A draft letter by Ketchikan Borough mayor seeks to assure the public that their civil rights will be respected, and that any use of the COVID-19 vaccine in Ketchikan will be purely voluntary.
Mayor Rodney Dial says citizens should never be required to disclose personal health information, such as whether they have been vaccinated, in order to access goods and services from either private entities or the government.
Dial will introduce a resolution to be heard at the Dec. 21 meeting of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly meeting.
Dial said his resolution is in response to a number of concerns he has heard from citizens that the vaccines will eventually be required for things like traveling on aircraft or ferry between islands, or health procedures such as dental work.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has also declared that vaccines are optional, but Mayor Dial is addressing the possible use of coercion, such as if a businesses requires proof of vaccination to access goods or services, or requiring tourists to show proof of vaccination before disembarking in Ketchikan. He wants an affirmative resolution in Ketchikan that reasserts constitutional protections.
Mayor Dial views this as a civil rights issue, and said the resolution he proposes seeks to reassure the citizens of the First City that their liberties and privacy are important and will be protected.
He stressed that this is not his statement on the vaccine, either for or against. He wants the vaccine to be made available to all who want it, as quickly as possible. His resolution to protect the civil liberties of residents of his community is being offered to the Assembly for their approval, he said.
A “systemic racism” letter penned by and signed by the Alaska Supreme Court and posted on its State of Alaska website in early June prompted robust conversation at the commission that deals with complaints about judges in Alaska.
Now, the commissioners would like a conversation with the Supreme Court justices who signed it.
The letter made its way to the commission agenda in August, when long-time member Robert Sheldon raised a concern about the appearance of the Supreme Court justices condemning the justice system in Alaska; the discussion about the letter was tabled until Dec. 11.
During the Dec. 11 meeting, the commissioners heard more of Sheldon’s concerns. Front and center, he said that the justices had a choice: They could have acknowledged that Alaska has done more for its primary minority population than any place in history with extensive reparations. He also pointed out that the letter the justices signed was eerily similar to the one penned by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and other courts around the nation in an effort that seemed coordinated.
Ultimately, Sheldon prevailed in his motion to have the Judicial Conduct Commission write a letter to the Supreme Court justices and invite them in for a private conversation about what they meant by the letter, and how it came to be written.
The commission voted 5-3 to make the request of the justices, recognizing that they may, if they choose, simply refuse to talk to the commission.
Background: In June, shortly after the death of George Floyd, a number of courts around the nation signed confessional letters taking responsibility for racism. Alaska’s Supreme Court letter echoed the phrasing of others, indicating there was a coordinated effort, which appears to have been coordinated by the National Center for State Courts.
Few of them were as radical as Washington Supreme Court’s confessional, which states, in part,
“As judges, we must recognize the role we have played in devaluing black lives. This very court once held that a cemetery could lawfully deny grieving black parents the right to bury their infant. We cannot undo this wrong⸺but we can recognize our ability to do better in the future. We can develop a greater awareness of our own conscious and unconscious biases in order to make just decisions in individual cases, and we can administer justice and support court rules in a way that brings greater racial justice to our system as a whole.”
Alaska’s Supreme Court wrote, in part,
“We recognize that too often African-Americans, Alaska Natives, and other people of color are not treated with the same dignity and respect as white members of our communities. And we recognize that as community members, lawyers, and especially as judicial officers, we must do more to change this reality….As judges we must examine what those changes must be, what biases – both conscious and unconscious – we bring, and how we can improve our justice system so that all who enter may be its judges reflect the community that we serve.assured they will receive equal treatment. We must continue our efforts to make our court system and its judges reflect the community that we serve.”
California’s Chief Justice also wrote, in part,
..We must continue to remove barriers to access and fairness, to address conscious and unconscious bias—and yes, racism…
Massachusetts’ chief justices wrote, in part,
As judges, we must look afresh at what we are doing, or failing to do, to root out any conscious and unconscious bias in our courtrooms; to ensure that the justice provided to African-Americans is the same that is provided to white Americans; to create in our courtrooms, our corner of the world, a place where all are truly equal.
Sheldon on Friday expounded on the Alaska exceptionalism in the court system, and said the statement by the Alaska justices was in error or at least ill-advised.
Alaska has completed four reparation cycles, he said, including the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, two recapitalizations of Native corporations, and land grants for Native Vietnam veterans.
Alaska’s largest corporations are owned by Natives, he pointed out.
Every Alaskan gets a Permanent Fund dividend, which is viewed by many as a form of universal basic income, Sheldon said.
