KINY – Bradley Grigg, the chief behavioral health officer at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau, told the city’s Economic Sustainability Taskforce that the hospital is seeing more youth in the emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have seen a serious uptick in the number of suicide attempts in the last six months. We’ve had five from the age of 14 to 17, and seven, ages 13 and under, that kills me,” he told the group.
Grigg said the problem is widespread, serious, and affects someone you know.
The task force was established in April by Mayor Beth Weldon.
The Lincoln Project, a group of political grifters who play-act as disaffected Republicans but are spending Democrat donors’ money, spent $4.3 million on the Alaska Senate race this year, attacking Sen. Dan Sullivan and supporting Democrat Alan Gross.
Rick Wilson, George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Jennifer Horn, John Weaver, Ron Steslow, Reed Galen, Mike Madrid are the founders of the Lincoln Project, which hit the scene in 2019.
The race has been called for Sullivan, and he is currently ahead by 14 points, 174,791 to 131,627.
The Lincoln Project went 0-7 in Senate races across the U.S., after spending nearly $12 million in support of Democrats.
They targeted Republican Sens. Steve Daines of Montana and Susan Collins of Maine, along with Joni Ernst of Iowa, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Now, with the election behind us, the Lincoln Project has launched an attack on the lawyers who are representing the Trump campaign.
“What the Lincoln Project is doing is both a frontal assault on longstanding professed ideals of the legal profession and a tactic of personal harassment and intimidation that stands in clear violation of Twitter’s stated rules. Moreover, the harassment initiative aimed at Jones Day and Porter Wright attorneys openly extends to pressure campaigns against the other clients of Jones Day,” wrote Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at The National Review.
Although the group helped take out its main target, Donald Trump, its Senate ambitions were completely thwarted, as detailed at the Washington Free Beacon.
The ballot measure that will radically and historically change how Alaskans choose their leaders is now passing narrowly.
The measure will break the party system in Alaska politics by creating a free-for-all open primary, and a ranked-choice voting method that many say is confusing and hard to verify.
The 313,485 votes on the ballot measure broke slightly toward the yes side, with 156,991 “yes” votes to 156,494 “no” votes. The measure, which was written by a couple of liberal attorneys and funded with $7 million of Outside liberal money, puts in place an election system never tried anywhere in America.
With about 23,000 votes left to count, it appears this measure will pass narrowly, although it may come down to a recount.
The language of the ballot measure is boiled down from 25 pages to a few short paragraphs that fail to actually describe all the changes the ballot measure will bring:
An Act Replacing the Political Party Primary with an Open Primary System and Ranked-Choice General Election, and Requiring Additional Campaign Finance Disclosures.
This act would get rid of the party primary system, and political parties would no longer select their candidates to appear on the general election ballot.
Instead, this act would create an open nonpartisan primary where all candidates would appear on one ballot. Candidates could choose to have a political party preference listed next to their name or be listed as “undeclared” or “nonpartisan.”
The four candidates with the most votes in the primary election would have their names placed on the general election ballot. This act would establish ranked-choice voting for the general election.
Voters would have the option to “rank” candidates in order of choice. Voters would rank their first choice candidate as “1”, second choice candidate as “2”, and so on. Voters “1” choice would be counted first. If no candidate received a majority after counting the first-ranked votes, then the candidate with the least amount of “1” votes would be removed from counting. Those ballots that ranked the removed candidate as “1” would then be counted for the voters’ “2” ranked candidate.
This process would repeat until one candidate received a majority of the remaining votes. If voters still want to choose only one candidate, they can.
This act would also require additional disclosures for contributions to independent expenditure groups and relating to the sources of contributions.
It would also require a disclaimer on paid election communications by independent expenditure groups funded by a majority of out of state money.
Alaska Democrats used ranked-choice voting during their privately held primary election this spring for the first time.
As one politico put it, Alan Gross was “born in the wake of an avalanche and his political career ended in the wake of a landslide.”
From the start, it was obvious the Alan Gross campaign was going to go negative against Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is completing his first term as Alaska’s U.S. senator.
But just how negative he would go was difficult to gauge last year, when Gross began his unlikely quest for the Senate.
