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Thursday, June 12, 2008

colbert, m & m, and the cesspooly trenches of partisan politics.

I was planning on taking a bit of a break from writing about the cesspooly trenches of partisan politics for the next couple weeks, but I'll make an exception today for the few points...

- By now, I'm sure everyone has seen what a $25 million public relations campaign couldn't even dream of coming close to accomplishing.

- Former Alberta Liberal MLAs Mo Elsalhy (Edmonton-McClung) and Maurice Tougas (Edmonton-Meadowlark) have started up a blog on Alberta politics. Not very often do Albertans hear from former MLAs, so this should be an ongoing interesting read.

- On the topic of former MLAs, former NDP Edmonton-Calder MLA Dave Eggen is the new Executive Director of the Friends of Medicare. Eggen fills the spot vacated by Harvey Voogd (Voogd stepped down to run for a Ward 3 City Council spot in 2007, he was defeated by Ed Gibbons and Tony Caterina).

- And finally, political differences aside, I want to wish my friend Anand Sharma all the good luck that I can muster in his run for the Presidency of the Alberta NDP at this weekend's convention in Calgary. Good luck, Anand!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to see Eggen still in politics. Hopefully he'll take a run in Edmonton Calder again in 2012 and become NDP leader. They could use a leader like him.

Anonymous said...

Judging by "Mo"s commentary on minimum wage earners and political/government workers, its sad to think that he was always regarded as one of the better Liberal MLAs; even from the other side of the fence.

Provincial NDP convention would be mildly interesting if there were any coverage...not sure we can expect any though, anyone know? Mr. Mason needs to get on with whatever he's doing. Would also love to know who are the publicly "undeclared" prov. ND'ers that will be there.

Anonymous said...

Also, I'll at least give Eggen that he's honest about his political stance as a democratic socialist and everything that entails. He'll at least stand up and say it.

Doesn't do anything to the fact of the viewpoint being largely disregarded, but at least its honest and he speaks about where he comes from. When I've heard him/talked to him anyway...

Anonymous said...

tjk: Mo doesn't say anything about government workers. Parliamentary assistants are Conservative MLAs given a spiffy new title but little actual new work.

Anonymous said...

Anon: I know those things to be both untrue and incorrect respectively.

You really shouldn't say things like: "I bet you, most of those minimum wage earners are smarter and harder working people than most of the ones Eddy surrounds himself with." If three "examples" is good enough for the blogger, then I'll provide 3 as to why this statement is not a good one to make.

1. Its disrespectful and petty. Not to mention extremely partisan for the sake of being partisan. I'm not saying anyone's perfect in this respect, as we could all strive to be better in this sense.

2. Its blatant pandering that voters don't buy and are not interested in. Ooh...look at me taking a shot at the politicos...whoopeee...

3. It trivializes the point that we certainly all strive to have the best standard of life possible for the people in this province. We have different methods, but the same goal (I think anyway).

Points like helping people earn more money and live better lives should not be trivialized. Raising the minimum wage (which even fewer than the statistically identified number make, most of us know that)is a negligible way to help these people earn more. We should focus on having them pay less tax (in an all-around sense) and keeping the economy strong, which leads to much better job prospects and more power for them to command a higher wage, as well as greater opportunities for advancement. END RANT. :-)

A said...

Those aren't examples, T.J. Tsk, tsk.

Anonymous said...

You noticed my "s, did you not? I suppose the things he wrote were more illustrations than anything else. Mine were reasons based on observation. Fun with semantics :-) Should've added reasons after the 3...where's that telepathic typer when I need it...

Anonymous said...

Anyone who claims PA's have little extra workload really needs to do their homework because they are either uninformed or just plain stupid.

Anonymous said...

Anand Sharma did win, he is the new party president.

Anonymous said...

Sharma is President. Now all we need is Eggen as Leader.