Alaska's Rebellion: Operation Polaris: The Second Civil War

By George Siter

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security." (Declaration of Independence) Alaska and other States have a huge federal footprint and the survival of Alaska relies on assets from these federal lands. President Obundu and Congress refuse to release these lands for Alaska's exploitation and survival. Retired General Wade Madison, governor of Alaska and his lifelong buddy Retired General Pat Reason have devised a complex and risky plan to withdraw Alaska from the Union, by force if necessary and at the same time capture many US military assets, personnel and nuclear equipment. Their lives and careers are in great danger. If their plan fails major retribution will come upon them and their co-conspirators. Can they pull it off?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781681971520

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my three sons: Barry, Bob (Apple), and Bruce; all three served America with honor and distinction in the military armed forces. Barry and Bob spent twenty and twenty-three years respectively in the Air Force. Barry served during the Vietnam War as a security policeman and Bob Apple as an F-15 fighter pilot during Desert Storm. Bob was awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal for his work in obtaining the current necessary military airspace over Alaska. Bruce was a paratrooper/Scout (19D), Special Forces, in the Eighty-second Airborne, Seventeenth Cavalry for eleven years. He then became a police officer in Madison, Alabama.

In 1994, Barry retired to New Jersey after twenty years in the USAF. Bob retired from the USAF in 2001; he had also been the owner of Gwin’s Lodge in Cooper Landing, Alaska, since 1994. In 2009, while still at Gwin’s, he inexplicably took his own life. Bruce died of pancreatic cancer. Both are missed by their families and are at home with the Lord.

Foreword

Senator Dave Donley

Life-long Alaskan, attorney, and member of

the Alaska Legislature from 1987-2002

Being born and raised in Alaska I remember how excited Alaskans

were during the 1960s that Alaska was a state and that Alaskans were finally full status American citizens. As years went by the federal government betrayed the Statehood Compact with Alaska time after time. And while Alaskan’s pride in America never lessened; contempt and distrust for a corrupt and abusive federal government grew. The Alaska independence movement developed and as a political party in an odd way even elected a Governor. Alaska’s Rebellion: Operation Polaris The Second Civil War draws on real history and politics to create a fantasy political thriller that is both educational and entertaining. Alaskans will learn much about America’s Last Frontier and the way our federal government has broken its promises to Alaskans. Alaskans may get some cathartic release from political frustration through the fantasy told in Alaska’s Rebellion.

PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Anyone who has written a book understands that it can be both arduous and fulfilling. When I was first inspired to write this book, I had never written anything of this kind before and didn’t even know where to start.

This project was first conceived in 1993 on my first trip to Alaska to watch my son Bob take his final flight in an F-15. On July 4, 1993, Denali Park was the scene of a protest against unlawful federal restrictions against citizens wanting to celebrate the nation’s birthday by driving the length of the Park Road to Kantishna for a picnic, where one member of the citizen party owned eight mining claims. The Alaska Reclamation Group maintained their right to drive the road without federal permission, citing the state’s rightful ownership of it due to legislation in the 1950s and 60s. They also had the invitation of a landowner and thus pointed out federal government restrictions of a citizen to his property. The feds required a special permit for the group to have access and Park Service management locked down the entrance with guards. The citizen caravan proceeded through the blockade, as they had stated they would in a meeting with the Park Service two days prior. Contrary to what had been promised them in the meeting, the federal authorities cited them for traffic violations. Fortunately, no one was shot. I was quite upset with these federal overreaches curtailing citizens from the legitimate use of their state resources and private lands. I decided then and there to write about that prevalent issue.

I must also credit Joe Vogler, the Father of the Alaska Independence Party, with my motivation and perseverance to write this book. The effort that this very dedicated Alaskan put into building a third party was, and still is, very inspiring. Joe was well-known for his belief in God and our God-given rights as Americans. He always said, Government is not the giver of rights; only God confers these to the people. People create government, giving it certain and limited powers. Only eternal vigilance by the people will confine government to its proper role. Joe disappeared in May 1993. A convicted thief confessed to his murder (some say execution); in October 1994, Joe’s remains were found, following an anonymous tip. May he rest in peace.

