PHOTOS: CNRL Executive Chairperson N. Murray Edwards, a billionaire. (Wikipedia photo). Below: Twitter gadfly Dave Beninger (Facebook grab), Law Professor Catherine Brown (University of Calgary photo), former Alberta Premier Alison Redford and billiona…
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Alberta Politics: Tories’ Senate gambit shows Harper still runs the party and the party still holds Parliament in contempt
PHOTOS: The Senate chamber, empty, as it should be. Below: Stephen Harper, apparently still the de facto leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Conservative Opposition…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Baked Alaska and the Fraser Institute: what changes, and what doesn’t, when oil prices fall and the money melts
PHOTOS: Alaska Governor Bill Walker illustrates about how much is left in the northern state’s budget now that oil prices have gone south. (Alaska Dispatch News photo.) Below: The wild rose, official flower of both Alaska and Alberta; baked Alaska, g…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Big Tobacco’s doubtful claim high taxes encourage cigarette smuggling finds support on Alberta’s Wildrose benches
PHOTOS: Young cigarette smokers in 1910. The tobacco industry and its friends on the Opposition benches think high tobacco taxes are a problem. Below: Wildrose Party Finance Critic Derek Fildebrandt, an advocate of this view; NDP Finance Minister Joe C…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Go figure! Major tobacco corporation’s unique Alberta lobbying effort focuses on Wildrose finance critic
PHOTOS: The benefits to young people of a low-tax regime for cigarettes. Real portrayals of the joys of smoking may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Cigarette smuggling – bad for the books for sure; Wildrose Party Finance Critic Derek Fildebrandt, whose 2012 Canadian Taxpayers Federation publication argued contraband cigarettes
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fast food and fair wages: What happens when a good idea from Alberta hits the big time in New York?
PHOTOS: New York, New York … You gotta love it! Below: Fast food, New York City style. Below that: New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Alberta’s New Democratic Party government got a powerful boost from an unexpected quarter yesterday for its plan, which is controversial
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Alberta is not Greece yet’ … Why do we have to pay for Jack Mintz’s mythmaking?
PHOTOS: Calgary in the near future, as fancifully described by the usual suspects at the University of Calgary, if the NDP doesn’t start delivering Conservative polices with alacrity. Below: U of Calgary Professor Jack Mintz, grabbed from Imperial Oil’s annual report; former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge. VICTORIA, B.C.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Speech from the Throne: NDP’s new political funding rules turn the Tories’ world upside down
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley gives a thumbs up in the Legislature for her government’s Speech from the Throne yesterday. Below: Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell reads the speech (Government of Alberta photos). There weren’t any real surprises in the Notley Government’s first Speech from the Throne yesterday, although the ban
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Hockey millionaires and pharmacare tell you everything you need to know about who the Canadian Taxpayers Federation really works for
The Montreal Canadiens in 1912-13. Now the highest-taxed hockey players on the continent, they’re still the best and likely to stay that way. Below: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions President Linda Silas; U.S. anti-public-health-care fruitloop and Canadian Taxpayers Federation ally Grover Norquist. For a while now it’s seemed as if
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Campaign Diary Volume 11: The uncomfortable truth about taxes and radical tax cuts
Radical cuts can’t be accomplished without harm – anyone who says different, like the city council candidate above, is presenting an illusion. Actual St. Albert city council candidates may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The philosopher Aristotle. A St. Albertan has asked me the tough question that all city
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Uh-oh! Premier Alison Redford wants to have a ‘conversation’ with us
Fireside chats? Alberta Premier Alison Redford as she’ll likely see herself while softening up the province’s citizens for the March 7 Budget Speech on CTV tonight. Below: Ms. Redford as Albertans may see her. Below that: the real Ms. Redford; Conference Board Chief Economist Glen Hodgson. Oh dear. Premier Alison
Continue readingImpolitical: Republicans on the no new taxes road to ruin
The Republican party in the U.S. has taken that road for almost two decades now and our Prime Minister has imported that no new taxes philosophy to Canada. Conservative sycophants all over the country have followed his lead. Yet at years end, take a look at what’s happening in our
Continue readingBullshit in absolutes: or how ‘liberal’* economists argue with themselves
We can perhaps amend an old Ethiopian saying to read “absolutes are for infants and kings”. It is catechism worth remembering when arguing with liberal economists. For theirs is not a just sport. In fact, one should never mix sport with justice. As Berlin said long ago (1958): Everything
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