Friday, July 11, 2025
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Pebble Partnership announces profit-sharing for Bristol Bay residents

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Pebble Partnership announced Tuesday that the company has created the Pebble Performance Dividend (PPD) to distribute a percentage of the revenue generated from the operation of a mine at Pebble to year-round residents of Bristol Bay.

Qualifying residents will get a 3 percent share of company’s revenues. During the first few years of the capital investment recovery phase, a $3 million fund will be set up to be distributed annually to the residents who join the program.

If 3,000 residents register for the program, the PPD will distribute $1,000 dollars to qualified participants once construction begins, money that will come from the $3 million initial fund.

“When we rolled out our new, smaller mine plan in 2017, I made a commitment to find a way to share the opportunity Pebble represents with the residents of Bristol Bay,” said Tom Collier, Pebble Partnership CEO. “While not everyone will want to work at the mine, this ensures a direct way for everyone to participate. Whether a resident supports the project, opposes it, or is neutral, anyone who is a year-round resident can participate. However, year-round residents who want to share in this opportunity must register their interest.”

PLP created a web portal for Bristol Bay residents to register and learn more about the opportunity – www.pebbledividend.com .

Once fully operational and profitable, the PPD will distribute 3% of the net profits from the mine to registered Bristol Bay residents.

Residency, governance and distribution will be overseen by an advisory board comprised of well-known Alaskans John Shively and Willie Hensley along with residents from the region.

All Bristol Bay residents who register via the web portal before July 31 will be eligible for a drawing for an annual early Pebble Performance Dividend beginning this year and payable through the start of construction. Five early dividend winners will be chosen from the group of eligible participants registered by July 31 . The web portal will remain open for registration until August 31 .

“Developing a mine at Pebble will provide jobs, economic activity, local tax revenue and infrastructure. Today we are adding one more way residents of the region can directly benefit from Pebble via our revenue sharing plan,” said Collier.

Collier further noted that federal permitting is nearing conclusion with an Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expected this summer.

Fairbanks school committee pushes staff ‘decolonization, white supremacy’ training

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No one ever accused the Fairbanks School District of giving students a true classical liberal arts education. The proficiency scores from the PEAKS tests show students skimming along just above the pitiful state average.

But all those classics that you may consider literature, and all that Socratic pedagogy used to get kids to think could be thrown in the burn pile, if “decolonization” efforts by the district’s Diversity Committee are taken seriously.

[Read: The value of a classical liberal arts education]

The Fairbanks School District’s Diversity Committee met June 10, and while the topics covered the expected — inclusion and diversity — several members expressed a new sense of urgency for more training on what it means to be woke.

Schools across Alaska have been out of session for months due to COVID-19, and the way the diversity committee sees it, now is the time for more intensive training.

Members argued that training should be mandatory on topics such as inclusion, micro-aggression, white supremacy, decolonization, and gender expression.

Listen, as at-large committee member Alyssa Quintyn describes her vision of what that training should be and how it should include indoctrination on white supremacy and decolonization. (Audio only at the click:)

WHAT IS DECOLONIZATION TRAINING?

What does “decolonization” training actually mean? In academia, it means the banishing certain works of literature or art.

The “decolonize your bookshelf” movement is now removing American and Western classics from schools, when the authors of the literature were white men or women, and who may through today’s lens appear racist, sexist, xenophobic, or merely heterosexual.

“In essence, it is about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long,” explains Juan Dival, writing for NPR.

“If you are white, take a moment to examine your bookshelf. What do you see? What books and authors have you allowed to influence your worldview, and how you process the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised? Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat?” he wrote.

One could reasonably come to the conclusion that decolonization training for Fairbanks teachers would include having them evaluate their reading lists under the watchful eye of a Maoist cultural moderator.

Removing books from required reading lists is something that the MatSu Borough School Board tried recently when it sought to remove a handful books that described child rape and human degradation. The school board found itself under siege by a national and local group of liberals that were horrified that literature be removed from reading lists, even though the books were still on the shelves in the school library.

