ricblog

Having arrived in Vegas a couple days before Redoubt began to belch again, I have been thinking about little less than if I shall have an opportunity to get home without having to drive to Anchorage from Fairbanks.  That research money in the stimulus package I pooh-poohed recently may prove to be my saving grace.  I would certainly accept any criticism for my stated position regarding stimulus funding of volcanoes if I get home as a result of some genius volcanologist’s discovery of a method to prevent ash from diverting my flight.

Being a realist, however, I am resigned to the fact that if Mother Nature in the first decade of the 21^st century is determined to punish me with a long drive home, so be it.  Or if some transcendental truth wills it, who am I to argue.

Thus, having printed out my boarding passes about sixteen hours before departure, I am very much aware that when I check the news and my flight status tomorrow morning I will be very lucky if she blew while I was in still in Vegas.  After all, I am not here to party, but to visit family.  Every other eventuality is a lesser degree of luck, other than an on time arrival home, although it is arguable which would be worse; sleepless in Seattle, or driving home from Fairbanks.

So, I have a proposal or two for the volcanologists.

That golfing dome on the south side could be a model for an airport dome.  Using the hot air from the volcano to keep it inflated, two exhaust tubes could protrude from the dome up to allow jets to fly in and out.  If the entry/exit points were at 70,000 feet then no one would care about the limited margin for error except the pilots, unless the overhead masks were deployed somewhere around 50 thousand feet.  Everyone would wake up at about the time the attendant reminds everyone to remain seated until the captain turns off the fasten seat belt sign. 

My second proposal is a variation of the first, except the dome would be placed over Redoubt.  Instead of the exhaust tubes extending up though, they would extend out, preferably away from any villages or homesteads.  Maybe the exhausts could be computer operated mechanical devices that could be redirected according to wind conditions and known population points.

I am done venting.  And if anyone cares, I don’t gamble.

Governor Bobby Jindal (R., LA) was berated personally, ideologically and technically after his rebuttal to the president’s non-state of the union address.  Beyond the nationwide attacks on his appearance, tone and presentation (some of which was from Republicans), Alaskan media focused on the young governor’s critical comment about funding for volcano research.  Although it was little more than a simple example of countless other equally suspect appropriations surreptitiously added to the “emergency” stimulus bill, the example was used by the governor as a metaphor to compare volcanic eruptions to the tragedy of the irresponsible spending that was erupting from the capital as he spoke.

The eruption of irresponsible spending Jindal referred to amounted to roughly three-quarters of a trillion dollars, all of which was purported to be vital to the administration’s efforts to avert the impending financial meltdown threatening to mortally damage many of the nation’s financial institutions.  Remember, that emergency bill that was passed on a Friday before recess without any one reading it (except Senator Mark Begich D., AK)?  Remember, the emergency appropriation that was not immediately signed into law at the White House, but days later in Denver? The bill that no one read that, after a thorough inspection, has more evidence of institutional changes in government than actual economic stimulation, by a ratio of about two to one.      

Governor Jindal’s metaphor was effectively made moot by straw man charges leveled against him from the Left.  Initiated with a false allegation that the governor demonstrated a total disregard for the potential benefits of early warnings for volcanic activity, in contrast to the evidential benefits of early warnings of hurricanes in his home state, the leftist’s straw man argument effectively deflected the discussion from irresponsible liberal spending to another opportunity for the Left to indict the opposition for invented crimes against humanity.  Ideologically, had there been $140,000,000 earmarked for hurricane research Jindal would have protested it too, asserting that the wind was blowing our money all around, from Washington to all 57 of the states.  Volcanic research funding was pork, plain and simple, but still presented an easy target on which to launch an assault.  Fascism light from the Left, but fascism nonetheless.  (“Suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship”) 

This straw man argument created a foundation upon which a full frontal assault was mounted to demean the governor and conservatives in general.  Regardless of the fact that the governor’s criticism was directed toward the lard in the Democrat sponsored emergency Recovery Act (originally referred to as an emergency economic “Stimulus Package”); and regardless of the absurdity of any claims that the volcano research funding could be considered as anything close to stimulating or urgent in nature; or that it had any measurable potential to promote an economic recovery, the Leftist Brown Shirts attacked relentlessly.  Fascism light from the Left, but fascism nonetheless. (“Eliminates opposition through secret police”) 

