THE CALGARY HERALD AND THE ART OF THE WHOPPER

CORBELLA

In today's edition of the Calgary Herald, Licia Corbella, Editorial Page Editor of the Calgary Herald has fired her first salvo of the imminent Federal Election. See: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=4ead416f-5b85-469d-b6eb-a4f6781eb902 It masquerades as speculation on the risk that Bush's pal Steve Harper is taking by breaking his own certain election day promise as well as law by calling an election.

But its real purpose is to bamboozle her readership and malign the Liberals.

Nobody maligns Liberals like Corbella. Even her former colleague from her Calgary Sun days, Paul Jackson (ret) - one of the biggest Liberal tormentors in the business - doesn't hold a candle to the meanness and pure bullshit of Ms. Corbella's invective pen when it comes to Grits.

Her column today goes all the way back to 1991 to lambaste former Ontario Liberal Premier David Peterson as "self-serving," "arrogant," "cynical, " and ultimately "humiliated." Poor Peterson, the only place in the country where he is still reminded of his now quite irrelevant but ignominious defeat is in the yellow pages of the Calgary Herald. Shurely, he's suffered enough!

Then she turns her sights on his successor, the former NDP Ontario Premier - now Liberal M.P. - Bob Rae. Rae in her words, was "an unmitigated disaster" . . . "not just for Ontario but for the entire country." I'm sure Rae will be surprised to learn of his vast national influence during his short reign as Premier.

Then she turns her guns on Dion bigtime.

About the Grit leader she says, "Dion is spectacularly inarticulate in English and apparently not a very good speaker in French either."

First of all, Corbella has obviously not spoken to Herald reporter Jason Fekete. For if she had, he would have told her that in his speech in Calgary during Stampede Week to a Liberal gathering, Dion was spectacularly articulate in English. He would have told her that he gave an excellent address in both official languages for which he was heartily rewarded with a standing ovation by his 500 or so listeners.

As for Dion being "apparently not a very good speaker in French either," the use of the word "apparently" here is a bush league weasel word. It is oftentimes used by irresponsible journalists - Corbella being a champ in that department - when they cannot prove the assertion that they are making and have no evidence of it.

She continued the heavy guns on Dion by writing that the Greenshift plan "will cause gasoline prices to soar." In making this statement, either Corbella has not done her homework, or shows a mendacious disregard for the truth (if Corbella needs this last phrase translated, she should check the definitions through Google; however, in order to get the right definition of the words she will have to spell them correctly). Gasoline at the pump is exempt from the Greenshift plan! See: http://www.liberal.ca/story_14102_e.aspx

Corbella also points out that the Greenshift plan "is so complex it takes hours to explain properly . . " Well, maybe I can help. The Greenshift plan taxes the polluters. The taxes generated will be equitably distributed among middle and lower income earners so as they can recoup something of what they have been dishing out to governments and oil companies over the past several years of high energy prices. There it is in a nutshell. Corbella, are you reading this? What part of that do you not understand??

She went on to malign Jean Chretien. She tells this whopper - that from the Liberal victory in 1993 Chretien's popularity "was all downhill from there." The truth is that Chretien went on to win two majority governments after 1993, with the popularity of the Liberals declining a negligible 0.1% between Chretien's first general election of 1993 to his last in 2000. She then writes that Chretien's downhill path "proves that telling whoppers isn't exactly the way to increase your popularity." Well, Ho! Ho! Ho! Statistics show that editors telling whoppers these days isn't exactly the way to increase your readership, or for that matter, the share value of Canwest Global Communications!

But now, for the Corbella granddaddy of all whoppers. Harper, she writes, says that "the Liberals have carried out obstructionist tactics in committees so key work is not getting done. She goes on, "Depending on who you talk to on Parliament Hill that is either very true or partially true . . "

In her column this morning in the good and true Globe and Mail - a great English language journal of record and one of the only two remaining in all of Canada, the other being the Toronto Star - June Taber writes in her political notebook that Herald Ottawa columnist Don Martin is Hot. Martin, she writes, "has a copy of the . . Conservative dirty tricks manual or "Parliamentary Obstruction Document," a 200 page tome on how to make Parliament dysfunctional" that many opponents of the Harper crowd would love to get their hands on. In fact, the Conservatives have written the book on how to make parliament dysfunctional. Corbella should talk to her colleague Martin, so that she may perhaps sneak a peek.

