By JOE SCHIERHORN AND JIM JANSEN

The Vote Yes on 1 crowd wants us to believe that this initiative is a fight between the oil industry and Alaskans. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

This ballot measure is a vicious and dangerous attack on Alaska’s economy, on our way of life and our economic future. The oil industry can invest its capital anywhere in the world and they will if we drive them away with uncompetitive oil taxes.

But where do we go? This is where we live, where we have our jobs, our homes and where we plan a future for our kids and grandkids. Where do we go when we drive away investment and oil production declines? 

This is clearly an Alaska fight, not an oil company battle. 

We are co-chairs of KEEP Alaska Competitive, a 5,000-member group of Alaska businesses, labor unions, Native corporations and individual Alaskans who understand that competitive taxes on our resource industries are essential to our future economy, our jobs and our PFD.

We are not the oil industry and we take no funding from the oil industry. We are a grassroots organization that provides information to Alaskans about the importance of investment, jobs and oil production.  We work very hard to secure an economic future for our employees, neighbors, children and grandchildren. 

The oil industry has paid about $3 billion per year in taxes and royalties to Alaska in each of the past two years. They have plans to substantially increase investment on the North Slope in the future that will provide jobs and increase production substantially “if” we don’t screw it up with a major increase in oil taxes. 

Alaska is a high-cost place to operate, especially on the North Slope. Our oil needs to move through an expensive 800-mile pipeline, then by ship to the West Coast. Other oil provinces have much lower costs of production and transportation. 

Alaska already has the highest government take of all the states at low oil prices and among the highest tax rates in the world. Increasing taxes by $1 billion per year will make Alaska uncompetitive and will reduce or eliminate new investment in our state. 

Other industries, like seafood, mining tourism and the thousands of small service companies, are watching this attack on the oil industry and asking: “are we next?” Why should we invest here? Why would anyone invest in a state under attack by people who want to kill our businesses?

Without new investment, production will decline, jobs will disappear, state revenues will shrink and PFDs will be a thing of the past. 

The coronavirus has turned the world upside down. There are 40,000 fewer jobs in Alaska today than there were one year ago. Alaska is one of the top five states most negatively impacted by COVID-19. 

There are 33% fewer businesses in Alaska than there were in January 2020. Oil prices are extremely low and are forecast to remain low. Why would we want to further damage our economy and kick our major industry when it is down? This is the wrong time to raise taxes on any industry, including the oil industry. 

Please go to our website, KeepAlaskaCompetitive.com, and study the impact of the ballot initiative and vote no on ballot measure 1 on Nov. 3.  Alaska’s future depends on it. 

Joe Schierhorn is the Chairman and CEO of Northrim Bank and Co-Chairman of the KEEP Alaska Competitive Coalition

Jim Jansen is the Chairman of the Lynden Companies and Co-Chairman of the KEEP Alaska Competitive Coalition

By MURRAY WALSH

‘Yes on 2’ made a presentation at the Juneau Chamber of Commerce in a Zoom meeting, which I attended.

I have said in an earlier column that in 40 years of watching initiatives rise in Alaska, every one of them appears to be based on hate or greed.  I opined that Ballot Measure 1, the changes to the oil tax rules, was based on both.  I believe Ballot Measure 2 is based primarily on greed for political power.

The main presenter at Thursday’s meeting was Shea Siegert.  His title was field coordinator for the Yes campaign and he is based in Anchorage.  

He started out be defining the “problem” and it included the fact that Alaska Republicans have a closed primary.  

He thinks this is bad, but he is too young to have experienced the events that required that closure. 

I remember them well and the short version is that Democrats, secure in the belief that they had a proper candidate of their own, sent about half their number to go vote in the Republican Primary.  (Remember this later.)  

This assured that the Republicans were stuck with a widely disparaged candidate in the general election and so it was that Bill Sheffield got elected in 1982.  Ballot Measure 2 would put an end to that closure.

Prop 2 would still have a primary election, but not divided by party.  There would be only one ballot with every contender who meets some kind of threshold, petition signatures maybe, listed thereon.   