Such behavior is not uncommon for the Leftists in America.  Their propensity to destroy the messenger, by any means possible and with blatant disregard for truth and honor, has been demonstrated again and again.  Next to their subtle and none-to-infrequent charges using race, climate or myriad of other subjects with which to demean or disparage,  this is simply one more example of the “win at all cost and take no prisoners” strategy deployed by the Left to gain power, and to effectively muzzle any opposition in order to retain it.  It is therefore fascism, and it has a strangle hold on America. 

Governor Palin welcomes Governor Jindal as a fellow traveler on the road that is fraught with the Left’s straw man IED’s.  The next thing you know Jingal will be an alleged father of a Palin.  

Many individuals who have been accused in this article of being fascist brown shirts, soldiers of the secret police or propagandists may not be guilty of the accusations.  It is entirely possible that they are just mindless reactionaries incapable of comprehending what they hear, or too lazy to obtain a transcript of it and read what was actually said.    Context is everything, and the context of Governor Jindal’s remarks are extremely important—especially if by failing to understand the context you inadvertently become a propagandist brown shirt soldier for the Left, or are proven to be examples of the poor quality of our educational system. 

On the other hand, there are those who just seem to go along to get along.  For example, Congressman Young, displaying his new and improved statesmanship so as not to jeopardize his next election, stated that the governor “should have been more sensitive in his remarks.”   The congressman did not throw Jindal under the bus, but he gave him a nudge.  Are there no real men left to defend against the fascists and to lead the mindless sheeples among us?   

The real argument in regard to the volcano funding, and the numerous other items funded in the legislation, was not if volcano research should be funded.  The real argument was whether or not the emergency recovery and stimulus package was the appropriate venue in which to fund them.  Contrary to the statement from Sen. Schumer (D., NY), some American’s do care about “those little, tiny—yes porky—amendments” because eventually they add up to become real money: a PORKULUS OMNIMINUS perhaps.

ric  

A grassroots effort to repair the municipal tax cap ended the first phase of the election process Tuesday, 10 Feb., when representatives of the Municipal Taxpayers League of Anchorage (MTL) officially filed their petition in the Clerk’s Office at City Hall.  The file, containing about 1100 pages with ten signatures per page, was more than a foot deep and amounted to more than half-again the minimum number of signatures required to qualify for the April ballot.  The MTL’s goal up to the filing date was to demonstrate significant popular support for the petition by obtaining many more signatures than required for certification by City Hall.

The MTL petition seeks to roll back, over the next three years, property tax increases that have been unacceptably imposed upon Anchorage property owners since 2003 when the Begich administration and the Anchorage Assembly approved Ordinance 2003-160, a reinterpretation of the 1983 Tax Cap Charter amendment.  It removed from the original tax cap formula (as interpreted in the 1984 ordinance) any annual payments received by the municipality (payments in lieu of taxes) from municipal entities such as the Port of Anchorage, Merrill Field and the utilities. 

The new interpretive ordinance swept aside the historical model of a lean and efficient government that was traditionally honored by every mayor and assembly for two decades.  The Begich administration, flush with cash derived from its new and innovative authority to raise property taxes, eliminated the challenge of making the hard decisions faced by its predecessors while it also enjoyed an uncommon ability to fund many services that preceding administrations and assemblies could only dream about funding.       

Qualifying for the April 7^th election ballot will soon prove to have been the easy part of the process for the MTL initiative.  In the next few weeks opponents of the charter amendment will mount a vigorous campaign to defeat it.  Their tactics and strategies have been seen before, and no thing or no one will be off limits for them to use or abuse in order to win.  Children and the polar bear, the homeless and single mothers, Belugas and senior citizens will all be fair game as props used to persuade the voter that the community can not afford the limitations of the original interpretative ordinance.  They will overwhelm the voter with narratives of the hardships the amendment will impose on our facilities, the environment and the weakest and most vulnerable among us. 

