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Recall Dunleavy top operative demands governor appoint woman or person of color (BIPOC) as next Attorney General

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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.

Alaska Life Hack: Advertise with Must Read Alaska

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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.

Thank you,

Suzanne

Bronson spoofs Dunbar with satire based on Jimmy Fallon ‘thank you note’ videos

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.

Bronson holds onto lead for mayor

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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.

They messed with the wrong Marine: Sullivan blasts unsubstantiated claims of widespread extremism in military

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US Sen. Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a Marine Corps Reserve colonel, criticized a suggestion made by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut that as much as 10 percent of America’s military service members may ascribe to “violent extremist” or “white supremacist” ideology—an unsubstantiated claim that would amount to over 200,000 military personnel.

Blumenthal is the senator who former President Donald Trump called “Da Nang Dick” for having misstated his military service. “I have now spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, the third rate Senator from Connecticut (how is Connecticut is doing?). His war stories of his heroism in Vietnam were a total fraud — he was never even there,” tweeted Trump in 2019.

The hearing witnesses—General Stephen Lyons, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, and General Tod Wolters, commander of U.S. European Command—also rebutted the claim by Blumenthal.

“This notion of extremism in the military, which is thrown about as if we know the numbers…I think that’s irresponsible. I’ve asked the military for data, and I want data before we besmirch the entire military,” said Senator Sullivan.

“You have knuckleheads in every organization in the world, including in the Congress of the United States, by the way. But there’s this narrative now that we have all of these extremists in the military. I think it’s ridiculous and we need to see data before we start throwing out [numbers] like ten percent. How the hell does he know it’s ten percent?”

In his first line of questioning, Sen. Sullivan asked Generals Lyons and Wolters for their assessment of the extent of extremism in the military ranks. 

“This is getting ridiculous when a U.S. senator is saying ‘10 percent’…Is that your experience, general?” asked Sen. Sullivan.  

“Senator, let me be perfectly clear. I think we have the finest military our world has known,” said Gen. Lyons. “We have the best America has to offer. There is no question in my mind, after 38 years of service. I believe that in my heart and I know it to be true.”

“Do you think it’s ten percent?” asked Sen. Sullivan.

“I don’t think it’s ten percent,” replied Gen. Lyons. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think there’s been any data on the topic. I can just tell you from experience, it’s extremely small.”

Sen. Sullivan then posed the question to Gen. Wolters. 

“Do you think it’s ten percent, general?” asked Sen. Sullivan. “Is there anything in your experience, in your thirty to forty-plus years as a general officer in the military [to indicate that]?” 

“Senator, I certainly agree that number is too high,” replied Gen. Wolters. 

“Here’s what I think the secretary of defense needs to do,” said Sen. Sullivan. “Enough of this. We need data. [They’re] besmirching the whole damn force—reserve or active duty—whether it’s a U.S. Senator or the Washington Post that writes a story on this once a day, with no data.”

On March 5th, Sen. Sullivan pressed President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, regarding Kahl’s claim that there exists “systemic racism” within the ranks of the U.S. military. Kahl did not present evidence or data to support his assertion.  

In the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, Sen. Sullivan included an amendment requiring the Pentagon to produce a report on diversity and inclusion in the Armed Forces, including providing data to identify racial inequities that may exist in the military.

Sources: Former Alaskan Tommy Beaudreau, chosen for deputy Interior secretary, is close to Murkowski

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Former Alaskan Tommy Beaudreau is President Joe Biden’s choice to become deputy Interior secretary, according to sources. Beaudreau was the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, could be nominated as early as tomorrow, and is a close political friend of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who was said to be instrumental in the choice.

Beaudreau, born in Colorado, was raised in Alaska, where his father worked on the Trans Alaska Pipeline.

He will take the place of the former nominee Elizabeth Klein, whose confirmation was put on ice by Murkowski, when she told the Biden Administration that Klein was a known litigant, hostile to the oil and gas economy in Alaska.

Beaudreau also has a history of litigation against the oil industry and was working to challenge several of President Trump’s regulatory rollbacks, including the Trump Administration’s opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain to oil and gas development.

“Murkowski had been openly promoting the Alaska-raised Beaudreau to the White House, a preference the Biden administration began to take increasingly seriously during Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s contentious confirmation hearings,” according to E&E News.

