A fundraiser at the Petroleum Club for the reelection of Gov. Mike Dunleavy is set for Tuesday, Nov. 23, from 5:30-8 pm. Hosts are John Sturgeon, Bob Bell, Rick Rydell, and Larry Baker.
Dunleavy became governor in 2018 when he beat Mark Begich and Bill Walker in a race in which Walker dropped out in the last two weeks of the campaign, after his administration became disgraced.
Dunleavy is facing Bill Walker again in 2022, and also former legislator Les Gara, a Democrat.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is suggesting soy is a more economically efficient Thanksgiving meal option than turkey.
“A Thanksgiving dinner serving of poultry costs $1.42,” said a tweet about a Federal Reserve economic data blog post. “A soybean-based dinner serving with the same amount of calories costs 66 cents and provides almost twice as much protein,” it said, signaling that soy may even be superior to turkey, pound for pound.
The blog post, at this link, said that the average global price of poultry has been six times higher than the price of soybeans.
“As of the third quarter of 2021, a hearty Thanksgiving dinner serving of turkey costs $1.42. A tofurkey (soybean) dinner serving with the same amount of calories costs $0.66 and provides almost twice as much protein. Keep in mind that this plant-based meal would be almost 3 times larger by weight than the poultry-based meal and may either keep you at the dinner table longer or provide you with more leftovers. Of course, our calculations here don’t include the time value, energy costs, and additional ingredients required to cook the meals,” the blog noted.
Republican U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan introduced a bill Monday that would allow the Alaska Native communities in Haines, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Tenakee to form urban corporations and receive land under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
The bill would wrest Tongass National Forest land out of federal control and into the hands of newly formed Native corporations so it can be logged, mined, or developed economically.
This is essentially the same bill in that has been introduced in some form for 20 years, but Democrats typically won’t go along with it, since it would remove land from federal control.
ANCSA, signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1971, settled Alaska Native aboriginal claims with the largest land claims settlement in U.S. history, creating Native corporations to begin driving economic growth for Alaska’s indigenous people.
The five Southeast communities included in this bill were not included in ANCSA, which divided 44 million acres of land among more than 200 regional, village, and urban corporations to resolve land claims throughout Alaska. ANCSA was an essential step to being able to get the Trans Alaska Pipeline System completed, and the focus then was not on Southeast Alaska. ANCSA was prompted by the discovery of North America’s largest oil field in Prudhoe Bay in 1967, and geopolitical forces, led by an oil embargo from OPEC, that led to an oil shortage in the early 1970s. In order to get the oil out of Alaska and establish energy security, the pipeline had to go through what had been unresolved tribal territory.
ANCSA, passed by Congress with the help of U.S. Senators Ted Stevens and Mike Gravel and Congressman Nick Begich, declared “This act shall be regarded as an extinguishment of all previous aboriginal title.”
In exchange for some land, the Native corporations received $900 million and other lands.
Today those corporations are some of Alaska’s biggest economic engines and contribute wealth to Natives and non-Natives alike.
But there was part of the state that didn’t get included. The new legislation, the “Unrecognized Southeast Alaska Native Communities Recognition and Compensation Act,” aims to rectify that left-out portion of Alaska by amending ANCSA to provide each of the communities the opportunities it granted to other Native communities 50 years ago: the right to form an Alaska Native Urban Corporation and receive 23,040 acres, or one township, of federal land.
“The culture and heritage of Alaska Native peoples is intricately tied to the land on which they live. The unique regions they have inhabited for centuries are directly connected to their identity,” said Senator Murkowski. “Unfortunately, five communities were not afforded the same benefits under ANCSA – access to land – that were granted to others throughout Southeast. It is past time the federal government make good on its promises to each of the communities that were left out of this significant agreement. I’m proud to work with Senator Sullivan, Congressman Young, and local stakeholders to correct this decades-long wrongdoing and provide equity to these landless communities.”