The entire committee meeting can be listened to at this link.

From spit on to spoiled burritos, Trump supporters wonder about restaurants

WHERE CAN REPUBLICANS AND FIRST RESPONDERS SAFELY EAT?

The first known Alaska incident of tampering with a Trump supporter’s food, when politics became poison for a customer, may have occurred in Fairbanks last month at the Fairbanks Espresso shack.

A young man wearing a MAGA hat and with a Trump sign on his truck ordered a coffee and breakfast burrito, only to find marking pen all over the burrito, telling him to never come back again.

He told Must Read Alaska that he surely won’t return, after he had red ink all over his burrito and was called a fascist by the Fairbanks Espresso owner.

In Juneau this month, a restaurant owner coined a new flavor of ice cream, “Fuck the Police,” or “BLUEberry Lives Murder,” as he alternately called it, with “Defund the Police blueberry jam. Some readers and those in law enforcement say they plan to stay away from The Rookery and the In Bocca Al Lupo restaurants after the incident.

Last week, soldiers from South Carolina’s National Guard, who were recently deployed to protect the nation’s capital and the White House from rioters, found shards of glass baked into a pizza they had ordered while stationed in D.C.

The pieces of glass were discovered both in the dough and the cheese after the delivery was made at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, where troops had been staying, according to The Post and Courier newspaper, which cited the Department of Defense.

This week, New York police officers were taken to the hospital after having their drinks poisoned by someone at a Shake Shack restaurant in New York City.

The trend of restaurant violence against supporters of the president goes back at least a year, although incidents were also recorded during the election cycle in 2016. The trend against law enforcement appears more recent.

Last October, a Vero Beach, Fla. man who was caught on a restaurant security camera hitting and spitting on a 67-year-old Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat was sentenced to 90 days in Indian River County Jail, a report said. The assailant had walked across the restaurant’s bar and told the victim, “You should go back to Russia, you f–king communist.”

One year ago in June, Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, was spat on by an employee at an upscale Chicago cocktail bar. The employee was questioned by Secret Service agents but faced no consequences.

The incidences of restaurants disrespecting conservatives may be causing them to change their dining habits and stay away from restaurants known to be populated by liberals.

WHERE IS IT SAFE TO DINE?

Must Read Alaska is compiling a list of restaurants in Alaska where readers can wear their MAGA hat, conservative swag, or walk into the restaurant with a Bible in their hand, where police officers can stop in for a bite without worrying about their food being contaminated.

If you know of an Alaska restaurant that should be on the “safe list” for conservatives, add it to the comment section below. Be sure to mention the community the establishment is in.

Chief Justice: No jury trials until September — at least

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CRIMINALS MAY ROAM FREE WHILE COURTROOMS STAY EMPTY

The Alaska Court System, which hasn’t held a jury trial since March 16, has just extended that moratorium on justice until Sept. 1, by order of Chief Justice Joel Bolger.

Due to the number of active cases of COVID-19 in Alaska, which the Chief Justice calls “high,” justice will be delayed for at least six months. Once jury trials start again, there will be a large backlog, which means many trials will be further delayed by months.

Bolger said that jury rooms just aren’t safe because they don’t allow for needed physical distancing for the parties, attorneys, court personnel, and a standard jury panel.

“The court administration needs additional time to devise procedures that will allow jury trials to proceed safely. And most courtrooms do not have adequate space to safely accommodate a public audience or a large jury selection assembly,” Bolger wrote.

The action effectively puts many conditions of the soft-on-crime SB-91 conditions back into effect, allowing criminals to roam free for months while they await trial.

SB-91 was unwound by the Legislature last year after it became associated with a statewide crime spree.

The Supreme Court has, through Bolger’s order, created a condition where Alaskans may once again be victimized by criminals on the loose.