Yes, the old adage of the camel’s nose under the tent is so, so true.  The tax cap was breached and the camel now owns the tent.   

If the MTL attempts to win with a campaign based on the concepts of fairness and justice by asserting that the municipality unfairly and unjustly raised property taxes, the opponents of the initiative will overwhelm their campaign message with a parade of victims they claim will suffer irreparable harm if the initiative is approved.  The voters will be forced to choose between what is perceived as fair and just for those innocent victims and the justice and fairness of taking money from property owners who, in comparison, are fully capable of contributing their fair share.

Moreover, although the conduct of the initiative supporters will be impeccably civil, the opponents will nonetheless portray them as uncaring and selfish oppressors who don’t care if poor children go to bed hungry or if veterans are forced to sleep under bridges.  Schools, the opposition will claim, will suffer dire consequences leading to lower graduation rates and plummeting standardized test scores.  Every priority, they will herald, that the previous administration supposedly struggled to fund will be at risk of becoming blighted or cut completely if the proposal is passed.  Moreover, the unions will go the full monty to defeat the initiative due to the threat it will present to salary and wage growth, as well as concessions it may force them to accept regarding working conditions and benefits.

If, however, the MTL deploys a strategy that emphasizes the municipal government’s infringements on the freedom and liberty of a large segment of the population, rather than the concepts of what is fair or just, they can effectively neutralize the opposition’s demands for fairness and justice with stark examples of the perils associated with a society that seeks fairness and justice at the expense of those exceptional American values of freedom and liberty.  An American, if forced to choose between liberty and freedom, or what is deemed to be fair and just, will value liberty and freedom above fairness and justice.  The principles of freedom and liberty are virtually non-negotiable.   On the other hand, negotiations and arbitrations for fairness and justice occur so frequently that they regularly go unnoticed.  Life is not always fair or just, but many among us and before us have made considerable sacrifices to protect freedom and liberty.         

The authority to tax, and how that tax is computed, was agreed upon by the citizens and representatives of the government in 1986.  Briefly stated, the taxpayer assented to the government’s limited taking of a portion of their liberty and freedom, in the form of tax dollars (a measure of his liberty and freedom), to enable government the ability to provide essential services for the community.  The citizen, via the tax cap, demanded in return that the government provide quality services with the limited revenues provided, or to seek approval from the voters if more of the taxpayer’s liberty and freedom were deemed necessary to provide those services.  The tax cap was an instrument with which the citizen prevented the government from abusing its power to encroach upon the liberty and freedom of its constituents.

The MTL initiative will restore the citizen’s inalienable right to determine how much liberty and freedom they are willing to cede to the government.  As apposed to the recent actions of the municipal government, when someone or some group of people thought it was a fair and just to infringe upon the liberty and freedom of many of their constituents, the MTL initiative will reassert the principle that the government’s job is to protect liberty and freedom rather than to take them and to grant them.  

ric   

It often seems as though in discussions regarding the role of government a substantial portion of the community is inclined to believe that government’s primary role is to serve as a benefactor of liberty and freedom rather than a protector of freedom and liberty.  Using terms that appeal to human emotions such as justice, fairness and equality, many among us repeatedly gain sufficient support for myriad of government social programs, as opposed to those who are forthright and prefer an indifferent government with a limited purpose.  Although a limited and indifferent government must also be fair and just as it implements policies to provide vital services, such as fire and police, when fairness or justice become primary requisites of government the inevitable result is someone wins at the expense of another, not often on the merits of an issue but as a result of some bureaucrat’s ambitious goal to achieve a fair and just society.  Social engineering, as it is called, thus undermines liberty and freedom using a facade of fairness or a veneer of justice.

In government, modern political discourse has depreciated in quality to the point where any conservative message that appeals to a sense of fairness or justice is ordained to fail due to the opposition’s apt ability to use issues of fairness or justice to arouse emotionally charged arguments against it.  All too frequently conservative messages or requests containing uncomplicated and matter of fact pleas for fairness or justice are so skillfully marginalized, minimized or convoluted by the left that the intended message suddenly appears as if it originated from abusive and selfish tyrants seeking to benefit on the backs of the less fortunate.  As a result, conservative policies are often effectively characterized as unfair and unjust, as if they are designed to compel poor children to go to bed hungry and for veterans by the hundreds of thousands to be forced to sleep under bridges.     