“For years, Alaska Native residents in five southeast communities have been denied the land and opportunities afforded by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, a historic injustice that Congress has a duty to rectify. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the passage of ANCSA, I am hopeful my colleagues will recognize the federal laws and circumstances that uniquely impact Alaska and join Senator Murkowski and me in quickly advancing our legislation for the benefit of our constituents,” Sullivan said.
U.S. Congressman Don Young previously introduced similar legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
To read the legislation, click here. To see the Forest Service’s maps, click here.
The long-shot legislation is the result of extensive and ongoing outreach to people in Southeast Alaska. It identifies specific parcels of land to be conveyed to what would become new urban corporations in an area of the state that has been nearly locked down by the federal government to any economy other than fishing and tourism. The legislation also includes provisions to protect existing rights-of-way and many existing uses of those lands and to ensure that reasonable public access can continue.
In November 2020, Senators Murkowski and Sullivan and Congressman Young introduced their original landless legislation, upon which today’s newly introduced bill was built.
Following introduction, during an Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining (PLFM) legislative hearing, Senator Murkowski raised her bill, S. 4889, the ANCSA Fulfillment Act, a package which aimed to resolve a number of outstanding issues related to the landmark 1971 law, including authorizing the five landless communities in southeast Alaska to form urban corporations and receive lands. Senator Sullivan was a cosponsor of S. 4889.
By ART CHANCE
I was raised in Baptist confinement; the “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” variety.
There were three kinds of Baptists in the rural South; the Missionary Baptists, the Progressive Primitive Baptists, and the “Old Line” Primitive Baptists. The Missionary Baptists are the ones you might recognize; they had a nice church with a steeple in town and there were nice cars parked around the church on Sunday morning. They’re the ones you’d associate with the Southern Baptist Convention and what passes for mainstream Protestantism these days. I was brought up to think of them as snobs, though not so much as Methodists and Presbyterians, but they did have some pretty girls, so I went to church there from time to time. I’ll always have a warm spot for them for the night we beat a nearby rival, a rivalry so intense the game had to be played on a neutral field, in football for the first time in 28 years, and when the team and band buses arrived back in town in the middle of the night, somebody opened the church and played “Alma Mater” on the carillon for the whole town, whether they wanted to hear it or not.
I sprang from the more déclassé sector of Baptist dogma and I had a divided family. My Father’s side were “progressive” Primitive Baptists. My grandfather and grandmother were charter members of the church, and my grandfather and later my father were deacons. We gave the land for the parsonage to the church.
I was something of a disappointment.
My mother’s side were “Old Line” Primitive Baptists. Union Primitive Baptist church was out in the country and didn’t have running water or modern facilities. It didn’t have stained glass windows or art work on the walls. It didn’t have a piano or other musical instrument. My grandfather was a deacon and the singing leader and most of the singing was “call and repeat.” Most of you don’t know what that is, but most of you have heard Joan Baez’ version of “Amazing Grace” on “From Every Stage,” the only Christian song you can sing or play in polite company these days. She does a lot of it in “call and repeat,” in which she sings out the words of the next verse for the audience.
Other than at Union Church, I remember it most from field hands working in cotton and tobacco fields. Someone was the song leader, maybe the foreman, maybe a pastor among the group; he; always he, led the singing. Most of you have no idea what chopping cotton or cropping tobacco in the 100 degree Georgia heat is like, but singing Gospel songs as you did it seemed to help.
That was the state of the World 50 or 60 years ago. Two hundred years earlier, you could have a trial by water (or worse) to see if your beliefs adequately conformed to “community standards.” A couple of hundred years before that, you would be offered a choice of the hot fire if you could afford it, or the slow fire if you couldn’t, as your soul was tried by fire.
You have to really be a student of history to know about Arianism, Catharism, Nestorianism, Appolarianism, Gnosticism and all the other “isms” that could get you tortured, flayed, blinded, burned at the stake or boiled in oil for the first 1,500 years or so of Christianity’s development. Only some of the notorious Inquisition was about testing just which flavor of Christian you might be, though it got pretty tough in places, but if you were a Muslim or a Jew trying to “pass” as a Christian, your life might well be forfeit.