“When the suspension is lifted, the time for trial will continue to be tolled for the time necessary to permit an orderly transition and scheduling,” Bolger wrote. In layman’s terms, that means there will be further delays.

When trials resume, the public may be required to participate by  teleconference, videoconference, or video feed. Those allowed in the courtrooms will be required to adhere to “social distancing, face coverings, and other health requirements imposed by government health mandates, presiding judge orders, and administrative bulletins.”

“Also to promote social distancing, court administration and trial judges may impose limits on jury panel qualification, assembly, and selection procedures. Jury questionnaires may be expanded to identify qualification and hardship issues and to expedite the exercise of juror challenges,” Bolger wrote.

Loudermill: Due process for the public employee

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By ART CHANCE

Both the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution guarantee that a citizen, and in some cases a person who is not a citizen, cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.   

The Constitution does not establish a substantive right to any particular process, but rather guarantees that any process that stems from the Constitution itself, from statute, or ordinance, or by contract must be afforded before a citizen or a person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property.   

Due process is going to become very important and likely very much lied about in the coming weeks and months as we endure the lynching of the officers associated with the deaths of George Floyd and Raychard Brooks.

Before the screeches of outrage begin, while there are lots of questions still to be answered, the only evidence we have in the George Floyd case are the videos. In the videos, it is graphically evident that Officer Derek Chauvin used excessive and unreasonable force against Floyd and is guilty of some degree of homicide.  

 I couldn’t be seated on a jury in the case because I have formed a conclusion as to his guilt and only a credible challenge to the authenticity of the video would dissuade me. 

The Brooks case is much more subtle.  The reason I style it “a cop lynching” is that none of these officers have been afforded due process and it is extremely unlikely that they can get a fair trial.   

The mob is going to demand their lives, or at least their lives in prison, or they’ll burn cities again and feckless Democrat mayors and governors will not oppose them.

In 1986, a case came to the U.S. Supreme Court involving the firing of a Mr. Loudermill, an employee of the Cleveland Board of Education. The Cleveland Board belatedly did a background check on Loudermill and found that somebody named Mr. Loudermill had a conviction in Texas.   

The Board assumed that the person in Texas was their employee, concluded that he had lied to them by denying that he had a conviction, and they fired him. 

If only the Cleveland Board had called Loudermill in and asked him, “Are you the Mr. Loudermill that has this conviction in Texas?”

Employment law is replete with cases that demonstrate the old saw of “bad cases make bad law,” and Loudermill is among the best, or worst, examples.   The board never did a thing to establish whether Mr. Loudermill was actually the person that had the conviction or to establish whether or not he had lied to them; they just fired him. 

He sued and changed the relationship between public employers and public employees.

Loudermill had successfully and uneventfully performed his duties for the Board. He had achieved “permanent status” by completing a probationary period. During probation, a public employee can be dismissed for “any reason, no reason, but not an illegal reason.” After probation, an employee becomes permanent and can only be removed for just cause.

The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that achieving permanent status confers a “property right” in a public employee’s job. Since permanent status is a property, that property can only be taken by due process of law.   Reasonable minds can disagree with this analysis, but I don’t really disagree with it.

Loudermill v. Cleveland Board establishes the Constitutional minima for due process for public employees threatened with discipline or dismissal.

At minimum, a permanent public employee must be given notice of the charges against him/her and in such specificity that the employee can form a defense. The employee, and in the union environment his/her union representative, must be given the opportunity to respond to the allegations and to point out any mitigating or obviating facts.

The employer must give consideration to the employee’s statements; the old “let them tell their story and then pull the dismissal memo out of the desk drawer” strategy is a tell; due consideration was not given. That is the minimum constitutional duty for due process.

