How is it going?
How is it going?
Well, the feds' recent moves on Kinder Morgan can't hurt, though whether they will help significantly(as opposed to just being a break even) is another matter.
The price of oil hasn't exactly playing along with her best interests the last few days.
She had to ditch her ideas about no pipelines, now it's we need them! Slow learner..
Source please.
I know she was against the free for all development of the oil sands because of the havoc they created but I’ve never heard of her being anti development. Moreover, it seems she may have been right because we are in an overproduction situation now, one that is reportedly slamming our potential margins to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year.
i think if there is overproduction today it is based on pipeline capacity, not lack of markets or opportunities to sell. if the pipelines weren't full and potential production couldn't be sold, that would be overproduction. what we have is probably better classified as restricted production in that you won't produce/store what you can't deliver to market. unfortunately, having the oil industry in that position has also put farmers in that same position as tanker trains are taking up limited track and locomotive resources to transport oil that would previously have been available to transport grain. that grain backs up in elevators and silos and in the field and all of sudden there's no new crops because of the oversupply of existing inventory, not because that inventory can't be sold but because it now can't be delivered either.
"If you did not want much, there was plenty." Harper Lee
Alberta deficit reduced to $8 billion: http://edmontonjournal.com/news/poli...lion-last-year
"Talk minus action equals zero." - Joe Keithley, D. O. A.
Vote her and her party out. No plan with the debt other than hoping for oil to go up. We need something like $93 boe to break even at current spending. We voted this kind of crap out in 2015 and replaced it with, well, the same thing. We need someone who is actually going to do something different, hell, anything different with any public program. We cannot continue spending like this. The NDP are in no way, shape, or form fiscally responsible. Their recent finalized budget still put them up $400M spending from their initial budget numbers. We will be talking about the NDP debt for years and years to come... this will be their legacy.
I drive really slow, in the ultra fast lane
While people behind me, are going insane.
Alberta has among the highest cost public services. and what do we get for all the debt Notley has piled on to protect our bloated, inefficient, overpaid public sector? mediocre at best outcomes (not great when dipper mediocrity includes education and healthcare is it?)....
Notley can fire up her anger machine all she wants, it is all she has left 'cause running on her dismal record won't get her much outside of the public sector heavy neighborhoods in Edmonton.
^ I love you call it the 'anger machine' when you're clearly popping an anger vein in your forehead right now![]()
Notley's got my vote. People who think it's the NDP who piled on debt need to take their head out of their arse. If the Cons hadn't left us without a penny saved and a huge infrastructure deficit we wouldn't be in this situation. The NDP is doing a hell of a job cleaning up the conservative mess but it doesn't happen overnight.
The NDP will win a second term. You heard it here first.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits" - Einstein
I love how you think I'm angry, when I'm not in the least. She didn't have my vote before, and she won't have it again..
The NDP are poised to add more debt when they kiss JTs butt over even more carbon tax, oh, how's that pipeline coming along???
Nothing happening, wow, what a surprise...
"The NDP are poised to add more debt when they kiss JTs butt over even more carbon tax"
that doesn't make any sense. The carbon tax brings in money, not debt.
How's that pipeline coming along? Ask me in two weeks.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits" - Einstein
We should have had a provincial sales tax many, many years ago. Lowering income taxes is my holy grail. Quit taxing my time that I invest into the economy. We NEED to be paying more user based fees/purchasing taxes. Want public healthcare? Pay a public healthcare levy. Want healthcare reform? Fight for true two tier similar to Euro models. If someone in politics came out and said "Elect me, I'll bring in a PST, include user based fees and lower provincial income taxes to 5% flat", they'd have my vote. PAY for the SERVICE you USE. NDP's answer was to keep status quo and increase taxes on income. Stupidity. I thought this government was going to actually change stuff for the better. It's been utter crap since they were elected. All they've done is focus on social issues. 95% of what this gov says is strictly about social issues. I don't go to the ballot box and vote on social issues.