The Left never had a Council of Nicaea or a Stalin. Constantine had a convocation of Christian bishops in 325 AD who were tasked with setting out what it meant to be a Christian. They produced the Nicene Creed. The assembled bishops were mostly from the Eastern Empire. The great losers were the Arian Christians, but they remained a force in the church for centuries, albeit a persecuted force. The most evident result was that the creed defined heresy, and the church, particularly the Eastern church, set out to extirpate heresy.
There is a good argument that Byzantine losses to the Persians and later to the Muslims among the Jews and other Semitic residents of the empire were in large measure attributable to persecution by the Orthodox Church. As the Muslims became ascendant, many Orthodox but heretical Christians chose conversion or dhimmitude over Orthodox persecution.
Fast forward 1,500 years; communism was little more established in Europe in the mid-1800s than Christianity had been in the 300s, perhaps less so. Various cells, cadres, and communes had tried to establish socialist/communist/communal governments throughout Europe and even to some extent in the U.S. all through the 19th Century.
You can trace most of the “isms” that bedeviled the U.S. in the 19th and early 20thCenturies to the Seneca Falls Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. in 1848. Marx’ “Das Kapital” wasn’t far behind in 1867. By 1871 proto-communists established the Paris Commune and rejected the authority of the French Government. It only took a couple of months for the French Army to reject the authority of the Paris Commune, but revolutionary groups were here to stay.
World War One proved too much for the tottering Romanov Dynasty in Russia and it succumbed first to a social Democrat democracy and ultimately to the communist Bolsheviks, thus establishing the first communist national government, led first by Vladimir Lenin. Autocracy is the only form of government Russia had ever known, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was even more autocratic than the Romanovs, but different people got to be the autocrats. Anastasia screamed in vain!
The aborning U.S.S.R. faced a civil war with revanchist elements, the “White Russians,” and various schisms between factions inside the nominally communist ranks. Bolshevik means something like majority, but they were anything but; they were just loud and violent.
Lenin kept the unholy alliance together until his death in 1928. Among the many ideological schisms, the most consequential was that between Lenin and another Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky. To use today’s words, Lenin was a bureaucratic communist; his intent was to harness the bureaucratic power of the state to the Communist Party.
Trotsky believed in ongoing revolution; he was more anarchist than communist. Lenin’s successor, Stalin, was cut from different cloth and had nothing of Trotsky’s dissidence; he threw him out of the U.S.S.R. Then, when Trotsky, ensconced in Mexico, continued to try to influence events in the U.S.S.R., Stalin simply had someone put an ice axe through his skull.
That was the communist version of the Council of Nicaea; adhere to the ruling dogma or get an ice axe in your head. To be fair, the Christians weren’t any more gentle; burned at the stake or an ice axe in your head: you pick it.
Through World War II, American communists were doctrinaire Stalinists. After WWII, the U.S. rigorously suppressed doctrinaire communism. The net result, however, was not really the suppression of communism, but its dispersion. In the 1950s and 1960s we saw the rise of the New Left in the US. The epicenter was Chicago and a Trotsky disciple named Saul Alinsky. Chinese Maoism was a derivative of Trotskyism, and lots of American young people spent the 1960s with a copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” in the pocket of their ragged Levis. It quietened a bit in the Reagan-Bush years, but returned in new bespoke clothes with Bill Clinton.
Bill and Hillary Clinton raised a fist and yelled “Vinceremos.” They meant to restart the revolution. Fortunately, it cost Bill the Congress and he tucked his communist tail between his legs and made nice with Newt Gingrich. Hillary, who wrote her master’s thesis about Saul Alinsky, remains resentful and tries to remain relevant. Bill seems to content himself with finding comfort with women who aren’t Hillary.
The Left did not rest after the Clinton retrenchment; they took your children, if you were foolish enough to send them to college. In scenes reminiscent of a Tom Jones concert in the 1970s, college girls were throwing their panties at the stage at Obama rallies in the ‘00s. Donald Trump was an unanticipated interlude that caused the Left a fit of apoplexy. I won’t discuss how the Left “defeated” him.