Cops commonly have much more elaborate process as a matter of contract or ordinance. The Alaska State Troopers have a Byzantine Administrative Investigation process in their contract that they got in their first interest arbitration around 1980. They bedeviled the State with it until we in State Labor Relations decided we’d had enough of process problems causing discipline and discharges to be overturned by arbitrators. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back was an arbitrator overturning the dismissal of an Alaska State Trooper caught walking out of Long’s Drug Store in Anchorage with shoplifted merchandise. We vowed it would never happen again. First we vowed that arbitrator would never work in Alaska again, then we vowed to fix the problem.

In the Floyd and Brooks matters, there is no evidence that any of the officers were afforded any process. They were all fired on TV by mayors who were only pandering to the mob. We had a case like that here in Alaska a long time ago when an inmate escaped Lemon Creek Correctional Centers in Juneau and was later found under the bed of a Correctional Officer. 

Gov. Hammond fired everybody in Corrections whose name he knew on TV from Anchorage; he was angry. 

Nobody stayed fired.

In the Floyd and Brooks cases, the TV firings guarantee that the officers will get back pay up until a criminal conviction, and then the government will have to restart the dismissal and base the dismissals on the criminal conviction.   

The days of cops letting a DWI walk away ended in the MADD days of the ‘80s, so there was no way those cops were going to let Brooks walk away, get a ride, or give him a ride home; there is too much money in DWI charges for city governments. If you know you’re not safe to drive, pitch yourself into the back seat to sleep it off. But leave the keys in the ignition, you get hauled away for DWI. 

Young men, black and white, need to learn that if you resist a cop, and especially if you brandish a weapon or threaten his/her weapon, you are likely to die. 

You need to learn what we long-hairs of the Sixties learned: Say, “Yes, officer.” You can defend your constitutional rights later when there isn’t a gun pointed at you.

These mayors pandered and the TV firings will be like wetting your pants in a dark suit; it will give them a warm feeling and nobody will notice. If they can empanel an “OJ Jury,” they might get convictions, but few of them are likely to survive appeal. 

Unless the video is discredited, Officer Chauvin is likely to get convicted of something eventually, but I think Attorney General Ellison overcharged him in response to the mob; manslaughter was a reasonable and convictable charge. In things like this, if it is simple, you don’t yet know enough.

Art 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. 

Supreme Court redefines gender as ‘identity’ in ruling

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COURT SAYS, ESSENTIALLY, ANYONE CAN BE A WOMAN

It’s anything goes now. Look for flight attendant men wearing skirts, and male ballet dancers in tutus, carrying the role of the Clara in “The Nutcracker.”

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not only mean that “sex” means “gender,” but that it now means identity.

In a 6-3 ruling the court has ruled that employers may not discriminate against workers on the bases of either their gender “identity” or sexual orientation.

In practical terms, it means little to large companies like Microsoft or even Alaska Airlines, which have robust policies in place that prohibit discrimination based on sexual preference or gender identity.

But for America’s small companies, and for services such as daycare centers, personal service technicians, and even someone who cleans the women’s locker room at the local gym, the court has said that gender identity and expression cannot be considered in hiring or firing. Men may come to work dressed as women, even if it cost the business customers. A business owner’s religious beliefs will not be upheld.

The ruling is expected to have wide-ranging ramifications, because by its logic, employers can no longer consider gender at all when hiring, for example, a person who fits women with undergarments at a department store.

Businesses must accommodate and provide facilities for a person who switches weekly between their identities as a man or woman, as some transgender people do. Even if it makes other workers feel like their rights to privacy are being violated.

Acting companies will not be able to prefer men for male roles and women for female roles. Need a Santa this Christmas for your photo shoots? You cannot discriminate against women for that job, and Mrs. Santa may be a he in your family photo.

The will ultimately have an impact on women’s athletics and whether men can compete in women’s sports.

“The Supreme Court got it wrong. The word ‘sex’—still today and when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964—refers to our biological reality as male or female. It doesn’t refer to our sexual orientations or gender identities,” said Ryan Anderson, senior fellow of the Heritage Institute.