No one could guess it could get so ugly or so personal. Gross and his third party helpers such as the Lincoln Project spent $36 million — more money than any candidate in Alaska Senate race history. Sullivan and third party helper groups had just $16 million to fight off the attacks. In the end, Gross in 2020 will end up with just 41 percent of the vote.
Gross’ initial campaign in 2019 was to introduce himself to Alaskans. He was an unknown from Petersburg and he needed to define himself, to show “Al” Gross as an upbeat real Alaskan on a real fishing boat. He glossed over his flaws and made fantastical claims about his larger-than-life Alaskan adventures. This was a candidate made up by marketers.
By the summer of 2020, Gross and his handlers had painted Gross as the “bear doctor,” (a doctor who kills bears), with a catchy jingle, and $36 million and change to batter Sullivan. By now, he and his Outside funders were on a rampage to assassinate the character of his opponent.
During the final days of the campaign in October of 2020, the attacks got so ugly that the New Jersey communication director, who had been brought in to be Gross’ spokesperson, was sidelined. She wasn’t exactly fired, because Gross had unionized his campaign and couldn’t exactly fire her, but Julia Savel was essentially let go — no more spokesperson role for her.
Alaskans, even his supporters, were by then disgusted and alarmed at how vicious and dirty the attacks from Comms Director Savel had become, and word was getting back that she was hurting Gross’ brand of being a real Alaskan.
The media, which had been sympathetic to Gross, lost respect for her because she would not tell them the truth, and in the last weeks of the campaign they didn’t want to talk to her anymore.
After the Gross campaign called Sullivan anti-Semitic and racist, even the liberal media had had enough.
But Savel had done her dirty work by then, and it was all over but the shouting. She had shopped a story idea around to all the media that Sullivan had voted time and again for policies that benefited his father’s Ohio company, a company for which his brother is the CEO.
Finally, after every other outlet had turned it down, Salon.com bit and wrote the 2+2=3 story; it was a piece of spun-up opposition research, and it was not interesting to Alaska voters. They were tired of being carpet-bombed by the Gross campaign.
Gross, in the final weeks, attacked Sullivan as “corrupt,” and said repeatedly that he was born a billionaire.
That is also not true. Not even close. Sullivan was born in a modest 2,000-square-foot house with a five siblings crowding the bedrooms. His father built a company from scratch, employed hundreds of Americans, and was generous with his fortune — so well that he earned the highest award given by the Jewish community of Cleveland, Ohio for his community service. Tom Sullivan gave away much of what he had earned to philanthropic causes in his hometown.
Tom Sullivan and his late wife, Sandy, started modestly in life but became well-known philanthropists, and were the lead donors to the nonprofit Menorah Park Center in Cleveland, which was designed to serve the Jewish senior community.
Sullivan’s family also has a long record of military service, one that is continued by Sen. Sullivan to this day as a Marine Corps reservist, the only active Marine Corps member of the Senate. He’s been in the Marine Corps / Reserve since 1993 and served in Afghanistan dismantling terrorist networks.
Gross, overreaching for nearly the last time, called Sullivan an anti-Semite because of an ad Sullivan’s side ran concerning the massive amounts of Outside dollars Gross had, many millions coming from NY Sen. Chuck Schumer.
While Gross was calling Sullivan an anti-Semite, a coward, and corrupt son of a billionaire, Sullivan’s father was gravely ill and is, at this writing, not expected to live much longer.
Some Alaskans wondered why, when Gross attacked Sullivan as corrupt, and attacked Sullivan’s family as he did, the favor was not returned.
It could have been, but Sullivan and others took the high road.
Gross’ father, Avrum Gross, whom Al referred to often during the campaign to shore up his “Alaska-born credentials,” was more than just an attorney general for Alaska. He was a hippie lawyer, a well-known drug abuser and alcoholic in Juneau, and he had proclivities that are just not ripe for telling, since one should not speak ill of the dead.
Gross, who ran on a health care platform, is known by only a few around him to be a heavy smoker. His campaign ads said, “it’s time to send a doctor to the Senate.” The smoking doctor.
While Gross pounded on Sullivan’s upbringing and father’s business interests, Sullivan never brought up any of Gross’ family history.
At this writing, Gross has not yet conceded the race, although the math just doesn’t work for him any longer. With 66,000 votes left to be counted, Gross would have to get 95 percent of them to win. He went quiet on Twitter two days ago, after wishing everyone a happy Veterans Day. The day before that, he wrote that he still could win.
