gutting of the Legislative Assembly rules to limit sitting days, Question Periods, and Opposition Motions to a statutory minimum of nine days plus time needed for second reading of bills</span></p></li><li><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The use of Omnibus bills (stuffing many unrelated bills together to limit debate time) to reduce legislature days – the very practice the federal Liberals say is “undemocratic” and “limits study”</span></p></li><li><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The presence in that Omnibus bill of clauses that allow ministers to bypass committees that review qualifications when making appointments, and that change the reporting of government loans and grants from monthly to annually</span></p></li><li><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The granting of power to government to interfere with where judges live, which has led to concerns about judicial independence from the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench</span></p></li><li><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The expressed concern from the press gallery about access to the Premier</span></p></li><li><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now, the limiting of inquiries by the Auditor-General and other parliamentary officers on government’s day-to-day operations</span></p></li></ul><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Had Bill 27 been in place before, those who locked up Ashley Smith could have sent the Child Advocate away. The death of children in care would have remained beyond the powers of Bernard Richard to study. The Auditor-General could not have asked questions about the safety of daycares, the oversight of health inspections, or the result of loans and grants to business. The Ombudsman could not have required statistics on the sorry state of child services provided in First Nation communities.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYt0E776JCkHABvpmsAneFiTFRIAWNwN5hZHKZnm9qZRTNfcgKQgS2ZL9TrJBARjJtxl5eIdJraWnLNVUhB1DI2ksWbSOaGx9_wN0dsIirujh91_Hr6CaPJPNRIA35XDAurSluhcG7HD8/s640/blogger-image--958341180.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYt0E776JCkHABvpmsAneFiTFRIAWNwN5hZHKZnm9qZRTNfcgKQgS2ZL9TrJBARjJtxl5eIdJraWnLNVUhB1DI2ksWbSOaGx9_wN0dsIirujh91_Hr6CaPJPNRIA35XDAurSluhcG7HD8/s640/blogger-image--958341180.jpg"></a></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>You'd have heard less from this guy.</b></span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">These things all happened. They held people accountable. They made people uncomfortable. They changed behaviour and they let people know that government is never above having to answer. And elected governments of the day accepted that as the accountability that comes with power.</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now, the question is put to us, as citizens. Did past governments accept this only because they were good people, and we were lucky that they acted decently? Or was there also a safeguard that citizens would demand that governments behave decently, openly and democratically? Were we always ready to defend our democracy, or simply at the mercy of the first premier who would be brazen enough to change the rules to benefit himself? Will we demand that opposition parties commit to roll these changes back before trusting them with power? Can Liberals of good conscience challenge their premier to live up to the best traditions of his party and not the worst impulses of his character?</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We will know soon enough. The government has introduced a Charter of Rights for Cabinet Ministers, with a right to secrecy for themselves. Will we care?</span></p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div data-signatureblock="true"><div style="font-family: Calibri, 'Segoe UI', Meiryo, 'Microsoft YaHei UI', 'Microsoft JhengHei UI', 'Malgun Gothic', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-81629755616402408852015-10-15T19:47:00.001-07:002015-10-16T08:37:50.937-07:00LEADNOW, WILL YOU PLEASE GO NOW?<div><b>LEADNOW CREEPS ME OUT</b></div><div><br></div><div>LeadNow is that group that has been polling ridings and telling us which non-Conservative candidate they believe has the best chance to win in each riding. My friends, which seem to lean left by nature, have been sharing their posts on social media. </div><div><br></div><div>LeadNow wants to get rid of Stephen Harper. I want to get rid of Stephen Harper. So why is their whole campaign giving me the creeps?</div><div><br></div><div>Just so we are clear (and so my friends don't feel like I'm doubting them), I don't discount the choice of voters to consider electability as ONE factor in their vote. In the end, your vote should reflect the likelihood of getting policies and government you want. If you have one key issue, and two candidates have equally acceptable positions on that issue, then it is only logical to think about which one can win. </div><div><br></div><div>What bothers me about LeadNow is that their campaign denies that anything else matters. It takes all those concerns, passions, preoccupations and hopes that lead people to choose a party, and treats any concern besides the polls as an irrational obsession. This masquerades as a value-free judgement, but it actually makes a big value judgement -- that all policies must be given equal acceptance as long as they aren't Harper's policies. </div><div><br></div><div>It makes it even creepier when that value -- that polls trump all -- becomes a campaign. It is one thing when a voter, in their personal reflection, decides they can live with the candidate who may be ahead. It's another thing when a national campaign spends time and