The contributors to this forum range in age from 18 to
80 and are women and men from a variety of backgrounds. We are not affiliated
with any particular political party but to be straight up about it we have not
had much pro-Tory commentary to date. If you feel the current government is
doing a good job, send us an e-mail and we'll post it. It is the debate that we
are after and we think it is missing in today's political climate. You can get a pretty
good idea where we are coming from by reading through our postings. Make sure to
click on the archives to see the older postings.
Why are we doing this?
For many reasons. Under the Klein Tory government, costs
are rising uncontrollably for electricity, natural gas, car insurance, health
care premiums, senior's facilities, long term care, secondary education
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. These cost are hitting everyone; the poor, the
middle class, and the well-off. It's just that the well-off are receiving a very
large annual income tax saving thanks to the Flat Tax scheme that the Tories
implemented a couple of years ago. This costs Albertan's about $1.5 billion a
year; comes from resource royalties that belong to all of us; and are given
primarily to the well-off under the guise of the Flat Tax. Nothing against the
well-off who, for the most part, are hard working, creative, ambitious and often
leaders in our communities. It's just that they don't deserve a bigger piece of
the resource royalty pie than everyone else and many of them agree they don't. Have a look at
The Alberta Flat Tax. Am I missing something? for
details.
Overriding all this however is the lack of serious
opposition to this government. The Liberals and the NDP have devoted members
that work very hard and have developed some comprehensive policies but they are
hampered by a lack of funding and by a media that in general is not willing to
upset the reigning Tories or to do the hard investigative reporting that needs
to be done in this Province.
So this is where we come in. We take no donations and
accept no advertising. Our livelihoods are not threatened by speaking out (we
hope). We are just after an Alberta where everyone gets a fair chance to make a
good life for themselves and gets a fair chance to speak up for what they think
is important.
A final reason we are doing this is to have some fun.
How are the articles organized?
They are organized by date with the most recent being
first on the main page. After a while they get shipped off to the archives where
they are organized both by topic and by date. You can access these from the
links column on the right side of the main page. The most useful archive is the
one organized by topic. Have a look at it
here.
Why don't some of the links work?
Links to articles often don't work after a period
of time. This is because the newspapers in question remove the articles after a
certain period of time for reasons known only to themselves. SUN papers seem to
have a life of about 2 days, Southam papers 14 days, and CBC, thankfully,
seems to keep their articles around forever. We try to reference CBC articles
wherever possible to reduce the extent of this problem.
Can anyone contribute to this
discussion? Yes. If you want to contribute, click on the envelope
to send us an
e-mail If you would
just like us to post your article, attach it to your e-mail and we will post it
provided it is not slanderous, obscene, or otherwise unsuitable. We will post
submissions on all sides of an issue. Indicate if you would like your name
attributed to your submission; otherwise we will post it anonymously and we will
never give out an e-mail address. If you
would like to become a regular contributor to this forum, please let us know and
we will work to set that up.
Even if you do not want to contribute to the discussion,
we would be interested in hearing what you think of this site. Kudos or flak
willing accepted. If you discover any interesting links that you think we should
include, please pass them along.
to send us an
e-mail If you would
just like us to post your article, attach it to your e-mail and we will post it
provided it is not slanderous, obscene, or otherwise unsuitable. We will post
submissions on all sides of an issue. Indicate if you would like your name
attributed to your submission; otherwise we will post it anonymously and we will
never give out an e-mail address. If you
would like to become a regular contributor to this forum, please let us know and
we will work to set that up.