Update: Gov. Mike Dunleavy has asked for the Department of Law to conduct an investigation into how and what information has been shared by the State with the Municipality of Anchorage, and how it was used in a recent Anchorage program that had contracted employees calling Anchorage residents to inquire about their vaccine status.
Dunleavy was responding to word of a potential violation of law after a group of Alaskans were contacted by individuals working on behalf of the Municipality of Anchorage about COVID-19 vaccine information. The Municipality received the names and contact information of those individuals through an unauthorized action by staff at the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Though a data sharing agreement with the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services exists with Anchorage’s municipal Health Department, the unauthorized sharing of information did not occur through that channel.
The Governor also directed DHSS Commissioner Adam Crum to conduct an internal review of all the department’s data sharing agreements.
“Alaskans value their right to privacy, especially sensitive health information, and they have a right to know how that information may or may not be used,” said Governor Dunleavy. “While the data shared appears to be limited, I apologize to any Alaskan affected by this action. The department of law will investigate the facts of the event while health and social services will report back to me with new policies and procedures that will prevent this from happening again.
Original story: People in Anchorage say their privacy was violated when contractors from the Municipality of Anchorage called them to ask them if they’re ready to make an appointment for the Covid-19 vaccine.
According to one woman who spoke at the Anchorage Assembly this week, the call took her off guard. How did the Municipality know she had not been vaccinated? Who gave the Muni that information?
It turns out, lower-level personnel at the State of Alaska gave the Anchorage Health Department a data set.
A source in the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services said there is a data-sharing agreement between the municipality and the state health department, but the information is general in nature. It is not medical information and it’s not likely a violation of federal health information privacy laws, known as HIPAA.
The goal of the Muni’s project was educate Alaskans on vaccine and answer their questions, the source said, and the focus was to be on vulnerable populations, 65 years and older, especially those who might have a hard time figuring out how to get a Covid vaccine.
“No personal information was asked. The focus was on asking if they had questions and if they wanted help scheduling an appointment,” the source said.
But the data set sent by the State to the Anchorage Health Department was then used by non-municipal contractors, and now the State is following up to make sure the data has been fully destroyed.
Some of you may remember the 1960’s television ads for RiceARoni, with the cute jingle, “Rice A Roni – The San Francisco Treat.”
That was then, this is now. The San Francisco treat for Anchorage consists of a group of politicos bent on destroying civil liberties and our free market system, replacing them with neo-socialist principles. And one of them is in the run-off to possibly become our next mayor.
Just to refresh – socialism is the economic system of social, not individual, ownership and management of the economy. Government controls the who, how, when, and where. Some bureaucratic central planner, who probably never ran a business, knows best how to manage the economy for society.
Socialism hasn’t worked so well in the past. Here in America, San Francisco, arguably one of the most once-beautiful and prosperous cities of the 20th Century, is now a socialist Mecca, a miserable mess overrun by vagrants, drug addicts, class inequality, and crime, all caused by socialists under the pretext of social equity. The 21st Century jingle should be: “San Francisco – The Socialistic Treat.”
This brings me to our mayoral election run-off between Dave Bronson and Forrest Dunbar on May 11. The April 6 election will be certified April 20 and ballot will be in the mail shortly after that. The two are within a couple of percentage points of each other.
The choice cannot be more stark: Do we elect Dave Bronson, who believes in individual responsibility and an economic free market system, or Dunbar, who has embraced the draconian mandates that suffocated business by government manifesto, taxation and regulations, and snuffs out individual freedom with laws, rules, and regulations?
Do we elect Dave Bronson, who will tackle the homeless and vagrancy problem with treatment and compassion, or do we elect Dunbar who will continue enabling and warehousing these people?
Do we really want Anchorage to look like that cesspool San Francisco with homeless tents on public sidewalks, defecation on the street, pandering at every street corner, trash in our parks, and a general uncompassionate neglect?
How about crime? During the time Dunbar has been on the Assembly, Anchorage has continued to have one of the highest violent crime rates in the country, while he and his colleagues made direct attempts to undermine law enforcement and pass resolutions to “oversee” police policies and procedures.
Don’t forget Dunbar supported his sister and cousin as they joined the Portland Wall of Mom’s to block police from stopping Antifa and Black Lives Matter from burning buildings during the “peaceful” protests of 2020.