money urging a value-free vote. It comes off as a well-funded effort to chase debate out of the public square. Once we decide we aren't blue, LeadNow seems to say, the conversation must end. </div><div><br></div><div>There are five reasons to tune LeadNow out. </div><div><br></div><div>First, elections are meant to be conversations. That is hard to remember when one party seems hellbent upon making us talk about niqabs and barbaric cultural practice hotlines (where I'm from, that's 911). But the three non-Conservative parties have platforms that differ on some big issues, from civil rights to economic theory to environmental standards to human rights. Even if you may decide that you can live with more than one of those options, that should happen after a full debate on the merits of each. LeadNow is actively trying to short circuit those debates. If we stop having those debates in elections, we start to lose the chance to learn from each other. </div><div><br></div><div>Second, those issues are legitimate reasons for people to choose a party over another. Even more vitally, the right to withhold your vote from the party highest in the polls has democratic meaning. When I ran as a Liberal, knowing that people could choose to vote NDP was a reason to remember our progressive traditions. If you don't want a pipeline, there is power in telling Mulcair and Trudeau that you will withhold your vote even if they may lose to a Conservative. Same goes for NDP voters who want Trudeau to know that voting for C-51 or opposing national child care plans will mean he loses their vote. Or Liberals who think Mulcair has made an economic error in rejecting deficits. </div><div><br></div><div>(Me, I worry that Mr. Trudeau's insistence on borrowing to fund massive infrastructure spends while opposing national social programs will lead him to eventually cut social programs to pay for the infrastructure, which will likely be distributed in a very political manner. It's not like we haven't just seen that in New Brunswick, where Liberals build hockey rinks in ministers' ridings and fire teachers in my children's schools.) </div><div><br></div><div>These are legitimate, principled stands. One may decide that they aren't as important as seeing Stephen Harper's ugly campaign beaten. But it is a legitimate balancing of factors, not some irrational fascination to be dismissed.</div><div><br></div><div>Third, local candidates matter. In the long term, good government requires smart MPs who can challenge their leaders in caucus and committees and not just recite talking points. (That is actually a good reason to turf the Conservatives in many ridings). Parties need to know that nominating good candidates and not just good soldiers matters. A candidate shouldn't get a free ride from scrutiny just because their party is ahead. </div><div><br></div><div>Fourth, LeadNow ignores the fact that if we always just support the leading non-Conservative candidate, the political center will become more conservative. Let me give you an example -- let's say late in the USA election, there are three candidates for president. Three weeks out, Independent Donald Trump has 38%, Republican Jeb Bush has 34% and Democrat Bernie Sanders trails with 28%. </div><div><br></div><div>Now, I do believe Trump would be a uniquely disastrous president, an authoritarian crackpot who has used ugly wedge issues to get ahead. I would prefer Jeb Bush, and so it would seem rational for me to vote for Jeb Bush to stop Trump. Except, I don't want to live forever in a world run by Jeb Bush. I really prefer Sanders, and at some point I have to vote for him. Yet LeadNow would have me forever accept Jeb Bush's America.</div><div><br></div><div>The result of this is actually counterproductive. If LeadNow tells us to always stop a Conservative by voting for the closest alternative, Conservatives can actually make us all move to the right. If Conservatives just choose more and more extreme right leaders, then we will start accepting more and more right-wing alternatives to stop them, and soon the whole spectrum moves right. (Case in point...one way in which Rob Ford triumphed is that he made progressives enthusiastically vote for John Tory, whom progressives desperately fought to beat in 2006). </div><div><br></div><div>The bottom line is that at some point, you have to vote for what you want. Which leads me to....</div><div><br></div><div>Fifth, citizenship demands more than just voting people out. New Brunswick is paying a high price for just throwing parties out and not looking at the alternative (eventually, parties can just nominate unqualified, scriptable leaders because anyone can beat the last unqualified, scriptable leader). Citizenship demands choosing the best ideas and the best candidates, not just falling in behind someone because they are ahead. (Vanilla Ice was the top-selling artist of 1991. That didn't make it right.) </div><div><br></div><div>A good citizen may decide, after thoughtful scrutiny, that two candidates will be acceptable and one can win. That should be the result of personal reflection, not national campaigns designed to squeeze out debate and options and choice. LeadNow isn't asking you to lead. It is demanding a follower mentality that isn't healthy in the long term, however alluring their short-term goal. </div><div><br></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-41141577799276391192015-08-05T21:54:00.001-07:002018-08-02T10:36:34.587-07:00Know How Trump Can Win? Trump Does.<div>
<i><b>What Donald Trump Winning Would Look Like</b></i></div>
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My friends who don't love politics will often ask me questions when something unusual breaks through the political noise and grabs their attention. </div>
