Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, March 2008

1. Polar Bear
2. Pliers
3. EPA
4. Uranium
5. Ad Revenue
6. 3 Stooges
7. Milblogs

1. Polar Bear. It is always entertaining when the actual natural world intrudes on the blathering and raving of the religious left, the Manmade Global Warming true believers. One such instance took place up here in Alaska last week when a 3-year old female polar bear showed up near the village of Fort Yukon, a mere 250 miles south of the Arctic Ocean. In order to get to Fort Yukon, the bear had to work its way across the Brook Range which sits between the village and the North Slope. Polar bears, or white bears as they are sometimes called up here, sit at the top of the food chain in the Arctic Ocean, along with the killer whale. Unlike killer whales, the bears have been known to actively hunt and eat people, so they are treated with a great deal of respect and if necessary, firepower. This one showed up outside a trapper’s cabin and was munching on lynx carcasses when initially spotted. It was hunted down and killed as a public menace. Why is this little story important? It is important because of all the yammering, caterwauling and incessant demands out of the greens for the feds to list the polar bear as a threatened, soon to be endangered species because its natural habitat, Arctic Ocean sea ice, will all be gone in 50 years due to the ravages of manmade global warming. This story indicates that the polar bear does quite well on the land. It can travel great distances. And it can make a beeline straight for the nearest source of free food. Remember this episode the next time you are told that the feds need to protect this animal from anything at all. These animals have been around for millions of years. They are sm art, deadly, and very capable of taking care of themselves with or without our help. They have survived (prevailed?) in times of intense glaciation. They have survived interglacials, where most of the glaciers disappeared. I expect they will do quite well regardless of what we or the idiots representing us in Washington may choose to do or not to do. Fairbanks news Miner, Fri.

2. Pliers. Just when you thought you had heard it all from the TSA, they find a new low for bureaucratic incompetence. From Hot Air, Friday, courtesy of Captain Ed, we have a report of a 37-year old woman who was forced to remove body piercings with a pair of pliers before she was allowed to board a plane from Lubbock to Dallas in February. The piercings showed up as noise as she was being scanned with a wand. The female TSA agent refused to let her proceed to the aircraft and her male supervisor ordered the jewelry removed. The woman borrowed a pair of pliers and did as requested. Kind of makes you glad that she didn’t have a steel plate in her head; pins and screws repairing bones in her arm or leg; or an artificial joint. We invested an awful lot of authority when we allowed the feds to take over preflight screening. Like any and all losses of liberty, this has gone very, very badly. The TSA was a mistake. Is ought to be shut down sooner rather than later. Also remember that the same people who pushed for the TSA – the big government types – are knocking on your door once again for you to give away yet another slice of liberty and allow them to manage your health care and regulate a natural, necessary p art of the atmosphere necessary for plant growth – carbon dioxide.

3. EPA. This one of from the LA Times via Limbaugh Friday. The EPA Administrator has decided to shelve all regulatory efforts aimed at controlling carbon dioxide emissions pending a long public comment period. This effectively puts off any new regulations until the end of the Bush administration – which is good news as far as it goes. There is always the next administration to worry about, as all three candidates have bought into the manmade global warming – carbon dioxide mythology. This decision is the first sensible decision out of the Bush administration regarding environmental issues this year, as fears have increased that the embedded greens will shove through a raft of new rules and regulations before the administration leaves office next January. Greens, their lawyers, and democrats who had hoped to use the courts and lawsuits to implement Kyoto via the back door were instantly and entertainingly outraged. In his announcement, the EPA Administrator called for a full scientific analysis of the problem and potential solutions – things that are anathema to the True Believers of the religious left.

4. Uranium. Columbian military recovered 66 pounds (about 30 kilos) of depleted uranium from the FARC narco-terrorists they have been pursuing militarily. It appears that the metal was intended for use in a dirty bomb, though one of the reasons it is called depleted uranium is because it has been depleted of the most radioactive isotopes. If FARC now has a source of uranium, where did they get it from? Given their support from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Chavez’ support from Ahmadinejad of Iran, the source shouldn’t be too hard to figure out ( North Korea or Russia?). On a related story, there appears to be a lot more damaging information on the three captured FARC laptops than initially released to the public. Several blogs including Hot Air and the Strata Sphere have noted that things got very quiet, very quickly after Columbia announced the laptops captured. We may be well on our way to unraveling yet another terrorist network, this one located in this hemisphere. It is a given that terrorist networks like this need state sponsorship, and we have evidence of money Chavez has given them in the past. Should this be tied directly to Chavez and Iran and we do something about it, it would be a nice intelligence coup.