NDP pushed us into net debt, not Cons. NDP control current gov spending. Cons don't. PC were idiots. So are the NDP. It's status quo.
I drive really slow, in the ultra fast lane
While people behind me, are going insane.
She had to, she has to pay off our debt somehow!!
^^I mean I would hope so, who else could possibly be responsible at this point?
She'll be gone next election..vbg!
don't count on it
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits" - Einstein
Yes, I'll count on it!
One acid test could be these by-elections:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...y-12-1.4706147
If the UCP has trouble winning these, it could spell trouble for them next year.
"Talk minus action equals zero." - Joe Keithley, D. O. A.
Do you want these jerks running the province? http://daveberta.ca/2018/07/aheer-ac...-east-calgary/
"Talk minus action equals zero." - Joe Keithley, D. O. A.
Cheshire Cat poster smiles on everyone of the -itches
Mom said I should not talk to cretins!
UCP has won massive victories in both Fort Mac and Innisfail.
In rural Alberta, the UCP could have a neo-Nazi heroin-addicted toddler rapist as a candidate and they would still win by a landslide.
“You have to dream big. If we want to be a little city, we dream small. If we want to be a big city, we dream big, and this is a big idea.” - Mayor Stephen Mandel, 02/22/2012
notley and the ndp are that despised are they??? Wouldn't have guessed that in a million years.
Well done UCP!!! LOL. Roll on 2019!!
It's a sad day when American style politics of fake news and attack style campaigns gather steam in this province. That's the UCP tactic. Trump style campaigns. Get ready for it. You'll be lied, mislead, and if you're a sucker, you'll fall right for it. I already see some of the usual suckers falling in line in this thread!
quoting for no reason in particular, and has nothing to do with my post above it
We should encourage savings and investment spending not consumerism. Lower income taxes and higher consumption taxes tend to reward saving and penalize spending. Our overly oil resource depletion based economy based on global commodity pricing of oil is not stable.
A modest PST would provide some degree of stable funding for core government services such as infrastructure maintenance, health care, etc. This makes sense.
Lower personal income taxes would be great. I’m not sure if I agree any longer on flat taxes.
The NDP lowered taxes on small business. They are taking huge risks against long odds and much of their effort, investment etc stays in Alberta.
NDP raised it on large business. Corporate taxes are net of expenses. Spend more, reinvest in the economy and less tax is paid and the economy does better. So higher taxes on larger corporations, which almost by definition are proven successful businesses. Plus in Alberta our largest businesses tend to export / repatriate their profits. A return of and on capital invested.
Last edited by KC; 13-07-2018 at 10:36 AM.
uhhh really?
https://globalnews.ca/news/3315559/a...-past-budgets/
Looks like the koolaid of the right is being drank heavily.
Under the PCs we had a triple A rating! Where are we Notley and gang!?
That triple A rating was lost just as the NDP came into power, which was a result of 40 years of PC mismanagement.
![]()
Last edited by Medwards; 13-07-2018 at 12:31 PM.
Great info in that chart. Alison Redford in the above context might have been our best Primer to date.
Mom said I should not talk to cretins!
It will go back up under the UCP...![]()
...Thanks to the work of the ndp
Things started going south really quickly after Ralph Klein left.
That surplus was 100% because the 2014/15 budget was the last one where energy prices were sky high. The PC's had gotten to a point where the provincial budget could only be balanced if oil was over $100/barrel. Unfortunately, the NDP haven't really taken any concrete steps to rectifying that.
Hmm I’d guess in that style of limited data context too: Britain’s Chamberlain was superior to Churchill because Britain’s finances were better before the war than during the war. My view is that Churchill would maybe have hurt the 1930s British economy by spending on re-arming but that would have been incurring some short term pain for long term gain.
What were the resource increases or decreases for each of the other premiers?
Last edited by KC; 13-07-2018 at 02:30 PM.