I visited Alaska again in 1994 and moved to Alaska permanently in 1995 to manage my son’s business, Gwin’s Lodge in Cooper Landing, Alaska. Managing such a popular place took all my time, usually eighteen to twenty hours a day. The idea of the book slipped way back in my priorities. Years later, Gwin’s was heading for receivership and the bank eventually took it back. In 2012, a new owner came forward and bought it from the bank, and I retired a third time. I kept thinking about the book, but still didn’t know how to start.

My best friend ever, Stan Tees from Cape May, New Jersey, suggested that I just start writing whatever came to my mind. There was much going on in Alaska at the time: The federal government was refusing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration and drilling and was trying to declare all of the ANWR as wilderness, which would lock it up forever. There were other strong signs of federal overreach and restriction of federal lands. Washington kept supplying me with scandal after scandal and with legislation which I considered offenses against the Constitution. So, I dug deep into research to supplement what I already had gathered over the previous twenty years. There was plenty for me to gather. Finally, through some physical debilitation, I needed to sit down to relieve most of the pain in my hips, back, and legs. Old age had crept up on me. I now had the time I needed to write.

I talked to Stan and got more encouragement to start. Once I began, the words just kept coming and the pages sped by. Soon the plot solidified, and I contacted a few of my associates for help with content and editing. First, there was Sgt. First Class Ken Colvin, from the North Carolina National Guard (NCNG). I met him on a National Guard training exercise named Vigilant Guard in 2010. At the time, I was a lieutenant colonel and commander of the Southern Command of the Alaska State Defense Force (ASDF), assigned as liaison to the NCNG. Ken and I became friends and have communicated through e-mail just about every day since. He immediately offered to help edit the book. Then there is Bev Kirk, from Chugiak, Alaska, another lieutenant colonel in the ASDF, who offered to edit. She is a true friend and great talent as well as a special education teacher who loves her job and her kids. I decided she was too busy and stood her down. By that time she had done the first two chapters. Then there is my friend John Engles of Valdez, Alaska, a former major in the Alaska State Defense Force and former commander of the Sixth Coastal Detachment of the Coastal Command, ASDF. He read the draft copy and gave me positive encouragement and some suggestions as to book content.

LTC’s Nancy Bilyeu and LTC John Bilyeu who share their home with me when I am in Anchorage for ASDF drills, have given me permission to use their three great dogs names in the story. There were several others from the ASDF whose names I will withhold. There was another special person, First Sgt. James York of the Fourth Battalion, ASDF, who in his own right is an accomplished and brilliant author and critic who encouraged me onward with professional advice.

I want to especially thank my wife, Shirley, for putting up with me as I spent hour after hour sequestered in my home office writing and rewriting, over and over again.

My daughter-in-law Pat kindly gave the book a preliminary edit in preparation for the final, professional edit. Diann Colburn edited the manuscript for the finished book. Thanks, Diann.

INTRODUCTION

Alaska, known as The Last Frontier, The Land of the Midnight Sun, and The Land of One Thousand Lights, is the largest state in the United States, containing 663,268 square miles. With over 365 million acres of land, it is one-fifth the size of the combined Lower Forty-eight states. Sixty-five percent of Alaska’s land—or 220.8 million acres—is owned, controlled, and managed by the federal government. The state of Alaska controls only 103 million acres of its land. Alaska’s economy depends on its natural resources. Because of distance, climate, and the lack of a large, well-trained workforce, it is not the most desirable place to start a manufacturing or other large business along the lines of Boeing or General Motors.

In 1968, almost ten years after statehood, oil was discovered on state land at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska. Oil now fuels the Alaskan economy and has since the 1970s, when the 800-mile-long Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline (TAPS) was built from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. The way it was designed, the TAPS should be at least three-quarters full to operate properly. At present, it is only about 25 percent full. Not only does this hurt Alaska’s economy, but it does damage to the pipeline itself.