5. Ad Revenue. Captain Ed in Hot Air Friday reported that overall ad revenue to newspapers nationwide had dropped nearly 8% in 2007, the second worst yearly drop in history. When the readership goes away as a result of leftist advocacy masquerading as factual reporting, it will not be too long a time before the advertising leaves also. The newspapers bought this on themselves by choosing sides and not being honest or honorable about making that choice. They and their investors deserve everything they get.

6. 3 Stooges. When Saddam Hussein secretly funds a trip to Baghdad for three democrat members of the House of Representatives out of the Oil for Food funds, is it considered a bribe? And if those House Members fight for policy changes in support to the guy who bought the trip ticket, are they traitors? Federal investigators and prosecutors delving into the oil for Food scandal found that Saddam’s intelligence agency secretly funded a road show for Jim McDermott (D, WA), David Bonior (D, MI) and Mike Thompson (D, CA). None of the congresscritters were named in the indictment of the Iraqi intelligence officer in Detroit, but the dates of the trip coincide with a trip to Baghdad by the three in October 2002. Note that McDermott was one of the most vociferous opponents of the Iraq War in 2003. It appears that Saddam certainly got his money’s worth out of this trip. We hope the voters will notice in November.

7. Milblogs. One of the great sources of news out of Iraq and Afghanistan has been the Military Blogs – Milblogs. Unfortunately, the Services have had a problem regulating both them and their content. The concern is that no commander wants actionable operational intelligence floating out over the internet for the enemy to read, analyze and exploit, so both the commanders and the writers need to be careful. But it is far easier to shut it all down than to take the time and make sure no single writer is spilling any intelligence, which by definition, means that the information flow from Iraq and Afghanistan gets shut off to a trickle. We also have the desire of individual commanders not to have anything hit the internet that will make them or their people look bad – and bloggers are pretty good at writing about everything rather than just things that will be pleasant for the Chain of Command to read. Two of the Services are handling the problem in different ways. The Army three years ago required all bloggers to register with their commanders so that what they wrote might be monitored. The Air Force took a different – a dumber – path, simply blocking all URLs with “blog’ in them. The official excuse is that bogs are not legitimate news outlets. What as great outcome, you now officially are requiring your active duty and civilian members to get their news from CNN, PBS and other “unbiased” news sources. That’s going to work real well. Milblogs, Sat.

1. F-117. The USAF quietly announced the retirement of the F-117 “Black Jet”, “Nighthawk” or “Cockroach” from active service. The first operational stealth jet will be returned to the Nevada Test Range for long term storage, the location where it first st arted flying in 1981. The aircraft was operational for 27 years. The mission will be handed off to the F-22 and F-35 which have better operational and stealthy capabilities. According to AP on Mar. 11, there were 59 of these jets built; seven have crashed; and one was shot down in Bosnia in 1999.

2. Obama. Barack Hussein Obama had a Very Bad Week last week, completely botching his explanation of Reverend Wright’s Black Nationalist preaching. Instead of transcending race, Obama has instead embraced it, painting himself as the black candidate instead of the candidate who happens to be black. During the week, FNC ran innumerable video clips of foul, hate-filled rhetoric from the pulpit of the Trinity United Church of Christ featuring the Most Reverend Wright’s greatest hits. Other media st arted picking up on the same video clips. They are easy to get, as the church sells DVDs of his sermons. As a result, Obama’s polling st arted cratering among everybody but black democrat voters, where he is enjoying about 90% support. This puts the democrats in an interesting position – with Obama most certainly going to be going into the convention with a lead in delegates and the popular vote, but completely unable to win the old Reagan democrats and moderates who he and Reverend Wright managed to drive away via their embrace of Black Nationalism from the pulpit. On the other hand, we have Senator Clinton, who will be viewed as having stolen the nomination should she obtain it via support from the super delegates, who does not have support from white men, and should she be nominated, the black democrat voters currently supporting Obama may very well stay home. Then entire episode underscores the problem with pandering to people based on race for decades. Eventually it divides Americans among one another – between those that believe they are owed something (the believers in Black Nationalism) and those that believe the race wars have been won already, and that the Good Guys who pushed (and led) the move toward a colorblind society won a greater victory than they would have ever imagined 40 years ago. That belief in the win is the foundation of Obama’s stunning rise to national prominence and the source of his spectacular fall in the polls.