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And there may be a Canadian election underway, but the question I'm getting these days is all about The Donald. Well, the question I get most is "Can you pass me a beer?". I have well-adjusted friends, thankfully. </div>
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But when people notice politics, they are noticing that Donald Trump has led the last eleven national polls of Republicans by a margin ranging from 4 to 18 points, often showing more support than Jeb Bush and Scott Walker combined. The crazier he sounds to my craft beer-swilling Canadian leftie crowd, the better he does. </div>
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The conventional wisdom is that this is a joke. Pundits all theorize that Trump has another agenda, that he's building his brand, that he wants something from the Republican Party. And when asked, I tell my friends that most columnists are saying that. </div>
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Then I tell them that I don't buy it. He did that before, flirting with runs but backing out. I think that, in his late 60's, Donald Trump has decided that he would like to be President of the United States. And if it sounds audacious, remember that this is a man who repeatedly declares bankruptcy and gets smart people to lend him more money. Audacity has not been his enemy. </div>
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I also believe that, while Trump suffers from Rich Man's Syndrome (developed when you've been powerful enough, long enough, that you spout off opinions developed in a world where no one tells you when you're wrong), he is neither dumb or crazy. Quite the opposite, actually. I think Trump is smart and analyzes deals carefully, and I think he has developed a strategy. </div>
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In no way do I predict a Trump victory. But he sees a path to one, and I too believe it exists in the outer reaches of the plausible. His campaign behaviour may be unorthodox, but it is calculated. The best way to understand just whatever the hell Trump is going to do is to understand what he needs to do in order to win the nomination, and the presidency. </div>
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The surest sign that Trump is sane is that he pledged to appoint Sarah Palin to his cabinet. (Yes, I just typed that). To be clear, I think most people who pledge to appoint Sarah Palin to anything more advanced than a cable access talk show in Macon, Georgia would be crazy. But Trump's embrace of the Wasilla Dangling Participle is actually sensible from one perspective --one that sees getting Trump elected as the prime objective. </div>
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Allow me to explain. </div>
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<i><b>Who Is The Republican Party?</b></i></div>
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Ronald Reagan cemented the coalition that Richard Nixon began assembling in the civil rights era. The traditional Republican was wealthy and wanted low taxes, limited government and a hawkish foreign policy. When the embrace of civil rights broke many working-class, southern whites away from the Democrats, Republicans added a more robust social conservatism to their coalition. Republican nominees for years had to tick three boxes -- socially conservative, fiscally conservative, and strong on defence. </div>
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In time, organizing among social conservatives and nativist groups became more essential. Groups like the Christian Coalition could provide numbers where the capitalist class provided the money. These groups gained power and soon, their litmus tests became essential for national Republican candidates. (As evidence, one could recall that George H.W. Bush was pro-choice until he rethought his position in order to join Reagan's ticket. Twenty years later, George W. Bush organized anti-gay rights referenda in swing states to drive turnout of socially conservative voters).</div>
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Of course, for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. Democrats, after getting trounced by the new GOP coalition for 12 years, tried a new formula. Bill Clinton moderated the Democrats' fiscal policies in 1992 and went after working-class voters on a more modest platform aimed at making the middle class more comfortable without promising big economic structural changes that might seem risky. It worked quite well (at least in a year when Democrats were "due"), as the Democrats won two (and really, three) straight presidential elections. As the GOP became more dominated by social issues in order to create a wedge, the coalitions shifted again. Many of the voters who had been "establishment" Republicans --voters whose economic interests were with small government but whose sense of community made them social moderates --became Democrats. The working class whites who fled the Democrats in the South over social issues then drove out the upper-middle class Republicans in the Northeast. Those Democrats essentially found that they could stomach Clinton's economics more than they could the republican's culture wars. </div>
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The Obama era completed this transition. Obama largely accepted Clinton's economic centrism, even touting his support for freer trade and the use of middle-class tax cuts as a legitimate policy goal. He stole the Republican's best trick from them, organizing coalitions of younger, urbane, educated voters and mobilizing diverse communities. If the Republicans had used traditional values to drive voters to the polls, Obama would embrace the diversity of the age and make the wedge work for him.</div>
