REFLECTIONS

[Administrator's Note: Since the Chanuka and Christmas holidays Alex's Interesting Items were delayed.]

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Suicides
2. Shell
3. Caroline
4. McClatchy
5. Salazar
6. Otters
7. Hottest Year!

1. Suicides. Something very sad is happening in Bush Alaska. The suicide rate, particularly among young adults is about double that of the national average. The Anchorage Daily News report Friday was prompted by a rash of six suicides among young adults across the Seward Peninsula in far western Alaska since the first of the month. Bush Alaska today has much the same problem as rural America had during the first half of the Twentieth Century – that is: How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen the big city? The twist for Bush Alaska is that it is not all that easy to leave, and there is incredible tribal pressure to stay, learn and practice the old native ways, and keep it going from now to eternity. An appreciable percentage of the young are deciding that this is not what they want to do, that they want something better, something more, something different, and are opting for that something different in some very unfortunate ways. We may be approaching the point in time where old native ways are becoming incompatible with surviving and prevailing in the Twenty First century. We may be approaching the point in time where those in the Bush will have to choose between the old ways and joining the rest of their neighbors in Twenty First century Alaska. Otherwise, they will lose their young. And this is not a choice anyone but those out in the Bush can make. We will pray that they choose wisely.

2. Shell. In another bit of good economic news for Alaska, Shell Oil announced that it had cancelled its exploration program in the Beaufort Sea, north of the Alaskan North Slope for 2009 so that it can fight anti-drilling lawsuits by the greens and NIMBY native subsistence hunters and whalers. The exploration program was going to inject around three billion dollars and employ nearly a thousand Alaskans. The fleet was ready to go last year, when the lawsuits hit the Ninth Circus and the exploration program was halted via court order. Lat month, the Ninth Circus decided that the Minerals Management Service (MMS) did not properly consider exploration impact on whaling, subsistence and local wildlife and sent the entire mess back to the MMS to do again. Shell has appealed to the entire Ninth Circus and awaits their decision. We will hope that they choose to do something other than second guess the paperwork this time around. Note that there is extensive offshore oil production already in place north of Deadhorse and the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. There is an artificial island named Endicott that has been producing for over a decade. There is another artificial island named Northstar that is a bit newer and is producing. The Beaufort Sea is pretty shallow, so the technique has been to truck gravel into the ocean and build artificial islands and causeways to them. This is really nothing new and not a particularly big deal; and we have been doing it up here for decades.

3. Caroline. Who says that there is no royalty here in America? It appears that the front runner for nomination to the soon-to-be vacated Hillary Clinton senate seat from NY is Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who has recently dropped “Schlossberg” from her name (remindful of Hillary’s “Rodham” appearing and disappearing from her name over the years). She is the daughter of JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy and has never run for anything in her life. She doesn’t vote in local or national elections all that often either. She climbed aboard the Obama bandwagon early in the primary season and it appears that he supports her appointment. Local politicians in NY are not particularly impressed and are letting the governor know of their displeasure. Whatever happens, the appointee will have to run for election in 2010, likely carrying the burden of defending congressional malfeasance during the ongoing recession / depression over the next couple of years. Still, she is probably a better choice than, say, Al Franken.

4. McClatchy. McClatchy is a corporation that owns a number of highly partisan, highly leftist newspapers nationwide. Up here in Anchorage, they own the Anchorage Daily News, which has chosen sides with the democrats, unions and greens in everything significant over the last decade. McClatchy also tries to identify young, photogenic, conservatives and destroy them before they can be elected to higher office. The marketplace is having a say about McClatchy and other newspapers that have chosen sides in the political wars. Stock price for McClatchy in early 2005 was around $74/share. Stock price this morning was under a dollar, a loss of over $73/share in less than three years. Anyone out there think that they are being rewarded for their sterling journalism? Perhaps they are being rewarded for choosing sides.

5. Salazar. Barack Hussein Obama asked Ken Salazar, the senior US senator from Colorado to be his Secretary of the Interior. Salazar is being presented as a moderate, who will not continue the green effort to lock up all federal lands and protect them from all human activity. Several environmental groups are screaming bloody murder in opposition, while entertaining, is not particularly convincing. Salazar has been a run of the mill leftist during his short time in congress, and recently opposed oil shale development in Colorado. It is likely that his appointment will be simply a nice, moderate face to put on the sharp leftward turn at Interior over the next few years. Salazar does want to return to Colorado and run for governor, so it does behoove him to behave himself and not do things that are too environmentally onerous while Secretary. Could it be worse? Probably. How much worse? Not much.

6. Otters. The US Fish & Wildlife Service is proposing establishment of nearly 6,000 square miles of protected habitat for sea otters off the western Alaskan coastline. Otter populations have dropped from an estimate of around 100,000 in the 1970s to around 40,000 today. The greens sued to get them listed as endangered three years ago and are on to the next step in the long process, that of locking up the land so that no human activity is possible. This action once again demonstrates the ongoing fallacy of the Endangered Species Act – that of assuming the numbers of all animals are static, and do not respond to changes in weather, changes in patterns of ocean currents or winds. Something happened in the North Pacific over the course of the last decade. Large numbers of aquatic mammals left western Alaska – where there is hardly any human population, and moved east. Most notable was the stellar sea lions, formerly favorite food of killer whales in western Alaska. The thinking is that something in the North Pacific changed, and the food animals the larger mammals depend upon moved east. The remaining killer whales are following the larger mammals east, but they are also hanging around in western Alaska and cleaning out the remaining otters. So what do we do as Americans when the weather changes; when the ocean currents change; when the winds change; and plant, animals and fungus that used to inhabit a location in numbers change? Do we declare an emergency, steal property from our neighbors without any compensation, and lock up tens of thousands of square miles of land and sea from all future development, until things change back? Or should we learn how things are changing, why they are changing and go with the flow? It is the height of hubris to believe that mankind is responsible for all (any?) changes in plant and animal populations, yet this is what we base public policy upon. And we execute t through the courts rather than via the elected branches of government. The Endangered Species Act as currently employed may be the single worst piece of legislation since the Sixteenth Amendment. It needs to be repealed, restructured, and revised to support sound management of the wildlife, property rights and just compensation, rather than a brute force, one size fits all, response to barely understood changes in the natural world.

7. Hottest Year! McClatchy ran yet another breathless article midweek claiming that NASA had described 2008 as the ninth warmest year on record. Tell that to the folks in Montana that last week endured -35 degrees F; those in Minneapolis – St. Paul who have endured below zero temperatures for over a week; those that shoveled snow in Las Vegas; shoveled snow in Houston; and endured the coldest summer on record here in Anchorage Note that all of the current winter weather is coming before things really get cranked up (or down) in January and February, the historical coldest months of the year. The glowarmers are well on their way to become laughing stocks.

More later — AG

“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 also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.