funk it up

Ignore the last post please... i'm back... i never really left...

I decided that I wanted to "funk" up my blog a bit, the funky '897' above is the result... once I finally figure out HTML, then watch out...

Now... to politics...

------------------------------------

Rich Vivone, the publisher of Insight into Government suggests that the PC Leadership race to replace Ralph Klein would be a little more interesting if 3 new people would join.

The names Vivone suggests are:

- Former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning.
- Current Finance Minister & Drumheller-Stettler MLA (since 1987) Shirley McClellan (awful, awful picture...).
- Calgary Southeast Conservative MP Jason Kenny.

I must say, I agree with Vivone. The current race, though it may have the potential to be nastily entertaining, looks pretty boring. Woo hoo. Jim Dinning... (insert extreme sarcasm here)

I get the feeling that Mr. Dinning is going to be the 'Paul Martin' of the Tory Leadership race - the former Finance Minister who 'tamed the budget' and 'will reinvest in our province' - the 'it's time to do politics differently' establishment candidate. (Plus, a minority government would do Alberta good!)

------------------------------------

The 26th Session of the Alberta Legislature continued this week with Premier Klein and Transport Minister Lyle Oberg ducking and dodging opposition questions about the Governments privately owned fleet of airplanes. According to Oberg, Ministers, who are all free to use the planes, operate on the honour system when filing in the flight logs.... no accountability, no transparency...only the honour system....

It got even more interesting this week when Liberal Opposition Leader Kevin Taft questioned whether the Government was using the planes to jet corporate lobbyists around the province.

According to Taft's Press Release:

"information obtained from the government’s flight manifests which details one R. Love flying from Calgary to Edmonton and Edmonton to Fort MacMurray on March 29, 2004. These flights were taken the same day as a press conference about the Fort MacMurray oilsands railway service in Fort MacMurray.

Rod Love was working as a consultant at the time for the Athabasca Oilsands Transportation Corporation. His primary role was lobbying the government to invest over $300 million into the project."

Of course, this is referring to Premier Klein's longtime political advisor and current Chief of Staff, Rod Love.

Wow, who knew that being Premier of Alberta meant you could fly your buddies around in taxpayer funded planes?!?!