4-14-16 Alaska/Alberta Citizens Are Both Victims Of Elected Official Overspending!

Yesterday’s Headline:   Will Alaska & Alberta punish taxpayers with more taxes —  or — reward bureaucracies and entitlement beneficiaries with tax increases?  You decide!

Today’s Alberta Headline, below:  “…a budget deficit above $10 billion, which is scary by any standard….”

Today’s Alaska Headlines, and our commentary below:

“Is Alaska Still America’s Last Frontier of Freedom?”

We genuinely like and respect almost all of the elected officials we have come to know after over four decades of Alaska residency and Alberta interaction.  Nevertheless, in business we would say that reward does not result from “good intent” or “being busy”; reward follows results.  Today we comment, with great regret, on the busy, good intent of public officials who did not lead their constituencies into a future of sustainable budgets.  There is still time to create economically sustainable futures for the children of these northern oil patches.  But elected officials better figure out ways to act both effectively and quickly.

by

Dave Harbour

Alaska’s deficit is about half that of a neighboring Canadian province with four times the population.  As our regular readers have found, neither Alaska’s nor Alberta’s government is confronting the need for balanced budgets decisively or effectively.

As we watch Alaskan legislative debate during these last days of the 2016 legislative session we have several observations:  1)  Legislators of all stripes are finally concluding that their state really has encountered the most serious fiscal crisis since approval in 1959 of the Alaska Statehood Act, and 2) Legislators are united in non partisan indecision about what combination of spending cuts or new taxes cause them the least amount of political pain in the process of correcting what is now a $4.1 billion anticipated budget deficit; and 3) democrats want to protect socialized spending on entitlements, state services, subsidies, minimum wages and prevailing wage union support (i.e. their voting constituencies), while 4) republicans are mostly united around the philosophical concept of cutting government expense to meet revenue reality — but are effectively intimidated by democrat constituencies calling them names.

We continue to see our earlier coined phrase — admittedly a generalization of American political dynamics — supported by both human nature and current practice: “Democrats never compromise; republicans always compromise”.

The socialist side is focused on accruing power by over regulating and taxing opponents while redistributing the income of wealth producers to socialist voting constituencies.

The accrued effect of this process, over decades, is the enlargement of government and government’s support constituencies along with the dismemberment and gradual dissolution of free enterprise voting constituencies.  This explains why the world leader in the “global warming/climate change movement” admits that the goal is not environmental improvement; rather, the goal is the destruction of capitalism.”

Alaskan and Canadian socialists are completely behind this effort.  (See our Chris Nelson commentary.)

The opponents of free enterprise are now, openly, socialists (i.e. as our evidence proves following the choice by Alaska democrats of presidential socialist candidate Bernie Sanders).  Concurrently, the traditional defenders of free enterprise are too often succumbing to socialist compromise or intimidation,

The trend is thus obvious to all who have eyes to see: absent a spectacular appearance of effective, conservative leadership.

Indeed, the 49th State built on natural resource entrepreneurialism has evolved from being renowned as the “last frontier”, or the “pioneering state”, into what it is becoming, “The Great Denali of Socialism”.

On the national scene, foreign Congressmen and Presidents have emasculated Alaska’s ability to rely on its natural resource wealth.

On the local scene, socialist elements — with help from over 3 dozen national and international environmental field office activists — have organized communities of entitled voters so effectively that in the bat of an eyelid Alaska could transform from a “red state” to a “blue state”.

We expect — but do not hope — to see more and more legislators “getting out while the getting is good”, as happened this week in Juneau.   We personally know and like almost all of them and find them charming, honest and sincere, in general.  Each will have a credible reason for retiring.  Each will appear to have been well intended.  Each will have, “worked hard for the people”.  Each, “could have made more money by avoiding public service, though money is not my priority”.   It is not wrong to expect to see more retiring in the next 24 months before the state moves, from teetering on the edge of the fiscal insolvency, into the abyss that is a declaration of bankruptcy.  Our regular readers do see the handwriting on the wall; they have seen Greece crash, Detroit deteriorate, Puerto Rico fail and their own think tank (i.e. ISER) has warned them repeatedly over the years.  Yet, chaotically and seemingly leaderless, they have spent with abandon.  They have either consciously supported or indirectly prevented establishment of fiscal sustainability.  Their irresponsible budgeting and compromising are rooted in an absence of strong values and/or courage along with a proclivity to “compromise” when intimidated…and, to seek public approval with each vote.

If ‘conservative’ leaders do begin to run for an exit as they face their own fiscal failures, expect to see more and more socialist legislators, mayors and assembly members elected.  They will demonize any remaining, ‘greedy’ conservatives, intimidate them more.  And, they will promise more spending and more taxing of ‘rich corporations’ as the ranks of entitled voters grow.

As socialist power grows it is also logical to expect battalions of experienced business leaders and free enterprise employees to pull up stakes seeking other places that can become for them, “new frontiers of freedom”.

For, unless its founding natural resource principles and values can be reinvigorated, Alaska can not truly be now called, “The last frontier of freedom”.       -dh