Opinion

Will we spend One Hundred Million Dollars for a faster horse

Published

8 years ago

2 minute read

Henry Ford was supposed to have stated; “ If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” It is often said but never proven, but it is indicative of the situation at the time.
I think of this statement, when I am involved in a survey, a planning committee, a budget meeting or anytime at all, when I am involved with planning.
Ford built cars, precipitated somewhat, to the industrial revolution and turned transportation on it’s ear, among many other things. Studebaker took longer to decide to switch from building horse drawn covered wagons to building gas powered vehicles. Today the decision was obvious, but then it required visionaries to buck the established thought and the status quo.
Do we have any visionaries in Red Deer willing to buck the status quo? Is the decision to spend $100 million on the downtown recreation centre just the same as deciding to retarp the covered wagon. Should we build a new aquatic centre in another location, like the area north of the river by Hazlett Lake?
When the Collicutt Centre was first considered it was also a highly controversial item that garnered strong opinions from all sides. Who today, would say it was the wrong decision to go forward? Especially since it is the most widely used facility in Red Deer and helped spur growth in the south east sector of Red Deer.
That discussion was around thirty years ago. The Collicutt Ctr. Itself is closing in on 20 years of age , now. The city is almost twice the size, as when Collicutt was first discussed, but there is no discussion now, about building an aquatic centre in the north west in the thousands of acres of undeveloped land coming up for development around Hazlett lake north of 11A.
So do the citizens of Red Deer want to invest $100 million in a faster horse downtown, or should we build a gas powered tourist vehicle by Hazlett Lake visible to Hwy2 and Hwy11a, traffic? Can we discuss this? Who will buck the established thought or will we just get our faster horse?

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National

Andrew Scheer exposes the Mark Carney Canadians should know

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the X account of Andrew Scheer

Mark Carney spent his entire life promoting the carbon tax.

Now he’s trying to scam Canadians out of billions and to do it he’s put a whole crew together.

It could be the biggest con job in Canadian history. Only YOU can stop it! pic.twitter.com/1DyywsynBN

— Andrew Scheer (@AndrewScheer) February 22, 2025

Daily Caller

NEWT GINGRICH: Europe’s Elites Were Finally Told To Take A Look In The Mirror

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Newt Gingrich

In an amazing show of courage, Vice President J.D. Vance offered an intervention for some of our European allies.

That is the best way to think of the two historic speeches he made in France and Germany last week.

In Paris, Vice President Vance pledged the United States would do whatever it takes to lead the world in the development of Artificial Intelligence. He went on to assert that Europe’s automatic response to regulate technological change rather than adapt to it was doomed to fail.

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Vance warned the Europeans that the Trump administration would retaliate to protect American high-tech companies from being fined and regulated by the European community.

Then, Vance went to the Munich Security Conference. It is the annual meeting of European leaders concerned about defense and threats to peace. The Vice President shocked the Europeans by launching a frontal assault on the decay of their political system.

As Vance put it:

“But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”

He then went through a litany of specific complaints about the behavior of different European countries. They ranged from failing to control immigration, suppressing free speech, and Brussels seeking to control and define futures of independent countries such as Hungary and Romania.

The leading French newspaper, Le Monde (their equivalent of the New York Times) asserted that the American Vice President was declaring “ideological war on Europe.”

Le Monde was right. The European elites have been decaying for at least two generations. They hide behind their privileged status and take ideological positions that feel good but are destructive. Europe’s failures are devastating for most everyday Europeans.

I have personal knowledge about this. I have a Ph.D. in Modern European History – and I have lived in France, Germany, Belgium and Italy. As a young Army dependent, we were living in France when the French Army came back from Algeria, killed the French Fourth Republic and brought back General Charles de Gaulle to establish the Fifth Republic.

It is now the longest serving non-royal government in French history.

The European elites value each other’s opinions more than they value serving the people of Europe. The European elites live in a fantasy world of green policies that destroy industries and jobs, welfare policies which destroy the work ethic, and immigration policies which undermine the popular culture. They simply hope for a peaceful world without a strong military.

Meanwhile, state enforced speech codes protect Islamic extremists at the expense of local citizens.

The result has been a steady decline of European culture, economic development, and defensive capacity.

The Afghan Islamist who wounded more than two dozen people and killed a mother and her two-year-old daughter with a car two days before the supposed security conference signals the willful avoidance of reality at the heart of the elite European worldview.

To be clear, I admire European civilization. I believe America is far stronger and safer if Europe is healthy and capable of growing and defending itself.

I hope vice president Vance’s intervention at least starts European elites thinking about what must be done to revive their continent.

For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.