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This worked well on two fronts. It got Obama elected, twice. His nomination win over the heavily-favoured Hilary Clinton was proof of this. Traditionally, Democrat insurgents (often brainy, quirky lefties such as Hart, Bradley, Kennedy and Dean) had fallen short when challenging the establishment candidate, in no small part because working-class minority voters tended to stick with the establishment candidate, the Gores, the Mondales, the Dukakii. Obama became the first insurgent candidate to flip both blacks and Hispanics into the insurgent column. He got upper-income liberal whites and working-class blacks and Hispanics to agree based upon diversity, and they turned out in the election.</div>
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That was the first benefit. The second was that his success drove a huge chunk of the Republican base absolutely batshit insane. </div>
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John McCain must, in his heart, wish he had just let Tim Pawlenty be his running mate. Because Sarah Palin gave voice to the nativist, less educated, Christian conservative base of the Republican Party, and they have been increasingly unwilling to give it back. And the crazier they get, the more the upper-income, educated, moderates flee to the Democratic Party, where they can now get reasonably low taxes without the crazy. </div>
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The result is a Republican Party that nominates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and drives out Charlie Christ and Lincoln Chafee. At the state level, they've handed Senate seats away by nominating Christine "Not A Witch" O'Donnell, Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin, Richard Mourdock and a cast of characters brought to you by the insurgent wing of the Republican Party. Their voters rarely care about appeals to choose an electable candidate. They'd rather win 40% of the time with purity than 80% of the time with moderates. </div>
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Trump has noticed three things, I expect. First, the craziest candidate (from a socially liberal perspective like mine) wins a nomination now more often than not at the state level. Two, there are signs that the deference to the moderate, electable candidate at the presidential level may fall next. </div>
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And third, not every crazy who wins the nomination loses the general. You sometimes win if you get the nomination. You never win if you don't. And so, a smart man would say, the first thing to do is win the nomination.</div>
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<i><b>The National GOP Nomination May Fall To An Insurgent</b></i></div>
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The pundit knows his history. When the presidency is on the line, Republicans flirt with an insurgent who gives voice to the angry, nativist side of conservatism, but then cooler heads prevail, moderate voters rally around one front runner and the moderate wins. Dole wears down Buchanan. McCain takes out Huckabee. Romney wins. </div>
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The investor knows that history holds, until it doesn't. And you want to be the first one in line when it doesn't. </div>
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And Trump likely noticed something. If you read back a few lines, you'll notice I didn't pair Romney with an ideological insurgent. Because there wasn't just one. Romney at various points trailed a variety of strange and surprising front runners, including Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and (God help us) Herman Cain. In fact, one month the front runner was Trump himself, when he showed up yelling about birth certificates and then went away. </div>
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Really, the Republican base tried everything to avoid nominating Mitt Romney. In the past, the safe establishment choice won because that's what most of the party wanted. But what if, last time, the majority of today's Republican Party actually wanted the bombthrowers. What if the numbers were there to elect the angry, white rage-fired, stick-it-to-book-learnin' alternative but just got stuck with such clear duds that they couldn't pull the trigger? (Remember, they tried to make Rick Santorum, a punchline who lost his own Senate seat by 18 points, into their standard-bearer -- and it probably went downhill from him). Perry couldn't remember his own talking points. Gingrich had more baggage than Samsonite. Cain actually couldn't talk. And they were all broke, compared to the Romney campaign. </div>
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Maybe the votes were there for someone who wasn't broke, wasn't indicted and wasn't completely tongue-tied. And Donald Trump is NOT those things. He's the opposite of those three things. Not tongue-tied, thanks to natural talent. Not broke thanks to birthright. And not indicted by the grace of God. </div>
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I think Trump sees a stock about to rise. He sees a Republican Party that wants, deep in its soul, to reject an establishment candidate. And if he can be the alternative to the guy the establishment wants, he might just get to 51%. </div>
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So, if he's smart, he asks --how do I assemble a coalition just a bit bigger than the Anyone-But-Romney coalition. </div>
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<i><b>How Trump Wins --and Why Palin Matters</b></i></div>
