There is nothing conservative about the UCP leadership candidates
By Lethbridge Herald on July 14, 2022.
Editor:
Those of us who were proud to be brought up in a conservative family world find it hard to believe what the Reformers have brought to the table.
Not one of them is smart enough to suggest we should be following our hero Peter Lougheed in collecting proper royalties and taxes and running this province properly like Lougheed did and Alaska and Norway are doing.
In other words there is nothing Conservative about them. I can’t find any true conservatives who have any intention of wanting to elect any one of these fake conservatives running for leadership of the UCP. If the stupid comments being provided by them wasn’t so dangerous it would be down-right hilarious.
Brian Jean suggests that we stop collecting oil royalties, but can’t explain how he will replace the lost revenues. He doesn’t care what it will do to Albertans and our already huge financial mess created by previous fake conservatives.
Danielle Smith has brought back the Alberta Sovereignty Act which suggests we completely ignores Ottawa’s rules and regulations and puts seniors at risk of losing their Old Age Security payments, Canada Pension Plan payments and Public health Care benefits and she doesn’t care what it will do to us seniors.
Travis Toews, as our finance minister, can’t prove to our Auditor General where he spent $4 billion of taxpayers money that was intended to help fight Covid. Why would anyone want anyone of them as our premier? All they provide is a worse financial mess for our children to deal with.
After watching Jason Kenney wanting to kick out our RCMP for daring to investigate his party now we see his pal Pierre Poilievre wanting to destroy the careers of around 7,500 young Canadians by scraping the CBC for daring to criticize the brand of stupid politics he plans to bring to Canadians. In other- words if you don’t agree with Reform Party Stupidity you don’t belong in their world.
It’s obvious that Poilievre’s plan is to bring Donald Trump American-Style Republican Politics to Canada.
Why else would he be praising his pal Jason Kenney for the COVID mismanagement nightmare he created in Alberta, while he praises the truckers for the mess they created in Ottawa and Coutts, and bashes Trudeau for wanting to ban assault rifles and handguns to protect Canadians against the gun violence stupidity we are seeing in the U.S.
Apparently he doesn’t care about what it has cost taxpayers or those that have lost their lives.
Where is the intelligence in that?
Alan K. Spiller
Edmonton
15-14
Here is more, and an interesting take re: Alberta politics….
“Alberta’s political culture and history played a part in Jason Kenney’s downfall”
http://www.theconversation.com/albertas-political-culture-and-history-played-a-part-in-jason-kenneys-downfall-183490
And more, which plays big in the current UCP leadership bid, and who will cater to what, and potential outcome for Alberta’s next provincial election:
“What the spectre of Alberta separatism means for Canada”
http://www.theconversation.com/what-the-spectre-of-alberta-separatism-means-for-canada-186897
I had lunch on Wednesday with a group of my friends and they certainly agree with me. None of them voted for any of these Reformers in the last two elections ad have no intention of ever doing it. They know the difference between a true conservative and a damn reformer. Three of them had their careers destroyed by Ralph Klein’s massive budget cuts and know what it did to their pension funds. Budget cuts that weren’t necessary if he had been collecting proper royalties and taxes.
We all thought it hilarious that Brian Jean was only able to get 150 people out to his gathering in Edmonton. Proving that most people aren’t interested in his lies. They heard enough of them when he was leader of the Wildrose Party. Wanting to make his rich oilmen friends a lot richer by screwing the people out of their royalties when he should be increasing them is what you would expect from a guy from Fort MacMurray isn’t it? Wasting $150,000. on an election to get your ass kicked doesn’t make this lawyer look very smart.
The thing you leave out Fed is that Notley wasn’t any better. The NDP screamed raise royalties for years and campaigned on it. After reviewing the royalty “scheme” they decided, ah, we’re not changing anything. This started the downward spiral in Alberta for investment.