3. Clarke. Science Fiction writer, novelist and visionary Arthur C. Clarke died last week at age 90 in his home in Sri Lanka. Clarke was most widely known for his screenplay for the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey. His technical background was in electronics, and he was p art of the group that worked on early applications of radar in Great Britain during WWII. He identified geosynchronous orbits as prime locations for communications satellites and pushed the notion of space elevators for access to space. Some space enthusiasts are in the process of renaming geosynchronous orbits into Clarke orbits in honor of his work. If you were a fan of old time science fiction, you read a lot of Clarke. He was active up until his death and will be missed.

4. Gas Pipeline. The discussion on construction of a natural gas pipeline continues in the legislature, with the Alaskan congressional delegation st arting to push hard for resolution. The problem is that TransCanada, the only company the Palin administration said has filled all the AGIA requirements, does not have any natural gas, nor does it have any commitment from the producers on the North Slope to sell any. TransCanada also may or may not owe former p artners billions of dollars. In order to meet the problem of lack of commitment from the producers on the North Slope, TransCanada wants a congressional guarantee for payment as a bridge shipper. None of this is going to make it through congress. Waiting in the wings are the producers, with Conoco-Phillips proposing a fully self-funded pipeline, complete with enough natural gas to fill it. Unfortunately, as of today, their proposal sits outside of the requirements of AGIA, so it was not considered by the administration. The ChiCom company Sinopec also has sufficient money to construct a natural gas pipeline. The sticking point for the Conoco-Phillips proposal is their desire for fiscal certainty – a guarantee from the Palin administration and the legislature to hold taxes and royalties stable for the lifetime of the pipeline – the next 30-40 years. So far, the Palin administration has been unwilling to even tell the producers what the taxes may be, which has not allowed them to plug in a number – any number - into their financial planning models. This negotiating ploy is mystifying, for any one of us who buys a house – typically, the largest personal investment we make – we always want to know the cost of the house and the interest rate of the loan right up front so we can figure out if we can afford it. Fiscal certainty for the natural gas producers means the same thing. In a related move, state taxes on the North Slope producers are well on their way to killing the oil industry here in Alaska. Last year’s ACES legislation taxes current production at 85% at current per barrel prices. At oil prices hovering just over $100/bbl, there is a worldwide boom in oil exploration and production. There is no such boom here in Alaska. Why? Because we have taxed and regulated our way right out of business. This state is no longer a friendly place for oil and natural gas exploration and production. Be had best get off the dime and cut taxes, regulations, and give sufficient protection from lawsuits so that the producers can do business up here. We have a recently earned – and unfortunately very well deserved – reputation in the industry as a difficult place to do business. And when places get too difficult to do business in, the businesses go elsewhere where things are more stable, peaceful, and they can make more money; places like Venezuela.

5. Memorial. Local anti-war vermin defaced the Veterans Memorial here in Anchorage last week. They dumped red paint on it and fled. The vandalism was discovered the next morning. To date, nobody has been apprehended. Anchorage is a pro-military town, and this nasty little act has tightened a lot of jaws.

6. Trinity. As the media looks into the festering sore of resentment, race-baiting, and Black Liberation Theology that calls itself the Trinity United Church of Christ, more of their p articipation in other liberation movements has st arted to see the light of day. For instance, the July 22, 2007 church bulletin reprinted a LA Times column by the Hamas leader, describing its goals for “all Palestine” – which normally includes the complete destruction of Israel – on the pastor’s page. Interesting form of worship, is it not? Praise the Lord; pass the ammunition to the Islamists. PowerLine, Fri.