To bring this to today, the communists, excuse me, Democrats, control the Congress and the Presidency; they can do pretty much whatever they want subject to their ability to cow the courts. Their tool of manipulation is the Covid scamdemic. Covid has become a messianic religion. You either accept the gospel of St. Anthony Fauci and his ilk, or you are a heretic.
I don’t look or act like a sensitive new-age guy; the Karens don’t even have to know, they couldn’t tell anyway, whether I’m carrying Covid or not; one look at me without a mask and they bustle off in the opposite direction with a distraught look on their faces. They are genuinely afraid, and St. Anthony and the “Jab Inquisition” have done that. St. Anthony doesn’t have to be Slo Joe’s Torquemada, there are millions of Karens out there to do it for him.
We have some “doctor” screeching at the medical board about “misinformation.” Who gave her the power to determine what constitutes misinformation? She doesn’t work for Facebook, which reserves that right for itself.
This doctor and her soy boy disciples would like nothing more than putting the dissenting doctors, most of whom are more qualified than their accusers, to the stake; what better place than in front of Loussac Library, the leftists’ holy temple in Anchorage.
We have exceeded even a medieval level of ignorance and superstition; we’ve made it all the way back to the Dark Ages.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
Sen. Dan Sullivan stopped by the Must Read Alaska office in Spenard to talk to Alaskans about the recent passage of the massive infrastructure bill, and the good it will do for Alaska over the next few years. Some of the high points from the interview are:
Perfect? No: Sullivan said the bill wasn’t perfect, but that it is going to put a lot of people to work in Alaska over the next five years on projects that are critical to moving the state forward. It is not the big social engineering bill that is called the Build Back Better Act, which was split off from the infrastructure bill so that the road, bridge, and broadband upgrades won’t be held up by what he termed as a socialist agenda that is in the BBBA.
Roads: The bill has $3.5 billion over five years for Alaska, a 34 percent increase over the previous highway bill. Much of the regular highway bill funding is incorporated into this legislation. Alaska will also receive part of the $110 billion over five years in supplemental funding for roads and bridges. The funds go to the state government, which decides which projects get worked on, and in what order.
Bridges: Alaska will get part of $40 billion over five years that is set aside for bridges; Alaska has 141 bridges that are structurally deficient.
Broadband: Sullivan emphasized the importance of broadband for giving parents and children choice in their education, making charter and homeschool education more available to those in rural areas. He also pointed to the $1.5 billion in flexible funding over five years, with Alaska having achieved priority for getting broadband to remote communities, before that money flows to cities like Chicago. Broadband is a key economic driver, he said, for a young state like Alaska.
Water and wastewater: The bill has $40 million to $60 million by 2026 for for safe drinking water, plus Sullivan was able to get $3.5 billion over five years for Indian Health Service sanitation facilities to help build out running water and flush toilets in rural Alaska.
Energy: The bill provides a loan guarantee up to $18 billion for the Alaska LNG project.
Streamlining Permits: The bill sets deadlines for completion of environmental reviews.
Ports and Harbors: The bill has $2.25 billion over five years for ports, including $250 million over five years for the construction of remote and subsistence harbor projects.
Sullivan, after the interview, dispelled some of the myths about the bill. It does not include Critical Race Theory, it doesn’t include gender identity politics, and it is different from the $3.5 trillion Built Back Better bill the Democrats are now trying to shove through Congress (the BBBA has passed the House).
Sullivan also talked about the increasing problem with the communist Chinese and their intent to invade and take over Taiwan. A Marine Reserve colonel, he said he is keeping a close eye on the developments and is concerned the Biden Administration will give over Taiwan to the Chinese.
Watch Sullivan talk about the bill at this link.
Women in power asserted themselves this week on issues of words and wardrobe.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland on Friday ordered a ban of the word “squaw,” which is an Algonquin word that simply means “woman,” from all federal lands.