Unlike the terms fairness, justice and equality, the terms liberty and freedom are more concrete concepts, and thus are less disposed to becoming clouded by arguments that employ moral equivalence, broad interpretations or obfuscations of the facts.  Freedom and liberty are the principles on which America emerged as a nation and they continue to shape American culture as vital threads woven into the fabric of the nation.  This is American exceptionalism.  Fairness, justice and equality, on the other hand, are subject to individual or collective biases and are often dependent upon perceptions relating to current events, situational perspectives or personal prejudices.  Words are symbols used to communicate a message, and the clarity of the message contained in the words freedom and liberty are more precise than the plethora of vague messages possible in the terms fairness, justice and equality.       

An individual or group is either free or not free; they have liberty or they do not have liberty.  Free men and women often agree to relinquish some of their liberty and freedom for the common good of their community.  Too often however, liberty or freedom is confiscated from freemen under the pretext of what is judged to be good for the community.  The common term accepted to describe such action is TAKING, and although terms such as stealing or extorting might be more appropriate, the word taking is used so as to minimize the potential of wide spread opposition and dissent.  It is easier to justify a policy in which government takes from someone for the common good than it is to justify extorting or stealing it for the common good of the community.  In other words, it is not nearly as irrational to take from an individual as it is to steal from someone.  The symbolism of taking is less harsh than what is symbolized by stealing or extorting.   

Free men have determined that no one is at liberty to surreptitiously call out FIRE in a crowded theatre.  So too, free men have agreed to give up some of the fruits of their labor, a measure of their liberty and freedom, in the form of taxes paid to government for the general welfare of the community.  When the community commences to impose increased demands on the fruits of the free man’ labor, and thus his liberty and his freedom, the seeds of discontent and conflict are sown.  This is the point where the concepts of “social justice” and “fair share” emerge; themes used by the takers to justify the taking of an individual’s freedom and liberty, for the common good.  Unlike in the example of the crowded theatre, where the individual has assented to a limit on his or her freedom and liberty, there is a point where an individual is forced to protest excessive taking; the point where the taking is done without the assent of the individual.  It is at this point when individuals from whom liberty and freedom is taken begin to contemplate having a TEA PARTY.     

Sometime before 1776 The English Crown began to infringe upon the liberty and freedom of the colonies with the imposition of taxes, the most notorious of which was the TEA TAX.  The colonists rebelled against the Crown’s limitation on their freedoms and liberties by waging The Revolutionary War, a war fought under the mantras of “no taxation without representation” and “give me liberty or give me death,” thus describing that the colonists had not assented to the limitations on their freedom and liberty.

Decades later, the nation became embroiled in a civil war, and liberty and freedom were again at the heart of the conflict.  The South’s economy had profited greatly from slave labor, or more accurately, from a total taking of liberty and freedom from the Negro.  Upon the conclusion of the war the freed and liberated Negro was purportedly able to enjoy the fruits of his labors via monetary compensation for the work he performed. 

Not until well into the mid-nineteen hundreds, when the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act became law, was the Negro truly free and able to enjoy the liberty and freedom theoretically afforded them in the founding documents, and won for them in the Civil War.  By the close of the century, substantial and measureable progress can be cited to prove unequivocally that Blacks had achieved parity in opportunity and reward for their labor and intellectual abilities.  Their theoretical freedom and liberty had become actual liberty and freedom.  Today there is a Black holding the highest office in the land, and in the years leading up to this point there have been Black candidates who have legitimately, but unsuccessfully, sought their party’s nomination to the office.  They have exercised the freedom and liberty to seek to lead the free world, and no tangible or covert obstructions denied them the freedom to do so.

“Free at last! Thank God Almighty, (they) are free at last!”

