Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, May 2008

1. Election – Issue. Last week, I went on an extended rant describing the playing field for the upcoming elections. This week, I will st art a series of issue pieces that will hopefully lay out some fundamental issues and attack paths against the democrats and their lackeys. First up is energy. If it was me, I would hang this p articular festering carbuncle firmly around the collective necks of the democrats, the greens, and their faith-based supporters among the voting public and the drive-by media. When you lock up over 80% of all domestic natural gas, oil and coal from domestic production, allow the value of the dollar to crash, and limit the ability of domestic energy companies to build new refining and generation capacity, prices for energy across the board WILL increase. Coal gasification and liquefaction (the Fischer-Tropsch process created by the Germans during WWII and used by South Africa today) produces diesel at about $40/bbl. Oil shale in Colorado is competitive at $70-95/bbl. All continental shelf and outer continental shelf oil and natural gas areas are competitive all the way down to below $10/bbl. Finally, we here in Alaska would open ANWR and NPR-A for oil and natural gas production and produce at least a generation’s worth of oil at Saudi Arabia quantities – over a million barrels per day within a few years. On the energy generation side of the equation, the two big solutions nationwide are clean coal and nuclear. Given that the only plant producing reactor vessels today is in Japan, and currently has a four-year backlog, reactors will be a bit slow coming on line unless somebody else st arts producing reactor vessels over here in the US. Bottom line here is that energy resources here in the US are cheap, abundant, and easily accessible. So why are we in a mini-crisis today? Answer: Because congress – the congressional majority currently infesting that body – is executing their comprehensive energy plan / policy. That policy does not include more production of fuels or energy. Their comprehensive plan executed by the congressional majority, by friendly green regulators, and in the courts for over two decades has been to obstruct, delay, deny, and sue anybody that dares to produce more energy or more fuels. It is time for a better plan, one that will not make us dependent on foreign producers; one that does not pump hundreds of billions of dollars yearly into the pockets of those that are exporting Wahhabism, sharia and radical Islam worldwide. It is time to clear the decks, streamline the regulatory and licensing flows; defend new projects from harassment lawsuits; and get to the business of producing energy in large quantities. The free market can do this quickly, cheaply, and sustainably. Government has created this problem. Leftists and their soul mates in the environmental community have worsened it. And they all have the gall to haul oil company executives – who they have regulated and taxed nearly out of business here in the US – in front of congress for a series of show trials last week, demanding why they let things get so bad? What self serving, contemptible drivel. Congress created this problem. A new congress can fix it and do so within months. The energy issue is a hanging curve ball for our side this election. We will see if conservatives are sm art enough to hit it out of the ballpark.

2. GI Bill. The latest round of political gamesmanship in congress is the new GI Bill, pushed by the thoroughly embarrassing Senator James Webb (D, VA) and the always predictable Chuck Hagel ( RINO, NE). Basically, the democrat version of this legislation attempts to turn the US military into just another jobs and patronage mill for future democrat votes. The legislation confers full benefits upon all military members after they have served three years. There are other goodies included, but this one is instructive of their technique. Webb has been a long time opponent of the Iraq war. Unlike his fellow democrats in the senate, he has figured out a way to undermine retention by paying off military members rather than simply zeroing out war funding. The Pentagon and the CBO both have analyzed the proposal and determined that it will blow a hole in retention of mid-level enlisted and officers. If your best people – your middle management and leaders - are bailing out in the middle of the war to take advantage of new congressionally funded goodies, you will very quickly have a retention problem, which is Webb’s plan. The Pentagon version being pushed by the Bush administration would provide access to the new education benefits based on a sliding scale of service – the longer you serve, the more you get. Additionally under the Bush / Pentagon proposal, these educational benefits are fully transferable within the families of the members; meaning that they can get education for their wives and children by serving. Democrats over the weekend staged a show vote for Webb’s legislation which has been attached to the supplemental for funding the Iraq war. Senators Obama and Clinton showed up to vote for it. McCain did not, as he backs the Pentagon version of the legislation. Don’t know how this all will sort itself out, but it is instructive that there is literally nobody in this country that the democrats can look at, touch or consider without trying to turn them into indentured servants for the rest of their lives. Our military deserves better.

