Senate hearings begin Monday at 9 am as part of the confirmation process for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who is President Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.
With only three weeks left until the voting ends for the 2020 General Election, this confirmation hearing has everything to do with politics. A conservative justice on the Supreme Court is, for many conservatives, more important than even winning the White House.
Replacing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Judge Barrett, 48, could become the youngest member to join the high court since Clarence Thomas in 1991.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hybrid in-person and telephonic meetings, with vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris attending remotely. Hearings are expected to continue over four days.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina chairs the Judiciary Committee and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is the ranking leader for the Democrats. The committee is made up of these senators:
Alyse Galvin, running for U.S. Congress as the Democrats’ nominee, has an impressive list of her prior donations to campaigns of Democrats, ranging from Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz to AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami. She also donated to current vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Since 2012, Galvin has donated more than $13,500 to state Democrat candidates, even though she has been unemployed much of that time. A few of the names of her candidate donation list make up the “who’s who” of the Alaska Democrats:
Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, embroiled in a current scandal
Byron Mallott, left office prematurely in scandal
Bill Walker, served one term, left in scandal
Austin Quinn Davidson, serves on Anchorage Assembly
Harry Crawford, former representative
Suzanne LaFrance, currently Anchorage Assembly, running for House
Liz Snyder, running for House
Adam Wool, current representative
Matt Claman, current representative
Geran Tarr, current representative
Kameron Perez-Verdia, current Anchorage Assembly
Forrest Dunbar, current Anchorage Assembly
Meg Zalatel, current Anchorage Assembly
Elvi Gray-Jackson, current state senator
Berta Gardner, former state senator
Bryce Edgmon, current representative
Ivy Spohnholz, current representative
Tiffany Zulkosky, current representative
Andi Story, current representative
Sarah Hannan, current representative
Zack Fields, current representative
Felix Rivera, current Anchorage Assembly
Eric Croft, former Anchorage Assembly
Tom Begich, current state senator
Hollis French, former state senator
House Democratic Campaign Committee
A review of Galvin’s FEC reports shows she donated to:
Political newcomer and kombucha businessmen Brian Daniels has unseated Linda Combs on the Palmer City Council. With absentee and questioned ballots now counted, he edged out the incumbent Combs by 13 votes.
“Some of you might know me from my days at Vagabond Blues or as current co-owner at 203 Kombucha. I’m also a huge music nerd and absolutely love the talent that Palmer has to offer…which has culminated into starting a music production company called 3000-21 Productions,” Daniels wrote. He is a graduate of Colony High School.
With Daniels joining the Palmer City Council, the edge is decidedly more liberal with a 4-3 liberal advantage. Daniels’ kombucha business was one of the prime sponsors of a Black Lives Matter rally this summer in Palmer.
Some 1,211 people voted in the Oct. 6 municipal election. Also elected was Sabrena Combs. 729 people voted absentee, questioned, early, or special needs ballots, while only 482 voters showed up at the polls on election day.
As with most elections we tend to get lost in the weeds as election day approaches. Did one candidate say something stupid or the other candidate say something mean?
Having lived through almost 20 presidential elections I have developed some insights regarding what really matters. I find it helpful to look at the election from 30,000 feet to see the big picture.
For example, what is the deal with President Trump and his detractors? First of all, Donald Trump is the first non-politician elected president since George Washington. The political class hate that and consequently him. He approaches problems as a businessman not as a politician. He sees a problem and finds a pragmatic nonpolitical solution regardless of the politics.
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are streaming over our southern border? You build a wall to stop them. This is not a Republican or a Democrat solution, but a practical solution.
President Trump inherited a government deeply mired in the swamp. People get elected to Congress and within a few years many of them (excluding our Alaskan delegation) are millionaires.
How does that happen? Well, the fat cats such as those in healthcare, non-profits, defense contractors, George Soros, lobbyists etc. not only provide the money to get them elected (Al Gross $17 million), they also see that they make good investments to accumulate wealth. In return they get their lucrative government contracts.
High ranking federal employees make sure it all works in exchange for pay and benefits far more than comparable jobs in the private sector. You have to wonder how did the Clintons accumulated a net worth of over $100 million when they were on government salaries most of their lives? Big corporations paid them $500,000 to make a speech.
A for-profit college, Laureate International University, paid Bill Clinton $18 million to be its “honorary” chancellor. Shortly thereafter the government shut down two of its main competitors. I guess that was just a coincidence.
Also, does anyone really believe Hunter Biden was paid $80,000/month to sit on a Ukraine gas company board and was paid $3.5 million by a Russian politician’s wife due to his business acumen? This is the definition of the swamp.
Donald Trump comes along and doesn’t need the fat cats to get elected. He also doesn’t need the federal employees to help him stay in office. He is there to drain the swamp, and that includes politicians of either party who don’t represent the people, big corporations and their government contracts and overpaid federal employees who make it all happen.