“Peaceful” protesters are at it again in Minnesota, this time burning the federal ICE building while agents were blockaded inside, laying siege to police buildings, and instigating anarchy.
Is this what we want Anchorage to become from more liberal leadership in City Hall?
It’s time we elect a mayor who will support law enforcement and confront the crime in our city. Dave Bronson will provide the police protection necessary to reduce crime and support healthy neighborhoods. Dunbar does not support strong law enforcement, no matter what his campaign propaganda may say.
The current devastation of Anchorage is being fueled by elitists. Ethan Berkowitz, the mayor who resigned in disgrace, came from San Francisco. Acting Mayor Quinn-Davidson, also from California, clearly has played politics with the Covid pandemic to keep government control over our lives and businesses. The downward spiral of our city rests directly from their actions.
What a waste. Businesses closed forever. They really needed CARES Act money to survive, yet received very little by these highbrow despots. This central planning of our economy by government bureaucrats to reward their friends and punish their enemies has got to stop.
Back to our current mayor’s race. To be fair, not all radical socialists come from San Francisco. Dunbar was born and raised in Alaska, but he cultivated his radical socialist ideas while studying at privileged liberal Ivy League institutions like Harvard University and Yale College. Dunbar is the sweetheart candidate of the uber-liberal Left, emboldened with an arrogant attitude exhibited by his openly coercive actions of picking and choosing winners and losers. That is not the role of government or any mayor.
To Dunbar, government must prop-up the arts, build trails, fund non-essential activities, accommodate the burgeoning vagrancy problem in Anchorage that he helped create, and heavily tax and regulate the private sector. He supported using CARES Act funds to provide free housing for his favorite social justice entrepreneurs and to fund privately owned ventures that advance his agenda. That’s not capitalism, that’s government control straight out of the book on Marxism. What a perfect formula for destroying Anchorage.
If mayor, Dunbar will increase the size and cost of government, increase taxes, create more regulations and rules to limit private sector success, handcuff our police, attempt to limit our Second Amendment rights, continue enabling the homeless population for political gain, infringe on our property rights, and take us down the road to become just another failed San Francisco. I, for one, have had enough of this socialistic garbage.
I do not believe Anchorage has embraced government central control over our lives. The combined number of votes for Dave Bronson, Bill Evans, and Mike Robbins exceeded the total liberal vote. This is not the time for people to stay home. Whether you supported Bronson, Evans, or Robbins, you must vote in this run-off election to save our city from permanent destruction at the hands of the progressive Left.
On May 11th we must elect Dave Bronson mayor. While he will have to confront a hostile Assembly, he will be able to rein in city bureaucracy, submit a conservative budget, veto bad ordinances and resolutions passed by the Assembly lunatics, and lead an economic recovery for Anchorage. Changing the political landscape takes time, but we can make a huge difference in the future of Anchorage by electing Dave Bronson mayor. Are you with me?
Craig E. Campbell served on the Anchorage Assembly between 1986 and 1995 and later as Alaska’s Tenth Lieutenant Governor. He was the previous Chief Executive Officer and President for Alaska Aerospace Corporation. He retired from the Alaska National Guard as Lieutenant General (AKNG) and holds the concurrent retired Federal rank of Major General (USAF).
I support the Anchorage School District’s existing strong anti-discrimination policies and our constitutional guarantees of equal justice under the law. Racism of any kind against anyone should not be tolerated.
But, the political left’s control of labels and narratives gives it an extraordinary advantage. For example, liberals have become “progressives.” Illegal aliens are now “undocumented persons.”
“Critical Race Theory,” a form of reverse racism, is already in the Anchorage School District with a vengeance. New proposed “equity” and “anti-racism” policies to be voted on April 20 may officially empower the District’s use of this discriminatory pedagogy.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a radical pop culture movement based on Marxist theory of society and race. CRT is found is books such as “White Fragility” and “How to be an Anti-racist.”
It typically includes the belief that white supremacy exists and maintains power through culture and law. CRT is anti-traditional family, anti-capitalism, anti-individualism, anti-merit-based success, and teaches that all white people are racists.
