By DANIEL SMITH

This is the time of year when one is inclined to reflect on the events of the past 12 months or more. From those reflections, it is possible to learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. If accomplishments and victories appear in your reflecting pool, by all means, take a moment to enjoy those memories as well.

The other exciting opportunity we have is the conversion of both recent and distant past experiences, milestones and events into predictions of what may be in our future. With that in mind, I offer the following predictions for 2022 for your consideration.

1. Current and soon-to-be former Anchorage School District Superintendent Deena Bishop will occupy the lieutenant governor’s seat and will probably do a good job working with Gov. Mike Dunleavy in his second term. Bishop submitted her resignation as ASD Superintendent and served under the employ of the Anchorage School Board, the majority being undeniably ignorant, afraid, and Marxist. She came face to face with leftist ideology and tyranny and did not like it. Bishop will now be free to unleash her repressed conservative principles and make the State of Alaska voting system the cleanest and most transparent system we have ever seen. Unsolicited mail-in ballots may even be outlawed statewide.  
2. Chief Medical Officer for Alaska Anne Zink will resign. Confidence in many federal agencies and others such as the CDC, FDA, NIH, WHO has been undermined by their unconstitutional assertions of authority. The heads of these agencies will continue to resign in disgrace and the agencies themselves will crumble. This will occur just as soon as the American taxpayer stops funding these entities or allowing Big Pharma companies to fund the agencies that are charged with overseeing their products and operations. But before that happens, those medical institutions, professionals, and bureaucracies that have embraced medical tyranny and mandates will be publicly shamed.  Increasing evidence of injuries and death caused by so called Covid vaccines will be revealed by even the mainstream media. The medical profession will begin the long journey back to healing patients, as its top priority.  Real vaccines will continue to be OK.
3. The Green New Deal will be commonly recognized as the Communist proliferation tool that it is. We only need look as far as our own backyard to see how these types of misguided central planning attempts have failed.  While not directly energy related, reflect for a moment back upon the Point Mackenzie farms, the Delta Barley project, the abandoned grain silos in Valdez, the failed fish processing plant in Anchorage (sold and converted into a church), Matanuska Maid Dairy and the Palmer Meat Plant, just to name a few.  Whether they are created by or “nationalized” by State funding, they are destined to fail. Centrally planned redistribution of wealth either through taxes, carbon credits, simple seizure of assets or the Green New Deal is a recipe for a totalitarian-style disaster. Reflecting on other government “deals,” Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and government regulated economy of the 1930’s was on the verge of failure only to be saved by the rapid industrialization and events of World War II.  

Wind and solar power are the center piece manifestations of Green theory.  They falsely promise the elimination of fossil fuels as if oil and gas are a bad thing. Realization that these alternative sources of energy are entirely weather dependent and at best are a science project, will take a few more years. Do they produce electricity? Yes. Are they available when you need them in the dark of an Alaskan winter or a crippling ice storm on Fire Island? No. Storage of alternatively generated energy is a necessary missing link that has yet to be resolved in commercial quantities so that alternate energy might make a meaningful contribution to the power grid. In Alaska we will see more public utility-sponsored and rate-payer-funded wind farms and solar arrays brought on line. They will predictably fail to live up to their promise as a replacement for fossil fuels. They will bring with them the baggage of central planning bureaucracy and at great expense.      

• The State legislature will finally realize that they too must follow the statutes and pay out Permanent Fund dividends as required by law. Enough State representatives and senators are guilty of thinking they know better how to spend their constituent’s money. They allow the Bill Walker-organized crime theft of our money to continue. I’m not sure if any State legislators will be arrested, but those who do not allow the legally required PFD disbursement to occur will be voted out of office. A constitutional convention will force their hand and not-so-gently persuade them toward a large-scale cut in wasteful State spending. Ultimately, the State will be forced to live within its means and without the theft of the people’s Permanent Fund dividend.  
• Manmade global warming will finally be exposed as a farce. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not poison. If I remember correctly from high school biology, plants need CO2 to grow. More CO2 equates to more trees, more rain forest, more crops, and less famine. Trees and plants produce oxygen. Most humans enjoy oxygen when it comes to things like breathing and such. CO2 will be declared a miracle element and advocates of reforestation will rejoice in its abundance. The sun and its cycles will be acknowledged as the driving force behind longterm climate and temperature fluctuations on the planet.    
• The Anchorage Assembly will turn over and the people of Anchorage will vote out the Marxists’ everywhere we can.  New to the Assembly will be Stephanie Taylor, Kathy Henslee, Randy Sulte, and Liz Vazquez. Balance will be restored to the currently tyrannical political situation in Anchorage. The actions of the current leftist assembly have left a rancid path of destruction in their wake. House cleaning will not be limited to elected officials. Those appointed by Marxists will be asked to box up their personal effects and thanked for their service as they are shown to the door. This is the part where we learn from our mistakes and never let our guard down again. 

I think we have a lot to look forward to in 2022!

Dan Smith is a lifelong Alaskan and Anchorage resident who writes for Must Read Alaska.