Richard Nixon – daveberta.ca – Alberta Politics and Elections

Dunn’s done. Auditor General Fred Dunn has announced that he will be stepping down in February 2010.

In 2007, Dunn singled out Energy Minister Mel Knight and the Department of Energy for failing to collect billions of dollars in resource revenues over the past 15 years. In 2009, Dunn’s office announced the delay or cancellation of 27 out of 80 planned system and financial audits due to lack of financial resources. At the time, Calgary-Egmont MLA Jonathan Denis was quoted as justifing the lack of funding to the Auditor General by defending the one-year MLA pay freeze:

“Realistically everybody would like more money, I would like more money, but the reality is we froze our pay cheques this year. This is the first time in 15 years we froze our pay cheques. And similarly we don’t want to be giving extra money to departments where that’s not required.”

Now… more than ever. His ideas may now be marginalized within the party he led to office 38 years ago, but the now Stelmach-led PC Party is seeking to revive fond memories of Peter Lougheed‘s victory over Harry Strom‘s Social Credit Party. The slogan for the November 6-7, 2009 PC leadership review, ‘Now… more than ever,’ appears to be an attempt to remind older supporters of their party’s exciting 1971 slogan: ‘Now!‘ Or maybe I’m wrong and the PCs are actually trying to channel Richard Nixon….

Who’s ready for a federal election? With the exception voters in a couple of ridings, Albertans are going to be far off the political radar in any upcoming federal election. While the Conservatives have already nominated candidates in all 28 ridings, the Liberals and NDP have only officially nominated a couple candidates each (Liberals: Jennifer Pollock in Calgary-West, Mary MacDonald in Edmonton-Centre, Rick Szostak in Edmonton-Sherwood Park. NDP: Lewis Cardinal in Edmonton-Centre and Ray Martin in Edmonton-East). With an election seemingly imminent, expect to hear a lot from the New Obama Party when they hold their caucus retreat in Edmonton in a couple of weeks.

american energy independence, 37 years and waiting.

With American President-Elect Barack Obama‘s team preparing to move into the White House, they’ve made one of their goals to achieve self-sufficiency in energy by eliminating current oil imports from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years. With this in mind, ask yourself if this sounds familiar…

…One month following the outbreak of the Yom Kippur Middle East war of October 1973, with the United States deep in the grip of Watergate fever compounded by the anxiety over the Arab oil boycott, former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon appeared on American television to prescribe strong medicine, his antidote for the energy crisis.

Nixon named it “Project Independence.” The challenge facing the United States, he declared, was to regain the strength of self-sufficiency in energy. This was a key to Americans predominance among the nations. “Our ability to meet our own energy needs is directly linked to our continued ability to act decisively and independently at home and abroad in the service of peace, not only for America, bur for all nations in the world.” Calling for “focused leadership” to achieve self-sufficiency by 1980, Nixon likened his challenge to earlier crash programs to develop the atomic bomb and to put a man on the moon. He went on to promise massive public funding for the exploration of American’s remaining energy resources-Alaskan oil and gas, offshore oil reserves, nuclear energy and synthetic fuels from coal and oil shale….

Source: Pratt, Larry, The Tar Sands: Syncrude and the Politics of Oil, Hurtig, Edmonton, Alberta. pp 49 – 50, 1976.

(h/t to Climateer Investing for the reminder)