Where's That Damn Calculator

Lyle Oberg the man who would be Premier but ended up as Treasurer can't find his calculator so the Spring sitting of the Alberta legislature will be delayed.

The session, Ed Stelmach's first as premier, was originally slated to begin in the last week of February. But the date is now being pushed back to March 7 to give the government more time to prepare. The delay comes less than three weeks after finance minister Lyle Oberg admitted the 2007 budget would not be ready until April, rather than March, as is the norm.

Apparently the session will be delayed because he is counting all the billions on his fingers and toes.

No big deal they do all the real business in Cabinet. After all the only deficit in Alberta is a democratic deficit.

The May 2006 report Fiscal Surplus, Democratic Deficit by the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute, not only correctly predicts this year's actual surplus, it also points out that the Alberta government has been wrong in its revenue projections for at least the last thirteen years.

More specifically, the report calculates that in each of the last six years, the government has underestimated revenues by an average of $4.3 billion per year.

This attitude was confirmed by Mr. Klein last fall when he told the media that the unbudgeted surplus was none of the legislature's business. Given Alberta's track record in budgeting, what the premier was saying was that the legislature should have no say in how to spend 20 to 25 per cent of the province's revenue.

For more on Alberta's democratic deficit see Daveberta's review of Kevin Tafts new book democracy derailed.

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Democratic Deficit

Ed Stelmach

Lyle Oberg



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Poll Predicts War On Iran

It's a good thing that the Bush White House doesn't develop its policies and strategies based on polling. American Majority Predicts War with Iran


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Iran


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PC=Liberals

I was always a Progressive Conservative, I am a Progressive Conservative and the Liberals are Progressive Conservative, said Garth Turner in his press conference with Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. And Dion didn't blink.

Well that settles that. We now know what 'progressive' means when Liberals and Liberalbloggers use it. Small p for progressive, small c for conservative.

The Big Red Tent is home for Red Tory's; Turner, Stronach, Brison.

I look forward to Garth blogging at Liberalbloggers and Progressive Bloggers since he was unceremoniously kicked off the Blogging Tories several months ago.

Of course it won't be the same old principled independent Garth of the past year because he has agreed to abide by caucus and party solidarity, Dion said so. Well maybe, I couldn't see Garths hands he may have had his fingers crossed when he said Yes, when asked by reporters.

And while there are few tears being shed over at the Blogging Tories, well lets just say they are the hardline right.

And while Garth may be a maverick, his sharp knife jabs at Harper and the Conservative party, at the press conference, claiming they abandoned their PC and Reform roots for the politics of fear, well that says a lot.

The centrist politics of the Dion Liberals bodes ill for the Harpocrites. After all as Garth said his choice was Liberals or Green. NDP never crossed his lips.

So folks if ya want to really be progressive and not just PC well then ya gotta move left.

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Garth Turner



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Groupthink

We sometimes overlook the most obvious connection between deniers, those who deny global warming, those who deny evolution and those who deny the holocaust.

They suffer from the same kind of groupthink and conspiracy theories.

Its not denial they say, it's debate they want, the facts are not irrefutable, there is evidence to the contrary.

For a long time Bradley Smith has tried to present himself as an honest chap, a champion of intellectual freedom simply seeking an "open debate"about the "holocaust controversy [sic]." But this debate is a sham. The so-called holocaust controversy does not exist. It is the invention of a collection of long-time anti-Semites and apologists for Hitler.

On the surface, Holocaust deniers portray themselves as individuals and groups engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and "truth."

Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term "revisionism" in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise. After all, the ongoing challenge to and revision of previously accepted historical interpretation is one of the hallmarks of the professional historian's craft.

Of course most holocaust deniers are right wing kooks that even other right wingers disavow or do they? Not so. Once upon a time they had powerful business backers, and in many cases still do today.

Like Robert Welch Jr. who founded the John Birch Society. Today the Birchites focus their criticism on immigration, legal or illegal and the UN. There are many in a variety of right wing movements, like the Minutemen, whose roots go back to the sixties and the World Anti-Bolshevik Movement which gave succour to post WWII fascists.

The right wing is inundated with conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers and neo-fascists. And ideological differences aside they are part of the 'mainstream' right, they are backed by private business interests and the tactics they have developed over fifty years of lobbying in the United States remain the same.

Because they are effective. Deny that your opponents have evidence, claim something is a theory, not a fact and viola, their views are challenged for there creditability.

Thus the same argumentative tactic used to deny the holocaust is used to deny evolution and used to deny climate change. It is groupthink on the right. And the argumentative style does not change, the subject of the attack does.

And it is always tinged with conspiracy theory, that the scientific or historical facts are being foisted on us because it is consensus reality, consensus of those in power it is not the 'real thing'.

So all the historians that accept the holocaust are establishment historians not 'real' historians. Scientists that accept evolution or global warming are not 'real' scientists.

The only place that a climate change science consensus exists is in what Essex and McKitrick call 'Official Science', the collective voice of governments and other so-called 'science authorities'. But this is not real science.

