Tiger Collapsing

For those cheering for the demise of Tiger Woods golf career, this weekend must be delightful. Before this tournament Tiger was asked if he was asked to join the Ryder Cup Team as a captain's pick, would he go. Tiger defiantly said that he was going to play his way on to the team and qualify with a quality performance. Historically he plays very well on this course, but not this weekend. He has gone on to play one of the worst rounds of his career after confidently proclaiming that he was going to play his way on to the Ryder Cup Team. The irony is amusing, however I have found myself quietly cheering for Tiger this season now that he has faced some serious adversity and struggled. He seems more human now than he was before.

CBC Giving Up On Ratings?

CBC Vice President Richard Stursberg was a controversial figure at the CBC until the announcement of his departure yesterday. He was controversial because he wanted to air content that people would want to watch, like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune (which ironically are two of the best rated shows on the entire network). This shook things up because the conventional wisdom among the CBC brass is to ignore ratings and force their idea of good programming upon those who happen to tune in. If you ever listen to CBC radio (cross country check-up notwithstanding), you know what I'm talking about. The controversy is should ratings be important, or should ratings be ignored. Should you provide programming that people want to watch, or should you tell them what they want?

I don't know how much input Stursberg had on the Soloman Show, but if that was his idea of what Canadians want to watch, clearly his judgment is lacking. I'm kind of torn on what to think of him. I can't say that I agree with his vision of quality programming, but on the other hand he pissed off a lot of the right people for me. He downsized the unionized CBC workforce last year, and ruffled many of the feathers that I like to see ruffled. The CBC has not said whether he quit or was fired, and he does raise the question of whether or not it is ethically permissible for a Vice President to wed someone under his sphere of influence.

We will see what direction his replacement takes the network. If they start by cancelling Jeopardy and other programs that draw ratings, then we should be concerned. I don't watch Wheel of Fortune, but obviously other people do. The higher the rating, the more that advertisers will pay. It allows the network to generate revenue. If they turn back towards shows that nobody watches, then they will generate less money in ad revenue and require more money in parliamentary appropriations to make up the difference.

The Curious Career Of Carole MacNeil

This is interesting. I did not realize that in June 2009 CBC host Carole MacNeil married the boss of CBC English program services. "Mr. Stursberg oversaw all aspects of CBC’s English-language programming services, including CBC Television, CBC News Network". At the time Carole was doing the once per week Sunday night show with Evan Soloman, which ironically was cancelled in June of 2009. Then suddenly in the fall of 2009, Carole gets promoted to the weekday afternoon anchor's chair and Evan gets the big prime time Politics show. Evan replaces Don Newman, they change the show name from "Politics" to "Power and Politics" and give him an extra hour.

It does seem like an interesting confluence of events. Carole marries her boss and shortly afterwards she and her co-host get promoted. Now her husband is abruptly leaving the CBC, and Carole has not been sitting in the afternoon anchor chair this summer but rather has been doing reports from Washington. The CBC is reporting her husband is leaving, but won't announce a reason or whether he quit or was fired. We do know that he was considered a controversial figure. I would be interested in more information about the decision making process that led to MacNeil and Soloman's new roles on the CBC a year ago. Is a romantic relationship between a boss and an underling ethically permissible? I do not have sufficient evidence to prove that Carole MacNeil benefitted career wise because of her marriage, but I do think it is a strange coincidence that she married the boss the same month that she and Evan's Sunday show was scrapped for future promotions.

Helena Trying To Blackmail Her Way Back Into Caucus?

Helena Guergis wants back into the Conservative caucus and to expedite the process she has publicly stated that she is sitting on information which could damage the party. "I could be on the attack, I really could" she said on television, "I really hope I’m not pushed further away from the caucus". Very mature Helena, blackmail is not the best way to go about returning to your former party, threatening to damage the careers of the people you aspire to work with. I had previously been of the opinion that if she is cleared of any wrong doing she should be allowed back into caucus, but now that she is engaging in blackmail, I've had a change of heart. That's a deal breaker for me. I don't think that even Garth Turner ever stooped that low.

That she is engaging in this behavior is proof that the decision to remove her from caucus was sound.

Blackmail: "The act of threatening to reveal information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. This information is usually of an embarrassing, socially damaging, and/or incriminating nature. As the information is substantially true, the act of revealing the information may not be criminal in its own right nor amount to a civil law defamation; it is the making of demands in exchange for withholding the information that is often considered a crime."

John Baird's New Job

John Baird is the new House Leader for the Conservative Government and will now be in charge of coordinating with the opposition parties on legislation. Rosemary Barton mused about the possibility that this was done to "provoke an election" by antagonizing the opposition (she made a nice stabbing motion on TV when talking about it). As Rosie said "if there's anyone who could spark some kind of showdown, it's John Baird." The Prime Minister said today that the last thing Canada needs is a fall election, which prompted coalition partner Jack Layton to say "when Mr. Harper says he doesn't want an election, he's got a funny way of showing it".

Let's not forget that the Liberal House Leader is Ralph Goodale who is most certainly an abrasive partisan. It is hypocritical for Liberals to complain about an aggressive partisan House Leader when they have one themselves. Who in cabinet really wanted the job of having to work with Ralph Goodale and Libby Davies? Seriously. Ralph did say that unless John Baird is co-operative, the Liberals might be forced to vote no confidence. Ergo if the Liberals decide they want an election, they won't hold a major press conference in Sudbury to announce it, they will likely choose instead to have negotiations collapse prior to a confidence vote; make it seem like an accident that they can blame on Baird.

