Saturday, 14 April 2012

Peter Lougheed

The patriarch of Alberta's Progressive Conservative Party has made a plea to conservatives who have switched to the rival Wildrose by pledging support for Alison Redford Saturday.

Peter Lougheed said in a news release that he and his family have even been doorknocking on behalf of Redford and the Progressive Conservatives.

"I want them to think about it and I want them to listen carefully to what Alison Redford is saying, to reflect on what I've been saying, to look forward to an Alberta in the future," Lougheed said.

"She's a positive thinker and she has an up-to-date view of the province. She knows the issues, she knows the province, she has had great experience internationally and had a great feel for Canada at large," he added.

"This is a harder campaign ... because we've been there for 40 years and obviously these are difficult and challenging times."

Lougheed was carried to power in 1971 and knocked off the Social Credit Party that had ruled Alberta for decades. It's the same sort of wave that Wildrose is hoping for on April 23.

Lougheed's endorsement comes at a crucial time for the PCs who have been both trailing and running neck-and-neck with the Wildrose in the first three weeks of the campaign.

The Wildrose, a party further right than the right-of-centre PCs, is made up of many ex-Tories who feel their former party has abandoned its roots of fiscal conservatism and grassroots decision-making.

With her party's success so far, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith was offering no apologies for keeping a tight rein on both successful and failed candidates in the current provincial election campaign.

"I think people were expecting that we would have a bunch of eruptions and explosions and undisciplined candidates through the course of the election campaign. I'm sorry to disappoint you," Smith told reporters at a campaign stop in Calgary Saturday.

"I mean you can continue, I suppose, hoping that one of them is going to have a bozo eruption and I suppose maybe that's what you're upset about is that our candidates are seriously focused on the messages we're putting forward in this campaign."

During the campaign the Wildrose platform has focused on allowing MLAs to have free votes in the legislature and the use of citizen sponsored referendum to return power to the grassroots.

But Smith confirmed that anyone who sought a party nomination for Wildrose were required to post a $1,000 good-conduct bond and so far only the winning candidates have had the cash returned.

"We're not going to return those good conduct bonds to the failed nominees until after the election because we're wanting to make sure through the process of our nominations that we have respectful nominations, that people respect the outcome and they don't try to sabotage the candidate who defeated them," Smith said.

"Sometimes nominations get kind of heated and sometimes nominees don't accept the outcome and so as a result we wanted to make sure they have an incentive to stand behind the result of our elected nominee."

Thursday, 5 April 2012

Fired Host

Keith Olbermann Files a No-Holds-Barred Lawsuit Over Firing by Current TV

by Howard Kurtz Apr 5, 2012 7:20 PM EDT

The fired host unloads on Current TV, accusing Al Gore of being a dilettante and co-owner Joel Hyatt of blackmail. Howard Kurtz on the war over Keith’s firing.

Keith Olbermann filed suit Thursday against Current TV, charging that owners Al Gore and Joel Hyatt and their deputies “are no more than dilettantes portraying entertainment industry executives.”

Jason Kempin / Getty Images

In the lawsuit, promised as a response to his firing last week, Olbermann calls his dismissal “the latest in a series of increasingly erratic and unprofessional actions undertaken by Current’s senior management.” The former host, who lasted 10 months there after a bitter breakup with MSNBC, is seeking $50 million to $70 million in lost compensation and equity.

The suit is nothing if not personal, and at one point suggests a failed bromance. Hyatt “attempted to isolate Olbermann from his professional representatives in an awkward attempt to form a close personal relationship with his new star,” it says. “When Olbermann did not reciprocate Hyatt’s advances, Hyatt reacted by withholding necessary production resources, disparaging Olbermann in the press, denying him contractually guaranteed editorial control over Current’s election coverage and the program website” and “cutting out Olbermann of internal discussions of other programs on Current, and directing Current’s attorneys to harass Olbermann with vague and spurious claims of breach.”

It gets worse: Hyatt “threatened to derail Olbermann’s career” before the show debuted last June unless he banned his manager, lawyers and agents from all interactions with Current. Hyatt, a wealthy attorney, “blackmailed Olbermann into agreeing” to put himself “in the position of “fending for himself without benefit of hired advisors. Olbermann gave into Hyatt’s blackmail for the purpose of saving the premiere of the program and the jobs of those who worked on it. Olbermann left the meeting devastated at having discovered that he was working for a blackmailer.”

Current spokesman Christopher Lehane, a onetime aide to Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, said in a statement that Olbermann was let go for such breaches of contract as “the failure to show up at work, sabotaging the network and attacking Current and its executives.

“As the old adage says: ‘When the law is on your side, you argue the law. When the facts are on your side, you argue the facts. When neither the law nor the facts are on your side, you pound the table.’…It is well established that over his professional career Mr. Olbermann has specialized in pounding the table.”

In the suit filed in Los Angeles, Olbermann says that Gore and Hyatt promised him “an unprecedented level of control and resources to build a new progressive network.”

But after former CNN executive David Bohrman was hired as Current’s president, “the ratings declined and the program’s production value deteriorated even further ... Current still couldn’t manage, literally, to keep the lights on.”

While many millions are at stake, the litigation also amounts to a public relations campaign in which each side is trying to discredit the other. An e-mail obtained by The Daily Beast describes how Olbermann threw a glass mug on the set and shattered it after getting angry over a satellite problem. Others say he simply knocked it off the desk, and a source close to Olbermann calls the e-mail’s characterization “a gross overstatement.”

“Olbermann left the meeting devastated at having discovered that he was working for a blackmailer.”

In Olbermann’s view, Current’s incompetence damaged the brand of his program Countdown, which he had launched at MSNBC. Numerous technical failings “and the inability to find the program or follow it on the Web caused a precipitous decline in ratings as Olbermann’s loyal audience was shut out and other viewers simply gave up,” the suit says.

Alleging that Current broadcast ads featuring Olbermann without his permission, brought in guest hosts without his approval, and blocked efforts to stream content online, the filing says: “It is both sad and ironic that a channel founded by Al Gore, for the stated purpose of creating an independent perspective free from the control of large corporate interests, restricted the rights of its most celebrated commentator and Chief News Officer to fully broadcast his opinions over, of all things, the Internet.”

Current ignored Olbermann’s advice as chief news officer when he objected to hiring former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm to host the program following his (and which, according to the suit, was originally proposed to be co-hosted by Van Jones, an Obama White House aide who resigned amid controversy).

And the suit alleges that Hyatt, the CEO, disparaged his star in comments to The Daily Beast and The Wrap. The Beast reported in January that Hyatt had said “that while he’d like to have Olbermann with the network in the future, ‘everybody is replaceable.’”

Olbermann disputes that his absences from work, such as the night before the Super Tuesday primaries, were unauthorized. But in a parting shot, network spokesman Lehane said: “We hope Mr. Olbermann understands that when it comes to the legal process, he is actually required to show up.”