We’re being gradually roped like dopes into accepting a sales tax

Endless spending has put province in a spot where the Alberta Advantage is doomed

Personally, I always thought the first Ali-Frazier fight shaded it but those who consider the Rumble In The Jungle the greatest sporting event of the 20th century won’t get much argument from me.

An aging, once upon a time greatest of champs, against that very demon of a man who’d recently destroyed legendary Smokin’ Joe, beating and bashing him across the ring in five minutes of mayhem as Howard Cosell famously called: “Down goes Frazier, Down goes Frazier, Down goes Frazier.” Yes, brutality and invincibility were personified in the frightening frame of the undefeated George Foreman.

But on a hot and humid night in a country then called Zaire, baked in the darkest heart of Africa, it was Ali who would emerge triumphant, delivering the knockout blow just before the end of the eighth. He’d let Foreman punch away that enormous power, blow by blow, in a relentless body attack while, gloves up and parked like a Brinks truck at the New York Fed, Ali clung to those ropes absorbing every blow, offering the odd cursory, but still lightening-fast, combination in return as almost an afterthought. It appeared a sad but predictable end, thought millions listening on radio across the globe.

Ah, but we were wrong. When the power in those heavy blows inevitably waned — because we’re not gods, so even George was proved mortal — it was the turn of the man who could no longer float like any butterfly but, in those glorious last two rounds, showed he could still sting like one amazing bee.

Famously it became known as “Rope-A-Dope.” And folks, we’re about to get what young George Foreman received back in October of 1974.

Because we are cumulatively getting weaker, round by budgetary round, in this wonderful province. When the money-weowe numbers get so large our resistance to debt and deficits wanes and, just like George’s punching power that night, we eventually stand tapped-out and set up for the counter. It isn’t yet the eighth round, but it sure seems like the end of the seventh.

It’s Smilin’, rather than Smokin’ Joe, who last week delivered the latest punch to our collective solar plexus. Hey, we spent almost $11 billion more than we brought in last financial year. But somehow Treasurer Joe Ceci sees some weird bright lights in this — OK, well his namesake saw them too, going down for the sixth time at Foreman’s hands.

But it isn’t Ceci or his NDP buddies who are the sole architects of this current “rope a dope” trick. What you see is what you get with our current government — endless spending, while the slightest whisper of cuts is derided the way Joe Stalin once dealt with Soviet generals leery of Herr Hitler’s non-aggression promises.

So, to cut to that famous fight, we’re set up, tired and baffled, ready to accept the knockout blow — a provincial sales tax.

The politicians, economists, media, talking heads, university profs, unions, civil service hangers-on — they can’t actually go full-on public yet but a fair few are showing their colours in wanting such a levy. Still, no one told poor George in the fourth it would be lights out in the eighth.

Yes, those voices suggesting we need a sales tax are growing louder. Once we were impervious to such talk, we’d batter anyone who mentioned such a measure. This was our Alberta Advantage. But we’re tired and the clever folk have roped us like dopes. Increasingly we hear there’s no other way, we must do this if we’re to have roads, hospitals and schools. So watch the next lot in power pivot, blame the NDP for the fiscal mess, and then slap on the first few percentage points. Onwards and ever upwards it will then go.

We’ve done our best — thrown every punch until we’re no longer on our feet. But that bell’s ringing for the eighth and, like that night in Zaire long ago, the truth is dawning.