Stop Not Making Sense

I didn’t go to the last Borough Assembly meeting, but I listened to the KDLL news report about Debbie Brown’s and George Pierce’s testimonies against funding non-profits.  Neither of them has any of their facts straight, but what do you expect?  For what it is worth, Debbie was able to speak a few clearly understood sentences and that’s different, although what she said was…crazy, so nothing really has changed I suppose. 

George confused the Kenai Watershed Forum, the non-profit that the Borough Assembly is considering partially funding, with state and federal regulatory agencies that were “taking land away from people”.  Debbie talked to the assembly as if they were kindergarten kids, explaining in the most basic terms what a non-profit does.  “They benefit their members"was her conclusion.

Robert Ruffner, the director of the KWF, noted that they did a lot of work for the borough particularly spearheading replacing substandard culverts that were impeding salmon migration and such, and that they hired local contractors at market rates to do this.  The KWF has been able to obtain several matching grants to replace the culverts. Because of their familiarity with the process of coordinating with inter-government agencies, they have expedited these projects, and have already replaced some dozen of these culverts and at a fraction of the cost that the borough would have incurred on its own.

So, people like Debbie, George, the ACT people and Fred Sturman, try to come across as folksy, homespun, common sense citizens, but in fact, they are not anything more than self-serving, stingy grinches. 

There are a few homespun sayings that come in mind about them:

Penny wise and pound-foolish.  So, this crowd would rather avoid paying for a few things now that would then take so much more money in the future to correct.  And we’re talking about preserving one of the few healthy remaining salmon runs on the planet.  What they are really saying is that they’d rather save a few dollars on property taxes, which are already some of the lowest in the nation, and to hell with worrying about having our grandkids have fish in the Kenai River. 

They would cut off their nose to spite their face. These folks are so caught up in their no-tax dogma, that they would oppose things that would, without a doubt, benefit the economy, recreation and culture of the Kenai. I think they are just basically cheap bastards. Oh, and the kicker here is that the $100,000 that the KWF is asking for would come from what the state gets from the haul of commercial fishermen and passed back to the borough.  So, not a penny of property tax would actually be used and the money the state receives from the fishing industry would then be used to enhance and perpetuate the fishery – and benefit all of us.  A win, win, win situation. 

They fiddle while Rome burns: So, there are clear and undisputed problems and there are clear and undisputed solutions, but Debbie and company would rather engage in political theater rather than actually solve the problems.  Notice that neither of them offered alternatives that might actually solve anything.  

The KPB barely dodged letting the crazies run the asylum this last election. Just check out the comments to any PC story and see that we have some very, very scary neighbors. Check out the PC story on this here.