Jason Kenney's Very Bad Bet

 Jason Kenney bet our money on Trump winning. No doubt he was shocked when whatever the GOP was doing to try to ensure a win didn't work. It was supposed to work, you see. Whatever it was. But it didn't, and here we are, with an angry Premier shouting at and blaming everyone else.

We are seeing a grown man who made a very bad calculation, having a very public meltdown. He invested in a risky deal and it fell through. Now he seems to think he is owed some sort of compensation. That really isn't how the world works.

Of course, all that money is a bit of a windfall to TCE. They are cutting their losses and getting out, laying off workers. And they are going out the door with our money. Why isn't Kenney asking for the oil company to give it back? Unless, of course...It was a gift, and the success of the pipeline was neither here nor there.

There have been a lot of gifts to oil and gas from this UCP government. They haven't resulted in the thousands of new jobs Kenney promised. But maybe that wasn't the point...

Promising jobs was maybe just to get elected, and to give cover for doling out billions to friends and donors. Kenney has doled out a lot of our money to friends & donors in the past two years, one of the most egregious being hiring Harper's 24 year old son for upwards of $100K. I mean, honestly, Ben Harper only got that plum job (part-time!) because he is the son of Kenney's good friend and mentor. There's a word for that... Ah, yes, nepotism. Creating a job for a friend's kid, and paying an outrageous salary, for...what, exactly?

But there are a ton of other examples. The War Room, the inquiry into "Un-Albertan" activities, the many panels and advisors who always say exactly what the UCP tells them to say, endorsing foreign-owned for-profit health care...

Kenney and his party seem to think that being in government is a license to reward supporters, curry favour with corporations (many of them foreign, like Australian coal companies), and engage in the worst sort of cronyism, while completely ignoring the needs of regular Albertans

If this bothers you (and it should) please take a moment to write to your MLA, and cc the NDP and the media, because goodness knows, your correspondence is probably going straight into the trash at your MLA's office.

The UCP are not above the law. Jason Kenney is not a king. They are supposed to work for us. They don't appear to be doing that. They appear to be working for themselves and their friends. We need to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that this is unacceptable.