Haaland, as an agent of the federal government, declared “squaw” to be a derogatory term that was inappropriate to use to name geological features. There are more than 650 place names that use the word, such as Squaw Mountain, Squaw Valley, and Squaw Creek. She appointed a task force to find replacement names.
“Racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands. Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage — not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression,” Haaland said in a news release.
“The term has historically been used as an offensive ethnic, racial, and sexist slur, particularly for Indigenous women,” the news release said.
The newly created Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force will include representatives from federal land management agencies, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion experts from the federal agency. The order requires that the task force engage in Tribal consultation and consider public feedback on all proposed name changes.
Secretarial Order 3405 creates a Federal Advisory Committee to broadly solicit, review, and recommend changes to other derogatory geographic and federal land unit names. The Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names will include representation from Indian tribes, tribal and Native Hawaiian organizations, civil rights, anthropology, and history experts, and members of the general public. It will establish a process to solicit and assist with proposals to the secretary to change derogatory names, and will include engagement with tribes, state and local governments, and the public.
Some states have passed legislation prohibiting the use of the word “squaw” in place names, including Montana, Oregon, Maine, and Minnesota. Squaw Valley Ski Resort officially changed its name to Tahoe Palisades in September.
Meanwhile, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and two other women senators had a letter published in the New York Times on Nov. 20, in which they criticized the newspaper for focusing too much on the wardrobe of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona who has some of the more flashy, form-fitting, and colorful attire in Congress. The letter was also signed by Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat senator from New Hampshire and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine.
Vanessa Friedman, a writer for the New York Times, wrote a defense in 2017 about why writing about the wardrobe of powerful people is of interest. In her column, she wrote:
“Every garment — a tie, a dress, a pair of socks or shoes — is a communication device of varying power and clarity, and we choose how to use those tools to sway those looking at us. After all, since long before Queen Elizabeth I whitened her face and exaggerated her ruff to transform herself into a living myth, leaders have been using clothes to influence opinion. For all of us, what we choose to wear in the morning telegraphs a message about who we are; and for those in the public eye, this effect is simply multiplied a hundredfold (or more).
“Is it sillier to acknowledge the strategy behind appearance, or to pretend such influences don’t exist? It may be embarrassing to recognize that what someone wears can affect your judgment, but it does: leather leggings and sneakers can make a member of the establishment seem accessibly cool; a red tie taps into memories of Morning in America; rolled-up shirt sleeves indicate hard work. At the very least, wardrobe choices can subconsciously make you relate to public figures in a more personal way, which could then tempt you to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to motivations and policy making — or they may alienate you entirely.
“Barack and Michelle Obama were masters of the sartorial statement, and a wave of politicians who have come since, including Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron and their wives, have learned from the Obamas’ example: strategically abandoning their ties on occasion; daring to wear “Star Wars” socks; promoting homegrown designers. Donald Trump, with his hair and his tan and his devotion to the overlong tie and boxy suit, uses his style to weave a different story. But, in the current White House, it is Melania whose clothes may be the most telling. Not because she is a woman, but because since the election she has rarely spoken, retreating to her penthouse in New York and emerging last week on the global stage in a series of strict, battle-ready outfits.
“It’s not that what she wears matters more than world peace or freedom of the press or trade policy or any piece of legislation — of course not. And The Times covers those issues with dedication. But one kind of analysis does not obviate the other, and can, in fact, elucidate it. We scour her wardrobe for clues as to who she is as a person and how she sees her role; where her values lie and how she will represent the country on the world stage. Where her husband’s (perhaps unstated) priorities lie. The vehicles may be superficial. But they are also broadly accessible, and that makes them powerful. And power is a subject I don’t think any of us would dismiss.
By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
“In the course of human events there have always been those who deny or reject human freedom, but Americans will never falter in defending the fundamental truths of human liberty proclaimed on July 4, 1776. We will — we must— always hold these truths.” The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, January 2021
These truths are especially meaningful when it comes to the protection, nurturing, and instruction of our children as we prepare them to take our place in what will hopefully be a better future and a better lifestyle than our own. That said, over the last decade I have become increasingly skeptical of this outcome.
