{"id":1525,"date":"2007-09-28T01:21:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T05:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1525"},"modified":"2007-09-28T01:21:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-28T05:21:00","slug":"mr-potatoe-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1525","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Potatoe Head"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s getting hard to keep track of all the hits Ed <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_0\">Stelmach&#8217;s<\/span> government is taking (note to opposition researches &#8211; maybe you should save some of these for the election). The <span class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_1\">latest<\/span> involves the&#8230;<em>I am not making this up<\/em>&#8230;&#8221;Idaho-Alberta <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_2\">Transboundary<\/span> Task Force&#8221;, where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/edmontonjournal\/news\/story.html?id=2ad61511-c276-4cf9-9556-23a6bc002cdc&amp;k=26183\">Tory <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_3\">MLAs<\/span> were paid $19,000 for doing absolutely nothing<\/a>. And I&#8217;m not using &#8220;absolutely nothing&#8221; in the sense that Tory <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_4\">MLAs<\/span> aren&#8217;t doing anything for the province &#8211; I mean &#8220;absolutely nothing&#8221; in the sense that it was a non-<span class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_5\">existent<\/span> committee. The committee was tasked with improving the relationship between Idaho and Alberta which by itself is fine, so long as &#8220;improving the relationship&#8221; doesn&#8217;t involve any Alberta politicians tapping their feet in airport washrooms.<\/p>\n<p>The problem appears to be that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\">According to the documents, the only work the task force did was hosting an<br \/>Idaho delegation that came to Alberta for a conference in July 2006.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That must have been one great conference. But, although I found my Larry Craig joke above somewhat funny, the best line goes to Roch Bergeron for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/calgaryherald\/news\/letters\/story.html?id=5b71e380-65e8-4324-a7bc-4490cffb9f53\">this <\/a>letter to the editor in today&#8217;s Herald:<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\">Idaho &#8211; Re: &#8220;$19,000 paid for little or no work,&#8221; Sept. 25.<\/p>\n<p>So, Tory MLA Cindy Ady received roughly $11,500 because she &#8220;was in charge of making sure that we had a good relationship with Idaho.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, Cindy, our family drove through Idaho this past summer, and everyone there was very friendly.<\/p>\n<p>I think you are doing an excellent job.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, there are a couple of ad agencies in Montreal that sure could use your expertise.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s getting hard to keep track of all the hits Ed Stelmach&#8217;s government is taking (note to opposition researches &#8211; maybe you should save some of these for the election). The latest involves the&#8230;I am not making this up&#8230;&#8221;Idaho-Alberta Transboundary Task Force&#8221;, where Tory MLAs were paid $19,000 for doing absolutely nothing. And I&#8217;m not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alberta-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}