Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Whoopee - Four Hundred Whole Dollars!

Whatever shall I do with this newfound wealth?

Lessee - oh yeah - the Gas Company's going to get it - all of it. Probably around January. With Natural Gas trading around $13, my heating bills in the depths of this winter are going to be brutal. I'm guessing that $200 or more for gas alone is not going to be unusual.

Let's do the math here - Alberta has roughly 3 million residents. At $400 each, that's approximately 1.2 billion dollars that Ralph is throwing around. $400 is a nice little sum of money - but for most people it's enough to pay off a credit card bill, or go out for a decent night on the town. (By the time you pay for taxi, baby sitter, restaurant and a show - $400 vanishes pretty damn fast)

Kevin Taft, leader of the Alberta Liberals, has quite rightly said that this idiotic waste of taxpayer dollars demonstrates a complete lack of vision on the part of Ralph's Team. Lack of vision, hell, the man's clearly hallucinating.

With Natural Gas and Oil at all time highs, the costs for small businesses are skyrocketing; transportation costs are about to go through the roof for industry. Where's the Alberta Government in this? Rolling around in the cash from oil like a pig in a mud pit.

What is the government doing to ensure that our infrastructure is becoming more energy efficient? Nothing. Zip, zero, nada! Building more roads is not making a more efficient infrastructure. Where are the changes being made to improve Alberta's industrial capacity? What are we doing to enable Alberta's economy to grow beyond it's oil and agriculture basis? Where are the new rail lines being built to improve our ability to move heavy goods around efficiently? Who is watching out to make sure that Alberta's - and Canada's - energy needs are being met first? Where's the investment going to improve our electrical infrastructure? I can't leverage $400 into much of anything. $1.2 BILLION can be leveraged fifteen ways to sunday - all of them to the collective benefit of Alberta and Canada.

That sucking sound you hear is Alberta's future vanishing into the black hole of Kleinsian planning.

Mr. Klein - you are "all used up". Leave. NOW. Before you do any more damage to this province and this nation.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is scary is when Ralph leaves. The people looking at replacing him are even scarier...

JN

www.nishiyama.tzo.com

MgS said...

Yes, but whoever replaces Ralph won't be able to play the 'personal charisma' card anywhere near as effectively.

That will (I hope!) have the effect of actually making our elections a bit more about issues rather than personalities.

(Somehow, I don't think Ted Morton or Dinning have the same personal appeal that Ralph has been able to play for so long)

Anonymous said...

We can only hope that the front-runners' lack of charisma shakes the sheeple out of their political stupor....

Unfortunately I'm not sure it will.

JN
www.nishiyama.tzo.com

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