“In fact, Congress has repeatedly rejected legislation that would have added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in federal law. The Supreme Court has simply legislated from the bench. This is pure judicial activism. Today’s ruling will have severe consequences for the privacy, safety, and equality of all Americans. The Court has rewritten our civil rights laws in a way that will undermine protections and equal rights of women and girls. It will also expose employers that are struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic to significant liabilities.

“Congress has not legislated such an outcome and it was wrong for the court to usurp lawmakers’ authority by imposing such an extreme policy on our nation,” he said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski praised the ruling.

“People should not live in fear of being discriminated against or losing their job because of their LGBTQ status. I am pleased to see today’s Supreme Court holding that existing federal civil rights law protects individuals from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. This is long overdue, and is significant progress as we seek to protect and uphold the rights and equality of all Americans.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a remarkable dissent, saying that there is an “ordinary meaning” to the term “sex,” as it was written in the law, and it’s easy to understand. He wrote that the meaning of “discriminate because of sex” plainly does not encompass discrimination because of sexual orientation, but refers to gender alone: “In common parlance, Bostock and Zarda were fired because they were gay, not because they were men.” (Pp. 11-22.)

Read the Court majority’s decision on Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia here:

BACKGROUND – THREE-IN-ONE ROIL

There were three different cases combined into one case in the Bostock ruling: A skydiving instructor who was fired because he is gay, and a child welfare coordinator fired for the same reason. Those two combined with a case about a funeral director and embalmer, who was fired after announcing he would be living and identifying as a woman.

Aimee Stephens, the funeral director, died on May 12 of kidney failure. His/Her wife, Donna, was substituted in on the lawsuit.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

(His dissent focuses on discrimination because of sexual orientation; he observes in a footnote that his analysis would apply “in much the same way” to discrimination on the basis of gender identity.)

[Read “Supreme Court decides who is a woman, ]

Republicans endorse challenger Kevin McCabe for District 8 House seat

Kevin McCabe, who has filed for House District 8 against incumbent Republican Rep. Mark Neuman, has received the endorsement of the Alaska Republican Party.

The endorsement came after a process that started in the winter with an endorsement from the local District, and then moved up to the entire State Central Committee for a vote. It allows the party to spend money to help McCabe in his quest to unseat Mark Neuman, who first took office in 2005.

Neuman has had health challenges the past two years that have prevented him from traveling to Juneau a times and he has missed critical votes, particularly in 2019.

Neuman, when he has been in Juneau, is a reliable conservative vote and once served as the co-chair of the House Finance Committee.

The endorsement doesn’t mean that Neuman cannot also be endorsed by Republicans, but the process has to start at the District level and work its way up to the State Central Committee. Time is short, with just two months until the primary election.

McCabe is a commercial cargo pilot and has been active in Republican politics. The District 8 area encompasses Big Lake, and parts of Knik-Fairview and Point Mackenzie in the MatSu Valley.

What’s to hate about the 2020 presidential choices?

By SUZANNE DOWNING

“Everybody I know here is sick about the RNC coming here,” wrote a reader from Jacksonville, Fla. 

“We don’t want them to contaminate our city. Yes, I consider the Trump base to be racist and deplorable. Trump himself is a very sick man. I can only hope that he and his are soundly defeated. It is beyond my comprehension that you support them,” she concluded. 

Harrumph.

The hatred of President Donald Trump manifests stronger than ever on the Left in 2020, and it will not get better as we lurch toward November. 

He cannot win the Left over, and they have expressed their rage at him effectively since Inauguration Day in 2017, when they first took to the streets to protest with their special brand of collective primal scream. They’ve been raging at him ever since, in one form or another, with a special emphasis on this election year.

There’s a reason Democrats hate Trump more this year than they did in 2016. During that election cycle, they were told repeatedly by pundits and pollsters that he had no chance of winning.

“Donald Trump will never be president,” Americans were told by media authorities, who seemed to just “know.”