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Step by step, here is what Trump would have to do to win the nomination. Essentially, he has to win the hidden primary --the contest to emerge as the leading anti-establishment option. The contest can be seen as a race among two groups, each wanting to be the last option standing for either the establishment or the insurgents. </div>
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The establishment primary involves Bush and Walker, with Christie, Kasich, Fiorina, Pataki and Graham trying to get an opening. </div>
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The clear insurgents are Trump along with Cruz, Rand Paul, Carson, Jindal, Santorum and Huckabee.</div>
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Two contestants stand out for their potential to appeal to both camps. Rubio was a Tea Party insurgent when he won the primary for his Florida Senate seat, but has shown some ability to appeal to moderates in his rhetoric and in substance on immigration. Rick Perry, if he can regain the form that briefly made him formidable in 2012, can play both sides. </div>
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First, Trump has to use his talent at attracting media to take the oxygen away from other potential insurgents. Candidates like Cruz, Carson and Paul have counted on the ability to exploit hot button issues to get attention in a crowded field. Trump's bluster and willingness to speak bluntly (some say crudely) on immigration has, for now, taken this from them. They cannot get free media, and there is no room to be any more outrageous on immigration than Trump has been. Cruz and Paul especially have avoided taking shots at Trump, hoping to be able to appeal to his voters if he eventually blows himself up with intemperate comments, or survives long enough to be mangled by the formidable Bush team's attack ads. But if Trump can avoid a collapse, he may leave the other insurgents with low numbers and limited ability to raise funds, meaning they will start to drop out after Iowa or South Carolina's primaries. </div>
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Second, if Trump can starve the other insurgent campaigns, he can begin to assemble the anti-establishment vote. This is easiest if Bush is the establishment candidate, as fairly or not, his name is synonymous with the ruling class of the GOP. If Walker (or with some breaks, Christie or Perry) emerge as the establishment choice, they may be able to satisfy some voters that they are new enough to offer a safer rebellion than Trump. (The first part of the strategy helps achieve the second, by the way. Trump's monopoly on media is also helping Bush avoid the emergence of a challenger for the establishment nod). </div>
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To beat Bush, Trump needs to assemble every possible insurgent vote. Social conservatives and evangelicals will be key to this. Trump can likely get the Cruz/Paul voters with bluster and style. There is potential for him to reach evangelicals (some polls show he is leading among these voters now). Polling research shows that evangelical voters like strong, blunt, authoritarian leaders -- something Trump can deliver in spades. For voters first drawn to Huckabee, Carson or Santorum, Trump may offer a style that is appealing. And many social conservatives feel neglected by the establishment, sensing that their issues get lip service in primaries but little attention in government. </div>
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Even Trump's support for some government role in helping people get health care is strategic. Pundits instantly jumped on this as a sign that Trump was shooting from the hip, and that he would pay for this break from conservative orthodoxy. I suspect he knows his potential market. Socially conservative Republicans tend to have lower income and education levels than establishment supporters. Their economic interests don't always align with the Romney wing of the party, but they tend to put up with that because of social wedge issues that make Obama Democrats suspect. This group is socially conservative, racially homogenous, structurally populist -- and open to government handouts if they are proposed by angry, white social conservatives. </div>
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If Trump were planning this all out, and thinking down the road, he would know that his style will get him a hearing among this sector of voters, but there is a risk of him losing them on substance. Bush and Walker surely already have war rooms with thick folders on Trump's lavish lifestyle, his three marriages, his past support for abortion rights. Bush is acceptable, if not exciting, to social conservatives, and he will surely see this as an opportunity to get enough insurgent voters away from Trump to deny him a winning coalition. </div>
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So Trump needs to keep his support among white, lower-income social conservatives. And he knows he will be attacked on those grounds. He will need some endorsements from opinion leaders with credibility among those voters. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqU0swi4DkLD9C1kW30abK0N9z51xS-InwAZA6C0068A-PdDPSuwqcLcJV5mGignKh3uFSeYV_UxDHc068N6DB6fWN36N6SidMZbj1edsAH60voL0lZC7yUy3u_ADVjbED9U6LlANu3gw/s640/blogger-image-615809955.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqU0swi4DkLD9C1kW30abK0N9z51xS-InwAZA6C0068A-PdDPSuwqcLcJV5mGignKh3uFSeYV_UxDHc068N6DB6fWN36N6SidMZbj1edsAH60voL0lZC7yUy3u_ADVjbED9U6LlANu3gw/s640/blogger-image-615809955.jpg" /></a></div>
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As chance would have it, there is one cohort of voters that still adores Sarah Palin. And they are exactly the group Trump will need in later contests to have any chance of winning. </div>