7. Sea Ice. What happens when actual observations collide with government funded religious pronouncements? In the case of manmade Global Warming, the observations are said to be ephemeral, not to be trusted, a blip in the overall movement toward global catastrophe. This winter, which has been harder than the last several up here, Arctic sea ice has magically recovered and now covers 4% more than its normal area. Due to the cold, it is also significantly thicker than it was the last several years. What does this mean in real terms? It aint any warmer in the Arctic. It is colder. And when the ice is thicker, it takes longer to melt and longer to open up in the spring and summer. If this keeps up, the rationale for listing the polar bears as an endangered species will be changed from no ice to too much ice. If those animals, which sit at the top of the aquatic food chain along with killer whales in this p art of the world, can figure out how to make it through the last several ice ages without the assistance of the US Government, the greens, and other manmade Global Warming acolytes, I expect they will be able to make it though the next one also. I almost forgot: the feds who have only been monitoring sea ice coverage since the 1970s, called the return of the ice a welcome event, but not any indicator of a shift in the climate. And it will be really, really bad this summer as all the thin, new ice melts completely. ADN, Weds.

1. Economy. I ran across the best description of the change brought to us courtesy of the new democrat majority in both Houses of congress. The following is lifted directly from the Texas Rainmaker’s blog, Mar 12. You want change? Here it is:

2. Salmon. The feds took the first step toward a complete shutdown of all commercial salmon fishing on the Pacific Coast. Location of the shutdown would be from Oregon south to southern California. The commercial shutdown is triggered by a fisheries crash over the last few years, with less than half of the necessary escapement returning to the rivers of Oregon and California. Escapement is defined as sufficient numbers of fish returning to the rivers to spawn to keep the numbers of returning fish in subsequent years at or above that number. We here in Alaska fight the escapement wars between the commercial fishermen and sports fishermen on a yearly basis – some years better than others. These days, the interests of the commercial fishermen here in Alaska are ascendant – something they will come to regret in the long run. Fisheries management is not an exact science, but it is not an unworkable problem. So what is happening in Oregon and California? I suspect that we are seeing the triumph of environmentalism and the tragedy of the commons over sound fisheries management. I will bypass beating up on the commercial fishermen for this discussion; for they are doing what they always have done when there is no ownership of the resource – no property rights. There is no incentive to take action to manage their actions and grow the resource. I will instead go after the second p art of the equation – the greens. The greens are firmly in charge of most land and wildlife management in Oregon and California. One of their tools is the use of the notion that natural, wild fish are somehow better than hatchery fish – even though every single hatchery captures wild salmon and uses them as the source for roe and sperm. They have systematically fought – successfully – the use of hatcheries to rebuild salmon runs decimated by bad weather such as the drought in Oregon’s Klamath Basin last decade, decimated by overfishing by the commercial fleet, and overfishing by native tribes. A few years ago in Oregon, federal fisheries employees were systematically killing and wasting returning hatchery fish before they could swim upriver and spawn. When you do not have enough fish returning to the rivers; when federal fisheries managers kill returning fish because they are hatchery raised rather than wild; you very quickly destroy healthy runs of salmon. Once the runs are destroyed by government mismanagement, the greens then have an excuse to list them all as endangered and get control of all flowing waters in Oregon and California. Salmon are pretty resilient and are not p articularly sensitive to problems with the water. They return to every bit of flowing water I know of here in southcentral Alaska. The only difference is that we have figured out how to manage – sometimes very poorly – the runs for abundance. And one of our tools up here is the use of hatcheries. I would say that this problem is manmade. And if I were to be completely cynical, it is intentionally manmade. This is what we get when we put the greens in charge. We get shortages, economic chaos, and idiotic, faith-based decisions. ADN, Sat.