And then there was former Conservative Premier Peter Lougheed’s ‘Six Principles’ for resource development which were, not, followed by successive AB Conservative governments, for years. They cannot be said enough. “Behave like an owner, Collect your fair share, Save for a rainy day, Go slow, Add value, and Practice statecraft. We, Albertans, the owners of the oil and gas resource, lost $hundreds of billions because these ‘Six Principles’ were not followed. Where’s the money?
Do you not think that the sharp decline in world crude oil prices that started in 2014 and was largest drop since the 1980s, had something to do with both situations you describe?
Of course it did, yet I doubt buckwheat is smart enough to understand it. Those of us who had ties to the oil industry know that had Lougheed’s formula been followed like it was in Alaska and Norway Albertans would all be rich. Trying to blame it all on Trudeau and Notley like these reformers do is just plan stupid, when they are the ones to blame.
So the answer was spend what you don’t have. A monkey could do the same. 20 to 70 billion debt in 4years. Brilliant. Regardless of what the oil price was.
I’ll ignore your “whataboutism” and do you the courtesy of addressing your point.
One answer is to institute a consumption tax in Alberta. Adding an Alberta top up to the GST would have little impact beyond some whinging in the short term.
In considering this proposition, please ask yourself a couple of questions: Why is it that Alberta is one of a handful of jurisdictions in the More Developed World that does not have a consumption tax? What do we know here that most others don’t? Would a consumption tax not provide the Alberta Government with a predictable revenue source? And would that predictable revenue help to smooth out the impact of booms and busts?
Those of us from the world of finance know that had the Klein , Stelmach and Redford governments continued to collect royalties and taxes at the Lougheed levels Albertans would be rolling in wealth today like Alaska and Norway are doing. There would be no need for any other sort taxes. In fact there is no way we should be paying a provincial tax and our property taxes should be next to nothing , like in Alaska. While Alaska has $78 billion in their savings account , Albertans have $16 billion in theirs and every man , woman, and child has received some $46,000. each in total oil dividend cheques since 1982. Albertans got $400. and a province in financial ruin thanks to these Reformers and the fools who support them. Norway has $1.1 trillion in their bank account and as oilmen point our oil product is far more than the other two combined. We estimate that Albertans has lost at least $800 billion thanks to the reformers starting with Ralph Klein. If that’s not bad enough our roads will cost billions to fix and the orphan wells cleanup mess billions more.
Of course if you had bothered to listen to what was being said, you wouldn’t need to make yourself look so stupid, would you? Notley proved that the tax and royalty system that Peter Lougheed had created was fair to all and should be followed yet these fake conservatives under Klein, Stelmach and Redford weren’t doing it which is why we were broke and Alaska and Norway weren’t. Notley campaigned on what Lougheed had done for Albertans and promised to get us back up to the Lougheed levels of corporate taxes and oil royalties. However she knew the industry was in an international oil industry crash created by massive surpluses, in 2014, just like we saw in the 1980s and agreed to do it on a gradual basis. The oil executives agreed to her plan and accepted an increase in taxes of 2% as a good start. She was planning to start increasing oil royalties in 2021 and we know what stupid Albertans did to her don’t we? A group of us had lunch on Wednesday with a retired RCMP friend and we talked about his comments the day after Notley was elected in 2015. “Notley will never get elected for a second term. Stupid Albertans will expect her to fix in only 4 years what these fools created in 25 and it can’t be done”. He was dead on that’s exactly what happened.All of us agreed that we hope Albertans aren’t so stupid next time, and treat her with a lot more respect. She knows what needs to be done so let her do it. Apparently buckwheat is one of these stupid Albertans, do you think?
And now due to it’s banked wealth, Norway is able to equitably transition away from over-consumption of carbon fuel (And continue to provide strong subsidies for it’s health and education systems).
Meanwhile in Alberta: The Destruction of Mr. Lougheed’s legacy by the so-called “Conservatives” that followed him continues.
And any clown that tries to make a case for the NDP contributing to that downfall is just a parrot who doesn’t understand how dealing with a quarter century of UCP bungling would be impossible in a single term.
Since Alberta has no political option other than the NDP (Because nobody would vote Liberal would they? lol), what are you going to do?