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<i><b>Plenty of peril</b></i></div>
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Of course, much can go wrong for Trump. The debates are a risk. I tend to think that eventually someone needing a boost is going to go at him, and there are some candidates built to bring out the worst in Trump. (Chris Christie strikes me as having the right mix of prosecutorial skill, fearlessness, and improvisation abilities, and his centrist pitch will only benefit from being seen as having skewered Trump in a Jersey to Jersey shoutout). The media may move on, or issues where Trump will be weak could come to the forefront (a foreign policy crisis would be bad for him). I still believe that, as the field windows to two or three candidates, he will have a hard time getting a majority. Of course, the longer the establishment candidates spend bashing each other without resolution, the better it gets for the Donald.</div>
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And of course, many of the things he is doing to win the nomination may hurt him in the general election. He may need to hope a scandal leads to the defenestration of Hillary Clinton. But he surely knows that winning the general first requires winning the nomination, and then you have one of two tickets in the ultimate political lottery (even if it is the one with lesser odds). And once it's down to a binary choice, people who can't stand him now may decide it beats a Democrat.</div>
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But we should move beyond the early analysis that said Trump knew he couldn't win and was running to cut a deal, build a brand, or feed his ego. Trump's moves have, in fact, been exactly the moves of a man who knows where his potential market is. He has grabbed an issue (immigration) others can't or won't address as bluntly, and attacks Obama in coded racial terms. He has picked fights with establishment figures like John McCain and used inflammatory words to make sure disgruntled voters notice. He has built an authoritarian brand in a party that loves them. And he has begun reaching out to the key market sectors which can build a winning coalition. </div>
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The odds are still against Trump winning. But his moves suggest that he is playing to win, and with more discipline and calculation than it first appears. Trump is ignorant on many issues, but he is not stupid. </div>
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Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-66132910598634435802014-08-28T04:40:00.001-07:002014-08-28T04:40:31.527-07:00DO LIBERALS ANNOUNCE FIRST, CHECK FACTS LATER?So, the Liberals' plan to borrow $900million plus interest, for unnamed "infrastructure" projects, isn't going over well among concerned citizens and, really, anyone. Two days after the growing chorus of worry about the fitness for office of the Liberal team, one worthy foot soldier, the bright and loyal John Case, has stepped up to try to defend the Gallant borrowing plan.<div><br></div><div>The Liberal response is here. It's telling. <a href="https://www.rebelmouse.com/JohnCase/liberal-infrastructure-plan-693271283.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">https://www.rebelmouse.com/JohnCase/liberal-infrastructure-plan-693271283.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>Let's take these two points that the Liberals now say were tragically "left out" of my original blog post.</div><div><br></div><div><b>LIBERAL POINT #1: WE NEED TO BORROW $900MILLION BECAUSE BRIDGES</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div>Even though the Liberal release notes that not a single actual infrastructure project will be specified now, they now tell us "Bridges! We meant bridges! Won't somebody think of the bridges?!". And they urge us to read the 2013 Auditor General's Report, where her warnings <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">state that 293 bridges are in poor condition.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">That is, of course, an important issue of public policy. Is that the $900million problem?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttrgpmtukKtENaKagAuQN-6sKHEIxQVK9cOqXuRnrLO9Ln3ptGKoWUgPncsK-Jz6oENYjYlRF2I-4Kk4zJiBjEAZzSam8KrghQ0XmRItgJuxOShtazbLudTgkgFE_5_tXjABLTjzQU8k/s640/blogger-image-1907983607.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttrgpmtukKtENaKagAuQN-6sKHEIxQVK9cOqXuRnrLO9Ln3ptGKoWUgPncsK-Jz6oENYjYlRF2I-4Kk4zJiBjEAZzSam8KrghQ0XmRItgJuxOShtazbLudTgkgFE_5_tXjABLTjzQU8k/s640/blogger-image-1907983607.jpg"></a></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><b><i>You see a bridge. Liberals see a $900million problem.</i></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><b><i><br></i></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">You know me....I'd like to do the math.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">If you read the <b>same report</b>, the Auditor-general tells you the size of our overall bridge fleet. We have 2,608 bridges worth a total of $895million. She also notes at area graph 3.4 that the 293 bridges the Liberals now cite are "not unsafe, but will require maintenance in the near future". </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">So, fair enough, we have bridge maintenance to do. But is that $900million of borrowing accounted for? Well, no. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">If you have 293 bridges that need work, and you have 2,608 bridges, or 11.2% of your bridges. If the TOTAL VALUE of your bridges is $895million, the total value of those bridges is just over $100millilon. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">(And that would be assuming the bridges are all near the average of value of the fleet, which is likely generous to the Liberals. After all, the biggest, most expensive bridges get the most regular maintenance, and there have been major projects on bridges such as the Harbour or Princess Margaret bridges. The bridges in question would be smaller and cheaper and used less often.)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">So if we spent 25% of the value of those bridges on maintenance, that's a $25million problem even under the most generous assumptions. And it is worth remembering that that the existing annual capital budget is $555million. Even if the Liberals just use existing budget plans, they would have $3billion of repair budget in which to find room for $25million worth of bridge repair if that's a priority.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">So, why would they need to borrow ANOTHER $900million? Well, maybe the Auditor-General tells us when she suggests at the end of the section in bridges that someone should borrow $900million and fix this problem. Except that she doesn't suggest anything like this. She suggests a non-political monitoring and reporting problem. Because if anyone had read the prologue to her report, with the warnings about critical debt and falling credit ratings, they'd know that's crazy.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><b>LIBERAL ARGUMENT #2: BUT THE GDP GOES UP!</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><b><br></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Well, of course it does. If you borrow money and spend it, the GDP goes up. And their consultant's report tells them that if they spend $150 million more per year, you get $113 more in GDP. Of course, the report doesn't say that's a good idea, because the Liberals didn't ask him that question.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">But we can do the math.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Generally, stimulus spending is designed to attract more private money into the economy to get things working. This is common sense. If the only people spending money are the government, and they're borrowing that, an economy will crater. So a good stimulus program will spur enough private investment that the GDP goes up even more than what government spends.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">You already see the problem, right? If you're spending $150million and the GDP only goes up by $113million, you're actually getting less than you paid for. </font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">To compare normal interaction between government spending and GDP, look at the status quo. New Brunswick's GDP is now about $32billion, or about four times higher than what government spends each year on programs and capital. And our economy, as Liberals correctly note, is one of the more fragile ones.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">So if we have a GDP at 400% of government spending now, and that's not good, what serious party would borrow millions to get a 75% return on GDP? Only a party that sees the patronage and short-term political benefits of roadwork as more urgent than health or education spending.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">As for the claim that "New Brunswickers will have $80million more to spend"? Let's all use our brains on this, folks. Here's a benchmark. If you borrowed $150million and threw it off one of those $900million Liberal bridges to be caught by passersby, then New Brunswickers would have $150million more to spend. Except they wouldn't, because it eventually has to be paid back. If it spurs private investment, then maybe that helps --but again, their own numbers show that doesn't happen.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Put another way, you could increase labour market income by $150million if you said "we are going to borrow $150million and hire 3000 teachers. As great as that would be, no one would seriously think you could justify that borrowing. So why borrow it for road work that you can't even specify now?</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">In the end, if the only money in your economy is borrowed government money, you'll eventually go broke. The scary part isn't just how weak these two arguments are, or that they still rent doing the math now --it's that the Liberals clearly released this plan without having done the math at all. </font></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087028444617609072.post-68951765669634432392014-08-25T13:54:00.001-07:002014-08-26T04:31:47.061-07:00THE LIBERALS MUST HOPE YOU DON'T DO THE MATH. SO I DID IT FOR YOU.OK, I feel partly responsible. I've been saying for over a year that Brian Gallant won't tell us what he will do if he wins. So now that he has brought forward an idea, I have to admit that I pushed him.<div><br></div><div>But, oh, the humanity.</div><div><br></div><div>Here's the announcement. I know, I'm not supposed to link to another party's announcement. But by the time we are done here, you won't believe me if you don't see it yourself. So here it is. Brace yourself.</div><div><br></div><div>http://nbliberal.ca/post-news/liberals-would-create-1700-jobs-with-infrastructure-fund/</div><div><br></div><div>As you can see, the basic numbers are these: the Liberals will create a $900MILLION infrastructure fund and will, over six years, spend that $900MILLION to create jobs. How many jobs, you may ask?</div><div><br></div><div>1,700 jobs.</div><div><br></div><div>Here's the math. It basically speaks for itself. </div><div><br></div><div>If you spend $900,000,000 to create 1,700 jobs, that means you are spending $ 529,411.76 per job. Or, if you like, $ 88,235.29 per year, per job.