I’m not an attorney, yet I can’t help but ask questions.
Are the Anchorage School District (ASD) board members, its superintendent, the unnamed library association, and those staff accountable for the procurement and placement of the book, “Gender Queer”?
What other books, which by intentional design move to sexually groom and indoctrinate Anchorage’s children for future exploitation, are on the shelves at Anchorage public schools?
Are those people criminally culpable in their breach of custody and subsequent unlawful exploitation of the 43,500 plus students in the Anchorage School District?
What’s really the difference between an adult sexual predator and an adult in the school district knowingly placing visual and aural material within the reach of minors?
Both are intended to groom and indoctrinate children for future sexual exploitation, and once sufficiently groomed, to prey on them. This has happened in the past with ASD and other Anchorage schools.
Is this an attempt to make it legal, or at least culturally acceptable?
Alaska Statutes 11.41.436 and 11.41.455 describe the circumstances that define the felony of unlawful exploitation of a minor:
AS 11.41.436:
(a) An offender commits the crime of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree if…
(4) being 16 years of age or older, the offender aids, induces, causes, or encourages a person who is under 16 years of age to engage in conduct described in AS 11.41.455 (a)(2) – (6);
*and* the offender occupies a position of authority in relation to the victim.
Alaska Statute 11.41.455 graphically describes the kinds of sexual activities the minor may be induced into performing by the exploitative adult who is grooming them. As we know, the process of grooming a child for future exploitation begins slowly, the perpetrator often starting by showing the child pornographic materials.
How is this different from the adults within the school district providing our children with easily accessible pornographic materials?
These people are effectively babysitting our children.
How would you feel if you found out that the babysitter you left your children with one the evening had been showing them pornographic and sexually explicit materials while you were out to dinner?
Of course, this begs the question, are there other sexually explicit and pornographic books and materials now being shipped to the Anchorage School District libraries and classrooms?
Who is ordering these?
Why would an adult, someone who is in a position of authority in the eyes of the children, want to subject young people to these materials?
The AS 11.41.370 further provides that a parent, legal guardian, or person having custody or control of a child under 18 years of age commits the crime of unlawful exploitation of a minor if, in the state, the person permits the child to engage in conduct described in this section knowing that the conduct is intended to be used in producing the material that visually or aurally depicts the conduct.
You be the judge.
Suzanne Downing, editor of Must Read Alaska, showed pages from the book in her Nov. 13, 2021 article, “Anchorage Schools Remove ‘Gender Queer’ Graphic Memoir From School Shelves”.
I bought the book from Amazon and reviewed it. While it could be termed as a “coming of age” memoir, I cannot agree that this book should be placed in front of minors as reading material in the schools.
In my opinion, the comic book format is a clandestine way of spreading sexual content to underage children.
Superintendent Deena Bishop responded to the article with what can be best described as an apathetic and dismissive memo posted on the ASD website.
The book was in a “batch” of “award-winning” books, she said.
What is striking is her total lack of curiosity as to what in her procurement system resulted in this purchase.
Why is she not outraged and angry?
Why is she not demanding answers?
Why is she not requiring her staff to thoroughly vet and review all “batches” of books coming into the school system for appropriate subject content?
Per Superintendent Bishop’s Nov. 15, 2021, memo to the public, the ASD Teaching and Learning Department is the department that reviewed and removed of the book. She details casually the circumstances surrounding the book’s journey to the ASD.
From the ASD website, the Teaching and Learning Department is the authority in curriculum. Per website, it is responsible for “the alignment of curriculum across academic services to support equitable, high quality instruction within a multi-tiered system of supports.”
Who are the members of ASD Teaching and Learning Department?
Was this department ultimately responsible for the purchase of this book as part of a library association’s “award winning” package of books?
Were there others involved?
Where are the records identifying the purchase of this book and others with the complete list of books from “a library association’s award winning” package of books”?
Into which school library (or libraries) was this book installed?
Who in the ASD library system distributed this book to its final destination?