3. Spitzer. NY Governor Elliot Spitzer, who abused his prosecutorial powers for year in his climb up the political food chain in New York, was caught in an investigation into a prostitution ring. This was a fairly high class business, with fees in the $5,000 range per event. Spitzer was famous as a self-described crusading prosecutor, going after various investment companies on Wall Street with gusto and a complete lack of mercy. He used a very creative interpretation of a 1920’s era state law to leverage his targets into plea bargains. The explicit threat was that if the targeted executives wouldn’t take a plea bargain, they and their companies would be destroyed in court. Spitzer then leveraged this shakedown operation into a 69% vote to put him into the governor’s mansion where he once again abused the law he was supposed to fairly and honorably execute. Spitzer was caught when his bank reported large cash transfers to the IRS, who then referred the movement of money to the FBI which pursued the investigation. All the usual suspects made all the usual arguments about the crime being only a personal foible. But Spitzer was different than Bill and Hillary, for he had a long history of merciless prosecution of all manner of illegalities – some real and some imagined. He also prosecuted prostitution rings in NYC noting quite accurately that they were mob-connected and would compromise their customers, who would then, in turn be targets for mob related activities. Reaction on Wall Street was positively gleeful with the DJIA jumping over 400 points within a day of his resignation. Although I am not a real fan of cheap shot, full body contact, political payback via the courts system, I do not think Spitzer will enjoy much mercy when his case hits the courts.

4. Al Qaida. The Pentagon released a report which included analysis of official connections between Saddam and Al Qaida last week. The drive-by media took the report, completely and intentionally misreported its conclusions beneath screaming headlines that the report found no connection. However, should you have actually read the report – and Steven Hayes has – you find something else entirely. You find that Saddam had extensive contacts with Al Qaida. He provided high-level support, training camps, money, intelligence, and used terrorism as another tool in his arsenal of weaponry against the west. The report is full of these sorts of connections and the drive-by media lied about all of them simply to make a political point that we went to war for no reason. Terrorism requires some sort of state sponsorship. When Saddam’s regime disappeared, it was the most significant blow that Al Qaida suffered in this war. When the Iranian regime falls, it will be yet another huge blow to Al Qaida. Once they lose their free ground in western Pakistan, they will be finished.

5. ANWR. The Alaskan congressional delegation hit upon yet another angle in their continual attempt to open ANWR for oil exploration. This one ties its opening to the per barrel price of oil. They are proposing legislation that will open ANWR for oil and natural gas exploration when the price per barrel rises above $125/bbl. While I don’t think this has a chance in Hell of making it through a congress with democrat majorities in both Houses, I remain ever hopeful.

6. Pryor. I would like to congratulate the Stupid P arty for failing to field a candidate to oppose first-term US Senator Mark Pryor (D, AR). Pryor is running for his first reelection in a reliably red state, and the state Republican P arty could find nobody to run against him. It’s going to be difficult to retake the senate if you can’t even get candidates on the ballot. Hot Air, Tues.

7. FISA. Nancy Pelosi’s (D, SF) House leadership failed for yet another week to bring legislation that will reauthorize FISA. This face-off between the Bush administration and the Senate on one side against Pelosi’s trial lawyer-friendly House leadership on the other has lasted over three weeks. The House intends on using the trial lawyers attacking the telecom companies who have cooperated with the Bush administration on terrorist surveillance as their vehicle to end intelligence gathering against potential terrorists. The Senate version of the legislation contains immunity from lawsuits. The House version does not – which is the entire bone of contention. To Pelosi’s majority, taking care of the trial lawyers and ending the war – at whatever cost – is more important than uncovering the threats and killing the terrorists.

1. Economy. With the loss of yet another House seat to a democrat last week – former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat in a Republican district - the time has come for the Stupid P arty to reconsider its election strategy at the congressional level before it gets completely blown out of the water. The loss was an 8% swing from the district’s anti-Kerry vote in 2004, which may mean this year will be much more like 2006 than 2004. P art of the problem is with the disaster that the Illinois Republican P arty has become. P art of the problem was Hastert himself. P art of the problem was the candidate himself, a three-time loser, retread from previous failed campaigns for higher office who brought little to the table in terms of conservative, defensible positions on issues. On the other hand, he was able to self-finance his campaign. It is time for the Stupid P arty to buck up and get off the dime. If we do not sharply contrast ourselves with the democrats, we will lose and lose badly in November. What would I do? I would tie the recession, the mortgage crisis and the energy problem ($3 gasoline) firmly around the collective necks of democrat incumbents nationwide. My message would be simple: There was no recession until we put these socialist bozos into the majority. It took them a mere year to destroy the economy with tiny, tiny majorities in both houses of congress. What do you imagine they will do with larger majorities? We put them in charge and they proved they couldn’t hack it. We reward them with reelection for doing this? It is a simple, defensible message. And it is time to run with it.