3. AGIA. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that TransCanda was selected as the contractor for the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline. She has recommended that the legislature approve the deal, which will grant a license to TransCanada and put half a billion dollars from the state on the table. Selection of the pipeline company is seen by some here in the state as a slap against British Petroleum and Conoco-Phillips, which proposed building and funding the pipeline by themselves. Palin’s proposal goes before the legislature at a special session in June. They will be asked only to approve or disapprove the proposal. It is important to note that TransCanada has no commitment from any of the producers for natural gas to fill the pipeline; and the producers are under no obligation to make any natural gas available for shipment. We are in a very touchy time now, and if everybody plays nicely together, we will get a natural gas pipeline and st art shipping lots of natural gas out of state. Should the producers play hardball with the state and TransCanada, things will get very ugly indeed and there will be a lot of rich lawyers afterwards.

4. Polar Bear. Interesting question about the decision to list polar bears as threatened species: How can something be threatened when their numbers have more than doubled over the course of the last 50 years? Second thing for your consideration: The argument against federal approval of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was that it would harm the caribou. Vice President Spiro Agnew cast the tie-breaking vote in 1973. Since then, numbers of caribou on the Alaska North Slope have more than tripled. Today, with the polar bear listing as a threatened species, we are confronted with precisely the same sort of argument, only this time with the increases in population of the animals already documented. I can argue the point that oil development in Alaska has been a great thing for the polar bear, as their numbers are increasing. I can argue that global warming is a great thing for the polar bear because their numbers are increasing. I can argue that more development nationwide has been a great thing for the polar bear because their numbers are increasing. When the animals increase in numbers, perhaps we are not harming them at all. When the greens are once again totally, completely and unequivably wrong – again – who will hold them to account?

1. Elections – Part I
2. Elections – Part II
3. Appeasement
4. Polar Bear
5. California
6. Oil

1. Elections – P art I. This one is a bit of a thought piece, and perhaps a call to arms. I will try not to give in to my normal wishful thinking for the Good Guys to prevail in November. Rather, I am going to try to tie together some things that have been bothering me for a while in this election season. First off, a preamble: I am nominally a Republican because they are the most conservative group of folks around that have an organization that can regularly win elections. When they cease being conservative, I will go elsewhere. I have a little bit of a libertarian streak, though I do enjoy referring to them as loosertarians. I also am understanding and supportive of the social side of conservatism including the evangelicals. I probably could be best described as a Reaganite and p art of Norquist’s Leave Me Alone coalition. So how does all that stuff fit in today? The Republican P arty within the Beltway went native around 2000, and gave up their majority in both houses of congress six year later by trying to be democrat light rather than conservatives, by being more interested in getting reelected than getting something done. They misunderstood the reason they were installed in office with strong governing majorities in congress in 1994 was because they promised to stay out of our lives and leave us alone more than the other side would. I figured it would take a couple of decades to become sufficiently corrupt that they got tossed. We missed it by eight years. Where are we today? Well, we have a presidential candidate that panders to greens, supports immigration, was selected by independents and democrats in early primary states, appears to be a fiscal conservative, claims to support strict constructionist judges and has nominally libertarian views on most social issues. He also glories in sticking a sharp stick in the eyes of conservatives on a daily basis. We have a democrat majority in both houses of congress, elected because they ran people who were less corrupt, as or more socially conservative than their Republican opponents in 2006. Yet the leadership that they have sworn oaths of fealty to is far, far more leftist, socialist, destructive of our property rights and liberty than any Republican defeated in 2006. Conventional wisdom is that they will greatly increase their governing majorities in both houses of congress in November, with Republicans losing three special elections for normally safe Republican seats so far this year. Yet polling indicates that the general public is not buying something, for congressional approval numbers are sitting at or below the numbers that turned out congressional majorities in 1994 and 2006.

