Session: State Capitol, Room 24 Juneau, AK 99801-1182 Phone: (907) 465-2186 Fax: (907) 465-3818 Interim: 600 East Railroad Avenue Wasilla, AK 99654 Phone: (907) 373-1842 Fax: (907) 373-4729

On the Leviathan

It's not a guarded secret. It's not as if the problem hadn't been examined and known to be real. It's not even that too few people know about it. Whole schools teach about it. It has been exposed generation after generation yet it persists. It's a simple and complex problem at the same time. Famous men such as Winston Churchill and Karl Marx have written about it.

It's the state! The government, local, state and federal all produce nothing but insist on telling everyone how to live and what to charge down to the smallest detail. Meanwhile it grows like cancer. As it grows we have to work harder to pay the taxes that feed its workers. And as the number and breath of laws grow, the liberty and security of the people wane.

The problem of big, intrusive government is nowhere more evident than right here in Alaska. We have had spendthrift governors who have been eager to expand the power of the state. We have a Legislature that loves to tax and control and a hard working public that is stuck with paying the bills.

Why do we put up with it?

In Alaska the Legislature meets for 120 days and spends literally billions of our dollars, with the highest spending per capita of all 50 states. Each Legislator, like a little tyrant, is well paid, has aides and gophers running around, people bowing and scraping, and still can't get all his work done in the allotted 120 days. In Utah, Legislators don't even have their own offices and have to use a secretarial pool. They are issued a lap top computer and function as their own researchers and typists. They meet for only 45 days per year.

In Oregon roads are paved, the people have schools and there exists an on-going justice system, all for a lot less than what we Alaskans pay for the same services. In Texas, the Legislature does not even own the land the government buildings* sit on; it's rented! In Washington State, the Legislature meets every OTHER year and then only for 60 days!*

What is obvious is that the once plentiful supply of oil has allowed our Legislature, a group of men and women not known for penny-pinching in the first place, to spend like no European monarch ever dreamed. Oil has provided a never-ending stream of taxes and royalties to pay for every single new or expanded, socialistic government program created in the last 30 years. Legislators can spend like drunken sailors because they don't have to squeeze the taxpayer as an individual!

Despite the obvious knowledge that oil will eventually peter out, legislators continue to spend at levels that imply a never-ending supply. That's because they supposedly have "cut government to the bone" and claim they have no choice but to fund each, "crucially important" program after another. (Because they are ALL so important to one special interest or another!) Or, as one Legislator whined to me, when I criticized his voting for spending on a new program..."It's the Christian thing to do." As if stealing from Peter to pay Paul were not a gross abrogation of the Fifth Commandment "Thou Shall Not Steal!" As a Christian myself, I can't steal from one group of Alaskans to pay for cushy government jobs and giveaway programs for another group.

The majority of my constituents are aware of this profligacy on the State's part. Most write or e-mail me to continue with my fight to trim, cut, minimize and find ways to get the government off their backs where I can. Yet they feel hopeless and unable to do anything as year after year the Leviathan grows.

To those who wish to recreate a society where individual citizens are sovereign again and where the government is a mere night watchman as our Founders envisioned, I recommend the following:

1. Subject any politician who seeks your vote to a simple test: Does he spend or cut? (Hint: The majority are spenders! Alas!)
2. Does that politician back the Second Amendment?
3. Whenever you hear of any NEW government program being proposed, ask this question: Will it cost more money than it saves? If so, why have it?
4. When you hear politicians or economists DEMANDING a state income tax or claiming that it's inevitable, tell them to shut up and cut government spending.
5. Don't be part of the problem. Earn your own way!
6. Don't give in to despair. Many peoples have spent generations after generations in pathetic thralldom to various tyrants over the world and still eventually rebel as did the Chinese students in Tianamen Square.
7. Think about positive ways that people can manage their lives without government help. If you don't need their help, you are able to avoid their heavy-handed controls.

Freedom is the means for people to maintain a good economy and a sense of moral certainty. We Alaskans can have it again as one by one we come to realize that we need Juneau and its politicians like a dog needs fleas.

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Vic Kohring is a 4th term Republican who was first elected to the Alaska Legislature in 1994. He represents Wasilla and Peters Creek and is Chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

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