Continue to be fleeced by the UCP whackos?
*Sigh* probably.
Boy have you got it right. The lawyers, accountants, oilmen, bankers and former MLAs that I have talked to all praised Notley for how she was handling the situation and that’s good enough for me.
Let’s have some names.
When I was in Norway a few years ago the people were thrill by how their government had managed their oil wealth and what it was doing for the people. University students pay no tuition fees, in fact they are paid $1,000. Per month to go to school . Kenney increased tuition for our students by 40% while he cut $9.4 billion off corporate taxes for his rich friends.
I like your style Mr. McKnight!
Play, pause, rewind,play, pause, rewind ,play. You are pathetic with personal attacks. Get lost.
So you still aren’t man enough to handle the truth. In other words a loser and a hero to these fake conservatives because you are easy to fool. I wonder who you think you are fooling? No one in my world, I can assure you we aren’t that stupid.
Graham Thomson gave a good description of Danielle Smith
“The anti-vax, anti-science, and anti-reality Campaign: Meet Danielle Smith , the favorite to be Alberta’s next premier”.
Apparently she has done the best job at tricking the stupid seniors into believing her lies. Too dumb to understand what her plans would do to them. I say seniors because as we all know these reform party fools attract mainly seniors as we have learned by attending these rallies, and the pictures prove it. Usually you can count of them being 85% seniors.
The following excerpt from an upcoming presentation by Dr. Stephen Pinker at the University of Lethbridge seems appropriate here:
“Today, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding—and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. Why do we find ourselves flooded with fake news, medical quackery, conspiracy theorizing, and “post-truth” rhetoric? It can’t be that humans are just an irrational species — cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and discovered the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, we think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning our best thinkers have discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others. Also, the rational pursuit of self-interest, sectarian solidarity, and uplifting mythology by individuals can add up to crippling irrationality in a society. Collective rationality depends on norms that are designed to promote objectivity and truth. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress.”
https://www.ulethbridge.ca/artsci/dr-steven-pinker-presents-rationality-what-it-why-it-seems-scarce-why-it-matters?fbclid=IwAR1xJ39WEboXM5phVRcVcUpdGy94gq0i4nMWMX2ubiCwXRP_DdsdJ_bfM-g
Brilliant words. Thx.
Please consider viewing the following excellent Academy of Ideas video MASS PSYCHOSIS – How an Entire Population Becomes MENTALLY ILL available on You Tube.
The academy of Ideas website was create by a couple of Canadian brothers who saw a need and has morphed into millions of viewers world wide.
https://youtu.be/09maaUaRT4M
It is most interesting to recognize the tens or hundreds of thousands and occasionally; millions of viewers, and to review the comments made.
“This hits harder now that Robert Malone has made, “mass formation psychosis” a catch-phrase”.
“This was the most educational and informative video I have watched in a while and explains a lot about why the masses are not waking up.”
“Can’t tell you how much I needed this video. After seeing so much corruption in so many events and areas of society over my lifetime and being labelled a mentally ill conspiracy theorist for stating documented facts, it’s vital to know that I’m the sane one and they’re the ones that are crazy”.
“this is really accurate and well-explained. I’m gonna share this with a lot of people, thanks guys, illuminating as always.”
“In school during the 1970’s we learned about WWII and I used to think “How did the whole world lose its mind?” Now I see, like other people have commented, it’s happening right before our eyes.”
And the bottom feeders that take advantage of the easily manipulated just play into the problem because it earns them money.
FoX, Rebel Media, people like Donald Drumpf and all the Poo-Anon wannabe Hitlers. – Just a whole pack of vultures feeding on the weak.
The weak being guys like buckwheat who are their heroes for being so easy to fool. The Ralph Klein I knew had a ball making them look like morons and he was great at doing it. A senior told me about going to one of Klein’s fund raising dinners and after telling the people a pack of lies in his speech, and getting standing ovations from the seniors in the crowd, he overheard him telling one of his MLAs “ I could tell these idiots anything and they would believe it”.
A parting shot. Lol. Childish.