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Searching for the real Schaeffer CoxFAIRBANKS -- Summer, the brief period when Mother Nature smiles on the Far North, still seems a long way off here in April. There are only the first hints of the change of season evident in the daytime puddles forming in the icy streets and the winter snows avalanching off rooftops. Still, in better times, this is when jailed climber Schaeffer Cox would be preparing to launch another assault on the summit of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley. An unmistakable presence in the clear, blue skies to the south, North America's tallest peak anchors a wall of Alaska Range mountains that seem to cut this corner of the 49th state off from the more urbane, more cultured civilization of Los Anchorage, as Alaskans are prone to call the 49th state's only real city back on the coast. Going to extremesFriends and acquaintances of Cox, at least the few willing to talk, agree his anti-government rhetoric had grown more and more extreme, if not bizarre, in the past year or two. But in a place where those who don't love the government hate the government, they add, this is not all that unusual. Interior Alaska is a land of extremes, both social and climatic. The temperature can hit a stifling 100 degrees in the summer and fall to a life-threatening minus-65 in winter. The people here are no less diverse than the climate. The Democratic Socialists of America boast a local office, one of only seven in the West, in the city that gave birth to the Alaska Independence Party of the late Joe Vogler and Todd Palin, the husband of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. A snowmachine racing champion, Todd was -- if Palin-era documents are to be believed -- at one time something of a shadow governor of Alaska. Sarah herself was never an AIP member, but she was a fan. As governor, she recorded a video to welcome delegates to the AIP convention saying, "your party plays an important role in our state's politics." Vogler, a crusty old lawyer turned gold miner, formed the AIP with the idea of undoing statehood and turning Alaska into a self-supporting nation, or at least reestablishing it as some sort of an independent entity associated with the U.S. government. Since his murder in the early 1990s, the AIP has become more of a states-rights party, but its platform still leans toward the revolutionary. Among other things, the party calls for the elimination of public lands, including Alaska's world-famous national parks, and an end to "all bureaucratic regulations and judicial rulings purporting to have the effect of law,'' which would do away with a goodly number of the rules that now govern American society. These views might be considered a little extreme in some places, but they are not so extreme here. The AIP was proposing its own Alaska tea party long before there was a national tea party campaign. National tea party favorite and West Coast spokesman Joe Miller now has a home at the very end of the road to the south of Fairbanks along the Tanana River. Miller almost won a U.S. Senate seat with a call for a radical restructuring of the federal government. A Yale-educated lawyer, Miller said he wanted to "get back to basics, restore essentially the constitutional foundation of the country, and that means the federal government becoming less onerous, less involved in every, basically, item of our lives." Those views helped Miller oust incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Alaska GOP primary, but in a state dependent on federal funding for an estimated third of its economy, she came back to narrowly defeat him as a write-in candidate in the general election. As I read this article and the comments made I once again feel the churning of my forefathers heart in witnessing this atrocity of liberty. It seems clear to me that I too must be considered a "domestic terrorist" when I speak of this corporation you call your government. Before you judge me in that statement I suggest you go to Dun & Bradstreet and do a search for the corporation named "United States". This is the results you will find: Mail Address: The U S Capitol There was a time in this nation when men were judged by the facts. A man was permitted to defend himself at trial before being sentenced. Obviously, you people and this media has already ruled in the case. But who among you has even an inkling of his knowledge of the "government". Schaeffer Cox is an abusive bully and is exactly where he needs to be. I've seen first hand how this supposed "Christian" and militia nutjob bullies people and I can't wait for his trial because I'll have plenty to say. Hopefully Marti has packed her bags and left. If she hasn't then she's crazy. Being called all those names in some very public forums by her husband was disgraceful. And bullying regular, hard-working people must have made him feel like a man. What a jerk. Face it---Murkowski BOUGHT the election by backing the skulldiggery of utterly corrupt Alaska Native Corporations. The ANC's have gulled, bullied, and cheated their shareholders for years and paid Murkowski to look away. Is it any surprise that the ANC's supported her? They knew that Joe Miller wouldn't look the other way. Well, neither are the rest of us. Claire McCaskill's reports will be out soon and we have our name on a copy. Cheating