Rachel Notley and the NDP: fresh faces or ruin of Alberta'

Quickly passes her communist agenda, but takes over 24 hrs to declare a state of emergency in the Fort.

It's her advisors who need to be fired. That's where half of this shit comes from.

"communist"

In fairness, communist agendas practically pass themselves. That's part of what makes them so much fun.

Nothing like a humanitarian disaster to bring out the political hyperbole. Shameful.

Nobody expected the fire to spread the way it did. Not Notley, her advisors or the emergency services.

Leave the political bullshit to the side and focus your efforts on meaningful discussion about a tragedy that has no place for partisan politics.

Pretty sure that when the NDP are ousted in three years it'll be like any other election. For all the condemnation that the PC/WRA/whoever nail them with during the campaign they'll end up keeping at least half of what the Dippers put in, including most of the taxes. Gonna be a tough day for the bloviators at the SUN papers, where most of this bullshit comes from, but there will never be a Klein Part Deux era in this province. Things have changed too much since 2000 and no one will ever endorse that kind of reckless cutting in spending and irresponsible tax cuts again.

Nobody expected the fire to spread the way it did. Not Notley, her advisors or the emergency services.

Leave the political bullshit to the side and focus your efforts on meaningful discussion about a tragedy that has no place for partisan politics.

Talking about partisan bullshit, she watched the same reports that everyone else saw on Tuesday and the new reports from over night. She was asked Wednesday morning at 11am if she was going to declare a state of emergency. She said, "we had everything happening that was needed." 5 hours later she was in Ft McMurray declaring a state of emergency. Another politician looking for a photo op with a burning city in the back ground.

Thanks to you 2 numb nutz for coming out tho and showing your concern

goddam commie changes her mind after only a few hours! Shoulda stuck to her guns no matter how wrong it was like a good conservative, eh?

This kind of partisan bullshit is just as bad as the left wing shit-for-brains who have suggested that the fire is karma for oilsands operations in Fort McMurray.

Nobody expected the fire to spread the way it did. Not Notley, her advisors or the emergency services.

Leave the political bullshit to the side and focus your efforts on meaningful discussion about a tragedy that has no place for partisan politics.

^ This.

Yeah, I don't see how the NDP can stay in power, even in a minority situation.

I also agree that there is little desire for massive cuts ala Klein either - everyone still wants schools, hospitals and twinned highways - at least in their part of the province - as well as no sales tax or increases to any other taxes, so the next government is going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place like the Dippers and the PCs under Stelmach/Redford/Prentice.

Frankly, I think the Dippers are a combination of fresh faces and ruin of Alberta.

While I agree with borrowing to fund infrastructure, when you have to borrow for operational costs, something is wrong with the budget in my books. IMHO, they should have found some cuts to prevent at least some of that borrowing. This could have been something like maybe instituting a hiring freeze for all but the most critical cases (like maybe replacing retiring nurses), and a announcement that a wage freeze is coming for upcoming public sector unions (many of whose contracts are coming up for renewal in the next few years) would have been a good idea too.

I also think that the economy could handle one of their major policy changes at a time (carbon tax, minimum wage hikes, Farm Bill, early shutdown of coal-fired electricity, etc.), but by piling them all up on us over the course of a year or two, I think they are risking doing serious damage to the economy, by killing off companies like this greenhouse operation in southern Alberta:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/a ... -1.3368376

All in all, I think the biggest problem is the Dipper's rush to push through all of their agenda in a couple years - had they spaced some of this out, I think it wouldn't be soo bad.

If I was a right winger in this province though, I'd be rejoicing, because of all these changes and their refusal to take a more moderate stance, I think the Dippers have set the progressive movement in Alberta back substantially. After they leave office in 2019, it will almost certainly be at a generation or two before Albertans ever consider a progressive government again.

Alberta has been badly run for decades, closer to KSA than Norway. More of the oil revenue should have been saved for the bad times.

That money got sent to Quebec, and other places. Norway wasn't busy sending money to Sweden, Denmark, or Finland.

Yes it should have.

Had Getty, Klein and the other PC Premiers after Lougheed followed through with the Heritage Trust Fund, it would be worth somewhere between $150-200 billion, and we could use the interest it generates to either reduce or eliminate our current deficit. Even a 5% return would equal between $7-10 billion we could use.

However, none of them had the courage to put in 30% of resource revenues and most of them raided it of every cent of interest in generated. Klein alone pulled nearly $13 billion out of the HTF. Thirty years after Lougheed left office, the HTF is a platry $4 billion higher than it was when he left office.