I can assure the Cochrane Eagle that I won't write anymore of my letters allowing myself to have these sarcastic remarks hurled at me, by my fellow seniors, but hope it's been a good learning curve for the young people. Now you know what happened in the 1990s when us true conservatives were desperately trying to put a stop to Ralph Klein, who always bragged about being a Liberal, and what he was doing to this province. In 2003, six of us formed SUN, Seniors United Now. The idea was that we would voluntarily travel the province talking to our fellow seniors about what Klein using Reform Party policies was doing to them and going to do to this province. Yet even though everything Klein had done had taken money out of their pockets we got called traitors, Communists, leftists, left-wing nuts, or closet-liberals by these ignorant seniors because we didn't think like them. Klein was their hero and could do no wrong. They went around talking about all the wonderful things he had done for us, but when you asked them to give you a list of these wonderful things you got a funny blank stare followed by a moment of silence, then they walked away saying he did lots of things. They had nothing to back their ignorance. They refused to look at the facts and nothing has changed, they still won't . Yet, I was in Alaska, once again last week, talking to the people about what their oil wealth is doing for them, as the internet points out, and I was in Norway three years ago and it's sickening to see what we have lost because of people in our province's ignorance, as oilmen in this province will tell you. If we don't stop them, they will put us in an even worse mess by supporting another former liberal, Jason Kenney, pretending to be a conservative, using Reform Party polices to destroy us. There is nothing smart about supporting governments that are only interested in looking after their own well-being and that of their rich friends. Although oil production in Alaska is a lot lower than what it is in Alberta they have $66 billion in their Alaska Permanent Fund. The people pay no State Taxes and their property taxes are next to nothing, and every man, woman and child has received some $43,000 each in annual dividend cheques since 1982. Yet, our seniors were willing to let Klein give ours away. Pull up the "Alaska Permanent Fund" on the internet if you don't believe me, and pull up "Giving Away The Alberta Advantage" and "Misplaced Generosity," put out by the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute, to see what happened to Albertans. Lawyers, accountants, oilmen, bankers and former MLAs have pointed out that by slashing our royalties and taxes like the Klein, Stelmach, and Redford governments did we lost around $400 billion. Can these seniors prove we didn't? If they had bothered to read the articles about the Carbon tax – such as "When it comes to Emissions Sweden has its cake and eats it too" or " Where Carbon is Taxed" or the one put out by B.C.s Simon Fraser University " The Shocking Truth About The Carbon Tax: It Works" – maybe these seniors wouldn't be showing how ignorant they are today. Whining, as Kenney wants them to do, about the Carbon tax while they ignore what Klein did to them. I was taught many years ago by an MLA from the Lougheed era that you can certainly trust what Universities write, they wouldn't dare tell lies about their government and risk losing their financing. Allan Spiller