the common people to benefit a few seems to be a leitmotif in Alaskan politics,and Murkowski has played along. Think about that, Alaska Dispatch. This is the person you helped elect. She has looked away, away, away, and is now trying to justify the unjustifiable treatment of shareholders in ANCs. Why don't you give another $6 million to a guy from New Jersey, and spit on the shareholders who got a whole $320 out of the deal? Keep doing that, and finally, the shareholders will wake up without any news stories to tell them how they have been cheated. Has anyone noticed the hypocrisy in these anti-government types? There is plenty of room in AK for them to all disappear into the wilderness and live a hard scrabble life of subsistence. But they seem to want to live in towns - where there are roads, and libraries, and schools, all furnished by the government. And there are stores, and electrical grids, and telephones - all for their convenience. Another thing I have noticed is the tight connection between most domestic terrorists and the Talibangelical far right churches. If we have to be irradiated and groped in order to board a plane, then these people need to be put in a cell and the key thrown away. After trial, of course, which is guaranteed by what entity? Oh yeah, the federal government... Way to demonstrate a lack of nuance frosty. You do realize that most of these nuts, along with most "not nuts", make a distinction between levels of government? That they aren't "anti-government" as much as they want each level of government to operate per its controlling documents within its proper sphere? For example, most limited-government people would agree that there's nothing wrong with the Federal government, in absolute accordance with its Constitutionally-defined powers in Article 1, providing and supporting a reasonable network of interstate highways and maybe even getting involved in the design and maintenance of a reasonable number of airfields under both a national defense (movement of troops) and "Post Roads" rationale. That Post Roads rationale also must extend to providing for air and water postal service, even if a money loser, to communities not served by roads as the Federal government may not treat citizens unequally within its mandated sphere. Astonishingly, -local- services like city roads and schools, libraries and such are the proper sphere for, gasp, state and local governments to provide as directed by the citizen voters of those areas. When the Feds get involved in such local issues, using the tax dollars of people who don't live there, they are over-reaching their proper sphere of influence as well as stealing money from those other states citizens for services that benefit them not a whit. In Alaska and most states, our State constitution allows, if not mandates, fully proper state involvement in some local affairs. The people whose money is effected (remember we don't have an income tax but oil revenue belongs to all of us per the Constitution) thus have a stake in what goes on in local communities and in return can more directly influence how their money is spent due to the greater level of representation possible at lower levels of government. This is Civics 101. In a Republic "that government is best which governs least" and the proper place for government action is at the lowest level possible, yes even at the cost of some efficiency. That way taxation and representation occur in close proximity and the vote (and money) of each individual has more power. Home grown domestic terrorists. Send them all to Leavenworth and throw away the key. Coyote, I for one don't consider the confederate states traitors. If you want to espouse our "Republic" the south was seceding because the federal guv. was outside the bounds of what the Republic started as. / One more example of the Fundamentalist Religious crowd infesting the State. Since the original Territory was divided up among the Religions to "save" the savages, Alaska has been plagued by the local and state dictatorships set up in almost every community. When only miners, trappers, and Natives made up the main portion of the population, these truly independent people kept the religious dictators at bay. Unfortunately, during and after WWII, the Southern Military influx brought in segregation, the KKK, and all the rest of the Old South Fundamentalist Religious dogma. Combining military and Fundamentalist Christian religion, too much of the State was operated as local theocratic dictatorships with preachers and priests maintaining their criminal dominance over entire communities. Heirs from the early indoctrination of the Native families in rural Alaska added new converts to accept the dictatorship. Why no mention of the second degree assault charge last year, when he punched and choked his wife? Anything of interest happen with Shaeffer Cox between, "At the time, Cox looked to be on his way to a future as a successful Alaska politician.", and "Less than two years later, law enforcement officers associated with the Joint Terrorism Task Force handcuffed the 26-year-old and hauled him off to jail ..." I seem to remember press reports of some stuff going on during that time that makes him seem less like a future hero of the Alaskan republic than a self absorbed thug. Where's his hat? |
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