Prior to statehood, Alaska was a colony of the United States from March 30, 1867, upon purchase from Russia. On May 11, 1912, Alaska officially became a territory and remained one for almost fifty years. According to the United Nations Charter, signed by President Harry Truman in 1945, Alaska had the right to remain a territory, become a commonwealth, become a state, or become an independent country. The people were required to vote to decide the status of their governance. In 1958, the people voted to become a state. In order to stack the deck in favor of statehood, military personnel were permitted to vote in that election, though clearly not registered to vote in Alaska, which helped swing the decision to statehood. At the same time, Alaska Natives were not allowed to vote, unless they could meet ridiculous Jim Crow-like requirements.

In 1959, Alaska officially became the forty-ninth state of the United States of America. Along the way, the federal government completely ignored the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Many Alaskans wondered what had happened to that amendment. The federal government called Alaska a state, but in has been treated like a colony, with its own flag. Just about everything in the state belongs to the federal government. Then there is the Declaration of Independence, which lays a deeper justification to question the actions toward Alaska:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.

What had not been discussed seriously anywhere were Native-American rights. In the ensuing years since statehood, there has still been a question of whether Russia had the legal right to sell Alaska in the first place. It has been questioned if or how Russia ever established a legal right to ownership or if they instead relied upon the right of the bold thief to proclaim that they had ownership to what they had stolen from the rightful owners. The Chickaloon Native Village at the International Indian Treaty Council on July 25, 2014, submitted a requested report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Eighty-fifth Session, under the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. The report asserted that:

Alaska never went through the proper process of decolonization as mandated by the UN Charter. No treaties were entered into to allow for the settlement of Alaska, nor were the Indigenous Peoples provided the right to have a say in the assumption of legal title of the lands and territories of the Indigenous Peoples. … In 1959, there was a vote taken for Alaska statehood. The Indigenous Peoples were prohibited from voting by law. That law required that in order to vote, the individual concerned had to speak and write in the English language. There was an additional discriminatory and a reprehensible requirement that five (5) white people had to verify through documentation, that the individual Indigenous person was competent to vote. Statehood was the only thing that was on the ballot. There was no option to vote for free association, independence, or commonwealth—these options should have been on the ballot. The military was at this time and, unfortunately, continues to be, allowed to vote in local elections in Alaska even though they are mostly residents from other claimed states or countries. Throughout this period, the US [sic] did not provide any reporting on decolonization processes—they simply sent a communication declaring that the conversion of Alaska to statehood under the United States was a fulfillment of the requirements set out in the UN Charter under Chapter XI (article 73).

(tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/USA/INT_CERD_NGO_USA_17785_E.pdf)

This document helps establish that not only was the Native population deliberately left uninformed, but they were discriminated against in Jim Crow fashion.

PROLOGUE

Each time a man stands up for an ideal,

or acts to improve the lot of others,

or strikes out against injustice, he

sends forth a tiny ripple of hope,

and crossing each other from a million

different centers of energy and daring,

those ripples build a current which can sweep down

the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

—Robert Kennedy

Something radical was needed to get the federal government to release access to the land, or Alaska would have to figure a way to take possession of it, by force if necessary. Governor Wade Madison hoped and prayed that force would not be necessary, but he knew he had to act soon. Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was at the top of his agenda. Without the American government relinquishing their interest in the federal lands in Alaska, there would be drastic ramifications for Alaska’s economy. It was his responsibility to do whatever it took to resolve the situation. And he was just the man to make it happen.

There were means available that he could use to accomplish the goal. It was radical and had never been tried before successfully. In 1860, there had been an attempt by the southern states to secede from the Union. That led to the American Civil War and the death of 600,000 Americans. Hopefully, what the Alaskan governor was planning would not become a second American Civil War. But that would be up to the president and the Congress. There was a peaceful option available, which he would seek first.

