A person just has to love Alberta politics
By Lethbridge Herald on January 19, 2022.
Editor:
Now, I’m quite content to let the professionals analyze the psyscho-sexual impulses that lead a fellow to spend his spare time down in his basement polishing his Glock.
I’m more interested in the socio-political reasoning which leads the premier to pick handguns for another of his trademark bush wars against the Feds.
Our boy Jason’s lined up foursquare behind the gun fetishists on this one and, while I suppose that’s safer than lining up beside them or, God forbid, getting out in front of them, it does raise the question: “Why this? Why now?”
After all, the gun lobby, vociferous as it can be, is a shrinking minority in this country.
Urban voters, and even here in Alberta, the majority of the population lives in the five largest cities, come out in favour of more restrictions on the possession of firearms time after time.
Secondly, in a broad but defensible generalization, gun owners and particularly that subset of gun owners for whom handgun ownership is a hill to die on, are already firmly on the right politically.
They make up a part of the UCP base. This is a base which is beginning to crack along the joins where the myriad squabbling factions that flew off of the old Alberta PCs were jammed back together in the UCP.
And that, I would suggest, is precisely why here, and why now.
Given the premier’s personal popularity he can’t even afford to look ahead to the next provincial election. He’s got to get past that leadership review in the spring and he’s going to have to pull every string, push every button and call in every debt just to get out of that one with the keys to that blue pickup.
So the single interest voting blocs are going to be assiduously courted.
“See.” says Jason. “See. I’m one of you all.” as he takes careful aim at the one toe he hasn’t already shot off.
Sohe hope he goes on as he’d begun. Shot up but still in power and limping towards his own personal new Jerusalem.
Politics. Don’t ya just love it?
Ken Sears
Lethbridge
17-16
Great comments Ken. Yah go ta wonder which one of these UCP fools will shot themselves in the foot next. There certainly isn’t anything conservative about them.
Well, political parties are a social construct so they evolve. I voted for Lougheed, but that ship has sailed. Most of us accept the nasty UCP as a logical endpoint of conservatism, and the world seems to agree with that. Time to reconsider your affiliation.
The intelligent conservatives will tell you that these phoney ones are Reformers and are nothing like the conservatives we proudly supported under Lougheed and Getty. The Lougheed MLAs taught me to never trust a Reformer and they are very easy to pick out. None of them are smart enough to follow in Lougheed’s footsteps of collecting proper royalties and taxes and running this province properly like Lougheed did and Norway and Alaska are doing.
They are only interested in using the peoples wealth to look after their own well being and that of their rich friends, using the peoples money to buy votes. MLAs from the Lougheed era made it clear to me that their mandate was looking after the well-being of all Albertans and not just the rich and that’s what we saw from them.
With so many ways of writing a letter you always find a way to frame things in a most crude red neck fashion. Lol, it surprises me that you are not firmly on the right.
Uh, I think it’s called “satire?”
You can imagine how a guy would feel after his parents and two sisters spent countless hours volunteering for the Lougheed and Getty governments. A brother in- law , in his spare time, voluntarily flew the government plane for them and Lougheed’s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother in- law of one of my uncles. After Dad donated around $30,000. to their party Klein almost killed him with his health care cuts. The same Ralph Klein we had known since the early 1960s and knew what a jerk he was. Even members of his own family refused to support him.
I was involved with the oil industry in the clean up of the orphan well mess when under Lougheed regulations, the industry was being forced to pay for the clean up , and rightly so, prior to Klein changing the rules and regulations to benefit his rich friends and dumping the costs onto the backs of the public, creating a nightmare for land owners.
In all the while lawyers, accountants, oilmen, bankers and former MLAs were pointing out to me about the billions that Albertans were being cheated out of. Lawyers were telling us that it was the worse case of fraud the world has ever seen, yet it was done in a legal manner because stupid Albertans kept re- electing them allowing it to happen.
In other words while Alaska and Norway were reaping the benefits of their oil wealth Albertans allowed themselves to get screwed and look at the mess these phoney conservatives have put us in. Senior couples in Alaska have received $92,000. Since 1982. Albertans received $400. and let this phoney conservatives screw us out of $800 billion we think.
Lawyers tell me that my remarks strike a nerve with these ignorant Albertans, making them feel guilty , but instead of admitting they were wrong find it smart to hurl sarcastic comments at you because they don’t want to hear the truth , they aren’t man enough to handle it. Somehow they try to make you look like the bad guy and you have ever right to sue them if you wanted to.
I’m not interested in doing that I find it more beneficial watching them tell the young people how stupid they are and when it boils down to the facts they only represent a very small portion of the population and don’t have a hope in hell of getting Kenney re-elected.
I understand your frustration at something that looked so good and hopeful going sour (or “going south” as I said, which is of course an accurate reminder of what’s happening in the U.S. being a mirror for us) but the new normal for the right wing has been the steady uptake for years now, over many election cycles. Progressive Conservatives were far better for sure, were indeed more progressive, but were absolutely overtaken by the Reform party. Why do you think? I’d suggest the Reform party had missionary zeal and still do, missionary being the right word because they literally want to convert a secular society to a more theocratic one. Recall Harper being the first PM to say “”God bless Canada?”
So in light of what has happened, it’s impossible not to identify an Achilles heel embedded in right wing political philosophy that predisposes it to a certain type of extremism, which has now manifested in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. I’d say not enough focus and investment in people, and too obsessed with money. (Which has lost meaning of late between the pandemic and bitcoin.) I think what’s happening here is similar to the U.S. in that they, like us, are generally more progressive, so Republicans find themselves in the position of not being able to win or hold power unless they game the system, so that’s what they’re doing. Conservatives here as well, hence their name evolving into “cons.”
Would you vote for the Alberta Party btw? They seem to be the old PC’s trying to make a comeback.
No on the advise of former conservative MLAs I voted for Rachael Notley in the last two elections and every conservative I know did also. It’s no secret she was on the right track by raising corporate taxes gradually and oil royalties to get us back up to the Lougheed levels to get us out of this mess.Every lawyer, accountant, oilmen banker or former MLA I talked to agreed.