Power Promotional Concepts announced yesterday that Paul McCartney will play the Halifax Commons on Saturday, July 11. Is there nothing David Rodenhiser can do to stop this?...

21 May, 2009
There are several grounds for opposing Darrell Dexter's promise to cut the HST on home electrical bills.
  • It will use taxpayers' dollars to give ratepayers the illusion they are protected from higher energy costs, when higher energy costs are a reality Nova Scotians must adjust to.
  • It will subsidize our dirtiest form of energy, coal-fired electricity. (Seventy-five percent of our electricity comes from burning coal, the mother of all greenhouse gas sources.)
  • It will go indiscriminately to all subscribers. A case can be made for subsidizing the energy costs of our poorest citizens, who have the least capacity to save on energy costs. But why is Dexter so keen on subsidizing the power bills of John Risley, John Bragg, and David Sobey? This is nuts.
More ominously, the NDP's home electrical subsidy bespeaks a poll-driven policy formation that bodes ill for Nova Scotia. At a time when we are finally witnessing real political leadership in the US, Dexter is showing the opposite: followership. 
20 May, 2009
Let's get a few things straight. The province ran a deficit of roughly a quarter billion dollars in the fiscal year just ended. We could have balanced the books by using the extraordinary payments from the Crown share adjustment, but legislation passed by the Hamm government prevents that. Without changing that law, that one-time resource revenue has to go toward debt repayment. (There are two good reasons for that law:  (1)  thanks to the excesses of the Buchanan administration, our provincial debt is far too high, and needs to be paid down to a reasonable level. (2) Non-renewable resource revenue should not be used for current expenditures; it should be used for things that produce lasting benefits. Otherwise, we're robbing future generations.) So last year's quarter billion dollar deficit is water over the dam. It's gone. We can't wish it back.
20 May, 2009

Jim Nunn announced his retirement from the CBC tonight. It's a big loss for the Nova Scotia News at Six, which has climbed steadily in the ratings since Jim retook the helm last year after a 12-year absence. His last show will be the June 9 election special. It's a great way for him to go out because, simply put, no one on earth does elections better. His command of Nova Scotia politics is without equal in journalism. I will be one of Jim's color commentators that night, a role I used to share with Harry Flemming. We'll have a ball....

19 May, 2009

Somewhere among our tweaks this afternoon, we did something that made the jump pages render incorrectly (and unreadably) in certain browsers. It works OK in Firefox and IE, but not in Safari, Chrome, or Opera (my own browser of choice). So I have reverted temporarily to displaying each post in full on the main page until I can sort this out. Ah, computers! [UPDATE] I think these issues are all fixed now, thanks to Mike Targett....

19 May, 2009
Years ago, a neighbor dropped into Baddeck's Alderwood Guest Home to visit Dolly O'Toole, a longtime Kempt Head resident who was in her 99th and final year of life. The TV flickered in the background, with the sound off, and at some point the visitor noticed that CBC's First Edition had begun. "Do you ever watch Parker debating with Harry," she asked. "Oh yes, never miss it," said Dolly, who lived just down the road from me. She paused before continuing. "I don't always bother to turn up the sound—but I can always tell who's winning." This is my test for who's winning a political debate. Voters may or may not be swayed by arguments and debating points, but they definitely tune in to get the measure of the candidates. Turning off the sound offers uncanny insight into how they are coming across.
19 May, 2009

If you believe governments get defeated, as opposed to opposition parties getting elected, then the satisfied/dissatisfied question in today's CRA poll poses an ominous portent for Rodney MacDonald. Satisfaction with MacDonald's government fell from 54% in February to 45% over the weekend. Rodney's personal popularity as leader also fell to third place at 20%, behind Dexter at 30% and McNeil at 24%. CRA was lamentably thin on details. The news release lists the leading party in each region, (Metro: NDP 44%; Rural Mainland: PC 35%; Cape Breton: Liberal 39%), but the tables give no regional  breakdown. In any case, the sample size,...

19 May, 2009

Don Mills of Corporate Research Associates has released his latest poll, one of the few that will be taken during this campaign. It shows the NDP inching up toward, but not yet reaching, majority territory. The Liberals are also gaining, while the PCs are slipping behind. Read the CRA news release or download the detailed tables....

19 May, 2009

"The gravest threat to our environment is climate change," says the NDP election platform. So why is Darrell Dexter promising to subsidize electricity consumption by $28 million? That's what it will cost taxpayers to remove the provincial share of the HST from electricity bills. Seventy-five percent of Nova Scotia's electricity is created by burning coal, the dirtiest fuel we have. Subsidize wind power, sure, or tidal, or mass transit. But a $28-million tax break for burning dirty coal at a time when climate change is "the gravest threat to our environment?" That's cynical and irresponsible. Worse, it assumes voters are stupid,...

18 May, 2009
I admire a blog or two, or three or four, and lately, for the first time in years, a backlog of grumbles about the state of the world has been clamoring for air. The Nova Scotia election seemed an apt time to get my own blog in gear. First gear, that is. I have a notion of what I want contrarian: the news today, oh boy! to look like, and how I want it to function. The site in its present state resembles these notions about much as a shower stall rendition of Layla resembles Derek and the Dominos. Expect adjustments. Contrarian uses WordPress blogging software, modified by the Shades of Blue theme from StudioPress. I use its built-in customizing features, but have not yet attempted to edit its stylesheets to change things at a more basic level. Editing stylesheets is the 21st century equivalent of boring the cylinders on your little deuce coupe. I'll get help with that bye and bye, but it will be a while before she's ported and relieved, and stroked and bored.
18 May, 2009
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