2. Elections – P art II. So what are the various national Republican campaign committees doing this year? As usual, they are defending all incumbents – regardless of how conservative they may or may not have been. They are running some of the most inept campaigns in recent memory, losing to democrats running as social conservatives, protectionists and populists. They are also losing elections, having lost Denny Hastert’s seat in Illinois, Woody Jenkins seat in Louisiana, and a long-time safe seat in Mississippi in a district that went for President Bush with over 60% of the total vote in 2004. In Hastert’s instance, they ran a squish conservative; in the second, they ran a guy with a 10-year history of personal and political connections to David Duke. The Mississippi race had a democrat social conservative running as a populist / protectionist against a guy who didn’t focus is message, said all the right squish things, and tried to save his carcass at the end by tying his democrat opponent to Barack Obama and Reverend Wright. Calling people liberals isn’t working any more. Real policy differences weren’t ever used by any of the three Republicans in any of the seats. The Mississippi democrat campaign supporters (as usual) passed out a bunch of fliers in black churches the Sunday before the election accusing the Republican being a KKK sympathizer – which is standard democrat fare for which the incumbent had no answer. You’d figure that after these sorts of democrat dirty tricks for the last four decades, we’d at least come up with someone who would answer the charge and return the fire in kind. But we don’t seem to be able to do so. We even have the specter of New Gingrich (who was far more green than anyone wants to admit to as Speaker of the House) sitting on a couch with current House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi doing a global warming commercial. His excuse is that conservatives need to be p art of the global warming discussion; to p articipate in tying the rope that will hang us, destroy our property rights and our liberty. It appears that the national guys have completely lost touch with the grass roots. Still, depending on how we play it, this may be one of the greatest opportunities since 1980 or the greatest loss since 1974. In 1980, there was a growing grass roots movement toward conservatism, and it had several strong spokesmen – Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman among others. Today, we know everything we knew in 1980, but have been worn down by nearly 30 years of p artisan warfare, corruption on our side of the political fence, and do not have a leader at the national level. We do have a far more effective way of getting the conservative message out to the general public as the drive-by media has committed suicide in support of their favorite leftist. So where is the play this year for conservatives? Clearly, it is at the state and local level. The left and their lackeys in the drive-by media want us to be demoralized, to stay home, and not p articipate. Yet they are running vermin for local, state and national office and expect us to sit this one out? No way. I think conservatives and libertarians ought to retake the P arty, support the most conservative candidate during the primary seasons this summer and fall, and then remove every single elected democrat possible from office in November. If we have to toss out our guys every two years, let’s do so. But the priority today is to destroy the other side. Our message to our candidates ought to be: Do what you said you were going to do. Keep your nose clean. Or get out. If you don’t get out, we will gladly toss you out of office, and do so repeatedly. The actions of the North Carolina Republican P arty ought to be an example to us all, for they shrugged off the leftist accusations of racism for using Jeremiah Wright in an ad against the Obama-endorsed democrat candidate for governor; told the McCain campaign and McCain himself to pound sand; and took the fight for governor right at the pandering democrat himself. They did it with style, grace and good humor. We can do the same. The other side only wins this if we withdraw from the battlefield. I do not plan on withdrawing until they are defeated and destroyed. Now is a real good a time to join the fight. Do it now or get buried. We do not need national leadership, for we as citizens have the political power (despite what our black-robed Masters may think) and are the leaders.