The Poll So Nice, Taber Wrote About It Twice

Yesterday when Liberal donor and pollster Frank Graves released his latest poll showing the Conservatives at historic lows, Jane Taber who sets the agenda at the Globe and Mail was so excited that she wrote two separate editorials in the same day analyzing the same poll. Headline #1 read "Revenge of propeller-heads leaves Tories even with Liberals" and headline #2 on the same politics page read "Snap election would leave Harper with razor-thin minority, pollster says". When a poll by a partisan pollster during the summer vacation period yields results you are looking for, may as well beat it like a dead horse. Jane has really turned it into overdrive since she returned from holidays.

I am not concerned about summer polling. It is a different audience for voluntary polls in the summer months. If this result is reflected in different polls by different polling companies for a few weeks, then perhaps there will be cause for concern. Besides, the good thing about hitting a low is that when you climb back up, you can boast gains and momentum. Had the Liberals not fell to 23% a few weeks ago, polling at 28% would seem much less impressive. The only problem is that when your good news pollster is a donor who wants you to win, be warned that it may not reflect the will of the people. Every session of Parliament that Ignatieff has led the Liberals through as leader, the party has polled lower at the end of the session that at the start. Iggy doesn’t do well in the national spotlight.

"Harper’s got us just where he wants us"

I think Paul Wells at MacLeans might be on to something here. According to Paul, the Prime Minister thrives on bad polling numbers; ergo today's poor results from Liberal donor and CBC pollster Frank Graves should be considered good news for Conservatives. In fact, it is even possible that the unscrupulous Mr. Harper has engineered this decline in order to tighten his grip on power. The decision to make the long form census voluntary without the threat of jail time is "wicked"; really the first step on the path towards herding the poor into concentration camps.

Or as Paul puts it:

"Harper is not frittering away his time, although plenty of writers prefer to believe he is. No: he is chipping away at the foundations of the idea of government the Liberals built over decades. That’s why the census debate was so emotional. Everyone, Harper’s allies as much as his opponents, knows he’ll follow this sudden move with many more.

The assumption behind so much of our political chatter is that Harper’s grip on power hangs by a thread. He likes that assumption. It allows him to keep changing the country while everyone waits for him to fall."

Frank Graves Being Green

Liberal donor and pollster Frank Graves has managed to produce a new set of polling numbers that he insists shows that the Green Party would win two seats if an election were held right now (though not in Saanich). If you take the 2008 election results and shave 8% off the Tory vote, add 3% to the Liberals, 1% to the NDP, and 4% to the Green Party; the seat count changes to 108 Tory, 105 Liberal, 43 NDP, 50 Bloc, 2 Independents, and zero Greens. The two best Ontario ridings (where Graves alleges they will win seats) are Owen Sound and Guelph. Even with the new numbers, the Greens would finish 3,000 votes behind the Tories in the first and over 6,000 votes behind the Liberals in the other.

Elizabeth May has a problem in Saanich. Gary Lunn is vulnerable, but not to her. The Liberal Party runs strong in that riding and with a projected 27,000 votes to Lizzy's projected 9,000 votes. At $2 per vote, the Liberals would be giving up $54,000 if they ceded their candidate to help the Greens. That isn't going to happen.

Summer polling numbers shouldn't mean all that much. Fewer people are home to answer Frank's phone calls.

Will Holland And Easter Tell Helena They Are Sorry?

I have yet to watch the video of the alleged Helena Guergis airport meltdown, but more people have since the days when Wayne Easter mass circulated an anonymous report of a spectacular hissy fit at the PEI airport. Weeks later Liberal MP Mark Holland referenced Helena Guergis "assaulting airport security" on the Soloman Show. Now that we know that the incident in question was not a meltdown of any sort and the video shows no fouls committed, I wonder if Mr. Holland and Mr. Easter will apologize for their mischaracterization of what actually occurred?

I know that pundits like Rosemary Barton enjoy musing about Helena suing the Prime Minister for defamation for removing her from caucus, but how about Wayne Easter for mass circulating a malicious false account of the incident. I don't recall the PM ever saying on national television that Helena Guergis assaulted airport security, but Mark Holland sure did. At the end of the day I think she paid a price for the indiscretions of her husband, whether that is right or wrong, it is what it is. I just remember the blank "I don't know" stare she gave Mansbridge when he asked about the cocaine the cops found on her husband.

Crime Rates And Prison Cells

The latest salvo being fired at the Conservative government is that if crime rates are declining, then how can we justify spending money expanding our prison capacity? The crime rates that are declining are measured in average per 100,000 people, not the total number of crimes committed. You can site the crime rate numbers from 1960, but our population has nearly doubled since then. Crime rates can go down while the number of criminals goes up. Over the past 50 years as our population has doubled, we have not adequately expanded prison capacity to keep pace with population growth rate. The problem is too many prisoners and not enough prison cells, such that to make room for new prisoners, we have to release existing prisoners early.

The latest op-ed at the Globe and Mail (which again does not list an author, but Jane Taber "sets the agenda") criticizes the government for spending more money to expand our prison capacity. What the unknown editorialist neglects to mention anywhere in the attack is that Canadian prisons are desperately overcrowded, and have been since long before the crime rate began to decline. If you want to have tougher sentences for serious crimes, then you increase the demand for prison space and you need a place to put the prisoners. We have to build more cells, either by building a new prison or expanding the existing institutions.

A drop in the crime rate is great, but as our population expands the absolute numbers are not as impressive as the weighted average.