Thus, liberty and freedom can be defined by an individual’s ability to be compensated for his labor, or for his intellectual abilities and talents.  To deny someone compensation for his labor is to deny him his liberty and freedom, and the taking a portion of someone’s compensation without his assent is a denial of a portion of his liberty and freedom.  

Unfortunately, returning to the liberal’s shrewd ability to evoke emotion to successfully argue that it is fair and just to take more from an individual who is successful, because he has plenty to start with and he will continue to have plenty despite having more taken from him, the liberal effectively asserts that the taking of more is the price to be paid for being an American; a successful person’s “patriotic duty.”  Once an individual is successful, according to the liberal, he or she then has a debt to pay, and the government of the people takes it as if it has a contractual right to do so, rather than to allow the individual the freedom and liberty to hold, dispense or dispose of his property as he desires, including his money.

Hence, society has determined that it is appropriate to take property in the form of money earned by an individual for the benefit of society, as if it was the duty of the successful to pay society for the opportunity to succeed; to be an American.  If the taking is claimed to be unfair or unjust, the argument is likely to fail.  Is it not common sense that if you have more, then you can afford to pay more?  Moreover, is it not a natural phenomenon for those who are not so successful to collectively determine that it is fair to take more from those who are successful?  That they are justified to do so?  This is income redistribution, otherwise known of as socialism, and it is a natural human tendency that our Forefathers sought to prevent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as in a variety of recorded discussions regarding the role of government in congress and between representatives and their constituents.         

If taking is framed within the concepts of liberty and freedom however, as it was leading up to the Revolutionary War; as it was leading up to the Civil War; as it was leading up to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts; rather than if it is fair or just, powerful arguments are possible that are fully capable of evoking strong emotional reactions against the denial or taking of someone’s liberty and freedom.  If denial of liberty and freedom, in the form of excessive taxation of the successful, without their assent, is framed as egregious assaults on liberty and freedom, as was the Tea Tax, slavery, segregation and discrimination, in contrast to claims regarding the fairness or justice of the taking, liberty and freedom will rule the day, every day. 

Denial of an individual’s liberty and freedom is not fair or just, yet the English Crown believed it was fair and just to tax the colonies.  Denial of an individual’s liberty and freedom is not fair or just, yet the South went to war to defend their opinion that it was fair and just to own slaves.  Denial of an individual’s liberty and freedom is not fair or just, yet the United States up to, and for some time beyond, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts continued segregation and discrimination of Blacks, as if it was fair and just. 

Thus, any argument centered on if something is fair or just is subject to abject failure, even if the issue is factually accurate and demonstrably evident.  Clearly, as indicated above, the taking of one’s property or of his labor, intellectual talent or skills can be determined fair and just by the takers.  Vigilantes and despots seek their form of justice and fairness just as the Crown and the South sought theirs, but that does not make their actions fair or just.  It simply indicates that those who are in a position to impose their will upon others at any given point in time are also those who decide what is fair or just at that particular point in time.  Would not the vigilante and the despot simply laugh at an accusation of unfair or unjust behavior?  So too, does not history show that the Crown, the South and over time, Americans react more favorably to demands for freedom and liberty than to cries for fairness or justice?  To argue it is unfair and unjust to tax the wealthy is an almost futile task in contrast to claims that he is being denied his inalienable right to liberty and freedom; as well as the right to assent to forfeiting some of his it.  Otherwise it has been stolen or extorted.    

In conclusion, arguments for redress of grievances using the concept of American exceptionalism are more effective than those made using the more nebulous concepts of fairness or justice.  Although attempts to argue for freedom and liberty using the concept of American exceptionalism are more complex and require some degree of finesse, individuals who do so can achieve more significant standing in a political venue than if one is crying out for fairness or justice.  Impositions of limitations and restrictions on an individual’s liberty and freedom, if accomplished without the assent of the individual, are perceived as grossly un-American— an affront to American exceptionalism.  It may not be fair or just to take from those amongst us who are more successful, but life is not always fair.  Yet, nearly all Americans are men and women of principle who would fight, and even die for the principles of freedom and liberty, otherwise known of as American exceptionalism.

ric