Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and his mostly left-leaning counterparts on the Assembly have the maturity level of a small spoiled child.
You remember when you were a kid and the ice cream scoop on top of your cone wasn’t as big as your siblings’ scoop. “It’s not fair!” you’d yell out in a whiny voice.
Those leading Anchorage have yet to comprehend the fundamental truth that life is not fair.
Here’s the thing about those duped, deceived, and seduced by the poisonous and deadly ideology of Leftism. They’re obsessed with equality. It’s seemingly all they think or talk about. They’re not concerned with what’s true, real, right, or wrong. They just want us all to be equal.
What Leftists like Berkowitz and his Socialist friends on the Anchorage Assembly don’t get is inequality is a byproduct of a free society. Some will make better decisions, take more risks, work smarter, and harder than others. In America, making good decisions pays huge dividends. Sitting on your butt in your mother’s basement playing video games all day does not. In our nation, more than any other, making good decisions will reward you with a prosperous life.
I’m not arguing racism no longer exists in America. It clearly does. But it’s not an excuse for failure when the data shows poverty is caused by choices, not racism or oppression.
Poverty in America is almost exclusively confined to single-parent households with kids headed by a female regardless of race. It’s true African Americans and Alaska Natives disproportionately live in poverty, but they also have the highest percentage of children born out of wedlock. More than 70% of black babies and 69% of Alaska Native babies are born into single-parent households. The same is true for only 28% of white babies. 97% of all millennials with a high school diploma, work full-time and married before having children do not live in poverty in America regardless of their race.
Berkowitz and the Assembly ignore this reality and blame inequality on racism. Therefore, the mayor and Assembly want to use some of your hard-earned tax dollars to create the Office of Equity and Justice. What will this taxpayer-funded office do? Nothing of any substance.
But it’s not a total waste of your money. At the very least creating the Anchorage Office of Equity and Justice allows Berkowitz and the Socialist on the assembly to virtue signal to their Leftist comrades that they care about the underprivileged, disadvantaged, underserved, and oppressed. And the “woke” media will view them as enlightened, compassionate, and fighting the never-ending scourge and epidemic of racism so prevalent in Alaska.
Keep in mind the racially aggrieved in Anchorage can already go to the Equal Rights Commission or the Office of Equal Opportunity. Soon, they can also belly-ache to the Office of Equity and Justice.
The ordinance uses 564 words to describe what the Anchorage Office of Equity and Justice will do. Never in the history of mankind have 564 words said less. Here’s one function: “Develop leadership opportunities for municipal staff and residents designed to provide career advancement pathways for communities of color, the disability community, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ+ residents, including continued hosting of annual Civic Engagement Academy.”
The above description should have also said we’ll accomplish this by discriminating against anyone not in any of the groups listed. The way to achieve equality of outcome is punishing good decision-makers and rewarding bad ones. Also, discriminating against groups that do not fit in the category of the so-called oppressed. It’s the dirty little secret Leftists never admit.
Anchorage is hardly recognizable from what it was before Berkowitz became mayor and the Assembly skewed decidedly left. The drug and alcohol addicted street people have taken over and are trespassing and occupying much of the city. Now city leaders want to use more taxpayer money to buy them hotels and other facilities making it easier for them to live their self-destructive lifestyles.
Anchorage has gone the way of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Rising property taxes, more crime, and an epidemic of homelessness. But what would you expect when you elect politicians who ignore real problems and instead stubbornly try to make life fair when it clearly isn’t.
Dan Fagan hosts a morning radio show on Newsradio 650 KENI from 5:30 to 8 a.m.
Time to leave AK. It is lost. Nothing worth fighting for anymore.
Greg,
I have to disagree with you. “It” is not lost. Currently “It” is suppressed, simply because conservatives didn’t vote. Voting in person is the only way “It” will be returned to the rightful owners, Alaskans. Casting a ballot is only part of voting. Making the right decisions that lead to which oval you ‘fill in completely’ and what the outcome will be, means being informed, aware and active with your thought, support of and encouragement to others, including politicians, that are conservative. The left has a goal. They call it unity and equality. What it really is, is ‘what’s theirs is theirs and what’s yours is theirs’, including rights and freedom. The big difference is that you worked for yours. They want yours because life is too unfair to ‘give’ them theirs. They are prepared to try and take what’s yours if you don’t give it to them. That’s called ‘democratic socialism’, and it is all a lie. Our defense is common sense, the Constitution, and the 2nd amendment.
If conservatives let this November slip through their hands due to apathy, indifference, disinterest, laziness, belief that someone else will take care of it, fright, coercion, and not vote (fight) back, maybe we deserve to lose the greatest state in the Union. Lots of Alaskans scouting around for an alternate paradise. Most haven’t found one yet. Lets retake all of Alaska and keep it this time. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died to keep America free of this nightmare. Lets not give up yet.
and go where Greg that it won’t find you? We gotta stop running at some point.
Free ponies?
There is nothing free in Anchorage!! Wow have you looked at property taxes lately. On the other hand this was absolutely the most moronic article I have ever read. Ethan Berkowitz is doing a far better job than Trump’s mini me Dunleavy. At least I can now feel safer going to the grocery store in Anchorage thanks to Berkowitz being the voice of reason by mandating masks!!
This is why Eaglexit from Los Anchorage is necessary. Alaskans need a place to escape too.