3. Appeasement. President Bush stirred up the leftists nicely midweek with a speech to the Israeli Knesset on the anniversary of the founding of Israel as sovereign modern nation. He noted that appeasement never works, and that some people that think that using a p articularly ingenious argument against a tyrant will keep them from being a danger to us all. He used a quotation from a US Senator when German tanks were rolling across Poland that if only he could have talked to Hitler, this would have never happened. Instantly, the Barack Obama campaign decided that he was the target of the presidential commentary, and trotted out all the usual suspects taking President Bush to task for blasting him personally while overseas. Interestingly enough, President Bush never once mentioned Barack Obama in the speech. It appears that Obama and his supporters have a very, very thin skin, as they snivel and whine at the drop of a hat. They cannot stand criticism of any nature. They try to deflect it by making sure that nobody says anything negative about their guy. Should you do so, you are immediately branded as a racist, or accused of improperly making political attacks on their guy while overseas. The second p art of this is the history of democrats – former democrat presidents like C arter and Clinton, a wide array of democrat members of congress, traveling overseas over the course of the last eight years blasting away at President Bush for everything under the sun. Apparently the notion that politics stops at the waters’ edge only applies to Republicans and never to democrats. Finally, the democrats are on the cusp of nominating a naïf, an idiot, a self-satisfied fool for their presidential nominee. And in order to keep from blowing their p arty’s coalitions to smithereens, they have to make believe he knows what he is talking about. For the record, Bush’s comments could have been directed to sitting Israeli Prime Minister Olmert that has been accused over the years of being far more interested in talking than fighting.

4. Polar Bear. The Dep artment of the Interior announced midweek that they would be listing the Polar Bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The decision is an attempt by the Secretary and his people to walk a fine line between a listing as endangered and telling the greens to sod off. The decision is a mistake, as numbers of polar bears worldwide have doubled over the last 50 years. Given that we have developed the Arctic substantially over the last century, that doubling of overall population numbers ought to be celebrated as a breathtaking success rather than as a failure. The decision is based on the notion that Arctic sea ice coverage has decreased significantly over the last 30 years. Well, that is correct, as the cherry-picked sea ice coverage number was carefully selected in 1978, at or near one of the coldest years last century. If you select your baseline at a temperature minimum, you bloody well will get a decrease in total iced coverage as the climate moves away from that minimum. Note also that the decision is based on the prediction that sea ice coverage will decrease over the next 50 years to the point where polar bears will no longer be able to hunt, den, or thrive. Note that we have only have had good observations of Arctic sea ice coverage for the last 30 years, and only spotty observations for the hundred or so years before. The decision is not based on any science, though these days, climate and environmental science has become as politicized as Lysenko’s agricultural science did under Stalin. We will hope that is will not end up being as deadly to the general public as Lysenko’s. Polar bear listing is nothing more than an attempt by the greens to use the Endangered Species Act to shut down all new energy exploration and generation in this nation under the guise of protecting the polar bear from extinction. It is an attack on wealth of us all at the expense of the wealth of the lawyers that will be litigating this travesty for the next century. It is junk science at its worst.

5. California. The California Supreme Court by a single vote threw out a state ballot initiative that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The decision was a 172-page exercise in tortured logic, self congratulation, and justification of this new judicial usurpation of the will of the people. Barack Obama immediately issued a press release that took sides of the issue. To his credit, McCain said that these decisions ought to be decided by the people of California rather than judges. Governor Schwarzenegger said he sup-ported the decision and would implement it. Note that this decision tossed out a ballot initiative that passed with over 60% of the vote. There is another initiative underway that ought to qualify for the ballot that will pass a constitutional amendment that will define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. It is expected to get the million or so signatures needed that will get it on the ballot. Callers to Laura Ingraham late in the week were quite worried that they would not be able to win the vote come November. Some other pundits believe that this single act of judicial activism will put California into play for John McCain come November. Who knows? What I do know is that there will probably be a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November in California and that State Supreme Court judges in California are elected. Chief Justice Rose Bird was tossed out of office nearly 30 years ago over an outrageous anti-death penalty ruling. I expect there to be a few more follow her into infamy should Californians choose liberty over submission to an imperial judiciary. California gave us the Vigilance Committees in the mid 19 th Century. Perhaps it is time to dust them off, as the ruling elite, the political class no longer follows the law as written or passed by the people of California. Note also that both the Massachusetts and California homosexual marriage decisions were each decreed by a single vote of a single activist judge. And note that neither would have a leg to stand upon had the SCOTUS not embraced the entire mess via their outrageous Lawrence v Texas decision a few years ago.

