On Disagreeing with Rex Murphy

who today wrote a piece on populist politics using Ralph Klein as an example. Sorry, Rex. Klein was a despot who took millions from education to finance horse-racing, which he was involved with. Beginning in the 1990s, he unilaterally gutted hospitals, putting thousands of nurses out of jobs, closing wards and entire hospitals, allowing hospitals to become very embarrassingly dirty, filling up emergency rooms, etc. Yeah, he did that; his “didn’t blink” ‘courage’ equalled zero compassion.
Schools he stopped funding, leaving teachers unable to buy the basic books they needed to teach the curriculum. He wasn’t really interested in children or education. Horse-racing, sure.
I think we saw his real colors the night he showed up drunk in a homeless facility and berated the people there for being lazy and not wanting to work. This snapshot showed what an uncompassionate, egotistical, out-of-control premier he was.
No, sorry, Rex. He may have been ‘popular’, but he sold education and health care downhill big-time. Alberta has never really recovered since the ’90s and is a pale shadow of its once exemplary greatness in those basic, key areas.