Questions for Candidate Miller

Update: The News-Miner now reports that Miller “Miller decided to leave the Army when an early release program was offered in 1991.” So question #1 is answered. Offered the opportunity, Miller didn’t hesitate to leave the U.S. Army early, after it had given him his free education. We’ll have to update JFK’s famous statement: “Ask not what you can do for your country; ask how you can serve your self-interest.”

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U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller never answers questions when WC asks them. So WC has posted them in this blog entry, and asks his readers to try to get answers from Mr. Miller. WC explains in each case why he is asking the question. WC will leave comments open longer than usual to see if anyone else has success.

Question #1: What About Your Military Service Commitment?
The U.S. Army gave you an all-expenses paid college degree. (WC, by contrast, worked through college, and borrowed money to make ends meet.) The U.S. Military Academy made you commit to five years of service:

Federal service academies provide a 4-year college program leading to a bachelor-of-science (B.S.) degree. Midshipmen or cadets are provided free room and board, tuition, medical and dental care, and a monthly allowance. Graduates receive regular or reserve commissions and have a 5-year active-duty obligation, or more if they are entering flight training.

Did you do those five years? You told the Alaska Bar Association you graduated from the Military Academy in 1989. You got your law degree from Yale in 1995. Yale has a three year law program. So you started law school in the fall 1992. That’s 2.5 years after graduating from West Point. That’s half the commitment you made. WC is confident there’s a good, sensible explanation of why you didn’t serve at least five years active duty to pay the taxpayers and the Army for your federally-funded education. WC would love to hear it.

Because if you wriggled out of your five year commitment to the Army, how can Alaskans trust you to stay the course as a U.S. Senator?

Question #2: Do You Think Your Position on Government Spending is Hypocritical?
Your education was paid for by the taxpayers. And, on the evidence at hand, you short-sheeted them on your repayment. WC assumes you used part of your military benefits to pay for your Master’s degree in economics, too. You’ve spent most of your professional life working as a state magistrate, acting district court judge, part-time Borough Attorney and U.S. Magistrate. All government jobs. And you attempted other government jobs: you tried elective office and lost, but that would have gotten you paid by the State of Alaska. And you ran – briefly – for the superior court, another government-paid job. Don’t you think it is just a bit . . . inconsistent . . . for Candidate Miller to rail about government spending when you have earned most of your income from the government?

Because if your rules don’t apply to you, if you are somehow “different,” how can we possibly trust you?

Question #3: Why Do You This It’s Unconstitutional for the Feds to Own Chunks of Alaska?
On Face the Nation, you told CBS’s Bob Shiefer there is “no good constitutional basis” for the federal government owning two-thirds of Alaska. Were you saying the Alaska Constitution is “no good”? After all, as an experienced Alaska lawyer who has “mastered the law,” you know that the Alaska Constitution, at Article XII, Section 12, says:

The State of Alaska and its people forever disclaim all right and title in or to any property belonging to the United States or subject to its disposition, and not granted or confirmed to the State or its political subdivisions, by or under the act admitting Alaska to the Union. The State and its people further disclaim all right or title in or to any property, including fishing rights, the right or title to which may be held by or for any Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut, or community thereof, as that right or title is defined in the act of admission. The State and its people agree that, unless otherwise provided by Congress, the property, as described in this section, shall remain subject to the absolute disposition of the United States. They further agree that no taxes will be imposed upon any such property, until otherwise provided by the Congress. This tax exemption shall not apply to property held by individuals in fee without restrictions on alienation.

If it’s in the Alaska Constitution, how can it be “unconstitutional”? Are you saying the people of Alaska should back out of their solemn commitment? Do you think they can?

Because those individual states you want to give more power? They have constitutions, too. And Alaska’s is crystal clear. And if you want Alaskans to welch on the deal they made with the federal government and the rest of the United States, how can they ever trust us?

Question #4: How Can the Constitution Be Static?
On your website and elsewhere, you say

The only answer is to return our federal government to the limits prescribed by our Constitution.  Federal powers not specified in the Constitution are reserved to the States by the 10th Amendment.

Are you serious? So you want to abolish NASA? The FAA? The FCC? The FBI? The National Tsunami Warning Center? The Alaska Volcano Observatory? The Global Positioning Satellite System (“GPS”)? The National Transportation Safety Board? The Center for Disease Control? The Food & Drug Administration? The Air Force? Not one of those federal agencies is “specified in the Constitution.” The Constitution doesn’t speak of control of nuclear weapons, either. Do you want to turn them over to the individual states?

Of course, The Founding Fathers didn’t know much about rocket science, national and international air travel, interstate crime, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanos, radio, television, computer microprocessors, germ theory, vaccinations, medicine or hundreds of thousands of other things. Alexander Hamilton argued that the power to deal with new issues was implied in the Constitution.  And if you are going to return to a literalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, shouldn’t you explain how the individual states would manage all of these issues?

And, while we are on the topic, WC thought that the United States Supreme Court, not a junior senator wannabe from Alaska, decided whether something violated the U.S. Constitution.

Because if you seriously don’t believe that the world has changed since 1789, or that the scope of the federal government’s powers don’t have to change when the world changes, then you are seriously unqualified to be a U.S. Senator.