During the conception of Alaska’s statehood, the power brokers in both Alaska and Washington connived to make of Alaska what many Alaskans referred to as a nanny state. One such local power later became Senator Theodore Stevanski, a major player in the construction of the Statehood Compact that gave the federal government control over two-thirds of Alaska. Washington would control the lion’s share of the land and the majority of the natural resources underground. In return, Alaska would receive lots of federal money through Stevanski’s power as a state senator.

Newly elected Governor Madison could not deny that the Alaskan population had been ignored and refused a proper vote and, at the same time, fail to acknowledge that the Alaska Natives, who may have had more legal standing in a court of law than the general population, were also outrageously denied due process to redress their complaints. All of these facts were going to make it tough for Wade Madison to work anything out. Fortunately, he would have the help and support of his lieutenant governor, an Alaska Native and lifelong resident who was highly respected in both Native and non-Native communities. At least, Wade would be able to get an audience with the tribal councils. All races living in Alaska had a vested interest in resolving this miscarriage of justice. Wade was thinking very seriously of something he read that dated back over 200 years ago: We have a wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale and self-preservation in the other, wrote Thomas Jefferson.

The time seemed right for Governor Madison to make his first move. He was a praying man; as such, he would always ask the Lord for guidance. So far in his life, this had been a good policy for him and not only built his confidence but brought success to whatever he undertook.

The challenge before him was much larger and more complex than anything he had undertaken before. He was constantly running through his mind all the actual and alleged violations and scandals that the current president and his administration were charged with by the public. He would constantly discuss these things with his lieutenant governor and also his friends. He particularly focused on the way the president was dealing with the military.

Alaska’s Rebellion

Operation Polaris

The Second Civil War

Call forth those things that are not,

as if they were, until they are.

Take-off on Romans 4:17c

This is a fictional story. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or activities, is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1

People get leaders they deserve.

Vote corrupt leaders out. If you sell

your vote you are just as corrupt.

—RadhikaN. Hsu via

He was the first president ever alleged to usurp the authority of the other two branches of government. He was constantly changing the Obunducare Affordable Care Act. Using executive orders, he was delaying parts of it and changing other parts of it. The president changed it some twenty-six times to suit his personal agenda. No president in history has changed a law without the assistance of Congress. The Care Act was passed by Congress and signed by the president. The president is not empowered under the Constitution to change any laws. His duty and privilege are to enforce laws passed by Congress. Making law is the exclusive prerogative of the Congress. His statement, I have a pen and a phone and I will use whatever power I can to move this country forward, struck an ominous chord throughout the nation.

The country was reeling from a debt of over eighteen trillion dollars and climbing (actually many times higher than this). He cut the cost-of-living adjustment for the military, reduced it for Social Security recipients, took 680 billion dollars from Medicare, and reduced Veteran’s Affairs funding for the medical care of veterans.

His Secretary of State Maggie Hinton had been accused by many of deserting our ambassador (which allowed him to be murdered in Benghazi) and covering up the investigation into why the United States made no effort whatsoever to protect or rescue the people at the consulate and instead allowed four Americans to be left to die when help was available less than an hour away. Just recently on national television, Congressman Willy Homer of Texas expressed concern that the administration must be keeping Gen. Paterson from talking about Benghazi. Paterson was director of the CIA at the time of the attack on the Benghazi compound.

In addition to all of that, the president withdrew troops from Iraq too soon and allowed Iraq to fall back into tribal violence between Sunni and Shiite radicals and opened the door for ISIS to invade Iraq and murder Americans and Iraqi civilians. He instituted radical rules of engagement in Afghanistan, thereby virtually sentencing many of our warriors to be murdered by Taliban radicals and Afghanis who were supposed to be on our side. He reduced the best infantry soldiers in the world, the United States Marines, to embassy protectors after dropping their numbers 68 percent, from 242,675 to 165,000 men and women. He continues to purge many career military officers of high rank because they don’t fit his radical agenda, as well as others who said they would not follow orders to fire at American citizens. His actions, as Commander in Chief, have reduced the size and power of the military to pre-World War II proportions. He also called returning veterans the most dangerous citizens, and possibly terrorists, in America.

