Having determined that the kid papering my neighborhood with literature from the “Conservative Patriots Group” was clueless about U.S. history, civics and government (apparently because he was home schooled by a member of this group), I thought I had better see who was responsible for this horrendous educational miscarriage.
CPO has a web site (http://www.conservativepatriotsgroup.org/) that simply reiterates much of the nonsense one is accustomed to hearing from the ultra radical right.
CPG’s Directors/Officers include both Frank and Jennie Bettine; Frank is an engineer and attorney listed by the Bar as located in Houston and his wife Jennie, the President, who describes herself as a JD (i.e. she has not passed the Alaska Bar) is arguably a better dog musher than lawyer. These folk are regarded as “crazy” even by people who live in Palin country (for an example of responses to the Bettines see, http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2010/02/18/opinion/columnists/doc4b7e07797796c801034329.txt .) CPG’s Vice -President is David Jenkins, apparently not the tea party wonk living in Virginia (http://jenkins.pundicity.com/about/) but a Palmer resident not otherwise on the radar. Also on the Board is Amy Thomas. Ms. Thomas apparently has a checkered history of involvement in the health industry (one wonders if this is the same Amy Thomas refused an Alaska nursing license for failure to disclose a prior drug related conviction.) The web site indicates that Rick Bryant is also a Director, but State documents indicate that the seat is held by Kevin Hite, President of the Alaska Snowmobile Association. As the group has incorporated both as a for profit and as a non-profit corporation in Alaska, the names and addresses of the officers/directors identified at http://www.conservativepatriotsgroup.org/directorsofficers.htm are available here https://myalaska.state.ak.us/business/soskb/Corp.asp?380055 and here https://myalaska.state.ak.us/business/soskb/Corp.asp?384518 , together with the articles of incorporation.
Moving through the site one sees that this organization is linked by cross-membership with the “Free Range Patriots” whose web site can be found at http://freerangepatriots.ning.com/. One avid participant is Jon Watts of North Pole (http://usahub.ning.com/profile/JonWatts), whose web site offers further evidence of the groups perspective.
The good news is that in a State that competes with Texas for having the craziest electorate (though the folk that elected Congresswoman Bachmann have to get a nod here) this group has less than 150 members. The bad news is that like Eddie Burke, these folk don’t want to hear anything that might disturb their delusional alternate universe.