11-11-16 A Glorious Week Ending With A Glorious Veterans Day!

Veterans Day Commentary

Dave Harbour

My Dad, Col. Dave Harbour, and Mom conceived me late Saturday night in Honolulu on December 6, 1941 — before all hell broke loose the next morning.

Capitol - Washington DC - Photo by Dave Harbour 1-24-14-00 By the end of the month, Mom was on her way to Coleman, Texas where I was born on Septembeer 4, ’42 with help from Dad’s folks. Within days of that “day of infamy”, Dad shipped out and was flying an Army Airforce fighter from a New Guinea base, successfully surviving years of WWII dogfights above the blue Pacific.

Dad’s brothers served in other theaters of war against that era’s “axis of evil powers”.

My Marine brother, Doug, survived the Vietnam Tet Offensive after enduring the death of brother warriors all around him on a shot up, bombed out hill near Da Nang.

I had the pleasure of serving on the quieter, Korean DMZ 15 years after that ‘conflict’, on LTG William P. Yarborough’s staff, with Chief of Staff, Col. Arthur D. Simons. Believe me, we came to know the nature and threat of the million-man North Korean Foot Soldier Army staring at us from the other side of the Imjin River DMZ, with bayonets fixed and artillery loaded.

This is why I appreciated President Obama’s respectful appearance at the Tomb of the Unknown today.
This also why I have argued and editorialized against most of his anti-American, anti-constitutional, anti-rule of law policies for the last 8 years.
This is why I am so delighted with the election of Donald J. Trump, who is pledged to uphold the values for which I, my brother and our ancestors put on the uniform of our country.
This is why I still fight to defend the constitution and the free enterprise system that gave us our current freedoms. There is more than one way to fight; we need not be in a foxhole in a foreign land to courageously, thoughtfully, diligently defend the traditional values and institutions which, together with our faith in God, enabled our country to prosper.

The foregoing is also why I wrote the Intergenerational Inequity piece for the Washington Times this week. The Alaska Support Industry Alliance’s Ak-Headlamp kindly referred to it, below.

Accordingly, the true message of Veterans Day, to me, is: Let this generation defend our God-given Constitution and principles so that we may pass on to our children the great gift of freedom which we inherited from our ancestors.

Ak-Headlamp

Think of the children. Commissioner emeritus of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, chairman emeritus of the Alaska Oil & Gas Congress, former chairman of the Alaska Council on Economic Education, and publisher of Northerngaspipelines.com Dave Harbour penned an op-ed in the Washington Times highlighting the state’s fiscal concerns, specifically his concerns with potential intergenerational inequality from various tax plans. “Our state is almost 90 percent dependent on oil revenue, but our great Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline is three-quarters empty and oil is fetching less than half of what it brought in nearly three years ago,” he opines, “Adding insult to injury, a fair number of Alaskan politicians — including Gov. Bill Walker and former Gov. Sarah Palin have supported higher taxes on an already highly taxed oil industry.” Harbour closes by calling on the coming generation to, “to tell parents and politicians, ‘Don’t buy your generation stuff that I have to pay for.'”

By wpnorthern|2016-12-22T22:26:44-09:00November 11th, 2016|Commentary|0 Comments

About the Author: wpnorthern

Dave Harbour, publisher of Northern Gas Pipelines, is a former Chairman of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, a Commissioner Emeritus of NARUC, NARUC's Official Representative to IOGCC and Vice Chairman of NARUC's Gas Committee. He served as Gas Committee Chairman of the Western Conference of Public Service Commissioners. He also served as commissioner of the Anchorage Bicentennial Commission and the Anchorage Heritage Land Bank Commission. He earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree: English, at Colorado State University, a Master of Science Degree: Communications-Journalism at Murray State University and graduated from Utility Regulatory School for Commissioners at Michigan State University. He served as a Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs at Alaska Pacific University, taught bank marketing classes at the University of Alaska and was an English teacher at Los Alamos High School. Harbour served in ranks of Private - Captain during a 4-year assignment with the Army in Korea, Idaho, Georgia and Fort Meade and received the Meritorious Service Medal among other commendations. Harbour is also a past Chairman of the Alaska Council on Economic Education, the Alaska Oil & Gas Association Government Affairs Committee, the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, the Export Council of Alaska and the Department of Commerce's District Export Council. He is a past President of the Alaska Press Club, American Bald Eagle Foundation, Consumer Energy Alliance-Alaska and Common Sense for Alaska. Harbour was instrumental in founding the American Bald Eagle Research Institute (UAS), the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, the Downtown Anchorage Business Partnership, and Arctic Power. He also served as CEO of several small Alaska organizations, including the Anchorage Parking Authority and Action Security, Inc. Harbour is also Chairman Emeritus of the Alaska Oil & Gas Congress. Harbour's wife, Nancy, is a professional, performing arts administrator and his three boys, Todd, Benjamin and William work in the fields of environmental management, energy marketing and medicine.