Well, the American political expression "yellow dog Democrat" comes from the notion that the Democrats(pre-1960s) could have run a yellow dog in the South, and he'd have won, such was the hatred for the GOP among southern whites. It wasn't meant to imply that southern whites WERE yellow dogs, or even that they resembled them. Just a hyperbolic way of saying that voters don't care about the candidate, as long as he's with the right party.
I took Death Monkey's post in that light. Not making a comment about the personal characteristics of the voters, just their loyalty to one particular party. Though I guess "neo Nazi" does kind of play into stereotypes about rural voters; heroin addicts and child rapists, not so much.
That’s because until recently few people of any political stripe seemed to grasp how our severely flawed economy, which is based on a flawed economic model, works. Being busy doesn’t mean things are going well. Net wealth (profits) only come from the outside. Just as a family busily employing each other to renovate their own home can quickly go bankrupt if none of them are working outside the home, a province busily ensuring everyone is living a great standard of living, either through spending every cent they bring in from selling off the resource wealth, or borrowing based on that resource wealth, can also go bankrupt.
Last edited by KC; 13-07-2018 at 02:41 PM.
Mom said I should not talk to cretins!
The economic and financial volatility of the depression was revisited during the war. Britain lost out. It suffered from massive destruction. It’s postwar years were horrible. It’s finances were largely wiped out. The US gained in the end.
Depressions can and do reoccur. Wars can and do reoccur. To turn a blind-eye to either risk is a sign of mismanagement.
Here in Alberta oil prices spike and they plummet. The PCs after Klein seemed to turn a blind eye to the possibility that oil prices would once again plummet.
Last edited by KC; 13-07-2018 at 02:53 PM.
He took a whole lot short-sighted knee-jerk actions but in the end put the economy in a far stronger financial and possibly sustainable position.
The sad thing is that the very next crew wiped out everyone’s efforts, everyone’s sacrifices and undid it all. Then the ones that followed did nothing to try to salvage what benefits they could from the Klein era. Like Trump today, undoing everything that Obama did. All for short term gains.
The NDP mostly acted as they should have in an economic downturn. Create a soft landing, protect the vulnerable, stabilize the economy, borrow if reasonable (which was the case with record low rates) and spend.
I’d have cut public service wages with a promise to spend all the savings on jobs, job creation, job retraining and business creation. The tax increases the NDP put in hit people with jobs and good incomes including public servants. That’s ok because our economy and all our government services are still is so oil price dependent that everyone essentially needs to take a wage cut to offset royalty revenue declines. It’s insane but no one has the guts to change things, reinvest royalties, raise taxes, introduce consumption taxes in order to replace our short and long term dependence on royalties and foreign investment in extracting and as rapidly as possible depleting all our non-renewable resources, cut government services and standards of living, share hardships (rather than selecting sacrificial lambs) until a much more stable predictable economic model is arrived at.
Last edited by KC; 13-07-2018 at 03:24 PM.
I’d feel like a failure if my life’s work and savings came down to a dependence on a great credit rating.
Government’s can bring forward spending and consumption through their borrowing and they can borrow to invest to earn ever greater returns and they can use their borrowing power to save/subsidize the private sector. It’s all ok if judicially employed.
However, the prime benefit of government borrowing capacity is to use it during a crisis as a stop gap to save the economy, save businesses, save livelihoods, create a soft landing and prevent panic, fire-sale liquidation of everyone’s productive assets and basically a long-term destruction of potentially productive capacity. That is what the NDP did. That is what the PCs were saying they were going to do. And that can’t be done during an economic crisis without hurting the credit rating.
What my family did with our business was to actually save in advance of the need and to prepare with savings and zero debt for the inevitable downturn. That seems impossible though for the province to do - as it had a faux-fiscal-conservative government and now has a new government dealt a bad hand.
Last edited by KC; 13-07-2018 at 03:39 PM.