His constant disingenuousness caused dysfunction in government, and more and more people no longer trust him or his administration. Scandal after scandal developed on his watch while the Senate Democrats, under the corrupt Majority Leader Henry Weed, did nothing but block the Republicans. Until the 2014 election, the Republican-controlled House kept sending positive legislation over to the Senate but the majority leader refused to forward it to the appropriate committees. Then he and the president had the audacity to blame the House for inactivity. In the meantime, the Republican House of Congress stood like deer in the headlights, scared to death to do its job and instigate impeachment charges because it was afraid to be accused of racism against America’s first minority president.

The president brought suit against some of the states over illegal immigration and refused to use his power to secure the southern border. He completely ignored state’s rights by ignoring the Tenth Amendment. His attorney general, Derick Bolder, was accused of being in charge of selling guns to the Mexican drug cartels, one of which was used to kill a border agent. The president has insulted our allies by giving weapons and support to our enemies in Egypt and Libya. For the first time in history, America’s foreign policy was hostile towards our biggest ally in the Middle East, Israel, by advocating that Israel gives up the West Bank. This would put Israel in an impossible position, unable to defend itself. By refusing to go to France, the president disgraced America by refusing to march and stand with all the leaders of the West against radical Islam. Not only that, but he refused to acknowledge the fact that terrorism around the world is the responsibility of radical Islam.

Beyond all these offenses, Alaska was particularly concerned because the president and the Democrat-controlled Senate would not open federal lands to oil exploration and mining. The North Slope oil supply was depleting and the pipeline was only half full of oil or less. With Washington keeping federal lands locked up, Alaska was being held hostage—relegated to a nanny state, colonial status, and headed for bankruptcy.

The question was: what could be done to stop the president’s usurpation of constitutional powers and reverse the current tide of destruction to the Alaskan way of life? To many people, the situation was hopeless. But not so to Alaska’s recently elected conservative governor. Perhaps the general election in 2014, which gave the Republicans majority status in both houses of Congress, might change things. However, with Obundu having two more years to go on his final term, there was still great doubt.

Chapter 2

Wade Madison, retired US Air Force four-star general, was currently in the second year of his term as governor of the state of Alaska. He was sitting in his office in Juneau, surveying the walls. Every time he looked around at the certificates, diplomas, awards, medals, and trophies, they reminded him of his life experiences as a soldier, a citizen, a man. He had just reached his middle sixties and was still asking himself how crazy he must be to run for political office when he could have just taken his Air Force pension and retired to a warm climate, played golf, done some fishing, and grown old gracefully. On the other hand, he realized that he had been called to service as a young man, which was why he selected the Air Force Academy instead of Syracuse University or Yale. Both colleges, at the time, had outstanding baseball programs, and Wade had been an outstanding baseball pitcher—sought by several colleges offering full scholarships. As it turned out, he earned a starting position on the Air Force Academy baseball team and had done very well.

He was mulling over in his mind the recent campaign and how debilitating it had been to his family and personal time. He now had even less time with his family or to himself, and he wondered if it had been worth it. As with almost all public servants who are dedicated to the cause and anointed for service, he sighed, shrugged his shoulders and went back to his work, determined to succeed.

Despite more than a year of effort on his part, his desk was still piled with unfinished business from the two previous administrations. Money was very tight. He had run as an independent, non-partisan candidate, and his top platform proposal was to get a natural gas pipeline built from the North Slope south to Valdez, paralleling the existing oil pipeline. The previous two governors proposed lines from and through Canada but had done little to bring those projects to fruition. Millions had already been spent on study after study. It was time for Wade to make his promise to build the pipeline become a reality. Alaska needed this pipeline and, in Madison’s educated opinion, it needed to be a large, four-foot diameter pipe. It should traverse the center of Alaska and parallel the existing oil pipeline. The Asian market was waiting but wouldn’t wait forever. In Madison’s opinion, the federal government and the Democrat presidents had been holding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) hostage for years; it seemed like they were against Alaska developing any natural resources. Although Alaska had enough oil and gas underground to supply the whole country for several hundred years, there had been no mining or oil drilling on Alaskan federal lands.