If Corbella thinks that this Conservative text book is gathering dust somewhere and not being put to the use for which it was intended, she probably believes that the Greenshift will result in higher gasoline prices or that Chretien's popularity went all downhill after 1993, or that Dion can't speak English or French articulately or that Canwest shares will increase in value as a result of her presiding over the editorial page of the Calgary Herald.

MENDACITY OR IGNORANCE ?

Jason Fekete, wrote on July 5, 2008 for his employer, the Calgary Herald:

"The NEP - which set domestic oil prices lower than the world price and steered energy exploration out of Alberta - crippled the province's economy for a decade, but it was compounded by a collapse in world oil markets." http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/2008/07/calgary-heralds-disrespect-of.html


Gwyn Morgan (last year) speechified as reported in the Toronto Globe and Mail:

“when Ralph became Premier [1993], Alberta was suffering the after effects of Trudeau's national energy program followed by a prolonged slump in energy prices."
http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/2007/10/gwyn-morgan-pinnochio-failing-memory-or.html


Neil Waugh (yesterday) as reported in the Edmonton Sun wrote:

". . . Pierre Trudeau's evil 1980 national energy program . . . brought on 10 years of economic winter in Alberta . . ." "http://edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists/Waugh_Neil/2008/07/08/6093641-sun.html



All of the above indicated in italics are either statements of mendacity or ignorance.

You decide which.

For further reading see:

http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/2007/02/neil-waugh-weasel-words-and-art-of-big.html

http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie

THE CALGARY HERALD'S DISRESPECT FOR THE HISTORICAL RECORD

For those of you who read my musings, Rick Bell has appeared in my pages more than once. These days he is temporarily out of my doghouse. The quality of his work has risen perceptibly since he was recently awarded SunMedia's prestigious J. Douglas Creighton Award. The Award is named after a much loved colorful co-founder and one of the publishers of the Sun organization. It was bestowed upon Bell for his undeniable excellent writing skills that has graced the Sun pages over many years.

Yesterday morning at the Calgary Zoo, I ran into the seasoned old pro Bell. He was there covering the speech of Stephane Dion at the annual Grit Stampede Breakfast. After exchanging the usual pleasanteries interspersed with a few loud guffaws, he introduced me to reporter Jason Fekete of the Calgary Herald who was standing nearby. I had never met Fekete before. He seemed like an earnest young man and was friendly enough. However, the introduction was perfunctory and fleeting. Hardly an opportunity to size up the personality and skill set of the young scribe.

Dion went on to wow the crowd of 500 or so party faithful with a forty minute exposition of his 'Green Shift' policy, delivered articulately and passionately without a note. The crowd gave him many warm and long bursts of applause throughout the speech, ending with a heartfelt standing ovation. It seems that there are a lot of 'Green Shift' sympathizers in cowtown. I have heard Dion speak many times in the past, but this was his very best outing and his listeners rewarded him accordingly.

After the festivities had concluded, I returned home and picked up my morning edition of the Calgary Herald which I had yet to read. I was disappointed but not surprised to see that the second most prominent story on the front page was - as you might expect from an organization that is in the throes of a steamy love affair with Bush's pal Steve Harper - a negative story about the Liberals. It was written by Fekete who I had just met. The headline read "Grit's blog slurs Alberta." The piece was about the incendiary musings of maverick Ontario Liberal MP and former Tory, Garth Turner. Turner has mused like this before. He's a loose cannon. All parties have had loose cannons. I would question whether Turner's musings - like pitbull stories - are the right stuff for front page treatment. For that I don't blame Fekete. It was probably the work of one of his rag's many Conservative cheerleader editors. So be it.