“White Fragility” is one of the books that promotes Critical Race Theory. The core message of “White Fragility,” that all white Americans are racist, is by definition racist. It teaches that all white Americans are a product of white supremacy and are actively or unwittingly complicit in maintaining this power structure. If you are white and say you are not racist, that is only proof that you are racist.
To quote from “White Fragility”:
Page 22: “When I say only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United states, only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over people of color.”
Page 27: “Whites also produce and reinforce the dominant narratives of society – such as individualism and meritocracy – and use these narratives to explain the positions of other racial groups.”
Page 61: “The romanticized “traditional” family values of the past are also racially problematic.”
Page 83: “While a white person may have been picked on – even mercilessly – by being in the numerical minority in a specific context, the individual experienced race prejudice and discrimination, not racism.”
To quote from “How to be an Anti-Racist”:
Page 19: “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Page 163: “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism. The conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body.”
Page 222: “They were reacting to the same moderate and liberal and assimilationist forces that all these years later still reduce racism to the individual acts of White Klansmen and Jim Crow politicians and Tea Party Republicans and N-word users and White nationalist shooters and Trumpian politicos.”
Critical Race Theory advocates radically changing existing law and culture to discriminate against all people who, happen to be what they would describe as the race in power, to advantage people of some other races. It is critical of civil-rights scholarship and anti-discrimination laws as mere tools of white supremacy. It advocates a revisionist negative interpretation of American civil rights law and progress against racism in the United States.
However, CRT proponents struggle to explain the success of some minorities and Asian Americans within what they argue is a structurally unfair system. Some CRT theorists group all Asian Americans within the “white” category to justify racial discrimination against them.
This has led to strong opposition to CRT among many Asian Americans. The Trump Justice Department brought suit against Harvard University for race-based discrimination against Asian Americans, but President Biden dropped the case. On the first day of his presidency, President Biden issued an executive order to rescind President Trump’s ban on Critical Race Theory training for employees in federal agencies.
So, what has this got to do with the Anchorage School District? Last year, the ASD began coordinating with the University of Alaska to train ASD teachers in Critical Race Theory. When I requested to be allowed to attend a class, the superintendent refused to let me even observe.
Also last year the ASD’s Director of “Equity and Compliance” announced the intent to use CRT to develop new training. A few months ago, a suggested reading list appeared on the ASD website of the Office of Equity and Compliance. “White Fragility” and “How to be an Anti-Racist” are among other CRT publications as recommended reading for “self understanding.” These books, based on Marxist philosophy, contain bias partisan attacks on Republicans.
I have objected to the District endorsing these books on a taxpayer-funded website without any listing or recognition of opposing thought literature. I submitted a list of books and publications that present opposing opinions, but the District refused to list them. I objected to the lack of any disclaimer to the political and partisan content of the books. Only recently, under public pressure, did the ASD add a very weak and inadequate disclaimer and several non-CRT books, but none in opposition to CRT.
In response to growing parental opposition, the superintendent has stated “Critical Race Theory is not being considered for ASD curriculum nor taught. The discussion of the term arose with self-interest courses teachers participated in on their non-work hours to gain an understanding of the present national discussion.”
But School Board now faces huge pressure to adopt new “equity” and “anti-racism” policies that will authorize the District administration to adopt “administrative regulations” that can impose Critical Race Theory on students and families. At a recent townhall, ASD administrators seemed excited to start the work of instructing parents and ensuring that you are discussing these issues in at home with your children in a District approved manner.
The State of Florida recently banned the use of CRT in public schools. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.” In Idaho, a proposal to ban CRT from public schools is in the State House. Schools in other states that have instituted CRT are having huge problems, as parents stand up to imposing its racism and warped philosophies on their children.
The new “equity” and “anti-racism” policies are scheduled to be voted on at the April 20 Anchorage School Board meeting before newly elected members are seated.
To be clear, equality means equal treatment, unbiased competition, and impartially judged outcomes. Equity can mean equal outcomes, achieved if necessary by unequal treatment, biased competition, and preferential judging.
Elements of such policies wrongly applied can attack America’s foundational principle that people should be treated equally and judged as individuals, not as members of groups.
At the April 20 meeting, I will offer amendments to the proposed policies to prevent the administration from using them to justify imposing Critical Race Theory on our children and discriminating against any student based on race. If that is not the intent then the advocates of these new policies should support such protections.