Beaudreau is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins, where he works on environmental and land issues.

In the Department of Interior he also served as acting assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management, and most recently as chief of staff. At BOEM, he oversaw the offshore wind program, federal offshore leasing for oil and gas.

Under the Trump Administration, President Trump scaled back offshore leasing for renewable energy, because it was leading to significant bird kills.

Dr. Quinn-Davidson will bully you now

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Anchorage Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson advised the public on April 12 that it’s time to have “hard conversations” with your friends and neighbors to push them to get a Covid-19 vaccine. Any one of the vaccines.

She said the vaccine is safe and the best vaccine is the “one that is available to you.”

If you are among the “vaccine hesitant,” you might want to avoid your neighbor until this panic fever dies down. Hard conversations could be behind the next knock on your door.

Less than 24 hours after the Anchorage mayor made her pronouncement, the CDC and FDA told health officials across the country to hit the pause button on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, because issues have arisen with some people developing blood clots several days after receiving that vaccine.

The six who got the blood clots were women between the ages of 18-48 who had had the shot a few days prior. One woman died and a second was hospitalized in critical condition. With nearly seven million having taken the Johnson & Johnson single-dose Covid-19 vaccine, that’s a small number, to be sure, but we also don’t know if there are undiagnosed blood clots that resolved themselves without medical care. There is a lot we still don’t know about the new vaccines we’re accepting.

The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is also now linked to a rare, but sometimes fatal blood-clotting reaction. Many countries in Europe have pulled that vaccine back from distribution, to be used only for older adults. Some countries are not using it at all after younger people developed headaches, swelling, and stomach pain.

All medications have some element of risk associated with them; even a regular dose of aspirin, that ubiquitous fever-reducing miracle drug, has been linked to Reyes Syndrome in children and teens.

Quinn-Davidson, who is not a medical professional and not even an elected mayor, is now dispensing unproven medical advice about the efficacy and safety of all Covid-19 vaccines. She is not following the science.

File Quinn-Davidson’s admonition that the new vaccines are safe under the category of “claims, without evidence.” That’s the media standard set by The Washington Post and New York Times these days.

Quinn-Davidson has set a goal of having 70 percent of Anchorage residents vaccinated before her emergency orders in Anchorage, which have kept the city’s economy in a tailspin, will be lifted.

The community is halfway there, with about 35 percent of adults now vaccinated. Getting to 70 percent is evidently going to take some coercion.

In her rush to get everyone vaccinated, she is engaging in public policy malpractice in ignoring the fact that the vaccines are experimental, approved for emergency use only. We who have accepted the “jab” are part of a grand experiment (this writer included.)

Importantly, it’s the dangerous governmental policy to have an unelected mayor encourage her constituents to bully their friends and neighbors with “hard conversations” into getting a vaccine that some have qualms about. To proceed to tell Alaskans that they must take the vaccine for the sake of the economy is practicing public policy without a constitutional foundation.

Randy Ruedrich: Too many ballots cast? Hardly.

By RANDY RUEDRICH

The 2021 Anchorage Municipal Regular Election is wrapping up with another 6,000 ballots or so to be counted today, April 13. I have a couple of thoughts to offer on topics that become subject to the rumor mill.

First, claims of more mail-in muni election ballots being cast than were cast in the 2020 Alaska General Election are simply wrong.

The 2021 Muni election precinct counts were being compared to the 2020 Alaska General Election precinct counts.  Those Division of Election precinct counts only report the 2020 Election Day votes cast at the precinct polling place. Those precinct counts do not include: the early ballots cast by the precinct’s voters or the absentee by-mail ballots cast by the precinct’s voters or the question ballots these voters cast anywhere in Alaska.

A proper precinct comparison of 2021 Muni ballots logged by April 12 to all 2020 General Election ballots cast shows: 

  • D 20 – Westchester:  48.1%
  • D 20 – Fairview: 35.3%
  • D 16 – Nunaka Valley: 46.6%

None of these precinct counts are near 100% of the 2020 General Election ballots cast, much less approaching 200% of 2020 General Election ballots cast. 

Now let’s turn to the process for counting ballots.

