With the May primary less than a month away, Idahoans have a few of the most important decisions they will ever make in picking new statewide constitutional officers and legislators. There are elections and then there are ELECTIONS. This is one of those ELECTIONS.
The country as a whole, and within many of the states, has been correctly perceived on a downward trajectory that is not only economic in nature. It is a philosophical and cultural vacancy that people can sense but is hard to wrap one’s head around. In Idaho, its manifestation has come in a realization that supposedly “conservative” Republican legislators and statewide officeholders do so many things that look nothing like any objective definition of ‘conservatism.’ They definitely don’t look “Idahoan” in tradition, culture and nature, either.
In recent years “conservative” voters in Idaho have been electing cheap imitations of conservatives to office all over the state. That bad habit has come at a cost. Without going into every exigent detail allow me to state the proposition concisely and directly as I can: Idaho has been literally reduced to a “federal reservation,” in most every sense of the term. As federal control and money has spiraled ever upward in the state, the sense of Idaho as a REAL state of free and independent people has spiraled downward in its wake. Slightly over 36% of the state budget is obtained from direct federal sources. By the time one adds in all the grants, subsidies and “non-cognizable” sources that number is far higher, likely as high as 50%. All Idahoans are beginning to understand what Geronimo prophetically stated 120 years ago, that: “One day the white Americans will know their federal government as the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache know it, and on that day they will know they are not free.”
Two-thirds of the state is controlled, thereby effectively ‘owned,’ by the Feds. That is undeniable. The same as within most western states the federal government has been loathe to give-up the remainder of the state to Idahoan’s control. Under various guises and Acts of pretended federal legislation, ever-encroaching control has been established on the 2/3 of the state in the choking grip of federal hands.
Federal legislation such as the Endangered Species, Clean Water, Environmental Protection and so many other Acts comprehensively create a de facto Reservation. We’re not a state, that’s for sure. Actual states have control of their land, water and resources.
With half of the state budget and about a third of the average city and county budgets are reliant on tracing federal dollars for their funding we have a huge problem. This has created the most obsequious and quavering political class of elected officials ever seen, forever in the thrall of federal officialdom and in constant fear of the loss of those federal dollars, along with their offices. They ignore the fact that the bulk of those federal dollars supplied to them are now either created out of thin air or borrowed. That denial is continuing toward some disastrous consequences as the federal fiscal process and national financial picture continues to unwind.
There is a growing minority of elected officials and new candidates stepping-up into the approaching maelstrom. en. Russ Fulcher, Idaho county commissioner Jim Chmelik, former Speaker and Rep. Lawerence Denney, small businessman Todd Hatfield, Litigator Chris Troupis for Attorney General and former Navy Commander and educator John Eynon are smart enough to recognize the approaching storm clouds on the horizon. They’ve announced as candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Controller, Attorney General and Supt. of Public Instruction, respectively. They’re true Idahoans who see the danger to the people and the state and want to do everything possible to avert the worst of the coming storm.
Interestingly, those six candidates did not emerge as as a block or slate all at once. They all emerged independently and for their own reasons to run because they recognized the same problems. And because they recognized the necessary solutions come from the SAME principles. Funny thing about principles, they make people consistent and disciplined. So in effect, they shouldn’t be looked at as a slate but as independent thinkers. Each of them came independently to the same conclusions because they used principles to analyze the problems the state faces.
It is due to a lack of principles that the current crop of incumbents have us in the mess we’re in, starting at the top.
The sitting elected statewide officers are not bad men. However, as longtime creatures of an entrenched Republican establishment they are almost completely blind (or maybe just avert their eyes from ugliness), ill-equipped or in active denial as to what is on the horizon. They are creatures of a sclerotic Republican establishment who behave as if conservatism means the maintenance of the status quo while in active denial that it is failing. They have no forward view, only one that looks to a past that no longer can or does exist.
It is also clear they have no idea of how the actual economic theory in play works and the meaning of “opportunity cost.” Because of the election for decades, at all levels, of economic partial-literates the Idaho economy has grown at less than a third of what it would have if they actually understood the meaning of “opportunity cost.” Without understanding the working of compound interest as it applies to debt or compound net as it applies to growth we suffer for their ignorance. Idaho’s economy in GDP terms would be over $100 billion annually instead of barely breaking into $50-some billion.
The current Governor, for example, boasts that Idaho gains $1 billion in net federal money flowing into the state over what all Idahoans pay in federal taxes. He doesn’t recognize either the immoral nature of that proposition or that all monies are not created equal. That is a problem that seems to inhabit all levels of Idaho government.
Firstly, it is plainly immoral to expect the taxpayers in other states to pay for Idahoans programs and expenditures. Secondly, for every dollar taxed or borrowed out of the economy and subsequently expended by government, costs that private economy a net of $2-4 of additional future GDP growth. We are literally either not moving the economy at all or driving ourselves to the poor house by continuing the current fiscal spending path of unconstitutional taxing, borrowing and spending. This is just one of the main failures in thinking. There are so many levels of failure in the status quo thinking of current office holders as to boggle the mind. The other failures will be covered in future articles.
In short, that’s why we should applaud the arrival of these six candidates and support their candidacies to the utmost. A big indicator that any real conservative should ALSO SUPPORT these candidates is the fact that immediately upon those candidate announcements the Dems and the liberals in the state, realizing their own candidates will never have a chance, immediately began talking nice about the GOP establishment incumbents while trashing the new candidates. They even suggest Democrats should switch their voter registration in order to vote for the incumbent REPUBLICANS in the 2014 primary!
If that isn’t the clearest signal to support all six of these candidates and most Liberty candidates for legislative office in the primaries, I don’t know what else an actual conservative would need to convince them. So get moving. Give your time, money and support to these candidates. Write letter(s) to the editor, hit social media and educate yourself on their positions and policies. And on the incumbents, too. Once you do you’ll see why the 2014 Primary election is the most important one in generations.