The Climate Change Deniers have money and powerful connections they have used to discredit their opponents, in this case other scientists and academics. And sometimes do so to end careers, literally terrifying their opponents into silence. Certainly a form of fascism.

"There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disrepute," he says. "And Kevin [Trenberth] is a likely target." Mann agrees that the scientists behind the upcoming IPCC report are in for a rough ride. "There is already an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC by climate change contrarians," he says.

Many of the IPCC's authors, some of whom asked not to be named, say this is a smokescreen. They claim there is an extensive network of lobby groups and scientists involved in making the case against the IPCC and its reports. Automobile, coal and oil companies have coordinated and funded past attacks on them, the scientists say. Sometimes this has been done through Washington lobby groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose officers include Myron Ebell, a former climate negotiator for George W. Bush's administration. Recently, the CEI made television advertisements arguing against climate change, one of which ended with the words: "Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution, we call it life." CEI's past funders include ExxonMobil, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.

The money trail

Some sceptical scientists are funded directly by industry. In July, The Washington Post published a leaked letter from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), an energy company based in Colorado, that exhorted power companies to support the work of the prominent sceptic Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Worried about the potential cost of cleaning up coal-fired power plants to reduce their CO₂ emissions, IREA's general manager, Stanley Lewandowski, wrote: "We believe that it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists... In February this year, IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels."

The Fraser Institutes response to the IPCC report was a long time in the making, and a coordinated effort between them and the anti-climate change lobby, the flat earthers, in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. And the organizations, front groups really, are all interconnected.

It was planned years ago, as new front organizations sprung up over the past three years in preparation for the IPCC report. While the Fraser Institute like its American counter-part the Cato Institute have existed since the seventies, groups like Canada's Natural Resources Stewardship Project, and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition are all relatively new lobbying groups. Even the older Friends of Science. was only created in 2002.

The push was on by the right and their big business backers when they saw the writing on the wall after Kyoto was signed. One faction of capitalism endorsed Kyoto, another was ambivalent, and a handful, but a powerful handful, vehmently opposed Kyoto.

Having lost the war they now engage in a protracted series of battles to attempt to inundate doubt in the public mind, using fronts like Junk Science.com and Fox News, various assorted right wing media mouthpieces in Canada, Europe and America. They know they have lost, but if in anyway they can hold back radical changes required to deal with the heat death of the planet, to save their industries they will. Victory to them is to delay change.

And they will never go away, another issue will come to the fore that they can delay, attack, undermine, and deny. And the consipiratorial politics of denial will once again be used.

The Right Wing exposes the Janus nature of the ruling class. One face appeals to the public as liberal, seeking to ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalism, the other jingoist, nativist, reactionary seeks to dominate through demagoguery and populism. One is enlightened capitalism the other is fascism. Both are false choices.

The alternative is, as it has always been for the past one hundred years, Barbarism or Socialism.



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Fraser Institute

Environment

Conspiracy Theory

Fascism

Anti-Semitism


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Echo Chamber

Here we have more of the same echo chamber of the Flat Earth society of climate change deniers quoting each other without referencing they belong to the same old boys club.

For instance we get this right wing column in the London Free Press, a Quebecor/Sun newspaper,

Kyoto penalizes those trying to do good
The not-so-green cynics at the Small Dead Animals blogsite have dubbed Suzuki's tour, Flakes on a Plane, and worry about the amount of emissions-spewing fossil fuels Suzuki himself will burn up by the time his tour wraps up in Victoria.

Cynics? Cynics? Rightwhingnutbars is more like it. But of course this columnist is a member of the SDA fan club so he puts them in a charitable light.

And we have this report published in the Canadian Free (sic) Press

Asking the right questions about climate change

And the folks asking those right questins are

The Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), a Canadian non-profit group, including a number of leading climate change sceptics, was launched October 12, 2006.

And they quote their pals in the Fraser Institute. As I pointed out here when they quote each other they fail to say they all belong to the same small circle of friends. Which is journalistically and intellectually dishonest, to say the least.

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Fraser Institute

Environment


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God Created Global Warming

Yep when you break down the arguments from the right that's what it comes down to.

Global Warming, like AIDS, is all part of Gods plan.

Global warming is a given. The cause of global warming is questioned. Some scientists blame man, just as many other scientists contend we are undergoing one of Earth's natural warming cycles.

Our planet has been cooling and warming since God created it.


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Creationism

Environment

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Al Gore A Tory?

File this under all is fair in love and war and politics...

In answer to a question in Palrliament today, Environment Minister, and Mouth that Roared, John Baird, he who is never without a newspaper to quote from, quoted Al Gore saying that Canada punched above its weight when it comes to championing the environment.

(source unkown and you will have to wait till tommorow for the exact quote to appear in Hansard)

My, my will wonders never cease. It's the Jolly Green Make Over of the Tories.

Of course we know this is all this recent conversion on the road to Paris, they still deny Kyoto, is superficial.