</div><div><br></div><div>So yes, if you give Brian Gallant a little more than half a million bucks, he can create a job. You could also put that money in a bucket, blindfold my 4 year old nephew and have him stumble through town, and he might well be able to employ at least two people, but let's move on. Math is inconvenient.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKuapwgrU-eVRmK4sT_H2w-134xrs9foFN5cwyg41s5K25Yfcjcz7uhyXrIggzsV5YiR056EWh1k10kvAZlEhZjP__8-XM_VcvxLpAgTieo5HjpBJaJufDtqo1cjfRjivJqDKUS6htmI/s640/blogger-image-436435537.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKuapwgrU-eVRmK4sT_H2w-134xrs9foFN5cwyg41s5K25Yfcjcz7uhyXrIggzsV5YiR056EWh1k10kvAZlEhZjP__8-XM_VcvxLpAgTieo5HjpBJaJufDtqo1cjfRjivJqDKUS6htmI/s640/blogger-image-436435537.jpg"></a></div></div><div><b>You can't make this stuff up.</b></div><div><br></div><div>You may be saying, "Well, fine, Kelly, but that will put a huge dent in that unemployment rate, won't it?" If you're saying that, it's a good question and I'm happy to answer it.</div><div><br></div><div>No. It won't. </div><div><br></div><div>The workforce, according to Statscan, is 349,000 people. So adding 1,700 people to that workforce will move the employment rate by 0.49%. This means that, using Mr. Gallant's approach as a means of employing all able bodied New Brunswickers would take $18BILLION in expenses, or a little more than the entire provincial budget for two years. </div><div><br></div><div>Now, the Liberals do mention that if government spends $88,000 to give you a job, you pay more taxes back, which is true. And they helpfully point out that $13Million more will come back In revenue to the provincial government. </div><div><br></div><div>What they did not think of (and really, should have) is that even at very generous borrowing rates, the interest on $900 million would also have to come out of the yearly budget, to be taken from health and education. If interest were <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">3% a year, that's actually $27million per year, for a net loss of $14million every year that has to be cut or borrowed. <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd-vxGz-I587SZXuI_OyoC0NThw3NXZBSirdnGfnrxn3gni8Qacdcylw-pXXROOBgEyB6-V9m08AUMP6Sir27abldyPFIkPpNzLFtYQlLpdDiJ4T7zLqoguQ8x_4RG-wm6RjOU5W_u4n0/s640/blogger-image-943943878.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd-vxGz-I587SZXuI_OyoC0NThw3NXZBSirdnGfnrxn3gni8Qacdcylw-pXXROOBgEyB6-V9m08AUMP6Sir27abldyPFIkPpNzLFtYQlLpdDiJ4T7zLqoguQ8x_4RG-wm6RjOU5W_u4n0/s640/blogger-image-943943878.jpg"></a></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><b><i> NO, he didn't borrow that much, Brian.</i></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Further, the Liberals' own commissioned economic analysis suggest that this will only increase the GDP by 0.3%, a highly inefficient return on stimulus packages (by contrast, the Obama stimulus package was held by economists to have had a GDP impact of between 2.5% and 4.5% with its emphasis on getting money in the hands of working families and more defined infrastructure. And even with that much better return on investment, no one ever suggested that the borrowing could be responsibly sustained for six years). In fact, the Liberals' own analysis states that their expenditure will increase GDP by less than the actual expenditure. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Not sure we were supposed to actually read that. Perhaps they figured that we would nod reverentially and move on.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">It's also important to note that when government borrows money, they increase demand for capital and drive up interest rates. So if you run a small business (the sector that actually creates jobs that last), then that's a lot of the oxygen the Liberals are taking up. This could actually hurt access to capital for local businesses.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">So, what does this mean for you personally? Well, right now there are 349,000 workers in the provincial economy. That means that, before interest charges, the Gallant Liberals will borrow $</span><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">2,578.80 that each one of the has to pay back personally, with interest. They will then pool this money and give it to 1,700 lucky people who work on infrastructure projects. </font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Um, how are people hired by Liberals to work on construction projects? . </font></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Now, you might think that with all that infrastructure money, at least there will be a project that you'll like there, right?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Actually, um, no. They won't release the list until after the election. These are needs so pressing that they can't name any right now. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">So, to sum up. We will borrow an amount equal to nearly the entire Department of Education, but none of it will go to education. We will add $2,500 per worker to the debt, add $14Million in cuts to health and education, add $900Million to the debt to move the employment rate less than half a percentage point and build some things no one can name right now.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">I challenged Brian Gallant to stop being silent. Shakespeare said something about silence and fools. The question is, will we be fooled?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div></span></div>Kelly Lamrockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02353997633886221821noreply@blogger.com0