2. FARC. The narco-terrorist organization that we and Columbia have been fighting for decades had a bit of a leadership change last week. The Columbian military executed a strike on a FARC camp a mile deep into Ecuador, killing a bunch of them along with the number two terrorist. They also captured three laptops afterwards. The laptops held a nice intelligence gold mine, with evidence that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela had recently given FARC $300 million to fund their terrorist operations against the government of Columbia. I expect the laptops are now being analyzed by American intelligence organizations – hopefully ones associated with the Pentagon rather than the politicized incompetents in the CIA. Information in the laptops also indicated that FARC was pursuing uranium so they could construct and operate dirty nuclear bombs for use in Columbia. Chavez’ complicity in funding terrorism against his neighbors will not set well with those neighbors, even the nominally friendly leftist ones. And it will certainly not set well with a nation like Columbia that has a trained and ready military. Chavez responded to the attack as all tyrants would be expected to – by changing the subject away from FARC and to military operations by Columbia in Ecuador. He demanded an apology and sent his troops to the border. Given that Chavez has decimated the officer corps in his own military after it p articipated in a failed coup against him some years ago, the military capability of his own forces may not be all that impressive. By weeks’ end, Chavez had backed down. To date, the government of Ecuador has been very, very silent on the strike and they did accept the apologies of Columbia for the incursion. When you get in bed with terrorists and their supporters, you end up doing things that they do and acting like them. Chavez has been sidling up to Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il and Assad in recent years. Appears he has learned well. One last thing was discovered on the laptops: Evidence of emissaries claiming to be associated with Barack Obama was prominently mentioned in files found on the laptop. The “gringos” were reportedly telling the FARC leadership that when Obama was elected, they (FARC) will be taken care of. How nice. Obama is not yet elected president, and his emissaries are already out in the real world, pandering to terrorists. Echoes of Jimmy C arter’s sterling foreign policy successes abound thirty years after his infestation of the WH ended. Hot Air, Tues.

3. Clark. Former Governor Frank Murkowski’s Chief of Staff, Jim Clark took a guilty plea last week as p art of the ongoing corruption investigation here in Alaska. Clark spent over $68,000 in money from former oilfield service company Veco on Murkowski’s failed reelection bid in 2006. Clark also agreed to assist the investigation and testify when and if needed. Sentencing will take place later this year, which has fueled local (and very cynical) speculation that the feds will drop the bid indictment just in time for the democrat candidate for House or Senate (maybe both) to steal a win in November. I hope they get this over with and that they get everyone involved. It is long past time to clean up oilfield politics here in Alaska. ADN, Tues.

4. Homeschooling. A California state court of appeals wrote an opinion last week that essentially makes homeschooling illegal in California. The ruling requires all parents who homeschool their kids to be accredited, credentialed teachers. It is based on a California law from the early 1960s that promotes public education as a way to instill patriotism, cultural values, and love of country – none of which are taught in the government schools any more. The ruling also ignores SCOTUS precedents over the last two decades. There are over 116,000 children being homeschooled in California. All of them and all of their parents are now at risk. Expect to see this travesty appealed to the California State Supreme Court. Expect it to become a huge issue in November’s elections. The courts, the government schools and the teacher’s union have given liberty loving Californians yet another reason to leave the state – regardless of how this ends up. Fully half of California’s $12 billion deficit has been caused by high end taxpayers packing their bags, selling their homes and going elsewhere. Liberalism costs property, liberty and lives. It must be fought at every turn, for this is what will happen when we won’t. Malkin, Thurs.

5. Franken. The guys at PowerLine Thursday reported yet another example of “do what I say, not what I do” out of democrat candidate for US Senate Al Franken. Franken, who st arted out as a writer for the old Saturday Night Live and then went into politics via Air America has decided to run for US Senate as a democrat candidate against incumbent Norm Coleman (R, MN). Franken has been running around the state bashing Coleman, and painting himself as a friend of the little guy. Apparently Franken failed to buy unemployment insurance for his employees in New York from 2002 – 2005, and owes $25,000 to the state of New York. As with all leftists, the rules only apply to everybody but them.