The second platform issue he had run on was to do whatever he could as governor to stop federal overreach and interference in Alaska’s sovereignty. As an attorney, he could find nothing in the Constitution that authorized the federal government to possess, occupy, and/or control any land outside of Washington DC, military installations, or post offices throughout the country.

It was getting near the time for the governor to deliver his State of the State address to the joint session of the Alaska Legislature. His thoughts ran wild over the information he could include in the message. He wanted to get national coverage of this speech because he had a plan lingering in the back of his head that he wanted the country to hear. Many people of the Lower Forty-eight seemed to believe that Alaskans still lived in igloos. It was time they got the facts because things were getting worse by the day. His thoughts went back to 1945 when World War II ended, and the United Nations was created. Then he found himself contemplating the most recent past.

In the most recent election, in which a new president had been selected, the Democrats had taken control of both Houses of Congress and the presidency. They rammed through the Affordable Health Act, and the president started signing executive orders by the dozen. It didn’t matter whether the orders were constitutional or not, he just kept signing them. It wasn’t long before his chickens started coming home to roost.

He continuously appointed unqualified people to cabinet positions and then he started appointing people with doubtful loyalties to the American heritage and way of life. The president had personally gone around the world apologizing for America, putting down the concept of American exceptionalism, declaring that America had been imperialistic, and stating that the US was no longer a Christian nation. Further, while attempting to ingratiate himself with many longtime enemies, he had insulted longtime allies. He also bowed to a Saudi king, sent a bust of Winston Churchill back to England as a protest, which insulted the British, and had the audacity to send the Queen of England a collection of his personal speeches as a gift.

He systematically started firing generals and admirals who admitted that they would not fire on Americans if ordered to do so. He forced the resignation of one of the most outstanding Special Forces generals over a minor Rolling Rock magazine article. Governor Madison had a personal objection to this president because, as Commander in Chief, the president was systematically setting out to destroy America’s superiority in the military by purging the ranks of officers and senior noncoms who were unsympathetic to the president’s policies. Having served over thirty years in the Air Force, including as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the previous president, Madison was particularly offended by these actions.

But none of that was as bad as the Benghazi Consulate affair: on September 11, 2012, the US Consulate in Libya was attacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists, and our ambassador and three other Americans were left to die—all because the president and his secretary of state, Maggie Hinton, had refused to beef up security though requested by the ambassador over several weeks. Two Navy SEALs were included among the four dead Americans. The attack lasted for thirteen hours, during which the American ambassador was dragged through the streets of Benghazi, beaten, sodomized, and tortured before being murdered. Yet neither the president nor the secretary made any effort whatsoever to send help though at most help was only one hour or less away. No one knows where the president was that night, but the following morning he went to a fundraiser and golf match in Las Vegas while the attack was still in progress. As if that were not bad enough, the president and Secretary Hinton lied publicly about the incident for days and weeks. President Obundu personally went to the United Nations two weeks later and stated that the attack was a spontaneous response to a video insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Governor Madison frowned as he contemplated what he considered to be the many misdeeds of the current American president.

Obundu was refusing to allow the Keystone Pipeline to be built, despite the fact it was estimated to bring upwards of 20,000 new jobs to Americans, including Alaskans, as well as energy independence to the country. His National Security Administration had its apparatus spying on Americans, as well as on our allies. He allowed the IRS to discriminate against patriotic conservative organizations. His Department of Education allowed Islam to be taught in public schools while refusing to allow Christianity to be discussed, much less taught. He allowed 680 million dollars to be stolen from Medicare and put a confiscatory tax on Americans through the Affordable Health Care Act. During his presidency, trillions of dollars were wasted on crony capitalism and bonuses for Wall Street bankers and bonuses for IRS agents and others who had, in the governor’s opinion, massively oppressed the public.

Furthermore, the president refused to release federal land located in Alaska to the Alaskans. The Department of the Interior (DOI) was taking control of the waterways and fishing rights on federal lands by declaring them wilderness, which further restricted access to the public to federal lands. This was a blatant overreach of the federal government, especially since there is no such classification listed under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Reclassification of federal lands is strictly under the authority of the US Congress, not the executive branch.

