The Democrat majority in the Alaska House is doing its level best to resurrect the term “Know Nothings” as the new legislative season kicks off. While they are not echoing the anti-Catholic, anti-immigration bigotry of the original Know Nothing party in the 1840s, it is clear they are going to use their majority to disenfranchise Alaskans who work in industries they don’t particularly like these days; the oil patch for instance.
Newly elected Representative Jason Grenn, a 35-year old who has never held a real job outside government funded charity (Pick, Click, Give), now deigns to determine who gets to vote on what.
At issue is his odious HB44, offered up last week to the resounding applause of Alice Rogoff’s fish wrapper. The operative lines in the legislation is as follows:
a legislator may not vote on a question before a committee of the legislature, and shall request to be excused from voting on a question before a house of the legislature, if the legislator or a member of the legislator’s immediate family has a financial [AN EQUITY OR OWNERSHIP] interest in a business, investment, real property, lease, or other enterprise if the interest is substantial and the effect on that interest of the action to be voted on is greater than the effect on a substantial class of persons to which the legislator or the family member who has the financial interest belongs as a member of a profession, occupation, industry, or region.
You can find the full text of this little jewel here: HB44
A murderer’s row of anti-development Democrats sponsor the Bill. These include all the usual suspects in the House like LeDoux, Kawasaki, Tuck, Sponholz, Parish, Fansler, Tarr, Drummond, Gara, and Ortiz.
Essentially HB44 prohibits legislators and legislators with family members who work in an industry, hold a financial interest in anything, from voting on a question that will impact or otherwise benefit the legislator. It is designed as a heat seeking missile aimed at anyone with any expertise in oil and natural gas, particularly Senators Meyer and Micciche.
What would happen if citizen legislators with hands-on experience in oil and natural gas are prohibited from voting on oil and natural gas questions? First thing is that there would be nobody around to question or oppose Governor Walker’s anti-producer jihad. There would be nobody in the legislature to question the economic folly of his natural gas line.
Instead, the legislature would be informed by Governor Walker’s consultants and taxpayer paid mouthpieces on the subject. And having legislated all the in-house expertise out of the voting process, there would be no dissenting voices. How that would help anything is beyond me.
I am not surprised that a man with no experience in anything other than publicly funded charity wants to make sure that the only people with no experience in any other business (modern Know Nothings) are the only ones who can vote on those questions. After all, to a man with a hammer, the entire world looks like a nail.
I am not surprised that these democrats will do everything humanly possible to disenfranchise fellow legislators with whom they disagree, for if you can’t win a public argument, what better way to win than to shut them up and ensure that argument never takes place?
In a lot of ways, Grenn is the perfect democrat – young, photogenic, nice family, and utterly clueless about business and industry. With his legislation, he ensures nobody with the knowledge or experience in any problem can get close enough to a problem to solve it.
I do expect Democrats to be hostile to resource development. It is what they are. It is what they do. This is only going to get worse.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
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