6. Kivalina. This one’s a couple weeks old, but needs coverage. The winters get long and cold up here, and when you are out in the Bush, in a small village, with not a lot else to do other than keep warm, the mind wanders a bit. The latest example comes out of the village of Kivalina, which sits on the far western coast of Alaska. Rocket scientists in Kivalina dropped a lawsuit on Exxon-Mobil and 23 other energy companies for causing global warming. The town sits on the coast and like most coastal villages up here, has to move when the weather rearranges the coastline – which it odes with some regularity. The locals have decided that the reason for the storms on the Chukchi Sea rearrange the coastline are all the fault of the oil companies and electric utilities and want the lawyers to make them whole. One almost hopes that they win and the lights go out for them forever. ADN, 2/28/08.

1. Economy. This one is going to be a bit of a rant, so you have been warned. I am old enough to remember the awful economic performance in the 1970s. That decade was marked by a veto-proof democrat majority in both houses of Congress after 1974, wage and price controls on energy – which created shortages, and a burgeoning environmental movement that made it all but impossible to respond to a declaration of economic war against the United States by the Arab Middle Eastern oil producers in OPEC. Nixon gave in to the greens, created the EPA and instituted wage and price controls. Dick Cheney had an early job in the Executive Branch to put those controls together. A huge democrat majority congress was elected in 1974, shortly followed by Nixon’s dep arture. Indeed, during the period, democrats in the senate held a 56-61 seat majority, and in the House, had a majority that ran 56-67% of all seats. Gerald Ford was the next president, and did a fairly decent job, holding the modern record for presidential vetoes upheld. Jimmy C arter was elected in 1976 as the first of two New Democrats elected in the last 30 years and presided over the most economically inept administration since Hoover. The entire event took 6-8 years, depending on where you st art counting, and ended with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. But the trigger to the entire mess was economic and energy public policy incompetence by the Nixon administration and congress. It is now 35 years later – over a generation – and we are well on our way toward reprising that mess, st arting with a similar trigger. Once again, there is trouble in the Middle East, though today we are now draining that p articular swamp of alligators. Once again, we have idiotic and foolish action by a Republican president sitting in the Executive Branch. This time it is a decision to move to ethanol, which has disrupted the worldwide marketplace for food, and has artificially changed decision making regarding from the farm to the grocery store and everywhere in between. Once again, we have a resurgent democrat majority in congress. This time, it is far more beholden to the greens than it was 35 years ago, but it is just as opposed to drilling, new exploration and new energy development as it was then. This new democrat majority may or may not get larger in November. If it does get larger, expect further artificial limits on energy generation and production; expect a carbon tax to be instituted; and expect a move back to bashing Big Oil as the source of all our frustrations. This is all so unnecessary. This nation is awash in fuels – especially with oil at $100/bbl. All we have to go is get the various governments (federal, state and local) out of the way so the marketplace can make logical, intelligent, and profitable decisions about what to do next. Over the last year, around 57 coal-fired power plants were cancelled. That will lead to energy shortages down south. Half of all the electrical generation in the US is done by coal, and we as a nation have more coal immediately available for use than anyone else in the world – centuries worth. You want quick, clean, environmentally friendly energy? Go with coal and scrub the emissions. We as a nation also have more natural gas than we know what to do with. It sits offshore in hydrates, in offshore reservoirs, within the continental US, and on the Alaskan North Slope. St art drilling and producing right now. I am not an ethanol or a bio-ethanol fan. Pound for pound, the fuel is less efficient than gasoline and diesel. My largest beef against ethanol is that it is a top-down government mandate. The marketplace is the vehicle to figure out what our next liquid fuel is going to be. With its support of corn-based ethanol, the Bush administration has placed a bomb in the agricultural marketplace, one that will make it more expensive for everyone of us to eat for year to come. We quit building reactors in the US shortly after Three Mile Island. There has been a two-decade long hiatus in new licenses and permits. Today there are over 30 new licenses in process. There ought to be 300, for if your goal is emission-free energy, reactors are your solution. Oil is also still a significant portion of our energy equation, and can be produced from the Alaskan North Slope (provided we are allowed to open ANWR and develop NPR-A), off the Gulf and California coasts, an in oil shales in the Mountain West. Geothermal energy is also possible throughout the volcanic Cascades from Long Valley Caldera north to the Canadian border. Idiotic, foolish, pandering energy policy is once again giving the great economy we have had over the last 25 years a push toward an unnecessary recession. And as long as we have democrats in control of congress, and pandering Republicans siding with them in congress and in the WH, that slide is going to accelerate. What is to be done? Relax clean air and clean water rules. Just because you can measure something, doesn’t mean it is dangerous. Acceptable levels of metals, gasses and substances ought to be somewhere near the background levels of whatever that substance is at interest at each location. Relax and accelerate licensing and permitting for new production and generation. Keep the producers and new generation folks out of court. Fully 40% of all new generation and production costs are spent in licensing and fighting the greens in court. Get the governments at all levels the Hell out of the way and allow the ingenuity of all Americans to kick in and work this problem. Sadly, I am afraid that we are going to have to relearn the painful lessons of the 1970s in order to do so. Happily, things indeed do move faster in the modern information-rich world, so that 6-8 years of self-imposed economic disaster we had in the 1970s may only last a year or two this time around. This isn’t that hard. We are certainly up to the task. Elect the most conservative dummy you can in the elections this year. Then beat the ever-loving tar out of him or her to get the government at all levels completely out of the energy marketplace. Be just as insistent and demanding as the greens. Hold their feet to the fire. Make it painful to ignore you and people who believe as you do. This isn’t that hard to fix. As always, this isn’t a problem. It is an opportunity to excel.

