An another winter passing, another election, and almost as inevitably another conservative government. It all seems, just so regular, like this is really the only way it could be. It appears that the PC which of course is just now the C party had the good fortune to be in power when we struck gold, black gold that is, and it seems the general population has confused the recent prosperity with good governing. Now one ( namely I ) would assume that most people would clear this misconception up when the outgoing premier, Klein, openly admitted that he never really had a plan for Alberta's oil money, and had been pretty much winging it for the last few years. Personally I would think that the reaction in this province would be of outrage, and perhaps even embarrassment that the people we had elected to office really didn't have any plan as to what to do with our oil money. Remarkably there was no such outrage and certainly no embarrassment, maybe this is less remarkable as this is the province which has elected and reelected Ralph Klein on many occasions, clearly we are not particularly venerable to embarrassment by gross incompetence in our political leaders. Proponents of said party would argue that many good things have been done in there time by collecting oil royalties, such as eliminating the deficit. I might counter that a grade seven class with a budget surplus of four billion dollars can pretty much make any problems go away. And as for the royalties it hardly comes as a shock that the government is now under criminal investigation into not charging enough for royalties and for simply not collecting some royalties. Out of the mix, we don't seem to have gained to much infrastructure or investments for a time when oil doesn't exist in this province. Maybe some of this might change under Stelmach, but since he's already running a campaign on ridiculous claims like if we do anything about the environment, everyone is going to lose their job, or if we try to collect a fair amount of money from oil companies they are all going to leave and we are all going to lose our jobs. Stelmach says that unless we give tax breaks to big oil, they will just up and leave for safer markets like Nigeria, or Iraq. So the concept here is pretty much if we are all going to stay happy and employed we all have to play into the hands of Big Oil as much as possible. It has recently been pointed out that if the conservatives win this election that there will have been more one party rule in this province, then in East Germany. But do not despair so much over the past, but the future, since in all likelihood the conservatives will win another election since right now boom times are good times, and people are not concerned if their children face the consequences of climate change being done now or that there might be a time when there is no oil and no money left in the provincial piggyback, voters are mainly motivated by the all mighty dollar, and having it right now, and conservatives are selling this idea, so they have most of the voters in there pockets, and if I'm not being to forward, I assume that the inquiry will find that the Big Oil has them in there pockets, which is clearly because these oil companies have that all mighty dollars in there pockets, and thats insight you can take to the bank. Run-on sentences aside, I have a dream, that one day there will be change in this province perhaps not today, perhaps not even tomorrow, hopefully before its to late to get it right.