I am an Alaskan Native by blood and birth. I was a single parent. This story, is spot on. I have many friends and family that would absolutely disagree with me. I have acquaintances that will probably disassociate themselves from me. I was not raised to be entitled though; I was raised if you want it, work for it. Keep telling the truth. Some of us are still listening, and will support it.
A brave comment. Thank you for being a leader we can admire.
I still say The Emperor’s New Clothes perfectly illustrates the philosophies of the Left.
It’s almost comical how these leftists take the satire and parody of people like Rand, Orwell, Huxley, and instead of seeing and understanding what those great authors pointed out- the folly of this system- they use it as a blue print.
Our Mayor is a one-trick pony. Good enough for San Francisco? Institute it here.
We have to remember all the illegitimate children fathered by legislators while in Juneau, for the most part on legislative staffers (and while married to women left at home in their districts). We know of them but the media do not speak of them. With elected leaders demonstrating that behavior I suppose we get what we deserve. So far as the equality racket, an Alaskan who today chooses welfare over work can have an auto, a computer, a color television, ample food, and warm housing; Louis XIV lived lavishly but could not have the first 3 of that list. Society will always be composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. Your little mayor cannot change that. But I am grateful to him for one thing: At least 10 of my close relatives and friends risked their lives to defeat the 3rd Reich, and your little mayor reminds me today that absolutely no story has but one side. I hope I do not forget to mention that in the unlikely event that I one day I am called upon to write his obituary.
KUBOTA2,
God is the adulterers judge and moral decay is cause for being unseated from a elected position. We should have moved the Capital to Wasilla and kept the clerical offices in Juneau.
It is frustrating to hear about the equality racket. As a lifelong Alaskan and Republican, my unemployment and Pandemic assistance was turned down because of Covid. Also, because of schools not reopening full-time, I am not assured full-time work, and hours to pay my bills, but AK State Law is used to substantiate refusal of Covid money. Apparently, even a pandemic does not supercede the plague.
AK State Law states, School district classified employees are not allowed to collect unemployment because they have assured employment in the fall.
If I chose to do so I could apply for Food Stamps, Housing Assistance, utility assistance and cash help but I just can’t stomach the idea of not working and being given sustenance for free. The Democrats seem bound to flatten the Republic to a blithering, depending, overweight, socialist. I agree with you, the socialists seem to want to FLATTEN THE REPUBLICAN curve, and hold onto the CARES money for their own expenditures. Who really cares about my adolescent kids when their kids get new clothes, vacations and fancy camps? Why don’t they have to worry where their next gallon of milk is coming from? It’s hard tack to chew : (
Once elected for a four-year term, an Alaska Official will get a lifetime retirement. It seems very unfair to a state that will eventually be struggling to pay its pensioners who built the state.
The Federal Government stated, it does not monitor how states use their CARES money. Thankfully, my other half works, and being a staunch conservative we get by.
But the issue I despise is the normalization of poverty for the middle class and expecting us to hike our britches up and run to the food banks.
“Useful idiots” no smarter than “woke” Berky. That’s how he got elected.
Dan said:
“Anchorage has gone the way of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.“
Don’t forget that little Ethan grew up in San Francisco, and is a product of that leftist (worse than liberal) mindset. That’s what the little fella knows and is recreating it in Anchorage.
True. But Anchorage elected this twerp and Anchorage will be passing him on to the rest of us. He needn’t have been elected, but a whole lot of so-called conservative people sat on their hands and let it happen, because they “didn’t have time”. Vote him out and his brownshirts as well.
Karen Kirkpatrick, and Narcissist Personality Disorder shows classic textbook behavior descriptions that perfectly illustrate liberals various MOs, too. (psychcentral.com NPD)
But mostly, the democrats are waving their huge flag of racism in hopes of keeping us distracted from the background noise of their heinous and treasonous crimes being exposed to the Public.
Any property taxpayer not at the assembly meeting tomorrow night are accepting the continual theft of honest earnings by a leftist assembly and mayor that will decimate the ability of many to remain in their homes.The taxpayer is no longer being represented by our “government”.
I can’t wait to tune in for another of Berkowitz’s radio chats on how masks are so important, no wait… mandatory. They’re mandatory, damnit! It’s a rule, YeaH!
Crime and homelessness? What’s that you say? We’re out of time?
Tune in again next week for another exciting conversation about you and your obligatory mask.
Simple. Put on a mask and calm the hell down! The rest will take care of itself. As far as the idiot’s in politics up there, sadly, there is no hope. You have users who are against work and opt for freebie handouts. You have the entitled, pretty self explanatory. You have conservatives who are a dieing breed fighting amongst themselves. The place is imploding, and is out of control. The house majority and the Senate rinos are engrained in everything. Just stop it all. Somebody turn off the lights whomever is the last one out.
Hey Greg,
I agree with you about the current idiots in Alaskan politics. They call themselves democrats. There is hope. If conservatives will take the time and energy to vote, the current idiots will soon be in the rear view mirror. If not, more of the same. I know you have already opted for “other than Alaska”. For the thermometer, not specifically politics, from what you say. Alaska and America are reeling with the assault on freedom and anyone not leftist. That can be turned around in short order. It must be or what you are saying may come true. Speaking of ‘turn off the lights’. My electric service for last month came to $850.00 (fuel ‘surcharge’ was over half). May not be too many lights left to turn off, if the increases stay on the current curve (up). I somehow feel this is due to leftist policy, also. Prove me wrong.
Dan can you please cite your sources for your stats?
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