2. Clean Water. A state judge from Fairbanks threw out the greens’ anti-mining ballot initiative entitled the “Clean Water Initiative.” This ballot initiative was aimed squarely at the proposed Pebble Mine and would have prohibited any discharge of any metals into waters around the mine. It was dressed up in a very pretty “Clean Water” bow, and has been sold to a skeptical public as a way to ensure the mine owners and operators behave themselves and don’t trash the surrounding countryside. Of course if you actually read the language of the initiative, you find that it will essentially shut down every single mine here in Alaska. In principle it could even be applied to recreational gold miners who would “discharge” sand and gravel taken from stream bottoms back into the streams they were mining from, though it is currently limited to mines greater than 640 acres. However, once you put that principle into law, it will not be long before it is extended to other things the greens find distasteful. The judge found that the initiative was an unconstitutional infringement on the Legislature’s ability to allocate state resources. The judge then went on to note that banning the use of water by mines and only allocating it for fish and game removed the ability of the legislature – which is constitutionally mandated – to make those determinations. There is a second, parallel ballot initiative that passed judicial review (so far). Expect the greens to appeal this to the Alaska Supreme Court, which is populated by a number of former democrat governor Tony Knowles’ Sierra Club appointees. We will see how this goes. ADN, Sat.

3. Pebble. Now that we are talking about Pebble Mine, the consortium backing the mine released yet another analysis of the total value of metals expected to be mined over the course of the next 50+ years from Pebble. They estimated that between $350 -500 billion at 2007 prices for gold, copper and molybdenum await mining and shipping. To contrast this, the total value of all oil produced from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields through 2002 was in the order of $280 billion – which is an incomplete number. It is incomplete because it is over 4 years old and it does not include current value of the resource. Still, it is instructive to note that the Pebble Mine all by itself should be within an order of magnitude as valuable to this state as the Prudhoe Bay oil fields have been since the first well st arted producing in 1969 (before natural gas). My source for the oil was a UAA economic analysis. Mining is important. We have learned how to do it better over time. We will figure out how to do Pebble better also. There are open pit mines out there with trout in their tailings ponds. Trout are pretty sensitive to environmental insults. We can do mining and fish at the same time and do it well. Let’s get st arted. ADN, Tues.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuv alleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http:/ /home.gci.net /~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/

If you would like to join II's mailing list, have comments or suggestions, please contact me at: agimarc@ak.net