1. Bailout. It’s election season and congress is well on its way to buying your vote for their reinstallation in office come November. As usual, they are going to be doing the buying with your money. There is a $300 billion housing bailout bill moving its way through the House that essentially allows the speculators, the people who signed mortgages they couldn’t pay for, and lenders that ought to have known better than to lend money to people that couldn’t keep up with the payments, to refinance at lower interest rates on lower house values. This massive injection of federal dollars into a marketplace that has already corrected itself will do little except further garbage up that marketplace, as all federal intervention historically does. A version of this legislation has already passed out of the Senate with a vote of 84-12 in April, and passed out of the House 239-188, at which point the WH threatened a veto. There is growing anger against this bailout by homeowners who have managed to keep up with their mortgages and falling house values during the popping of the housing bubble. The run-up in home prices was a nice thing for homeowners. But that time has passed for a bit, and it is now a buyers market for a while, which will allow lower income people to get into homes a bit easier and current homeowners to sell and upgrade for a more reasonable cost. This sort of congressional meddling is not unexpected, but as usual it will always be substantially damaging to the marketplace. Kill this turkey and keep it killed. Malkin, Thurs, Fri.

2. Louisiana. Republican hopes for resurgence in the House took another hit last week in Louisiana where a long—time, safe Republican incumbent lost to a more conservative democrat by 3%. Like the loss of Denny Hastert’s seat several months ago, this election sends a very stark message to Republicans nationwide. The incumbent was not in any p articular trouble, but he had been in office for a while, and there were allegations of corruption floating around, though these sorts of allegations have become yet another standard electioneering tool for leftists and their lackeys in the drive-by media. There was a third candidate in the race that took 4% of the Republican vote. We are now faced at least until November with yet another congressional seat that will caucus with Pelosi and the democrats. It is not enough for Republicans to trot out their standard hot-button social issues any more. They must show how they plan to get the government the hell out of the marketplace so that government-caused problems like rising food prices, housing bubbles, energy shortages, gasoline price spikes, and our long-time favorite – health care, can all stabilize and repair themselves through the actions of hundreds of millions of our neighbors all acting in their own best interests in a free market of ideas and efforts. I believe the message this year ought to be some form of small government, less intrusion, leave us alone, and get out of the way. Should McCain adopt this economic message – and from the look of his economic advisors, it may be coming – he has a real chance to blow Obama out of the water in November. More problematic will be the congressional races, as I am not yet convinced that the National Republican campaign committees understands the self-created train wreck they are hurtling toward. They need not p articipate in that train wreck, and could instead turn the tables on the democrats. Our solution ought to come at the state and local levels via the actions of various state and local conservative activists and campaign committees.

3. Hezbollah. Iran and Syria triggered their expected summer offensive in Lebanon last week as Hezbollah st arted military action in Beirut. AJ Strata writing in the Strata Sphere believes the offensive is intended to distract attention from Iranian destruction in Iraq, as Al Sadr’s Iranian trained and backed Mahdi Army just surrendered to the Iraqi military. Hezbollah’s excuse for a p artial takeover in Beirut was the Lebanese governments’ elimination of a Hezbollah internal communication network used to coordinate their actions in Lebanon with their masters in Syria. This attack may or may not be a prelude to military action against Israel planned later this summer. Iran continues to meddle. Syria continues to carry its water. And Hezbollah continues to demonstrate the notion that should fight someone; you had better defeat them decisively and destroy their warfighting capability forever. If you don’t you will be back fighting them year after year after year.

