Pater provincias

Good ol' Memorial University of Dannystan, reliable source of incisive analysis like this:

"It's something in political science we call economic regionalism," he said, explaining Williams is seen as somebody who's not trying to favour any particular group. "It's almost like he's trying to help out the Newfoundland society as a whole," Marland said.

Standard

An exchange from yesterday’s CBC St. John’s Morning Show panel with Jeff Gilhooly, recovering politician John Efford, and MUN political scientician Michael Temelini:

Gilhooly: Michael, what did you think of the reasons Paul Oram gave there?

Temelini: It’s almost as if there’s a standard script, y’know, “health reasons”, “family reasons”, “blame the media”.

Health? Sure.

Family? Righto.

But “blame the media” as part of the “standard script” that gets trotted out on resignation day?

Really?

Three strikes and you're out

In a James McLeod report in today’s Telegram, another of MUN’s political scienticians, Matthew Kerby, without any obvious sense of irony, speculates as to the “three strikes” which may have led to the meteoric fall of Paul Oram:

The first strike against Oram was conflict-of-interest controversy about his former career owning personal-care homes, which emerged mere hours after he became health minister.

The second strike, Kerby said, was the revelation that upon taking over the government's biggest department, Oram had declined any briefing notes.

By the third, and final strike - the ongoing controversy about service cuts in Lewisporte and Flower's Cove - Kerby said Oram had become "damaged goods."

It must be a relief to the Eighth that these are the strikes against.

After all, there are, and never have been, any other real or perceived conflicts of interest lurking around the cabinet table; Paul Oral was the only cabinet minister who minimizes his ATIPpable paper trail; and he alone inflicted political own-goals on Danny Williams-Government to the point where he became damaged goods.

Negative charge

From a Peter Walsh piece in Saturday's Telegram, in which Michael Temelini comments on the astonishing parachute-candidate phenomenon in this year's federal election:

"That, to me, is why Lacey Lewis is there. Why would you put a Newfoundlander in the Labrador riding? It plays into all the negative (political) attitudes that Labradorians have toward Newfoundlanders."

It's an article of faith among the PWG-waving set that Labradorians have "negative attitudes" towards Newfoundlanders.

Of course, it's also an article of faith that Canada traded fish quotas for... well, fill in the following blank; the iterations of that myth are too many to count now:

Canada traded fish quotas for ____________________

Michael Temelini (II)

“If, indeed, the former Deputy Premier, Tom Rideout, did try to squeeze out more money, outside of the normal, transparent, process, then maybe this is a victory for those who are opposed to porkbarrel politics, I mean, we’ve got to get over this idea in Newfoundland Labrador, that just because you occupy a senior position in government that somehow you should have special access to funding for your district to pave roads and so on and so forth.”

The ironies, nested within ironies, of that statement. Where to begin?

Oh – how about here? There are three classes of people who call the province “Newfoundland Labrador”.

1) The misinformed and ignorant
2) The sycopohantic
3) Danny Williams

Michael Temelini is not Danny Williams.

Michael Temelini (I)

“On the other hand, if Rideout did try to squeeze out more money, outside of the normal transparent process, maybe this is a victory for those who are opposed to pork-barrel politics.”

So says Our Dear Political Scientician, Michael Temelini, on the CBC.

Question: who, pray tell, are “those who are opposed to pork-barrel politics”?

A hint as to a possible answer: “Those” aren’t WilliamsGovernment.

This cleverly colour-coded graph shows this year’s Provincial Road Improvement Program funding announcements. Red columns are the sacrificial districts. Light blue are Conservative backbenchers; dark blue, cabinet ministers — at least at the time of the announcement.



Note: The figure for Baie Verte-Springdale is the as-announced $3.5-million that precipitated Tom Rideout’s departure. The figures for Gander and Bonavista North are arbitrarily set as $2-million, since The Most Open And Accountable Government In The Universe combined the two into one $4-million announcement rather than breaking the two figures out.

Cf. individual longitudinal graphs for Humber Valley, Isles of Notre Dame, Bay of Islands, Carbonear-Harbour Grace and Grand Bank, Burgeo-La Poile and Ferryland, Fortune Bay, and Labrador West.

And, especially, cf. similarly colour-coded graphs for previous years. A careful comparison of this year’s graph and previous years’ yields a most interesting phenomenon. There are two well-defined “plateaus” at that $2-million and $2.5-million announced-per-district levels.

What’s up with that?

That’s a question some enterprising political scienticians ought to look into.

It would certainly be a more fruitful exercise, in light of recent practice, than searching for “those who are opposed to pork-barrel politics”, whoever they are.