In his 13 years on the Judicial Conduct Commission, the commission has investigated or reviewed each complaint of bias, whether or not it was even jurisdictional, he said.
More of the commission’s discussion of whether to have the justices respond to them on the topic of their letter is at this YouTube link:
Alaska’s Commission on Judicial Conduct oversees the conduct of justices of the Alaska Supreme Court, judges of the state court of appeals, state superior court judges, and state district court judges.
Last May I was a signatory to a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy asking the governor to direct the Department of Transportation to sign a lease with Goldbelt Inc. and begin construction of a ferry terminal at Cascade Point.
The letter outlined a whole host of reasons for making the project happen without further delay, including a wide range of political and labor support for the project.
In its September report to the governor, the Alaska Marine Highway Working Group lead by Vice Admiral Tom Barrett also recommended the Cascade Point project as a way to improve service and reduce costs.
Although the governor and his chief of staff have publicly stated they support a Cascade Point ferry terminal, the project is languishing while the clock runs on the $42 million of state funds appropriated and available to pay for it.
If those funds are not obligated without any more delays, legislators across the state will target those funds for projects in their own districts. When that happens, the governor may be tempted to use the money as a bargaining chip, dooming the Cascade Point project.
In a public meeting last month Goldbelt CEO McHugh Pierre advised Chief of Staff Ben Stevens that he has provided the Department of Transportation a proposed land lease based on previously approved state leases.
Pierre has also stated that Goldbelt is ready, willing and able to work with the State to make a ferry terminal at Cascade Point a reality, a necessary step in improving the Alaska Marine Highway System.
Getting any bureaucracy, including DOTPF, to implement a Governor’s policy can be a challenge, especially if there are those in the bureaucracy that either do not support or outright opposed the policy.
However, I know from personal experience that if you are committed to getting something done, you can actually get the bureaucracy to do it and do it timely. But it takes leadership, commitment, determination, clear communication and constant follow-up.
Juneau Access supporters listened to former Gov. Bill Walker promise that he supported the Juneau Access road, and then string them along until he finally announced that he didn’t support the project after all. We all know what it is like to be told by politicians what we want to hear, but not get any actual results.
With regard to a Cascade Point ferry terminal there are several questions that need to be asked. Does the governor or his staff not know how to get this done? Is the governor and his staff letting DOTPF subvert his policy, by outright opposing it or intentionally slowing the process? Are there exempt and partially exempt DOTPF staff that need to be replaced? Or does the governor not really support this project?
Carly Fiorina once made an observation in response to a statement made by Hillary Clinton. Carly correctly noted that, “Travel is an activity, not an accomplishment.” There is a corollary to that statement. “It is not what you do all day, it is what you get done that counts.”
The bottom line is this: When can we expect a land lease with Goldbelt to be signed and construction of a Cascade Point ferry terminal to be put out for bid?
The answer to that question will indicate whether Gov. Dunleavy is a leader, good for his word, or just another politician, no different than his predecessor Bill Walker.
Tom Williams is a 43-year resident of Juneau with both private sector and public sector experience, including 18 years of Alaska executive and legislative branch service.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy is proposingan economic stabilization dividend, which would be the rest of the 2020 Permanent Fund dividend of approximately $1,900, a full statutory PFD for 2021, for a total of a $5 billion recovery package delivering nearly $5,000 to each eligible Alaskan.
Today, Dunleavy said that 40,000 Alaskans are now on unemployment, businesses are in trouble and many are closing their doors, and Alaska is in the middle of a 100-year crisis, with oil prices, tourism, fisheries, and a pandemic creating a perfect storm.
He said the Permanent Fund has grown by more than $1 billion per month during the pandemic, (and is now at over $72 billion.) Dunleavy is proposing to use half of the growth on recovery.
“This year has presented Alaskans with challenges unlike any we’ve experienced in this lifetime. The widespread global pandemic led to economic devastation for every sector of Alaska’s economy. In the face of this, Alaskans adapted and overcame many hurdles, successfully completing a construction season and a safe fishing season. The state and federal government partnered to distribute $2.3 billion of Federal CARES Act funds to Alaska businesses, $1.3 billion to Alaskan workers, and $568.6 million in community assistance,” he said in a statement.
Dunleavy is proposing the first bond proposal in 10 years of $300-$350 million for roads to resources, renewable energy, infrastructure. It would leverage $54 million in state funding for a $1.4 billion capital budget.
