By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
Assembly Member Jamie Allard’s Must Read Alaska column on Oct. 29 nails the challenge we face in today’s Marxist control of our cities in America, detailed through her personal experiences in working to represent her community.
Anchorage is not an atypical Marxist stronghold.
We can see these experiential examples in almost every state in America. Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in particular stand out. These formerly wonderful cities are now controlled by a Marxist regime solely focused on destroying Americanism, actively attempting to murder liberty in ways we have never seen in our respective lifetimes.
One may ask, why destroy something that is innately good and best for its citizens?
Why implement a totalitarian regime with mind-numbingly rigid controls on citizens?
And why are these same citizens seeming go along with the new regimes like lambs to slaughter?
These are questions must be addressed if we are to survive the onslaught.
Here in Anchorage we see the conservative attempts to change the fabric of municipal government to a breathable balance between individual rights and the need for the rule of law. However, the current assembly powered by the unions, the education industry, the health care industry, and the welfare industry not only continue to drive stakes through the heart of individual rights but ignores the law in favor of political expediency and situational ethics.
Oh, and the almost $1.5 billion dollar budget controlled by the municipal assembly and the school board continues to enrich the pockets of the unions, the education industry, the health care industry, and the welfare industry while Anchorage’s general and student population is on the decline.
This situation necessitates the extraction of more and more money from a shrinking population.
This is the tragedy of the early 21st Century, which like the plague of the early 20th Century Progressive Movement captured the control of our banks, our education system, our food, and more, now focuses on indoctrination of our population through propaganda and entitlement.
We are moving closer to despotism and further away from liberty.
What is liberty?
Frederic Bastiat in “The Law” asks, “Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heartbeat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties—liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism—including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?”
“Legal despotism” is the perversion of the rule of law.
With every meeting, the innocent and alleged “enemies” of the municipal assembly are convicted on trumped-up accusations or false evidence in their kangaroo public hearings by limiting speech, attempts at humiliation, and betrayal of their oaths as they pervert public policy.
They cut off the microphone, they mock the speakers, and they force citizens to wait for hours just to speak, and then end the meetings before those citizens have had their turn at the speaker’s box. They pretend to be the victims of an angry and deranged public when they are the real bullies and tormentors.
Then there are the corrupt beneficiaries who all participate in the institutionalized theft of our public trust and taxes with impunity.
We the public are outraged and incredulous.
The innate desire for liberty, even here in Anchorage, is ignored and frustrated by its policy makers, who use our tax dollars to frustrate and demean the American spirit.
These statists pretend superiority over their constituents as they attempt to arrange our lifestyles through their organizations and regulations. Any successful conservative actions to limit these actions are worked around, overcome, and met with greater arrogance and greater limitations on our liberty. Even when conservatives succeed, they end up in failure because of these arrogant and all-knowing autocrats.
In Alaska, the question is simple: How can we as conservatives change the policy makers who believe their sole task is to have power and control over every aspect of our lives and future?
The answer in 2021 is not through municipal elections, attending assembly meetings, sponsoring recalls, or other forms of legal civil disobedience. We have seen these all fail to our disappointment, despair, and great expense.
The answer, in my opinion, is simply take our ball and go to another field to play.
Eaglexit is all that we as conservatives have left.
Think about it.
Is there any other way?
The Municipality of Anchorage must be decentralized. The detachment of Assembly District 2, including Eagle River, Chugiak, and its other communities, will weaken the power and control of the Marxist assembly in the remainder of Anchorage.
In this process, Assembly District 2 will have their chance at real liberty.
What will follow?
Perhaps Assembly District 6 and other assembly districts will realize their potentials and detach.
It really is not a question of whether we can afford it. The real question is can we afford not to decentralize Anchorage?
Those who are against Eaglexit argue that costs will rise. Yet, from 2019 to 2021, our mill rate in the Eagle River Tax District 10 increased by 10%.
Do they not see this?
Or are they just the epitome of the frog in the water, slowly heating to a boil and ignoring the impending disaster?
Perhaps it is time for a civics course.
Come join us.
Oh, and by the way, Assembly District 2, you may want to jump out of seats and give Assembly Member Jamie Allard the standing ovation she deserves!
Michael Tavoliero is a realtor in Eagle River, is active in the Alaska Republican Party and chairs Eaglexit.