During this 2021 election cycle, I have been a Municipal Election Center observer for a candidate, and I have witnessed the process.  Each ballot travels through this sequence in preparation for counting on or after April 6:  

  • The intake scanner/sorter creates an immediate trackable reference for each ballot envelope.  
  • The scanned envelope’s signature and an on-file voter signature are compared and approved or challenged by real people.  
  • The approved ballot envelopes are opened.
  • The secrecy sleeve with its ballot is separated from the envelope.  
  • The empty envelopes are bundled and secured.
  • The ballot is removed from the sleeve and flattened.  
  • These flattened ballots are stored on a secure facility prior to tabulation.  

This ballot opening process which maintains voter confidentiality is consistent with the Alaska Division of Election absentee by-mail process and the Muni Clerk’s own absentee by-mail process prior to 2017.

The envelopes with signature issues are reviewed to identify these unique defects.  A letter is sent to each voter informing the voter of their envelope’s issue:  no signature on ballot envelope, no signature on file, no matchable signature, etc. The voter is provided instructions on how to cure the ballot envelope’s defects. The voter may respond up to the day the election is certified.

Ballots are then tabulated. If a ballot is physically imperfect or damaged, a facsimile is created. Ballots that have extra marks or have over votes are segregated electronically for adjudication.  This adjudication step requires an elections supervisor to affirm that the voter’s intent, as defined by Muni Election Code, can be determined by clearing the extra marks or strike outs in the ballot image.

This final step delayed the release of numerous batches of ballots that had tens of ballots to be adjudicate on Wednesday.  

As of April 12 in the afternoon, all tabulated ballot tallies have reported on the Muni Elections.

Randy Ruedrich is a former chairman of the Alaska Republican Party and is an elections expert.      

Senate Finance Committee would extend Alaska disaster declaration to Dec. 31

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A Senate Finance Committee committee substitute for House Bill 76 would have the expired disaster declaration extended to Dec. 31, 2021.

Offered by Finance Co-Chair Sen. Click Bishop’s office, the new version of HB 76 also strips out a House-inserted prohibition against using federal disaster relief money for elective abortions.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy was on record Feb. 14 saying he doesn’t need or want the Covid disaster to be extended, but he does want certain aspects of the legislation passed in separate bills — things that enable telehealth, or cutting red tape for procurement.

The current version of HB 76 also gives new powers to the commissioner of Health and Social Services. The bill says the governor cannot extend the disaster declaration unless the HSS commissioner certifies that there is neither an outbreak of Covid nor an imminent threat of an outbreak of Covid-19.

How many cases classify as an outbreak? Two.

Epidemiologists define an outbreak of the new coronavirus as “two or more laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases among workers at a facility with the onset of illness within a 14-day period, who are not epidemiologically linked, do not share a household, and are not a close contact of each other outside of the workplace during standard care investigation or contact tracing.”

With this language, the disaster declaration would effectively be taken out of the governor’s hands, and also out of the hands of the commissioner of HSS, since it’s unlikely that there will be that few cases of Covid-19 in a 14-day period during the coming year.

In addition, according to the new version of the bill, any federal Covid-19 relief money could not go through the “RPL process.” That’s when the governor uses the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee to approve appropriation changes as conditions require. This aspect of the bill means that for any type of change in spending the federal funds — big or small — the only way the governor can redirect funds is if the governor calls the Legislature back into special session (at a cost of $125,000 per day).

The practical effect is that the Legislature would be in rolling special sessions in Juneau all the way through Dec. 31.

Although the committee substitute for HB 76 presumes all members of the Senate Finance majority understand what is being offered, it’s possible that they don’t fully grasp that they could be in Juneau for much of the rest of the year because with $2 billion coming from the federal government, there are likely to be adjustments that need to be made. Amendments were due at 5 pm Monday.

As for removing the abortion prohibition language, that particular prohibition was the only amendment approved by the House of Representatives that was offered by a Republican — Rep. DeLena from Palmer. Her amendment passed at great cost to her as a legislator; it angered minority Democrats such as Rules Chair Bryce Edgmon, who threatened that she’d never get another piece of legislation through his Rules Committee.

The bill, should it pass into law, would be retroactive back to Feb. 14. The governor would have to sign it or veto it; a veto would almost certainly mean the legislative session would be further delayed.