They didn’t have to hate him with passion back then because he was a joke, a buffoon to the media.

The Left had Hillary, and Barack Obama backed her. That means she would win the black vote. Michelle Obama backed her, which meant she would win the lady vote. Hillary Clinton vanquished everything in her path until she met the likes of Donald Trump.

In 2020, the Democrats are not taking chances. They saw the economy as unbreakable, and Trump on a path to victory. There was only one thing to do – burn it down. Stage a revolt. They are not going to allow him to win again.

In the rearview mirror, this insurrection from Seattle to D.C. seemed inevitable. The people had been cooped up in their homes for weeks in a form of government-imposed repression. Church was banned. Sports were prohibited. Police handcuffed parents playing with their children in parks, sunbathing on beaches, and even on paddleboarders in the deep blue sea. Meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous were raided and broken up. Millions of men and women were driven out of employment, children were out of school, and people were getting sick.

Hell broke loose, and it was fed by the fury against Trump and all he stands for to the Left. As Must Read Alaska’s reader in Jacksonville noted, Trump supporters are now all racist deplorables. She and other progressives are clearly not over Hillary Clinton’s loss and they are in full battle mode to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

It’s worth taking a snapshot look at this moment in 2016, because the country had a choice then. Voters may not have liked Donald Trump, but Mrs. Clinton was unacceptable to many as well.

In the Quinnipiac University National poll released in June of 2016, Clinton had 42 percent support to Trump’s 40 percent. It was considered too close to call. 

Democrat voters may have fretted, but there was no cause to riot. There was enough to work with to get to a win.

Hate was simmering, even then. In that same poll, 61 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: “The 2016 election has increased the level of hatred and prejudice in the U.S.”

But of that 61 percent, 67 percent blamed the Trump camp and just 16 percent blame the Clinton campaign. 

Women supported Clinton 50 – 33 percent and men supported Trump 47 – 34 percent at this time in the 2016 election season. Black support for Clinton was at 90 percent.

Then came November of 2016: Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million, and yet did not prevail and return to the White House in triumph. In spite of two faithless electors defecting from Trump, and five faithless electors defecting from Clinton, Trump managed to crush the Electoral College – 304-227.

It was a breathtaking election for both sides. 

Clinton supporters – almost to a person — are still raging in anger over that result, and Trump voters now have amnesia that their candidate only is in office only because his campaign team did better electoral math. His popularity is marginal, even after four years of a roaring economy.

Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, summed it up in June of 2016: “It would be difficult to imagine a less flattering from-the-gut reaction to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This is where we are. Voters find themselves in the middle of a mean-spirited, scorched earth campaign between two candidates they don’t like. And they don’t think either candidate would be a good president.”

With liberals sensing Trump could win again, they were the dry tinder for the match that was lit by Black Lives Matter. By the hundreds of thousands, they have turned our cities into chaos because of their hatred of one man, who represents all they hate about America.

For the choices this year, these voters do not have two lightning rod candidates. Only Trump brings out the rioters and the vitriol. 

Biden is milquetoast, dithering, and as he reaches for words he can’t find, he bumbles toward November with neither the stamina for the job, nor the apparent desire for it. 

You may pity him. You may consider him part of the swamp. But there’s nothing to hate there. 

Trump supporters must recognize that the same people who hated Trump in 2016 are hating him even more today, and they do not hate his alternative. They will tolerate Biden. They will market him as normal.

This poses a peril for Republicans up and down the ticket. Trump has a rapidly shrinking window to make his case to swing voters. He cannot afford to alienate them between now and late October, when most will have made up their minds. As for women, it’s going to be a hard sell for Trump.

Although the Black Lives Matter riots show what a threat to our republic the Democrats are, how socialistic and communist-tolerant they have become, this will come down to personality in the end.  Liberals may not like Biden, but he doesn’t trigger them into a visceral reaction, like the angry woman from Jacksonville expressed this week.