This prevents the party, any party, from sorting out for themselves who they want their champions to be.  It also means that candidates from third, fourth, or fifth parties are also listed on the primary ballot.  

Only the top four go on to the general election, regardless of party.  What this means, at least in Alaska, is that the fringe parties are stopped cold at the primary, no further participation in politics that season.  No appearance for the Green Party on the general election ballot or in TV debates and candidate forums.  

Fringe parties know they will not win in the general elections but they want to play anyway so that their views become more widely known in the hope that their numbers will expand over time.  It is a virtual certainty that if all primary contenders are listed on a single ballot, the top four would be Democrats and Republicans, most likely two of each.

Another part of the problem Siegart sees claims is that that non-R/D parties like Libertarians and others, are somehow disenfranchised by the current system. This came up several ways, but this claim is just not true. Siegart tried to make it sound like third parties had to find a place in either the R or D primary in order to participate.  

The fact is that we have, in the 2020 election season, two people who want to be on the Democrat spot on the ballot and yet also want to be deemed Independent.  

The current system does not require this.  You can create a party, pick your candidate by a primary system of your own design, and that person will appear on the general election ballot, with the appropriate letter whether it be L for Libertarian, G for Green or S for Stag.

Let’s get on to the General Election.  Under Ballot Measure 2, the top four from the primary now appear on the ballot and you are supposed to vote for all four of them in rank order showing the one you like the most, next most, next most and last most.  If Candidate A gets 50%+1 votes, he or she wins and that’s that.  

But if nobody gets over 50%, then the person who got the least number of votes is thrown out but votes he or she did get are distributed among the other three by some kind of formula.  Siegart did not attempt to explain how that is done and I don’t want to bother trying to figure it out.  

What I do want to say in this regard is that if you were bugged by the hanging chads in 2000 and if you worry in general over the processing of votes, then remember that all the quarreling over what has gone before was just about counting.  Under Ballot Measure 2, the quarreling with be over mathematics.

One of the issues several attendees focused on was what happens with your ballot if you only vote for the guy you like best and don’t vote rank choices for any of the others.  

Here is the answer: If your guy wins, boola boola, game over and congratulations.  But if your fave does not win, your ballot means nothing further because you didn’t specify rank choices for anybody else.  The ballots of people who did place all four votes will continue to operate according to the voodoo math until a result is achieved.

The sheer complexity of Ballot Measure 2 should be enough to generate a screaming no! vote, but there is more to say about it.  There is method in this madness.  

Remember what I said about the Democrat machine at work in 1982?  This is as stark an example I can post to show the difference between the major parties.  The Democrats have well entrenched party leaders, many union bosses, who can cook up various schemes and they have plenty of sergeants and corporals to execute the plan.  

Alaska Republican leadership is much more ephemeral, rising at need and tending to other matters during the downtime.   

What this difference means, for Ballot Measure 2, is that the more organized party can instruct its members to vote according to a scheme.  One example of such a scheme could be: “Look, we got two Dems on the ballot but we, your party bosses, think that Bozo would be way better than Dingbat so everybody pass the word, but don’t say anything to the press about it.”  

I will look for other examples of how this could work and report any found but for now, I hope the foregoing is enough to get you to vote no on this thing.  It stinks.

Murray Walsh is part of the extended MRAK writing staff in Juneau.

By CRAIG CAMPBELL

Next month we face the most significant election in my lifetime, and I’m old.  After a summer filled with violent riots, this election season may end with more violence and destruction of property and lives in the name of “social justice” and “fair elections.”  

Burning down America will not bring social justice or create a better society.  Only the looney on the Left think that further dividing our people is good for America, but that is a real possibility based on the track record of this past summer.

Contrast that with how Anchorage responded to the “Summer of Love.”  Anchorage did not erupt in violence. We did not burn down businesses, loot stores, murder people in the streets, or spew hatred against those who we had political disagreements. Peaceful demonstrations were held, some with heated exchanges, but they remained peaceful.  

That method of protest is specifically spelled out in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution  which “prohibits the United States Congress from enacting legislation that would abridge the right of the people to assemble peacefully (my emphasis)” as the means to redress grievances against the government.  