The governor resented all of this, and more, because it had an adverse effect on Alaska, forcing it to remain a nanny state. He considered it outrageous that Alaska, with all of its God-given natural resources, could be held hostage and in bondage by a rogue president and the Democrat majority in the US Senate. He had to do something about this situation, or he would not be faithful to his oath to Alaska’s Constitution.

Alaska currently was in the middle of what seemed to be a very cold, hard winter. The snow lingered longer than usual, and the temperatures remained unseasonably low. He thought about that joke, If it weren’t for global warming, we would all be freezing to death. It illustrated the absurdity of claiming that humanity was causing global warming. He knew that the people who believed this were driving the president’s agenda, which in turn was negatively affecting Alaska’s development, particularly the development of its natural resources. In the last couple of years, the Agrium Corporation had closed its fertilizer plant in Nikiski because of the high price of natural gas and the difficulty they had obtaining it. One of the two remaining oil refineries in Alaska was getting ready to close its doors because of job-killing federal regulations. Coal mining was under assault by the EPA and its clean air advocates. President Obundu had stated that he was shutting down the coal business in the entire country. Every day Governor Madison was receiving calls from businessmen complaining about federal regulations that were destroying their businesses.

Yet, according to the Anchorage Daily News, the Russian president was planning to develop a passage through the Arctic Ocean so that by 2015 or 2016 Russia’s cargo tonnage would top four million a year. Dealing with this Russian plan was part of the mess left to the governor by previous administrations.

Of course the governor was concerned; any big event like an oil tanker collision or other disaster would certainly involve northern Alaska. Would the federal administration supply more icebreakers and rescue ships to patrol the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Passage? There were no docks off Barrow, yet it should be obvious that docks would be needed to facilitate rescue and cleanup operations. Additionally, offshore docks were needed for loading huge tankers for both oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The US Coast Guard would need to build a search and rescue operation in the Arctic similar to what they already had in Kodiak and in Southeast Alaska. Yet there seemed to be no motion in that direction on the part of the federal government.

There seemed to be a constant stream of issues that the previous Alaskan administration and the Obundu administration had not resolved. The Arctic Policy Commission was working on a final report, but the Commission’s preliminary report had been basically useless, and the public comment period had been closed before the public even knew that there was a comment period. This culture of non-disclosure had to stop. Governor Madison suspected the report would produce a lot of posturing and political rhetoric, with little substance and no results. He thought how much better it would be if Alaska were an independent nation. He vowed to himself that under his administration the public would be kept informed. Whenever there was an opportunity for the public to comment on any Alaskan business, there would be widespread notification through the media. That would be the responsibility of his Lieutenant Governor, Sally Giselle. He sent her a text message that he wanted to see her about a couple of things and let her know when he was available.

CHAPTER 3

Coffee in hand, Wade was deeply engaged in his daily routine, scanning the morning newspapers from around the country. He had already noted several stories and commentary that were disturbing. He felt that his State of the State message this year would be very depressing. The federal government, with the current liberal, socialist-leaning president, and the far-left majority leader of the Senate, were not helping him move Alaska forward. In fact, it was obvious that Washington was not only taking the side of the environmental extremists but, in fact, leading them.

As usual, development was basically at a standstill. Alaska needed a constant pattern of growth in natural resource development in order to survive in its location. Since there was no major manufacturing effort in the state, just about everything had to be imported. The short growing season retarded any serious agriculture program from developing. If it weren’t for oil on state land, Alaska would be hard pressed to survive on its own without federal assistance. That appeared to be the whole agenda of the feds from the day in 1903 when Teddy Roosevelt tied up the Chugach mountain range, prohibiting sheep hunting, to Nixon’s 1968 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which basically stopped any development on any federal land anywhere in the country. Alaska’s future had been relegated to that of a colony rather than a full state, dependent on the largesse of the federal government. Given the fact that drilling