They say that Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith keeps photos of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Ted Byfield in her office … used to, anyway.

The Wildrose Alliance is the party of untrammeled free enterprise, right? Dog eats dog. Big shark swallows little shark. Government has "no business picking winners and losers." (How many times have we heard that one, eh?) It’s just better that way, they promise…

So what was Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith doing yesterday demanding that the Alberta government pick winners and losers?

As long ago as the Ralph Klein regime, cynical conservative politicians from Alberta who wanted to privatize our public health care system have talked up the notion that private corporations do a bang-up job delivering "publicly funded" health care.

Indeed, when the "publicly funded" mantra starts coming out of the mouth of an Alberta politician nowadays it's a certain sign a pro-privatization pitch is next on the agenda. In the Albertan context at least, the phrase has come to be code for "provided for a profit."