Was there a review of this book before it was put into circulation?
What is the name of the library association and what is the length and depth of its relationship to ASD?
And perhaps what is most discouraging and disappointing, where are the responses of the Anchorage clergy and churches?
Dear leaders and acolytes who lead Anchorage’s religious communities, are you aware of what happened?
Are you curious in finding out the truth?
Where is the moral outrage to this crime perpetrated on the entirety of the children attending the ASD schools?
I grew up in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, when Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, The Painted Bird, and other novels were continually subjected to bans. I do not support censorship. Hey, I went to Woodstock.
And yes, I accuse any adult who intentionally places these materials in the hands of our children, our most precious asset, of committing an egregious and unforgivable crime. These people will get away with this and more if we don’t apply the law and statutes to them now.
When public funds are used for the grooming and indoctrination of children for sexual exploitation, beyond the scope of what true education must be in Alaska, I just can’t buy it.
Can you?
Michael Tavoliero is a realtor in Eagle River, is active in the Alaska Republican Party and chairs Eaglexit.
SCOTT W. ATLAS, MD
Adapted from A Plague Upon Our House by Scott Atlas, MD, due out from Bombardier Books on Dec 7.
It was February 2020, and news accounts had been describing increasingly alarming information about a deadly new virus emanating from Wuhan, China.
Apart from my general concern about the spread of the infection, I was confused about some of the basic numbers being aired. The overall message coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) seemed to have obvious flaws.
The extremely high risk estimates seemed very misleading. Even worst—the reported fatality rates were based only on patients who were sick enough to seek medical care rather than on the undoubtedly much larger population of infected individuals.
I was stunned that this basic methodological flaw was being overlooked by almost everyone, while the resulting fatality rate of 3.4 percent was highlighted throughout the media. Every legitimate medical scientist should have called that out. Their silence was puzzling.
In the United States and throughout the world, a naive discussion about statistical models ensued. To an extraordinary and unprecedented extent, these epidemiological models were featured front and center in news coverage, with no perspective on the models’ usefulness. Reminiscent of other legendary frenzies in history, like the tulip bulb mania or the tech stock bubble, hypothetical extreme-risk scenarios went seemingly unchallenged and were given absolute credence.
At the same time, common sense and well-established principles of medicine were being ignored. Every second-year medical student knew that the elderly were almost certainly the most vulnerable group of people, since they were virtually always at highest risk of death and serious consequences from respiratory infections. Yet this was not stressed.
To the contrary, the implication of reports and the public faces of official expertise implied that everyone was equally in danger. Even the initial evidence showed that elderly, frail people with preexisting comorbidities—conditions that weakened their natural immunological defenses—were the ones at highest risk of death. This was a feature shared by other respiratory viruses, including seasonal influenza.
The one unusual feature of this virus was the fact that children had an extraordinarily low risk. Yet this positive and reassuring news was never emphasized. Instead, with total disregard of the evidence of selective risk consistent with other respiratory viruses, public health officials recommended draconian isolation of everyone.
The architects of the American lockdown strategy were Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. With Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, they were the most influential medical members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
The task force quickly expanded to include a new chairman, Vice President Mike Pence. The White House also announced that Birx would be the task force’s coordinator. She had worked in the State Department as the U.S. AIDS coordinator under the Obama and Trump administrations—hence she was often addressed by the honorific “ambassador.” The task force ultimately included representation from numerous federal agencies concerned with health, science, national emergencies and logistics, the economy and many other relevant concerns.
The task force dealt with a number of issues at its origin. Since the country had not been well prepared for a pandemic, one of the primary tasks was to develop adequate testing—a key public health measure in early infectious disease outbreaks. The second main set of tasks centered around the production and logistics of supportive medical equipment, including ventilators, personal protective supplies for hospitals and extra beds and personnel to accommodate sick patients anticipated to overwhelm the system.
Dr. Birx, Dr. Redfield and Dr. Fauci—often called “the nation’s top expert in infectious disease”—dominated all discussions about the health and medical aspects of the emerging pandemic. One thing was very clear: all three were cut from the same cloth.