Biden reminds progressives of a time when things were going their way under the leadership of the cool-kid president. They long for those days when Obama was “admired” by European leaders and would not rock the boat of the world order. 

Today, voters are faced with different scenario than 2016, when both candidates were hated – almost equally. 

This year, the hatred only goes one direction. But it goes deep. Very deep.

Anchorage Daily News endorses race-based discrimination

By DAN FAGAN

The Anchorage Daily News editorial board published a column Sunday entitled, “A long-overdue reckoning.”

In it, the board openly called for business owners to discriminate based on race. 

“If you’re a manager of a business, take a step back and look at the people who work for you. Do they reflect the diversity of our community? If they don’t, ask yourself: Why not?” wrote Ryan Binkley, Andy Pennington, and Tom Hewitt. 

There’s only one way to guarantee the racial makeup of your workforce matches that of your community, and that’s to hire on the basis of race. You’ll need to discriminate against more qualified workers if they don’t meet the racial makeup of the person you’re looking to hire. 

This race-obsessed approach to hiring is unfortunately common among many human resource managers working for major corporations that live under a not often written but understood mandate to diversify the workforce. This of course is the opposite of what civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for.  

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” said King. 

The ADN editorial board is made up mostly of virtue signalers trying to prove their wokeness. It makes sense they would expect business owners to place proving their wokeness over hiring the best possible candidate.  

In our ever-shifting views on race in our country, something very unfortunate has happened. The idea we should judge, evaluate, and treat others based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin is now considered racist. We’re now told by race-baiting politicians and media types that striving for a color-blind society is no longer an attainable goal. “I don’t see color” is now mocked.  

It’s no secret the ADN buys into the ideology that America and Alaska are inherently and deeply racist. 

“Even today, racial prejudice scars the face of the Last Frontier,” writes the ADN. 

The paper argues the case of the Fairbanks Four “exposed deep rifts and race-based suspicion” in Alaska.  The ADN also implies racism is to blame for “domestic violence and sexual assault problems that disproportionately affect rural and native communities.” 

The paper, aided in part by money from far-left activist George Soros, has done extensive reporting trying to tie domestic violence in Bush Alaska to racism. The ADN even won a Pulitzer for its effort. 

Want to win a Pulitzer? Advance the notion we’re a racist country. You’re halfway there.  

The ADN editorial board also called on legislators to do something about racism.  

“If you’re a lawmaker, consider what could be done on a policy level to make our union, our state and our community fairer in the way all of their people are treated,” the editorial stated. 

Notice Binkley, Pennington, and Hewitt didn’t give an example of a law that promotes inequality. That’s because there are none. The idea that we live in a nation where “systemic” racism is prevalent is nonsense. Nowhere in America or Alaska is racism codified in law. 

The single most ridiculous thing the ADN editorial board argues is that we don’t talk enough about racism. The board writes “racism and race-based inequity in our society – have too long been avoided by people like us, for a variety of reasons that don’t hold water.” 

“Racism and race-based inequity” is just about all liberal media types talk about anymore. The belief we’re a fundamentally racist nation is built into the fabric of almost every story the media report. It doesn’t matter the problem, somehow, someway, the media will find a way to blame it on racism.

The truth is data show African Americans are not disproportionately killed by white cops. And when it comes to poverty, most of it in America is found in single-parent households with children headed by a female, regardless of race. It is true blacks disproportionately live in poverty in America. But that’s because black women disproportionately have children out of wedlock. 75% of all black babies in America today are born into a single parent household. 

And there’s this: 97% of all millennials of all races with a high school diploma, work full-time, and married before having children do not live in poverty. The disintegration of the American family, not racism, is why we have poverty in America today. 

The African American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell said it best, 

“Racism is not dead, but it is on life support kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists.” 

Dan Fagan hosts a radio show on Newsradio 650 KENI from 5:30 to 8 am.