He did make his mark, even if he didn’t win. The ugliness and dishonesty Gross engaged in during his campaign for Senate set the bar lower than it’s ever been in Alaska politics.
Alaskans, however, saw through it. For all his tens of millions, Gross performed worse than Alyse Galvin in her run against Don Young, and even worse than Joe Biden did with Alaskans.
Sullivan got more votes than any other statewide candidate this year by sticking as much as possible to the high road. As they say, maybe the good guys don’t always finish last.
Congressman Don Young announced today he has tested positive for COVID-19. He is working from his home in Alaska and says he is feeling strong and following protocols.
Young’s wife Ann is a nurse.
Several people associated with the campaign have also tested positive, Must Read Alaska has learned. All are doing well and are working from their homes.
Young, who is 87 years old, is in generally good health, although he has had some bouts of sciatica, a pain in the lower back. He just won his 25th term in Congress and has served for Alaska since 1973.
In past years, he has stayed healthy throughout his campaigns, and sometimes has gotten a head cold right after the campaign ends.
“That didn’t go over all that well,” wrote one Alaskan to Must Read Alaska this morning, after Gov. Mike Dunleavy used the Emergency Alert System on Thursday to plead with Alaskans to stay home if at all possible due to a rising number of COVID-19 cases in the state.
That Alaskan wasn’t alone. Other Alaskans reacting to the Emergency Alert System message said they were not amused. They thought an earthquake had hit or a bomb was on the way.
Instead, Dunleavy is ordering all of the State workforce who can work from home to do so, and asking the public to voluntarily hunker down for three weeks.
In the past seven days, 2,791 Alaskans have tested positive for COVID-19. Dunleavy warned today that the health care system in Alaska, including the medical workers caring for COVID and non-COVID patients, are at risk of being overloaded.
When possible, private businesses should ask employees to work from home, he said. People should return to curbside pickup, where possible. They should rethink how they are going to do Thanksgiving celebrations, he said.
His request was not a demand, but generally the Emergency Alert system, which sends an alarm to people’s smart phones, is only used for imminent threats.
Yet it’s an example of how officials are having to deal with COVID fatigue. Dunleavy is facing a growing segment of Alaskans who have become numb to all the orders and lockdowns, and he is having a harder time getting through to them about how important it is for them to keep a physical distance from those not in their immediate households. They’ve been doing this for months, with lockdowns and changing emergency orders that are crushing many private businesses in Alaska.
Since March, 20,207 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed among Alaska residents, and 96 deaths have been reported associated with the highly contagious virus.
Some Must Read Alaska readers were apoplectic about getting the emergency alert in their phones at 10 am, and reached out to this publication with their immediate, unvarnished comments.
“What the EFF?” wrote one reader.
“Final nail in his coffin,” wrote another.
“People are upset. They’ve lived through wars and are swearing about this,” wrote another.
“Holy crap he just gave me a heart attack with that emergency cell phone message,” wrote one Alaskan. Another said that it gave her a panic attack.
Of the hundreds of messages written on the response panel on YouTube, none were favorable. Many said they thought they were going to have a heart attack.
The message was also broadcast on YouTube and has been viewed by over 17,000 people as of this writing.
“My job as governor is not to tell you how to live your life. My job is to ensure the security and safety of Alaska. I can’t do that without your help,”he said. “I’m asking you to reach deep for the next three weeks. If we can buy time for our critical workers – if we can keep our systems operational – we can avoid being forced to take further action. But if we cannot reduce the spread of this virus, we reduce our future options for how to proceed. No matter what you believe about the virus, the facts are the facts. Hospitalizations and sick healthcare workers are reaching untenable levels. We must act together now while we still have choices.”
Dunleavy announced the following executive actions:
On Monday, November 16, the new 30-day COVID-19 disaster declaration takes effect.
Effective immediately all State employees are to work from home whenever feasible.
Face masks and social distancing are mandatory at State work sites for both employees and visitors.
Earlier this year, the Municipality of Anchorage used the Nixle alert system in a similar way, and it was poorly received by many who believed it was a misuse of the Nixle subscription service, which is supposed to relate to emergencies or to get the public’s help in locating missing vulnerable individuals.
According to the latest count published by media giants Google, New York Times and NBC, candidate Joe Biden now has over 77.1 million votes, and President Donald Trump lags at 72 million votes in the race for the White House.
NBC tally shows over 158 million people voted in this election — more than are registered to vote, according to the U.S. Census.
If the Big Tech/Big Media reporting is correct, that means more than 149 million citizens — or 97 percent of eligible voters — cast their ballots in the presidential election.
The U.S. Census reported that in 2018, there were 153 million registered voters who were eligible to cast ballots. If that number is still accurate after two years, 149 million of them voting is either a remarkable sign of civic engagement or fraud.
Other media are reporting that the number who voted this year is is even higher. According to Bloomberg, 161 million voted in the presidential election, putting the turnout at 105 percent of the 2018 number of eligible voters.
Looking back in time, Pew Research reported that in the last General Election, November 2016, about 157.6 million were registered to vote, citing to Census Bureau estimates.
The Associated Press that year reported Hillary Clinton received 65.8 million votes, and Donald Trump received 62.9 million votes. Other votes were spread among third party candidates. The Election Projectreports that 136,753,936 ballots were cast that year for the nation’s highest office.
Over the years, they have marched in peace and in war – shoulder to shoulder, their uniforms reflecting different branches of the armed forces, all committed to defending America. We call them veterans, men and women who have sacrificed part of their lives to serve in defense of liberty.
On this day, we pause to salute them – from wars gone by and wars still being fought. The struggle to keep this nation free is unending. The need for soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guardsmen is one that continues and will continue.
We are reminded of the unending call to service on Veterans Day because this national holiday no longer is one that calls to mind only heroes of the past – those who served and fought and died in wars that to many seem a part of ancient history. Now, as we honor and remember those who wore the uniform of our nation many years ago, we also raise a salute to a younger generation that proudly serves today – in Afghanistan and other trouble spots around the globe, manning bases and posts here and in far-flung corners of the world.
Sadly, with the advancing years, the number of World War II veterans is declining rapidly, and even the ranks of those who served during the Korean War is growing thin. We stand today on their shoulders, able to be proudly free because of their sacrifices.
The long line of those who bravely and honorably have risked it all to serve this nation in its military extends far into its distant past. But it is a line that marches forward, too, as brave new young people step forward to carry freedom’s banner.
One of the most misguided political campaigns in Alaska state history was drawing to a close today with Dr. Al Gross still holding out hope for a miracle upset of incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.
A Gross victory remained statistically possible as this was written. He needed only about two-thirds of approximately 83,000 outstanding votes to oust Sullivan if, of course, Sullivan got no more votes.
Given the monstrous amount of money Gross and Gross-minded interests spent on the election, the candidate’s reluctance to throw in the towel is probably understandable.
Nearly $35 million is a staggering amount of money to pay for about 100,000 votes. But then there were pre-race indications that Gross, born and reared in the Alaska state capital as the son of an attorney general for a Republican governor, had a solid chance of beating an immigrant Sullivan, the interloper from “Outside” as Alaskans commonly refer to the Lower 48 states.
Aside from being a Marine, Sullivan’s Alaska cred isn’t great. He comes from a wealthy family who saw to his prep school education. From there it was on to Harvard, Georgetown and a political appointment as a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Statebefore being tapped as Alaska Attorney General in 2009 when then Gov. Sarah Palin wasin the midst of a minor scandal called “Troopergate”and needed a lawyer far removed from Alaska politics; and finally Alaska Commissioner of Natural Resources under former Gov. Sean Parnell.
Clearly the Gross campaign looked at Sullivan’s resume and tried to make the election a contest between a real Alaskan – grizzly bear slayer, commercial fisherman, outdoorsman, big-mountain skier, teenage entrepreneur and independent thinker – and an Outside product of privilege willing to kowtow to the Trump administration.
The pitch was a mistake that underlined how badly out-of-touch with average Alaskans the state’s Democratic party.
Three words
The reality here is that Gross had a realistic chance of unseating Sullivan if he’d stolen an idea from President Donald Trump (God forbid) and listened to the decade’s old advice of political consultant James Carville, the man largely responsible for the election of Democrat Bill Clinton as the nation’s 42nd president in 1992.