4. Hatcher Pass. To demonstrate yet again the ridiculous lengths that the anti-development crowd will go, we have the story of a small hydroelectric project near Hatcher Pass, a recreation area sitting in the hills above Wasilla, Alaska, 50 miles or so north of Anchorage. A renewable energy company plans on building a small dam that will channel water into a long pipe. The pipe will run along the creek for a bit as it drops in altitude toward the valley. At the end of the pipe is a turbine and generator. Total output would be electricity capable of serving up to 1,000 homes. Total cost is in the $4 million range. The dam will not create a reservoir. Perfect project, right? It is privately done; uses renewables; is environmentally friendly; and has a very small footprint. Not so fast, as this is in no way good enough for the local greens. Our local McClatchy owned fishwrapper, the Anchorage Daily News, otherwise known as the Incredibly Shrinking Newspaper, ran an article Weds. describing a town meeting on the project. The largest concern was for insects that salmon fry fed upon and how taking water from the creek high in the mountains would damage salmon runs. Interesting enough, salmon don’t get that high in the creek, so it will be difficult for salmon fry to get that high. There are also a number of beaver dams along the creek below the proposed water offtake that have active and thriving rainbow trout and dolly varden (char) populations. Volume of water flow is no problem, as the mountains in the area regularly get significant snowfall. Rather than figure out how to make this proposal work and work well, the kneejerk reaction is to say no – and to dream up reason after reason after reason not to do so. The greens don’t want renewable energy. They don’t want any energy generation at all.

5. Bridge. The private sector, once unleashed and properly incentivized can do wonders. The latest example if the rebuilding of the I-35 bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last August. Remember, that the public blame was quickly placed on President Bush, budget cuts and irresponsible tax cuts. The political solution was a series of proposals to raise taxes and to rebuild every single highway bridge in the US. The actual cause of the collapse was a structural design defect that had connecting plates on the bridge that were not strong enough to withstand the physical loads on the metal. The bridge was doomed as soon as it was designed. A private company in Minnesota got the contract to rebuild the bridge. The contract was modeled after similar contracts the rebuilt collapsed highways following the 1994 Northridge e arthquake in California, and gave significant monetary rewards to the construction company should they complete the job earlier than scheduled. Captain Ed in Hot Air, Mon. reports the new bridge is now fully three months ahead of schedule, with the construction company in line for over $20 million in incentives for early repair. They may end up being finished in Sept. rather than the scheduled December completion date. In all of this, local regulatory agencies have kept well out of the way; there have been few if any environmental harassment lawsuits or complaints. People got the bureaucracy out of the way and got the job done. Imagine what we can do if we take this model to other things the government is doing. We are back to the point where government is not the solution, it is the problem.

1. Elections. Conservatives in Great Britain won a significant victory in local elections last week, managing to turn out 44% of the total vote, as compared with 24% for the ruling p arty, Labor, and the Liberal Democrats with 25%. In these local elections, labor lost an estimated 331 seats, with the conservatives picking up 256. As far as I can tell, this victory was mostly unexpected, with only the latest polling indicating a conservative victory. The socialist, nanny state, intrusive moves by the Labor government were fully supported by British media, and had become increasingly reviled and onerous to the citizenry. Next up are Parliamentary elections, where we will see if this move to the right by the Brits is real or simply a head fake. There may be a lesson here for American conservatives in the run-up to our November elections. Today, there is widespread belief that the country is going to Hell, and conservatives will get wiped out in November. Yet we are witnessing the self-destruction of the democrat p arty at the national level via the endless steel cage death match between Senators Clinton and Obama. The new democrat majority in both houses of congress continues to pander and investigate and place the blame while gasoline, energy and food prices ratchet sharply upwards. While this may be a democrat year, I can’t stop thinking that it is indeed a time for a change, and time to toss the clowns that we installed as congressional majorities in 2006. And I wonder if the elections are going to turn out much, much differently than conventional wisdom is telling us today. The rest of the world is turning right. Can we be far behind?

2. Cooling. AJ Strata’s Strata Sphere Thursday wrote of the latest global warming prediction. This one has global temperatures falling a bit over the course of the next decade due to natural fluctuations in ocean warming and cooling cycles, changes in wind directions, and changes in the strength and flow patterns of ocean currents – none of which, by the way are considered in any of the CO2 is evil / global warming models. The prediction comes out of a German marine sciences institute. If you look at the graph included in the article, it shows that the steady rise in atmospheric CO2 decoupled from temperature change in roughly 2002, when yearly temperatures flattened out while CO2 continued to rise. The far right hand portion of the graph is even more interesting, as it shows a sharp downward temperature turn in 2007. If CO2 is driving global temperatures upwards, then it is not possible to decouple the two lines on the graph. And if natural cycles can mitigate the predicted overall global warming to manmade CO2 production, and can do so for the next decade, isn’t it possible for the same natural cycles to be driving global warming itself? The global warmists have themselves out on a very small limb that is showing signs of breaking. Perhaps we need to provide them with a saw. Personally, I am most concerned about the lack of sunspots. Go to www.spaceweather.com and take a look at the nearly flawless face of the sun. Lack of sunspots means low solar activity which also correlates nicely with historically colder climate. This solar cycle has st arted late, which usually means fewer sunspots. It might be time to think about planning for some extended very cold weather.

