Right Wing Political Theater

Proof that Alaska is actually a state.

Last week, before being sworn into office, my representative to the state House, Lindsey Holmes, decided she’s really a Republican — this after running and winning multiple times as a Democrat. Why more Democratic women aren’t defecting to the party of trans-vaginal probes is beyond me. I suppose I’d be more upset if I thought the Democrats were losing a hard worker who did more than run up her Alaska Airlines mileage on legislative junkets.

Lindsey “found herself” for a committee assignment – making Vic Kohring look like a bargaining savant. Her dishonesty with voters and misrepresentation to donors was bad enough, but by switching sides, even with her no-work ethic, she handed a super majority to the Republicans.

And they’re not lazy, they’re crazy.

OK, I’m not a psychiatrist and crazy isn’t a diagnosis, but we’ve seen substantial evidence of their nuttiness this week in Juneau.

A bill backed by Mike Chenault, Craig Johnson, Charisse Millett and Tammie Wilson would make federal agents subject to arrest for enforcing future federal gun laws on Alaskans.

Maybe they think Brown v. Board of Education was about getting brown crayolas in the box with the other colors and forgot that, at the direction of the president, the National Guard enforced that particular U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

More likely, though, it’s political theater intended to make their right wing constituents get all tingly.

On the other hand, it may not have occurred to some lawmakers that there are constitutional amendments other than the almighty Second. Someone should tell them that the Supreme Court ruled in 1958 that federal law “can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes.”

I wonder if this “evasive scheme” was dreamed up at the Fairbanks Denny’s. Jefferson Davis Chenault and his band of wanna-be confederates seem to be channeling the recently convicted and sentenced Peacemaker’s Militia.

The federal government successfully prosecuted those fruitcakes for conspiracy to kill a federal judge and state troopers with all kinds of illegal weaponry. Militia members refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the courts and held their own “trials” at Denny’s. No really.

But this isn’t Joe Vogler’s Alaska. Vogler was considered “fringe” or “colorful” by many of us with his “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.” Now his ilk are running the state House.

Maybe the “Let’s have a Civil War” crew didn’t realize Vogler was sponsored by the Iranian government to speak at the United Nations – only he disappeared first. He was murdered after a deal for illegal plastic explosives went south.

Gov. Giveaway wasn’t much different in his State of the Oil Colony speech. He embraced foreign owned companies and felt compelled to take his own cheap shot at the feds.

“Let us also come together to stop federal overreach. When a federal agency tramples on what is our right, we will not roll over; we will not lie down. We will stand up for what is right.” Parnell said. “As Alaskans, we regularly experience the disconnect between federal flights of fancy and on-the-ground realities. Well, here’s the reality: Washington, D.C., just doesn’t get Alaska — never has, never will.”

I wish I’d had a warning that was coming. It was blow-your-coffee-out-your-nose funny. Hard to bridge the “disconnect” between Alaska and the feds after you willingly give up your place at the Coastal Zone Management table. I guess without local knowledge the feds will just have to Google.

Oh, and when it comes to the federal flight of fancy called the Affordable Healthcare Act, he gave up our sovereignty there too.

All the chest thumping and declarations of independence are a bit pathetic. I doubt the governor will turn down federal money for fishery disaster relief, if it passes the Congress. Alaska has turned into that bratty middle school kid who wants an allowance but screams, “You’re not the boss of me.”

The Anchorage School District just announced $25 million in education cuts. Wasilla’s Wes Keller wants Alaska to change its constitution to funnel public money to our local madrasas. Where’s the outrage from all those constitution-worshipping patriots who think Moses got the Second Amendment straight from The Man.

The governor says education is a priority but he’s happy to let inflation make cuts in the education budget.

Sorry, Govenor G, I believe your priorities are what you spend OUR billions on – and sadly, that’s an anti-competitive bailout of the big three oil companies. Try again.

If our “leaders” are going to keep a chip on their shoulders about federal authority, why don’t they just go big – secede already! Maybe the feds will say, “OK, fine, you want to move out? You can take only what you’ve paid for.”

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