I was born here in the 1950s and have lived here most of my life. The Klein years were the years that led to the mess we are in today.
http://www.vueweekly.com/ralph_kleins_true_legacy/
H.L. did you know that politics isn't a team sport?
Last edited by RichardS; 14-07-2018 at 08:37 AM. Reason: @$!?++!!! Autocorrect
President and CEO - Edmonton Airshow
I would say absolutely it is a team sport.(and a blood sport)
A year from now....the victors, and themselves....the loyal opposition.
Mandel was behind the UCP and the NDP. Mandel has nothing to offer the province of Alberta..
Mandel, and many others, we're caught up in the wave of discontent. People voted against an establishment...and I know Rachel and team know this. They weren't voted in as much as someone else was voted out. They ran on her name alone. Stephen was ousted on the PC name.
This time, it can't be won on Rachel's name alone as they've had the chance to govern. The PC's are dead, and haven't governed. Plus, many here were saying, "don't worry, she is more Lougheed than not."
So, this time it is going to have to be on policy, not a wave of discontent and anybody but party X. That is what is going to make this vote so interesting.
President and CEO - Edmonton Airshow
There is a huge wave of discontent in Alberta right now, that's why the UCP will win.
There is... but it is not just at the NDP. The UCP also has significant detractors, and yes SDM, that includes rural Alberta.
All it will take H.L. is for one of the loose cannons in the UCP to make people think more than twice. Contrary to my acoustic reaper primate friend, rural Alberta is a lot more savvy than he thinks. Rural Alberta is hurting badly, and Calgary is more progressive than some pundits give it a chance.
Sure, the polls show a strong UCP lead, but let's put one Lake of fire quote out there.
President and CEO - Edmonton Airshow
We'll see
.Imho, the NDP was an experiment, one AB doesn't want to see again.( ever!)
outside of the ucp saying there is a huge wave of discontent, i’m not convinced that tsunami is much more than a ripple on the pond. there was a huge wave of discontent leading up to the last election that elected rachel premier but it took 44 years to build, not 4. her government hasn’t been perfect but it’s been far from the disaster kenney would have you believe. i’m hopeful for the alberta party but their potential will be determined at the local level based in the strength of candidates they can attract. if they are successful at that cumulatively, they may surprise you. if they’re not, rachel may well surprise you once more. kenney seems more interested in power than in what he will do with it and there is an undercurrent with him and the ucp that is more difficult to ignore in a general election than an inconsequential by election.
"If you did not want much, there was plenty." Harper Lee
I have listened to Kenney, and I really like what he has to say. How many times did Notley visit Fort Mac? and Calgary? We see through her, you can carry on loving her..as for the AP, Mandel is way out of his league.
I prefer Notley to Sarah Hoffman, I'd like to punt her out of sight, forever!
^^ I like the Alberta Party a bit better. UCP is too right wing for me. Although I like the guy running for nomination in my riding. Roger Fodjo, has some interesting policies I like; advocating for more seniors programs, working with city planners to obtain an efficient real estate development and engaging the local authority to maintain neglected back alley's in older neighborhoods among others.
Mom said I should not talk to cretins!
Neo-Nazi...that has no connotations that are as repugnant as child rapists...if not moreso?
Loyalty to one party out in Rural Alberta would mean the UFA, or SoCreds would still be in power. Rural Alberta has changed from the fire and brimstone loving world, to one that is absolutely terrified about its future, its economic abilities, and it being pillaged by urban centres. You cannot make a living farming now. Hearing of all these "rural subsidies"...point them out to me, I'm certainly not getting them. Equipment costs are out of reach. The "discount" on fuel is not paying the road tax. Shipments are often stalled. Crop insurance is stupid. Traditional mining industries are going away. Larger urban centres are demanding the vast majority of investment goes into their economic diversification, and the current and past administrations think coming out and using rhetoric like "retraining" works in centres like Ryley or Vauxhall...where they are looking at dissolution in the face. Look at Vegriville...and why I thought the move of the Immigration centre was ill timed.
For example, when Minister Bilous did his Coal Communities tour, people there expected to hear concrete or at least relatively open answers to serious questions on their mind with the transition of the fuel type. Fun fact, coal was already on its way out, especially with the life cycle of the plants out here, and the people were already having their kids go to post secondary and NOT enter the coal industry. They all knew this as TransAlta and others were saying Gas or Hydro since about 2005. Now, with the accelerated shutdowns, people were rightly scared as they still have mortgages, children, schooling, etc. All they received was rhetoric about we are thinking about maybe doing retraining, and then a 30 minute speech about how this is actually Harper's fault. So, instead of being reassuring and gaining support, it fell flat and hundreds of scared people, left even more worried. They had this audience in the palm of their hands...and blew it.
So, what is the urbanist's response? Why, call them callous, ethnic cleansing, gas chamber building, homophobic, backward, sister wife/unca daddy rearing, only using the head for a hat rack voters! Oh, and throw in a dose of drug addiction and child abuse...because that is a uniquely rural blight. Yup, that'll get Rural Alberta on your side.
It's not funny to the "progressive" when people make light of their stereotypes...why is it funny when the shoe is on the other foot? This is why progressives lose so much face in this hypocrisy...and the real reason why rural Alberta largely votes the same. No one offers any better, and all the progressives say is go **** yourself, you neo nazi hick.
President and CEO - Edmonton Airshow
She's okay at journalism. For photo op moments I liked the Jim Prentice/Smith moment. Granted Prentice was Conservative but held many liberal points of view. For example Jim was in favour of a carbo tax/levy even before JT got elected.
Mom said I should not talk to cretins!
Richard:
Again, I don't think that Death Monkey was saying that people in rural areas were child-raping nazi heroin addicts(or even similar to them), just that they are so loyal to the UCP, that even a candidate with highly unappealing personal characteristics could win in those constituencies.
In fact, if he did think that they were all like that, then his hyperbole wouldn't make any sense, since there would be nothing noteworthy about them voting for someone who was like them. But if we assume that, under normal circumstances, they wouldn't like neo-nazi kid-raping junkheads, it becomes all the more remarkable if they would vote for someone like that because he ran under the right banner.
(And no, I don't think he literally meant that someone like that could win; see my earlier "yellow dog Democrat" comparison.)
I do agree that rural Albertans are not eternally loyal to parties, otherwise, as you say, there wouldn't have been any changes in party dominance in the countryside. Though it could be argued that, while they do switch loyalties between right-wing parties, they have not for a long time switched over to the left or even centre-left(the UFA and arguably early Social Credit being the last instances of that). But this is probably a characteristic shared by rural voters in many other jurisdictions as well. Check out the fortunes of the Saskatchewan Party, for example.
Loyal to the UCP...fine. Saying that they would vote FOR...and I quote...
...means that Rural Alberta would vote for...tolerate...accept...and adopt a neo-Nazi, heroin-addicted, toddler rapist as a candidate....In rural Alberta, the UCP could have a neo-Nazi heroin-addicted toddler rapist as a candidate and they would still win by a landslide.
which...by default...would mean that they accept the same...and by extension...would be the same in order to tolerate and vote for the same...
They don't...
I dare you to run a Yellow Dog...or a Neo Nazi, heroin addicted, toddler rapist as a candidate in rural Alberta....
If he/she isn't shot, deficated on, and then buried in a pool of diesel and set on fire (not necessarily in that order), I'd be surprised...
Right wing socially...maybe 40 years ago...but the social conservative is dwindling. Rural folk really don't care...as they have bigger fish to fry. Living out past 60 km from a major centre is not going to land you much...and you're treated like garbage.
Right wing fiscally...yes...as they see just how small a dollar is today. ...and like I said before, the NDP had a chance...and blew it. Bill 6...was a horrid lauch. F-off and die when industry decimates your farm/opportunity...yeah right.
Sure, there are still some fire and brimstone folks...but remember the Alan "lake of Fire" was an Edmonton candidate...and Ron "I'll win 'cause I am white" was CALGARY...both Wildrose...both urban/suburban candidates...but yeah...only in rural alberta. Major race rallies...urban. #Makeitawkward...looks like it happened on 104 st and 100 Ave IN EDMONTON...the downtown bastion of progressives. Was it rednecks in a Ford F150...nope. Looks like a compact car to me.... So, do I label Edmontonians racist neo-Nazis? Hell no. I know better...
\...but if I did...if I dared take a slam at progressive stereotypes...many here would be asking for my head on a platter...
...so why is it ok to slam scared rural voters....scared because they see their livelihood and their character assassinated at every turn due to a few bad apples...as in the #makeitawkward moment? I know the answer...and it is exactly WHY the NDP doesn't stand a chance...and it is not because they want to vote a certain way...it is because the alternative has spent 4 years telling them to f off.
I could tolerate the attempt at hyperbole, but if someone went after progressives...or artists..or a favorite TV broadcaster...I'd bet I'd see a cry to ban the person responsible from the very halls that think it is acceptable...and funny...to correlate rural folk to toddler rapists...let alone gas chamber builders. I'd suggest you don't take me up on that bet...I have the complaints to prove it.
President and CEO - Edmonton Airshow
The UCP has been involved in the following incidents:
- Walking away from votes in the Legislature. This is not the 1932 Weimar Parliament in Germany where the Nazi party walked out and triggered elections.
- The party whip resigning from caucus.
- Two resignations.
"Talk minus action equals zero." - Joe Keithley, D. O. A.
Those sewer rats! How dare they!!!
Should of just said in rural Alberta a magpie could run under the UCP banner and still win by a landslide.
Simple. Point taken. And no excess baggage.
And the weird big spender is finally gone.
Well, they tend to be more hardcore on law and order, I'll agree, but it's outright hyperbole to suggest that they would just automatically defecate on, torture, and then burn in deisel a nazi junkie pedophile(otherwise, we'd be hearing a lot more about that kind of stuff happening in rural Alberta).
Just like it was hyperbole for Death Monkey to suggest that they'd vote for a nazi junkie pedophile if he ran for the UCP.
OMFG people it was an effing JOKE for crying out loud - just chuckle and get over it already.
“You have to dream big. If we want to be a little city, we dream small. If we want to be a big city, we dream big, and this is a big idea.” - Mayor Stephen Mandel, 02/22/2012
Its all in the delivery, although the punch line was messing.
Mom said I should not talk to cretins!
^
which also isn’t funny (as well as probably not true) which is probably why it didn’t go over very well even as a joke.
"If you did not want much, there was plenty." Harper Lee
Understanding America’s Moral Divides - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...ivides/510569/
You mean like the UCP candidate who just won in Innisfail that had worked on the Trump campaign? Appears he has no problems supporting the "grab them by the pussy" candidate and neither do the people that voted for him.
This is not someone who was appalled at Trump's comments or behaviour as he was there at the victory party wearing his MAGA hat.In the final day before voting day, an investigation by Vice.com revealed that Innisfail-Sylvan Lake UCP candidate Devin Dreeshen, son of local Conservative Member of Parliament Earl Dreeshen, was a campaign volunteer for Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.
As part of the investigation, Vice discovered a November 2016 photo of Dreeshen at an invite-only election night event in New York City sporting a red ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap and raising a drink to Trump’s victory.
http://daveberta.ca/2018/07/devin-dr...n-by-election/
So yeah, there's people in Alberta who would vote for someone regardless of their behaviour and strictly because of their party affiliation.
Last edited by kkozoriz; 15-07-2018 at 08:31 PM.
^
probably true enough.
and it’s probably as true for urban as it is for rural voters.
"If you did not want much, there was plenty." Harper Lee
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