I anticipate loud opposition to any amendments to the proposed policies. That opposition will tell you all you need to know about how dangerous these innocent sounding policies may truly be.
Anyone can testify at School Board meetings in person, by telephone or Zoom. To sign, up to testify contact the Board Secretary at [email protected] by 2 pm the day of a meeting or calling 907-742-4315.
Your voice can make a difference.
This communication is from Dave Donley as an individual and not on behalf of any elected, appointed, or military position he may hold including the Anchorage School District and School Board.Donley is a lifelong Alaskan, parent of 13-year-old twins, and served in the State Legislature for 16 years.
The Alaska Public Offices Commission chose not to have an expedited hearing for a frivolous complaint made by mayoral candidate Forrest Dunbar against his runoff opponent Dave Bronson, based on a number of allegations about improper campaign finance practices.
Dunbar’s complaint is a classic campaign strategy to tie up an opposing candidate’s time and resources fighting a complaint. Dunbar’s finance manager said the series of mistakes she identified were the worst campaign finance abuses she had ever seen. She said the same thing about former Rep. Lance Pruitt’s financial reports during his race last year, but this is a tactic to distract a campaign from the job of getting in front of voters and to burn up money with lawyers.
The APOC panel said the Bronson campaign should address any of its minor reporting issues in amendments to its filed financial reports, which the campaign said it would be pleased to do. Some of the supposed errors were things like a donation being reported on one day, rather than another, but it was due to software calculations being made in another time zone. These are minor matters that can be fixed in an amended filing.
The afternoon hearing on the matter at APOC may have been a disappointment to the Dunbar campaign because it burned up just as much of their time and resources as it did Bronson’s.
Sparks flew at the end of Wednesday’s Anchorage Assembly meeting, which was continued from an unfinished Tuesday meeting.
Assembly Chair Felix Rivera, fresh off a win against an attempted recall, verbally lit into Chugiak-Eagle River Assemblywoman Jamie Allard, calling her xenophobic for comments she had made the night before about the crisis at the southern border.
He also criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for not having a statewide mask mandate in Texas and stated that illegal immigrants coming across the Texas border from Mexico have a lower rate of Covid-19 than the Texas population.
In words that were practically spit through his mask, Rivera read from a prepared written statement, saying he could not sit by any longer and that people like Allard don’t belong in Anchorage. Some speech just is unacceptable and should never be spoken, he said. Allard’s comments were an example of speech that should be sanctioned.
Allard had, on Tuesday, said she was concerned about illegal immigration in our country and the humanitarian crisis on the border. Her remarks were made during general comments from the various Assembly members.
The rule of the Assembly is that no member may denigrate another member or imply that member’s motives, but that rule didn’t apply tonight. Rivera, who just won a recall election against him, was in high dudgeon. When she called for a point of order, he cut off her mic and continued reading, and at the end of his comments adjourned the meeting.
Assembly member Chris Constant could be heard saying into his mic that Allard had not objected properly, and therefore it was her fault that the personal attack was made. No other member called for a point of order.
After his gavel went down, Allard rose from her chair, her mic still cut off, and yelled in indignation at Rivera, and also told Constant to stand down.
Allard is a first-generation American, the daughter of immigrants from Chile and Italy.
“They are both legal immigrants who came over the right way. My entire family speaks Spanish,” she said after the meeting. “I am so fed up with people using their race as a crutch.”
“Tonight I was the target of an unprecedented personal attack by the chair of the Assembly during an official meeting. Not only were his comments slanderous and baseless, but clearly demonstrated an abuse of power, and violation of the Assembly rules, by the Chair of the Assembly. He is using his position in an unethical manner,” Allard said. “I will not stand quietly by while my character is attacked in an official meeting by Felix Rivera today or any day.”
A coalition of hard-left groups has joined with the Recall Dunleavy Committee leadership to demand that the Legislature not confirm Attorney General designee Treg Taylor.
Taylor was named to fill the position that was vacant after Ed Sniffen resigned, having been named in an inappropriate relationship claim from when he was in his 20s. Sniffen had replaced Kevin Clarkson, who was forced out for having an inappropriate relationship during his stint as AG.