3. FEC. Democrats in the Senate have effectively shut down the Federal Election Commission for the course of this campaign season. Their vehicle has been to block all appointments to the Commission so that it no longer has a quorum and can no longer act. In parallel, they are raising money hand over fist in an attempt to elect their presidential candidate and expand their majority in both houses of congress. The last leg of this stool, massive voter fraud was kicked out by the SCOTUS decision on Indiana’s photo ID requirement for voting in elections a couple weeks ago. There are over 30 states without this requirement. Now that the SCOTUS has supported photo IDs for voting, I would expect a number of them to pass legislation to defend their election processes before November.

4. Juneau. This one is another Global Warming story, for if there is Global Warming, you would expect to get less snow. Alaska’s state capitol is Juneau, which is a smallish town located among the fjords of southeast Alaska. Juneau is not connected to the rest of the state, or anywhere else, for that matter, by the road system. Only way in and out of Juneau is via sea or air. It sits on a flat spot on the side of a mountain next to the water, and in the winter, avalanches in and around town are a concern. Juneau is also the most liberal-voting p art of the entire state. Electricity for Juneau comes in via a many miles long transmission line from a small hydroelectric facility – that’s renewables for you greens. In mid-April, an avalanche wiped out over a mile of transmission line from the dam to the city, shutting off all electricity. The electric utility did have some ability to generate based on oil / diesel, but it is expensive. The local electric utility estimates it will take a couple of months for the transmission lines to be restored. The only bad thing about this event is that the legislature was not in session when the lights went out. Greens in Juneau have for years fought all industrial and infrastructure development. Had there been other ways of generating electricity for the city, other ways not as dependent on a single transmission line, this natural event would not have been as disastrous. Had there been a road into Juneau, we could have trucked in propane, diesel, oil, and other fuels on an emergency basis. Trucks are easier to schedule than ships and far less expensive than aircraft. Additionally, Juneau sits on the edge of the Tongass National Forest which was mostly locked up from logging during the Clinton administration with great support and p articipation by Juneau-based green organizations. If you log the local forests on a regular basis, you then have roads, can cut down trees, and burn them for power. Today, the technology exists to produce power via biomass reduction into methane, but such an operation requires a thriving logging industry with lots of logging trash being made available for the operation. So far, nobody has gone after the local greens for their p articipation in making an unfortunate event into a very expensive catastrophe. We will see if that happens. ADN, Weds.

5. Separatists. Race-baiting in Hawaii has produced the expected result, as native Hawaiian separatists broke into the former palace of the Hawaiian Kingdom, turned out everyone, and occupied it. For decades, politicians on both sides of the political divide have been pandering to racialists, Hawaiian separatists, setting up separate but unequal facilities, rights, schools, monies and voting rights. The majority of citizens in the state does not want this pandering and are disgusted by all of it. Unfortunately, years of pandering and writing things into law do tend to set things into motion that move to predictable ends. There is no way that this sort of government-sponsored racial ap artheid can end in anything other than violence. Somebody is going to get badly hurt – likely a lot of somebodies. And should the separatist movement in Hawaii be successful in transferring lots of free money and free property into the hands of a bunch of bozos that have neither earned nor deserve it, there are other bozos out here in the rest of the country that will try the same thing using what is happening in Hawaii as a precedent. All of this is government caused. All of it is government sponsored. Absolutely none of it is necessary. Everybody involved in supporting and tolerating it ought to be sorely ashamed of themselves.

"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/

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