The savings accounts are all gone, he said, calling once again for the three constitutional amendments he wanted for the past two years, which got no traction in the Legislature:
A cap on government spending
Require a vote of the people to pass new taxes
Constitutionally protect the Permanent Fund and the Dividend
The Department of Revenue’s Fall 2020 Revenue Sources Book today forecasted that funding from the Permanent Fund Earnings Reserve account will be $1.6 billion in this fiscal year, and will be only $1.2 billion in both FY 2021 and 2022.
The Permanent Fund is expected to transfer $3.1 billion to the General Fund in both fiscal years, which begin July 1, 2021. These amounts include funds for general government spending.
The forecast indicates that the State of Alaska’s budget gap is much larger than it was last year.
Between continued growth of the fund and continued low oil prices, the Permanent Fund transfer is now the state’s largest source of UGF revenue, contributing 65% of undesignated general funds in FY 2020 and projected to contribute at least 67% for each of the next 10 years.
The current balance of the Earnings Reserve Account of the Permanent Fund is $6.7 billion, including realized and unrealized gains.
The fund itself has a value of over $70 billion but that fluctuates with the market and is not liquid assets. It cannot be accessed by the Legislature.
For FY 2020, Alaska North Slope oil prices averaged $52.12 per barrel.
ANS oil price of $45.32 per barrel for FY 2021 and $48.00 per barrel for FY 2022.
For FY 2020, ANS oil production averaged 472,200 barrels per day. ANS oil production is expected to average 477,300 barrels per day in FY 2021 and 439,600 barrels per day in FY 2022, before climbing to 481,800 barrels per day by FY 2030.
Drilling and investment were sharply reduced over the past year, and are reflected in the lower near-term forecast, but the department is optimistic that new developments will contribute to stabilizing production over the coming decade.
The Revenue Sources Book is an annual publication that provides basic information about state revenue, as well as a forecast of state revenue over the next ten years.
The lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General against four states’ election results has been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will not overturn the results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania, which was President Donald Trump’s Hail Mary effort to win the election.
The order was released Friday: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy had the State of Alaska sign on as a friend of the court, a role that indicates support for the lawsuit. Eighteen other Republican-led states joined in various capacities.
I’ve been reading the Left’s frothing about the Texas election lawsuit.
One published on an NBC News site is an example of just about everything that is wrong with American education, law, and politics. The author, a law professor in Texas at a state university, is teaching young minds full of mush in law school. His idea of persuasion is “I don’t like it.” It follows that you shouldn’t either. That is pretty much the state of argumentation and education these days.
There once was a whole course of study called rhetoric and argumentation which was usually a part of a legal education and higher degrees.
Rhetoric and argumentation is based on logic, and logic is hard; it is higher mathematics hard. You might have noticed that not many Americans take higher mathematics and we import our mathematicians and engineers from India and China. It’s just toooo haaaard for Americans so we take studies courses.
When I was in exile from the Executive Branch back in the mid-nineties, going to the monastery wasn’t an option ,so I went to the university to get a bit of a “tune-up” after 30 years or so of only reading about trade-craft and Tom Clancy novels. Mostly I took literature, history, and writing classes, but I also took a 200-level logic class, and I got my only B in a University of Alaska class.
The professor was an adjunct. He was a conservative, rigid, even dogmatic guy with a Ph.D in Philosophy and a J.D from Gonzaga, and he lived up to his conservative Catholic, Jesuit education. He and I became friends, while most of my classmates hated him. Thirty-five people enrolled in that class, and seven took the final.
His idea of a final for a 200 Level class was giving us a 1,500-word excerpt from C.J. John Marshall’s decision in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, written in 18th Century baroque legal English. We had to “distill” it into standard “subject, verb, object” English, identify all the syllogisms, and then analyze all the syllogisms for logical validity.
Then he gave us 50 syllogisms to analyze. He graded on the strict, old-fashioned curve. I got the B; I was tempted to ask to see the A, but I can’t quarrel that I deserved the B. That is the way education once was before there were participation trophies. That was the professor’s last semester at University of Alaska Southeast. The next year there was a groovy long-haired guy who had classes out on the grass with the students in a circle. I’m sure those are some really smart kids.
To bring this back to the point, the opposition to the Texas lawsuit is “I don’t like it.” This is a state university professor shrieking like a ninth grader.
Leftist argumentation is almost exclusively a combination of invalid syllogisms and subjectivist fallacies. I thought about how I could avoid making this into a logic class; I decided I couldn’t but I’d try to limit it.
Here is a classic invalid syllogism:
God is love / Love is blind / Stevie Wonder is blind / Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.