The Alaska Coalition for Justice wrote to the Legislature on behalf of all Black, Indigenous people of color (known now as BIPOC) to oppose Taylor’s confirmation. It appears that part of the problem is that he is white and male.
The group is demanding the governor appoint a woman or person of color as attorney general.
Among the signers of the letter is Meda Dewitt, who runs the Recall Dunleavy dark money campaign. Other signers include representatives from the Alaska Center, Stand Up Alaska, Alaskans Take A Stand, and the Poor People’s Campaign.
In its letter, the group went on to libel Clarkson by accusing him of the crime of sexual predation because of friendly text messages he sent to another state employee, which included pictures of him cooking macaroni and cheese.
The group is angry that during his March 15 confirmation hearing in House Judiciary Committee, Taylor called former Attorney General Clarkson “a good friend,” and “an honorable man.”
Without evidence, the group wrote, “Mr. Taylor plainly announced complicity with sexual predators,” the group wrote. “While defending sexual predators, Mr. Taylor has announced his so-called sincere desire to prioritize addressing the sexual violence crisis that Alaska faces, without any concrete plans of how to do so. He is either unable or unwilling to make the connection between his former colleagues predacious, harmful behaviors that share the same root as the current sexual violence crisis that Alaska faces.”
Taylor attended the United States Air Force Academy and Brigham Young University, earning his Juris Doctorate from J. Ruben Clark Law School. His wife, Jodi Taylor, is a life-long Alaskan. They have six children.
Must Read Alaska celebrates its sixth anniversary this month. For an upstart news organization, it’s a big deal, but while we celebrate, we’ve also got bills to pay here at the little news site with a big mission as we head into Year Seven.
MRAK has become go-to conservative news site for Alaska, with an amazing base of followers who appreciate “the rest of the story” being presented. MRAK isn’t like other news organizations — it has no paid staff, but it has a huge readership. Every day, MRAK takes on the mainstream media to correct the record and allow conservative voices to be heard. Our motto is: Better leaders, better policy. That’s what drives our mission to improve life in Alaska for all.
This project started as a newsletter that went out once a week. That grew to three times a week and a website that has news posted each day. It’s a lot of work.
That’s why we are asking for your support as a business. We welcome your ad on this website, which has an average of 20,000 visits per day. Our readers are typically between the ages of 35-64. Nearly 62 percent of MRAK readers are men.
Now, as the economy of Alaska is ready to rebuild, reach out us at [email protected], for ad rates and availability.
Perhaps you cannot advertise at the moment. You can still help Must Read Alaska stand strong by donating today. The donation link is always at the top of the page on the right.
Mayoral candidate Dave Bronson was subjected to a lengthy complaint by Forrest Dunbar over campaign finances, but took it all in stride in a new spoof video that appeared on Facebook on Tuesday.
In it, accompanied by soft music, Bronson says “thank you” to Dunbar, for publicizing Bronson’s campaign, leading to him raising over $14,000 overnight.
The spoof is a takeoff on comedian Jimmy Fallon’s skits, in which he signs thank you cards ironically. Fallon has written thank you notes to things like a light bulb he’s too lazy to replace, his F12 key on his computer, and microbreweries for making his alcoholism seem like a hobby. Fallon wrote such classics as, “Thank you, take-out restaurants who put two spoons and two forks in the bag, for being nice enough to assume that all this food I ordered is for two people.”
The Alaska Public Offices Commission will hold an initial hearing of Dunbar’s campaign complaints on Wednesday.
An additional 5,615 mayoral ballots were counted by the Anchorage Elections Office on Tuesday. Candidate Dave Bronson has a new lead of 1,359 votes, nearly two percentage points ahead of Forrest Dunbar. Bronson increased his lead further in the recent vote count by another 118 votes over Monday’s totals.
Net Democrats ballots are at 34,129 while net Republican ballots are at 35,971, a lead of 1,842 ballots favoring right leaning candidates.
The number of ballots received (turnout) is at 75,000 as of last night with 72,652 ballots counted. This is 96.8% in of expected. Of these, there were 71,588 ballots that had a choice made in the mayoral race.
In the tight race for School Board Seat B, Kelly Lessens widened her lead against second-place finisher Judy Eledge, now at 24,454 to 24,179. Before Tuesday’s count, Eledge was within 93 votes of Lessens.