Anchorage, thus far, has demonstrated the political maturity to debate, demonstrate, and argue our differences without resorting to the power struggle of violence. Congratulations, well done.

Our test is yet to come.  Will we continue to be the shining example of peaceful protests, or will we become just another American city destroyed by division led by a national movement to replace Democracy with Marxism.  I kid you not.  Anarchists are already mobilizing with the intent to violently disrupt our national security after the election and to ignite a revolution.  

As I am writing this, Louisville, and many other cities have once again erupted in violence.  This time over the grand jury indictment of a former police officer in the death of Breanna Taylor, all because the indictment did not meet the mobs thirst for vengeance.  

Will Anchorage do the same? If we do, we will have been drawn into the abyss of militant violence not based on the rule of law, but rather based on mob hysteria fueled by radical anarchists.

Two upcoming events will further test our resolve.  President Trump is expected to nominate a Supreme Court judge this weekend to replace Justice Ginsberg.  How will we respond?  

The tension leading into the November election is at a fanatical frenzy.   No matter whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump is elected our next president, projections are there will be violence across America. How will we react?

Not since the American Civil War have tensions been so extreme. The difference is, the Civil War had clear geographical boundaries and political objectives that could be recognized, if not accepted by all.  

The Confederacy (south) was comprised of states that believed in a confederation form of government and supported slavery as an economic tool for prosperity.  In no way am I inferring this was good or right, it’s just an historic fact.

The Union (north) was also aligned by specific states, but supported a federal system of government, generally opposed to slavery.  The objectives of both sides were clear.

That is not the case in 2020.

Yesterday I drove by the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts (ACPA) in Anchorage.  I saw the banners “Black Lives Matter In AK” hanging from the front of the building. Before you jump to an incorrect conclusion, I was not offended. Black Lives Matter was established as a social movement advocating for non-violent protests against police brutality against black people, it represented an honorable cause.  

Then came the Ferguson and Baltimore riots, and BLM was hijacked by Marxists aligned with Antifa. BLM now embraces a diversity of tactics, including violence, to achieve its goals. 

Hawk Newsome, head of Black Lives Matter for Greater New York has said that if BLM is not given what they want, they will “burn down” the system.  This is funded by the likes of uber-liberal billionaire George Soros “Open Society Foundations,” which has donated over $33 Million to BLM. Don’t believe me? Do your research.  It’s a fact. 

Today, violent rioters across America are determined to eliminate our basic rights, fueled by Radicals who do not believe in individual accomplishment or the rule of law, but rather want to obliterate the greatest form of government ever created and ultimately impose a despotic autocracy where the enlightened elite determine what is “equitable and fair.”  

Look no further than the rioting we see in Democrat-controlled cities, driven by anarchists determined to dismantle our institutions and replace our great democratic republic with their own autocracy.  It’s all about POWER!  

Revolutions are always about power.  Today’s BLM/Antifa movement is straight out of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution playbook.  They have the same objective, overthrow the establishment and create a power structure with them in control.  Crush individualism in favor of collectivism.  They win…You lose!

The pendulum swings back and forth.  Every four years we get an opportunity to move that pendulum. Will we accept the outcome of the election, or become another Democratic lead city that doesn’t have the moral courage or leadership backbone to stand up against violent rioting if the political process doesn’t go their way.

Will Anchorage follow the sheep over the cliff, or will we stand tall against tyranny and the violence inflicted in order to gain control?  Will Anchorage remain a community that respects opposing viewpoints and understands that politics is never perfect, but is the foundation of America and that our government structure is the best one ever created by people?  Now the test.

First test: How will we respond to the Louisville indictment.  

Second test: How will we respond to President Trump’s Supreme Court nomination?  

Final test: How will we respond to the results of the November election?  

Anchorage is a terrific community and we have always strived for social justice. We are good people. Not perfect, but working to improve how we treat each other. Cross your fingers that this unifying culture of our community will prevent anarchists from ruining a great American city.  

Do your part: Vote and do not be hoodwinked into accepting anarchy as the alternative to justice and democracy. 

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).