If you think about it, that argument leaves out a few alternatives to Stevie Wonder being God. I think that is called an undistributed middle proposition, but it has been awhile.
The other staple of leftist argument is the subjectivist fallacy. The most common is “I feel strongly therefore;” The other most common leftist fallacies are first, “the appeal to the mob;” everybody believes that Joe Biden won the election. The next most common is the appeal to authority, argumentum ad baculum; I’m a law professor, therefore you must accept my opinion.
The latter is mostly what we’re dealing with here — a law professor saying, I believe it, therefore it is true.
Return to Texas vs. the defendant states, Texas argues that those states violated the US Constitution by changing their election procedures during the course of the election and doing so by Executive or Judicial action rather than by Legislative action as required by the US Constitution.
There is no argument that the defendant states changed their election laws by Executive and Judicial actions in contravention of the constitutional requirement that election laws can only be enacted by the Legislative body.
The U.S. Supreme Court can simply refuse to take the case. One or more of the defendant states can make a motion to dismiss. The Court can simply dismiss Texas’ claims and this case goes away; China Joe wins the presidency.
There’s a good argument that CJ Taney should have done that in Dred Scott and the US Civil War would have been delayed, if not avoided. I think that if left to his own devices, that’s what Chief Justice Roberts would do, but there are five other justices who might not see it as Roberts does.
My money would be on the Court taking it on. Roberts can slither off and join the minority. That effectively makes Clarence Thomas the Chief Justice, and Thomas rightfully has a bone to pick with China Joe. If the Roberts is in the minority, the senior associate justice gets to write the majority opinion or assign the writing.
I’m not a lawyer, before any of my fans point that out, but I hired, fired, and supervised lawyers and beat a lot of them like rented mules in arbitrations and labor board hearings; I’m pretty good at this stuff.
I don’t know the psychology of DC very well anymore. I can’t rule out the Supremes just walking away from this, but I don’t think they will. The Democrats have threatened the very existence of the Supreme Court with their “court packing” scheme, and I don’t think the Court will take that lying down.
We’re facing an existential battle for the American Republic and the last line of defense is the Supreme Court. I think the line will hold, but prayers might be helpful.
rt 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.
Unhappy with how the Alaska Board of Fisheries was managing the waters that lap at the doorstep of Alaska’s urban core, the United Cook Inlet Drift Association – the powerful commercial fishing lobby that long dictated salmon management there – in 2013 filed a lawsuit demanding a federal, management takeoverin the center of the 180-mile long fiord that stabs into the state’s midsection.
After spending unknown tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys as the case dragged its way through the federal court system, they won big.
And on Monday they lost everything.
Acting on a federal court judge’s order to create a salmon fishing plan for the federal waters in the Inlet, the North Pacific Management Council – an arm of the U.S. Commerce Department – took an unprecedented action.
It accepted the state of Alaska’s argument that adequate numbers of salmon bound for Inlet streams and river can be commercially caught in state waters and simply ordered the closure of federal waters to commercial salmon fishing.
The decision shocked pretty much everyone involved with the fishery politics of Alaska.
“The fix was in,” UCIDA charged on its Facebook page, where it lambasted Alaska Deputy Commissioner of Fish and Game Rachel Baker for suggesting to the Council that regulation of a fishery in what is called the federal government’s exclusive economic zone from three to 200 miles off state coastlines would do little but boost the cost of fishery management for both the state and federal governments.
Unlike those seeking to defund the police, two Eagle River Assembly members and the president of the Alaska Black Caucus will work together to find the money to pay or equipment for Anchorage police, including body cameras and replacements for squad car camera systems.
Assembly members Jamie Allard and Crystal Kennedy, along with Alaska Black Caucus President Celeste Hodge Growden, are opposed to a proposed special tax levy on Anchorage private properties to pay for the equipment. They think there is a better way than to tax people at this time of economic stress.
The special tax is being proposed by Assembly members Forrest Dunbar, Meg Zaletel, John Weddleton, and Acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Allard and Kennedy asked the Assembly to hold off on an ordinance that would have placed the additional property tax on the April ballot.
Allard believes the money should come from the alcohol tax and Hodge Growden believes this is the wrong time for a new tax. She said she is willing to search for grants to help pay for the equipment.
The group will need to come up with $3 million to fund the list that was proposed to go before taxpayers.
Hodge Growden was one of several people who testified Tuesday that this is not the time for new taxes. She reached out to Allard and Kennedy to see if the three women could work together, and on Thursday, they announced their plan to do so.
