The AGE OLD BARGAINING TRICK

You know the one where you put something worse in a contract so that what you intend to agree on does not seem so bad.

It is almost laughable if not pitiful to watch George Baker do Stehen Harper's bidding in the Senate. I don't believe he even knows.

Now what we know is this - Steve's campaign chair in the Atlantic Region is John Crosbie. We also know or we have been told that John has been writing back and forth or in some way communicating with Harper on this budget thing for a while now.

John says he believes in the Accord and wants it protected. He talks to Steve who has to find a way to get out of his promise to remove non-renewable resource revenues from the equalization formula. You see Steve - who Jeffrey Simpson of the "Simpson's" family says he can not figure out why the man made the promise to begin with - intended to remove non-renewable resource revenues from the formula because it is an economic theory he has espoused since sucking his thumb. And Jeffrey - he did know it would negatively impact other provinces like New Brunswick and Manitoba - as he stated he would correct those deficiencies in another way. No Jeffrey he knew exactly what he was saying when he made the promise and he believed in it.

The problem came when his politico managers sat him down and read him the "majority" act. The method in which federal parties win elections - they suck up to Ontario and Quebec. These two provinces visited the PMO and Flat"hearty" and told him he must get rid of his economic principles and forget about making other regions of the country happy. How were they going to pull this off? Considering Mr. Accountability (Steve) actually put the promise in writing they would have to be clever.

My guess is they enlisted the services of one John Crosbie and asked John who was a Steve supporter - how to get out of the mess. John knowing the legislation of the Accords so well suggested that if the budget contained changes in the Accords - there would be outrage in the Atlantic Region and deter from the actual promise of removing non-renewable resource revenues from the formula. This little diddly started a good while ago with little hints from the PMO and Finance suggesting that the "O'Brien" report might be adopted because the provinces could not agree on changes. You see the PMO already knew that when he was the Leader of the Opposition but that did not stop him from promising what he promised - in fact he was showing economic leadership.

Then of course when the budget came out - Danny predictably went off his head and to his credit ignored the changes to the Accords and kept on target with his attack on the PM's real promise. But people like Ed Hollet and John Crosbie "discovered" the changes to the Accord after much prodding and direction and brought up that this indeed was worse than breaking the promise of removing non-renewable resource revenues from the formula.

You see the Accords have a preamble which states the Accords cannot be amended unilaterally and any fool in Ottawa knew that. That is why I believe the changes to the Accords are a planned negotiation tactic draw attention away from the real problem. Despite Danny's attempt to stay away from the whole Accord debacle he knew he had been snookered by his buddy Crosbie and the stage was set.

If the Senate votes to accept the "Crosbie" amendment it was set up to do just that - and everybody in Newfoundland and Labrador will be wiping their brows as now they will be in no worse a position than before the budget. Whoooopeee. And you wonder why Newfoundland and Labrador has failed for so long. A combination of naivety - crookery - deception through the use of our own people.

And my friends - Norman Doyle - who nobody could figure out as he surly would have under all other circumstances vote against the budget - voted yay. He and Crosbie must have had a coffee sometime over the past year.

Bravo gentlemen and George - do you get it yet?

Why didn't Danny show up?

I guess this answers that question.

Hey Gerry where are ya?