But as I read further into the story, I did find something in Fekete's story that, well, . . really pissed me off. It was the invoking of the mother of all of our fears - Alberta's potato famine, its holocaust. Yes, the Ace up every RAT (ReformAllianceTory)'s sleeve, and the rabbit in every RAT's hat - the National Energy Program! The evil and dreaded NEP!

Now, being a Grit in Alberta, I need not dwell on the fact that I do not like the mention of the NEP. Of course, I don't. After all, our opponents have been flogging us about the NEP for - believe it or not - more than twenty-eight years! But what I really dislike is when it is made to look a lot worse than it was. When history is cast aside in the interests of advertising revenues or pamphleteering, or pandering to an important well-heeled segment of the Herald's dwindling readership. That is when it really gets to me.

The offending paragraph of Fekete's article reads: "The NEP - which set domestic oil prices lower than the world price and steered energy exploration out of Alberta - crippled the province's economy for a decade, but it was compounded by a collapse in world oil markets."
A fair interpretation of Fekete's words is that it was the NEP that caused our economic woes for ten years, and the collapse of world oil markets did not make things any easier. This is nonsense!
These are the facts:

1. The NEP was introduced in October, 1980.
2. Brian Mulroney and the Tories were elected in September, 1984.
3. Mulroney's Western Accord ended the NEP in March of 1985.

So, Fekete's history lesson so far is that the life of the NEP was four and one-half years - not a decade.

But here's more history - economic history, in this case - for Mr. Fekete:

• Between October 1980 and December 1980 when the slowdown began to take hold in the oil and gas industry, as well as other parts of the economy, interests rates - led by the Federal Reserve Board of the United States - rose from 13.5% to 20.50%.

In other words, NEP came into force and interest rates shot to the moon, just like that. There was no lag in time between the NEP and spiralling interest rates. Think of it - homeowners facing twenty percent mortgage rates. Investment loan interest in the same levels of the stratosphere. Business in times like that has only one way to go - down! It went down. And it got worse:

• By September 1981 - one year after the introduction of the NEP - interest rates were still hovering at 20%.
• Through 1980, the average price of a barrel of oil was $37.42 US (inflation adjusted to 2007 $97.68 US).
• Through 1984, the average price of a barrel of oil was $28.75 US (inflation adjusted to 2007 $59.47 US).
• Through 1986, a mere 6 years after the NEP and almost 2 years after the Western Accord that trashed the NEP, the average price of a barrel of oil was $14.44 US (inflation adjusted to 2007 $28.29 US - about 29% of the real value of a barrel of oil in 1980 when the NEP was initiated).
• Between 1987 and 1990 the average price per barrel ranged from $17.75 US to $23.19 US (inflation adjusted to 2007 $33.56 US to $38.02 - 35% to 38% of the real value of a barrel of oil in 1980 when the NEP was initiated).

And so, there was little lag in time between the NEP coming into force and collapsing oil prices. What this history tells us is that the NEP was literally the least of our problems.

See, Historical Oil Prices http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp

See, Historical Interest Rates http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PRIME.txt

See also, http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/2007/10/gwyn-morgan-pinnochio-failing-memory-or.html

So the NEP - as bad as it was, and it was not good policy admittedly - was only a factor that lasted not more than four and a half years. A long way from a decade. Far more trouble came to the oil and gas sector because of high interest rates and plunging oil prices (caused in part at least by high interest rates), all of which started at about the same time the NEP came into force. The NEP did not set interest rates or oil prices. It was those high interest rates and low oil prices that caused far more economic havoc for Albertans and lasted a helluva lot longer than the NEP.

Politics being what it is, I can understand why politicians sometimes misrepresent facts or skew them a certain way so as to reap some political gain. That's politics, and if one is involved in politics, it goes with the territory. But why should a newspaper do the same? What about the old newspaper value of informing the public - informing the public of the facts, not myths, so the public can make intelligent choices. That's what newpapers used to stand for, and what too often these days, they do not stand for.

Back a long while ago, when the Calgary Herald was a venerable newspaper of record, it would have accurately reported all of the economic facts about the NEP. Those days are clearly over now that it has become merely a cheap Conservative/Fraser Institute pamphlet.