Ralph Klein kicked off the provincial election campaign kicking the disabled while they are down. Ralph is using his position as Premier not just as a bully pulpit, but as the pulpit of a bully. Making a caricature of disabled protesters, who rightly demanded a few crumbs from the Alberta Advantage (oil), Klein instead warned them that they looked able enough and that he would crack down on those abusing the system.

This is the same Premier who while drunk in public entered the single men’s hostel in Edmonton seeking out the poor to shove, berate and threaten. His excuse then was he had a drinking problem.

No, he has a poverty problem. He cannot believe that anyone in Alberta — er, his Alberta, isn’t as well off as the members of the PC — the Party of Calgary. (It has become clear that in this election — called for November 22 — the term PC does not mean Political Correctness, nor does it mean Progressive Conservative. It means Party of Calgary. When Klein announced shortly before the election call that his government was giving $3 billion as a “gift” to Alberta municipalities, it looked like another typical Tory election ploy of buying votes with our own money. But in this case there was a twist: the $3 billion was not going to be divided evenly between Alberta’s two largest cities. Rather Ralph’s hometown of Calgary was going to get $1 billion, Edmonton was going to get $750 million based on its population, while the rest of the money was to be spent across the province in smaller cities and municipal districts.)

Ralph likes to bully the poor, people with disabilities, those who protest his decisions — or lack of decisions.

Let’s compare crooks: there is no evidence that people on AISH (Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped) are taking advantage of us. For five years there has been no increase in AISH payments and for the past decade the number of people on AISH has not increased. There are 31,450 Albertans who get $850 a month from AISH. Half that is federal funding and excess federal tax credits for the poor get clawed back by the Alberta government.

That comes out to just over $2.6 million annually, less than the cost of the current Senate election. If people with disabilities work, their wages are used to claw back the $850. If they do work it will be at minimum wage, which is the lowest in Canada. In Alberta, working full-time for minimum wage would earn you $860 a month. The severely disabled are expected to live on $10,200 a year. That is below the national poverty level, no matter who calculates it — StatsCan or Ralph’s pals at the Fraser Institute.

If there is any financial funny business going on it’s in the Legislature, not in the AISH program. Take the health minister’s executive assistant for one. He got $400,000 for giving advice on health care projects, work he supposedly did but did not have any evidence of doing, and he got his contract without tender. We call that cronyism if not criminal. But in Ralph’s World he calls it good government. Let’s see: that $400,000 would support 4,000 severely disabled Albertans on AISH for a year, with spare change left over.

If this were the federal government doing this, Ralph would be joining his Calgary pal Stephen Harper calling the Liberals crooks. Wait it did happen — it’s called Adscam. But this is Alberta, home of the longest-lasting single party government in North America, if not the world. We are a single-party state and have been for over 70 years. First it was 20 years of the United Farmers of Alberta, then 35 years of Social Credit theocracy, and now 33 years of the right wing Tories. That is longer than Castro has ruled Cuba. It is longer than one-party state rule in the Soviet Union.

Ralph likes to refer to the mythical volk of Alberta, as severely normal, so there cannot be anyone poor in Alberta, or any injured workers, or seniors, or people with disabilities. And woe betide those who insist they are not getting a fair shake in Ralphâe(TM)s Volkstadt. Itâe(TM)s the Alberta Advantage über alles.

Peter Elzinga, a long time PC insider and the un-elected deputy Premier for Edmonton, is still managing this election for the party of Ralph, while he is employed by Suncor as legal counsel as they sue the Alberta Government over royalties they owe us.And Ralph is going to lecture people with disabilities on abuse of the system.

With 73 of 85 seats Ralph can bully anyone he wants from his Teflon pulpit. With the aplomb of a King Charles, he can dismiss the legislature as a damned nuisance that gets in the way of his government. Nor does his view of parliamentary democracy include an opposition; they too are nuisances, just as Cromwell was.

He can walk out of the Federal health care meeting to go gambling, dropping some cold Alberta cash into the VLTs in Quebec. He dropped a wad that would have paid the rent and utilities for at least one person on AISH. Ralph likes to drink, so we privatize the government liquor stores. Ralph likes to gamble so we introduce VLTs into bars. On the other hand, women’s shelters in Alberta have to beg for money to meet increased insurance costs.

He can hold another useless Senate election — a $3 million red herring while claiming there is no democratic deficit in Alberta. And like other leaders who follow the dictator principle, Klein dismissed elected health board representatives two years into their mandate because they were not Tories. They were another opposition to his government. He has dismissed school board trustees for the same reason. They voiced opposition to government cuts. Vox Populi is not popular with Ralph. If Ralph and the PCs had their way, every level of government in Alberta would be dominated by Tories and opposition be damned.

The reason for electing another senator-in-waiting — we already have two from the last exercise in futility in 2001 — is because Alberta Tories want to reform the federal government. But no reform is needed in Alberta insists Ralph, where the legislature sits less often than in any other parliamentary democracy. In Alberta, the most important matters of State are decided in closed cabinet meetings.

That should be expected from a Premier who states in the legislature that Augusto Pinochet is just a misunderstood democrat. He was forced to overthrow a democratically-elected government because it was socialist. Them reds got what they deserved. And with unabashed aplomb his evidence for this opinion was an essay he wrote for a university course. The fact he plagiarized whole sections of his essay off the internet was dismissed with a wave of a hand and the iron fist of his Minister of Learning who met with Alberta’s University Presidents and demanded they write public letters of support for Ralph saying he didn’t really cheat on his homework. In Alberta when it comes to the crime of plagiarism, to paraphrase George Orwell, some undergraduates are more equal than others.

Ralph claims there is no democratic deficit in Alberta. In Calgary, home of Canada’s corporations and right-wing lobby groups, all is well for the Party of Calgary and Ralph. This election is being held three and a half years into a possible five-year mandate. And while our Teflon Emperor has proclaimed this is his last election, that will mean Ralph expects to rule until 2010. By that time Alberta may be the last single party state in the hemisphere, including Cuba.