After all remember the last time a Tory Minister quoted Al Gore.

I hope they all plan to attend this event, if not to embrace Gore at least to get his autograph,

Former US vice-president Al Gore will give a public lecture at the University of Toronto Feb. 21, addressing the threat of global climate change. ...

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Baird

Environment



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Principles and Independence Fini

It's the last time you will see this.....principles, gone, independence, gone.....looking forward to his new banner spin...

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Garth Turner



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Who Said It First

The echo chamber of the Blogging Tories, the National Post and the New Canadian Government, having all the Alberta MP's , have now gotten through to their pals in the Media Room of Premier Ed Stelmachs office. Which prompted his latest Klein like outburst.

But before Mark Holland of the Liberals said anything about the need to slow down tarsands development this guy said it first, and not a peep, nary a word, not a comment from the BT's or the Harpocrites, heck not a word from Fast Eddie either.......


Former premier, Peter Lougheed criticizes oil sands development

CALGARY, Jan. 24 /CNW/ -The next episode of Energy-TV includes a candid
interview with former premier, Peter Lougheed following his keynote address at
the Oil Sands Supply & Infrastructure conference in Calgary. Lougheed
delivered a speech that was critical of both the petroleum industry and the
provincial government's management of oil sands development.
In an exclusive Energy-TV interview, Lougheed bluntly discusses his
concerns about the rapid oil sands development including a call for a review
of the capital expenditure aspect of oil sands projects and how the rising
cost overruns are impacting the royalties collected from oil sands reserves.
He also examines alternatives for cleaner oil sands development, such as not
using natural gas for bitumen production, alternative energy sources and his
views on fresh water use.

Former premier says bitumen should stay in Alberta

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Lougheed told delegates at an energy conference in Calgary on Tuesday that the provincial government should firmly link the licensing of new projects to the processing of bitumen at home.

"I just find it completely unacceptable that our resource involves shipping jobs down the pipeline with bitumen to the United States."

Lougheed, the keynote speaker at the two-day Oilsands Supply and Infrastructure conference at the Hyatt Regency, said shipping bitumen south is a temporary solution in an overheating economy, but it shouldn't be part of the long-term plan.

Note the dates, and this is not the first time Lougheed has said this......

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Stelmach

NEP

TarSands

Alberta

Environment



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Shower With A Friend

That is Alberta Preimer "Fast" Eddie Stelmach's suggestion to Albertans. Big Oil is not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, no siree, its you and me he says.

Stelmach promised that his government will set mandatory emissions intensity targets this spring, but he suggested individual Albertans can help by conserving electricity and hot water.

And of course following that logic we all use much more water than the TarSands do, NOT, so we should all shower with a friend to help save Alberta's water. Can you spell goof; EDDIE.

The premier said it's wrong to place all the blame for greenhouse gases on the energy sector.

"The energy sector is number 1 (in emissions), but of course every time you put on your lights in the house or turn on your TV, you're using electrical energy," said Stelmach.

"So it's going to require all Albertans working toward one common goal."

In dry Alberta, conflict over water has been going on for years, fuelled by an industry that, it's estimated, requires between two and 4.5 barrels of H2O to produce a single barrel of crude. Moreover, while Canada boasts 20% of the world's freshwater, Alberta gets by with only 2.2%.

As I said here before when Conservatives accept the need to do something about Global Warming they will say it is an individual problem, not a problem of capitalism.

The reason for the outburst is Fast Eddie is all upset over comments made by the Liberals but was deafeningly silent over threats from his pals in the New Conservative Government of Canada to introduce a new NEP.

And Eddie claims voluntary caps are working!! Funny that's not what Harper and Baird say.

But Mr. Baird did say something of great note, something that those in the business community, especially oil and gas, have been lobbying successfully against for 15 years. Said Mr. Baird: "Voluntary compliance is not enough. We actually have to regulate. Those regulations have to be enforceable." And, he said, these regulations will be tougher than anything the Liberals ever proposed.

Someone should get the Federal and Provincial Tories on the same messaging page.

Oh wait they are, the Feds want to cap "emmision intensities", which will NOT result in a decrease in Greenhouse gases as Alberta has already shown.

And Fast Eddie needs his newly appointed Tory Media hacks to properly brief him, they are no longer working for the Sun.....

Stelmach also threw out some figures Monday suggesting Alberta has taken a leading role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Alberta is the only province on record that has actually reduced CO2 emissions by 16 per cent," he said.

But the premier later conceded he was talking about so-called emissions intensity, which is a measurement against the growth in industrial production rather than a total measurement of what's coming out of the smoke stack. If a company increases emissions at a slower rate than it increases production, then emissions intensity is reduced even though absolute emissions have increased.

An Alberta Environment official later confirmed that total emissions have increased by 40 per cent since 1990, but emissions intensity is down by 16 per cent over the same period.

Ouch!!!

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Stelmach

NEP

TarSands

Alberta

Environment



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