First, they were all bureaucrats, with a background in various government agencies. Second, they shared a long history in HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis. That was problematic, because HIV couldn’t be more different from SARS2 in its biology, its amenability to testing and contact tracing, its spread and the implications of those facts for its control. Indeed, the three of them spent many years focusing on the development of a vaccine, rather than treatment, for HIV/AIDS—a vaccine that still does not exist.
It’s also worth noting Dr. Fauci’s history in regard to AIDS. He created headlines for his alarmist speculations in his 1983 JAMA editorial that AIDS could be transmitted by “routine close contact, as within a family household.” It had already been known that transmission happened via fluids through blood or sexual contact.
Less than two months later, on June 26 in The Baltimore Sun, Fauci publicly contradicted his own explosive claim: “It is absolutely preposterous to suggest that AIDS can be contracted through normal social contact like being in the same room with someone or sitting on a bus with them. The poor gays have received a very raw deal on this.” That seemed like quite a flip-flop, with no new evidence or explanation given—more reminiscent of a politician than a reliable scientist.
Most others on the task force were juggling several concerns or had no medical background. This was one more responsibility added to their portfolios, so they deferred to those deemed medical experts. Drs. Birx and Fauci commandeered federal policy under President Trump and publicly advocated for a total societal shutdown. Instead of focusing on protecting the most vulnerable, their illogical and extraordinarily blunt response—despite its predictable, wide-ranging harms—was instituted as though it were simple common sense.
Over those first several weeks, fear had taken hold of the public. Media commentators and even policy experts, many of whom had no expertise on health care, were filling the airwaves and opinion pages with naive and incorrect predictions. This misinformation was going unchecked, and was indeed repeatedly endorsed and sensationalized. Some whom I had previously considered among my smartest colleagues and friends expressed great confusion and a striking absence of logic in analyzing what was happening.
I asked myself time and again, “Where are the critical thinkers?”
After more than 15 years a health policy researcher and decades in medical science and data analysis, I had never seen such flawed thinking. I was bewildered at the lack of logic, the absence of common sense and the reliance on fundamentally flawed science. – Scott Atlas, MD
Suddenly, computer modelers and people without any perspective about clinical illnesses were dominating the airwaves. Along with millions of other Americans, I began witnessing unprecedented responses from those in power and nonscientific recommendations by public health spokespeople: societal lockdowns including business and school closures, stay-at-home restrictions on individual movements, and arbitrary decrees by local, state, and federal governments.
These recommendations were not just based on panic; they were responsible for generating even more panic. Covid rapidly became the most important health policy crisis in a century.
Scott W. Atlas, M.D. is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution. This column first appeared in Newsweek and is used with permission.
On Friday, Alaska Congressman Don Young surpassed former Speaker Sam Rayburn’s tenure and became the 6th overall longest serving congressman in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Young has served since March of 1973, and is in his 25th term.
He already was the Republican Party’s longest-serving member of the House in history, and is currently Dean of the House, the first Republican Dean in over eight decades.
“It’s truly the honor of a lifetime to represent Alaskans. I love this institution dearly, and I’m grateful to have served with nearly 2,200 friends on both sides of the aisle in the House,” Young said in a video posted by his staff.
“His tenure in the United States Congress. 48 years, 256 days.That’s me. That puts me in the sixth position of every congressman who has ever served for longevity. When I get reelected this time, I’ll go to number four,” he said in the video, taped in his colorful DC office, surrounded by his Alaska memorabilia. “I thank you for that, Alaskans. Don Young thanks you. I’ve done the job for you because you’ve asked me to do it, and we’re going to do it again. I’m proud of that. It’s gonna be good times. God bless.”
Rayburn, of Texas, was a Democrats who served as the 43rd Speaker and was also speaker three times. He still is the record-holder for having the longest tenure as Speaker, 17 years total. He served from 1913 until 1961, and an office building — the Rayburn Building — at the Capitol is named in his honor.
Watch the Don Young video at this link:
