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In the second part, start at 10:05 for that, if Bernie actually means this, then he should be the next President of the United States.
If he has an actual commitment to justice, and this isn’t just rhetoric… this may indeed be me looking to the east by light of the fifth day.
Hey folks,
The fascists are once again in power here in Alberta. They will soon be deconstructing all the careful people centric legislation that our provincial NDP has enacted the last years.
“The UCP has made no secret it will scrap the carbon tax, but it would also kill (and spend taxpayer dollars to review) the NDP government’s entire Climate Leadership Plan.”
Future generations, go frak yourselves. We need money and jobs in the short term and our political thinking is a reflection of our shortsighted nature.
“The current large emitter tax would be replaced with a new Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) program. The first $100 million of TIER would fund new technologies to reduce carbon emissions (the party cited improved oilsands extraction technology and carbon capture as examples) and $20 million would go to the energy “war room.” The rest will fall into general revenue. That change would likely sound a death knell for both Energy Efficiency Alberta, which oversees projects solely funded by the carbon tax, and Emissions Reduction Alberta, an arms-length agency established in 2007 and a recognized world-leader funding research technology with carbon tax dollars.
Getting rid of effective human habitation preserving programs is the order of the day.
“Under an Open For Business Act, the UCP would introduce a $13/hour youth minimum wage, publish economic data on the NDP’s minimum wage increase, allow banked hours to be paid at regular instead of time-and-a-half pay, and restore mandatory secret ballots for union certification.”
Because youth who have the agency to work should not be rewarded with a quasi-livable minimum wage. Overtime? Get bent workiers. Oh, and let’s make it harder to unionize, because nothing says ‘open for business’ like an exploited working class.
“It would reduce the business general income tax rate from 12 to 8 per cent over four years in the hopes of creating jobs, “
Because trickle down economics has been shown to fail in almost every jurisdiction that it has been implemented in. It does not stimulate economic growth, nor does it create jobs. It creates bigger dividends for shareholders and more profit for the wealthy elite. I’m so happy the working class has voted overwhelmingly to enrich the business class.
“and replace farm safety Bill 6 with a Farm Freedom and Safety Act. However, the party would maintain some employment law changes made under the NDP, including provisions around long-term, bereavement, domestic violence and child illness leave.”
Farm workers obviously don’t need rights. They need to be as vulnerable and exploitable as possible. Remember folks, work through your injuries or we can replace you with another desperate person.
“The party pledged to develop a 10-year tourism strategy focusing on jobs, “reorient” the mandate of Travel Alberta towards public-private partnerships, and make the department the responsibility of the Economic Development Minister.”
Ineffective private/public partnerships serve only to enrich the private sector and are inefficient ways to get public works done. But let’s make it a priority because efficient public works are for dirty socialists.
“The Alberta Energy Regulator’s board of directors would be fired by a UCP government”
Let’s change the Energy REGULATOR because they hold a balanced view toward the environment. We need someone to make Alberta great again and burn some coal and deregulate all the things so we can screw the public, raid the treasury, and make the business class even richer than before.
I for one am totally pumped to embrace the upward transfer of wealth in our society. I can hardly contain myself as I consider the upcoming gutting of the public and social services. Tickled pink (or perhaps I should say UCP blue), am I.
Doesn’t matter. The Make Alberta Great Again Tide doesn’t care about corruption.
Hey folks,
It is election day here in Alberta, and I need all of my followers and friends to get out there and participate in the democratic process. All the election information you need can be found at the Elections Alberta Website.
Remember, you need to vote to prevent some darn potato from doubling the efficiency of their dullard vote in your riding. We must keep the damp squibs at bay. :)
Now for the partisan section. Alberta, can we please not return to the conservative horror show that is the already corruption ridden United Conservative Party? I’m not quite done with feeling the more people first attitude of the current NDP government and would like people in power that do not automatically bend a knee to big oil interests in our province.
So yah, I’m still with Rachel Notley and would be very happy to give her and the NDP 5 more years of governance in Alberta.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley speaks to reporters about her first cabinet meeting in Calgary, Alta., Wednesday, May 27, 2015.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Here is hoping that Albertans are not as far right and baffled by bullshit as they seem to be.
I’m not a regular listener to conservative talk radio show host Charles Adler. But earlier this week, tens of thousands of Albertans gathered around their radios like it was the 1930s, to listen to what was some of the most compelling talk radio you’ll ever hear.
It was a remarkable extended interview between Adler and his friend Jason Kenney. Adler played back the now-famous clip of UCP MLA Mark Smith comparing women who choose to have abortions to murderers and saying that homosexual love isn’t real love.
Kenney was offered chance after chance by Adler, who clearly wanted Kenney to show some empathy, some contrition, and for Smith to face any kind of consequences. But no, in a moment that will define his political ambitions and potentially the outcome of this election Kenney chose to stand by Smith.
He chose to dissemble, to obfuscate, to spin.
Given the 2012 “lake of fire” election and the backlash around GSAs in 2014/2015, that helped sink the Prentice PCs it’s a remarkable misreading of the desires of Alberta’s voters – voters who spoke very clearly in 2012 and 2015 that the rights of their fellow Albertans are very dear to their hearts when they head to the voting booth.
But this is part of a wider trend, where Kenney just doesn’t seem to understand Alberta voters in 2019.
Yeah, we need to vote in the abortion is murder, tax breaks for the rich, party. Can we not, Alberta?
From the Time article –
“When asked about the sizable chunk of the population who thinks that equal pay is a non-issue, Patel suggests that it may come from a lack of first-hand experience.
“If you’re not living it,” he says, “maybe you’re blissfully unaware.”
Funny how that happens when the status quo happens to be your friend.
A soldiers exit essay on leaving the US war machine.
What I Won’t Be Missing
“It’s time to wave goodbye to a litany of absurdity that I witnessed in the institution to which I dedicated my adult life. Some peers, even friends, may call this heresy — a disgruntled former major airing dirty laundry — and maybe in some way it is. Still, what I observed in various combat units, in conversation with senior officers, and as a horrified voyeur of, and actor in, two dirty wars matters. Of that, I remain convinced.
So here’s my official goodbye to all that, to a military and a nation engaged in an Orwellian set of forever wars and to the professional foot soldiers who made so much of it all possible, while the remainder of the country worked, tweeted, shopped, and slept (in every sense of the word).
Goodbye to the majors who wanted to be colonels and the colonels who wanted to be generals — at any cost. To the sociopaths who rose in the ranks by trampling on the souls of their overburdened troopers, trading lives for minor bumps in statistics and pats on the shoulder from aggressive superiors.
Goodbye to the generals who led like so many lieutenants, the ones who knew the tactics but couldn’t for the life of them think strategically, eternally proving the Peter Principle right with every promotion past their respective levels of incompetence.
So long to the flag officers convinced that what worked at the squad level — physical fitness, esprit de corps, and teamwork — would win victories at the brigade and division level in distant, alien lands.
Farewell to the generals I served under who then shamelessly spun through Washington’s revolving door, trading in their multi-starred uniforms for six- and seven-figure corporate gigs on the boards of weapons manufacturers, aka “the merchants of death” (as they were known once upon a distant time), and so helped feed the unquenchable appetite of the military-industrial beast.
Farewell to the senior generals, so stuck in what they called “their lane” that they were unwilling (or intellectually unable) to advise civilian policymakers about missions that could never be accomplished, so trapped in the GWOT box that they couldn’t say no to a single suggestion from chickenhawk militarists on the Hill or in the Oval Office.
Goodbye to the devotees of American exceptionalism who filled the Army’s ranks, stalwart evangelists of a civic religion that believed there was a secret American inside every Arab or Afghan, ready to burst forth with the slightest poke from Uncle Sam’s benevolent bayonet.
Ciao to staff officers who mistook “measures of performance” (doing lots of stuff) for “measures of effectiveness” (doing the right stuff). I won’t miss the gaggles of obtuse majors and colonels who demanded measurable “output” — numbers of patrols completed, numbers of houses searched, counts of PowerPoint slides published — from already overtasked captains and the soldiers they led and who will never learn the difference between doing lots and doing well.
Goodbye to battalion and brigade commanders who already had their hands full unsuccessfully “pacifying” entire districts and provinces in alien lands, yet seemed more concerned with the cleanliness of troopers’ uniforms and the two-mile-run times of their units, prioritizing physical fitness over tactical competence, empathy, or ethics.
Godspeed to the often-intolerant conservatism and evangelical Christianity infusing the ranks. […]”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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