Of course, they all hate him. Their gravy train is being derailed. What we are witnessing is an all-out assault on the president by the whole Washington cabal. Their financial future depends on getting him out of the White House.
Two members of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ inner circle have come to his defense as speculation swirls in Anchorage about Berkowitz and a reporter.
Your Alaska Linknews anchor Maria Athens, who remains in custody on Sunday afternoon, blew up the mayor’s life on Friday when she posted a photo of a man’s naked backside on Facebook, implying it was the mayor. The physique and the head of hair resemble Berkowitz, but in this era, photos can be faked.
What is unclear is how Athens got the photo of the man’s backside and what her motivation is for posting it. Did she have a special hatred of the mayor and his wife?
Berkowitz’ friends were quick to condemn the woman.
“Ethan Berkowitz shouldn’t have to go through this. There is no basis for any of it. Stay strong my friend,” wrote Eric Croft, a close friend of the mayor. Croft is running for mayor, as Berkowitz is term-limited out next April. Many on Croft’s Facebook page agreed in varying degrees of expressed solidarity and vitriol.
Assembly member Forrest Dunbar, also running for mayor, also came to the defense of his fellow Democrat Berkowitz, who is the highest ranked Democrat elected official in Alaska.
“Yesterday, a woman made wild and unsubstantiated charges against the Mayor. Her behavior in the past months, in which she has shown up at Assembly Meetings while refusing to wear a mask, produced bizarre and slanted pieces of pseudo-journalism, and become ever more enmeshed in conspiratorial thinking of the far-right, indicate that she may be mentally unwell,” Dunbar wrote.
“What’s perhaps more disturbing is that hundreds of people on this website credulous shared her accusations, so consumed are they with hatred towards Ethan that they would apparently believe any lie told about him. This piece had exactly as much evidence as the debunked notion that he used his emergency powers to close restaurants because of his own business interests. Both stories are vivid examples that old saying: ‘A lie gets twice around the world before the truth gets its shoes on.'”
Without knowing whether the Athens’ allegations about the mayor, his genitals, and an underage girl are true, both mayoral candidates say they are lies.
Dunbar, in his scolding essay on Facebook, says the charges are unfounded and fraudulent. He says he has known Berkowitz and his wife Mara Kimmel for years and they are ‘decent, honest, public-minded people.”
More than 50 hours after the first posting on Facebook by Athens, the mayor of Anchorage has been nowhere to be found. A police detail was at his house overnight on Friday but has been scaled back, Must Read Alaska has learned.
Berkowitz has made no public statement about whether the photo posted on Facebook of the naked man is him. He’s made no public statement at all, in fact, other than a vague press release on Saturday, which denied all the allegations as slanderous.
The response from the Left — not believing a woman in this #believeallwomen era — and the silence from Alaska’s largest newspaper is now the topic of discussion in many circles in Anchorage.
No story has yet appeared in the Anchorage Daily News, more than 50 hours after the incident first blew up with the bizarre video posting and the nude pictures on Facebook regarding the mayor. The newspaper ran a story about the mayor’s proposed budget on Sunday afternoon.
KTUU ran a brief story that discredited Athens on Saturday, mainly relying on the official police statement that an investigation turned up no credible evidence that Berkowitz was involved in illegal sexual activities.
It’s in stark contrast to how the media treated former Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, when he was let go from his job after a series of uncomfortable and flirtatious text exchanges between him and an employee in the Governor’s Office.
The media was also quick to report unsubstantiated allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But today, it’s keeping mum about Democrat Mayor Ethan Berkowitz.
I don’t buy into the declaration of “It’s time to end the Permanent Fund dividend.”
We are spending in 2021 over $12 billion on state government.
We have less than three quarters of a million people.
I couldn’t help but think about our schizophrenic state constitution. You know the one that provides that all political power is inherent in the people but gives authority to the Legislature over all the natural resources belonging to the state, including land and water, for the maximum benefit of the people.
How have those benefits worked out?
Billions upon billions gone. Zilch. Kapoot. Vapor. No discernible evidence the money was ever used on anything.
How many boondoggle projects have wasted our natural resource development revenues over the past 40 plus years?
All conceived and led by an insatiable state government and administrations.
We don’t have much to show for it, except we have now the most incompetent state government ever in the history of the state.
It keeps setting exemplary failure levels across the board nationally, especially, in our two most major budget items, education and healthcare.
In our nation, Alaska has one of the worst education performance outcomes as well as one of the highest costs per student. Alaska has the highest cost for health care in the nation. Our state university is an embarrassment with a dismal graduation rate. The list of state operated failures is only surpassed by our denial to correct them.
Yet we boast one of the highest cost per capita for a state government.
And it’s time to end the PFD?
I have personally seen the benefits of the PFD to Alaska families needing to make ends meet during a bad winter, families saving their PFD’s for their kids’ education and saving their PFDs for a down payment on a house amongst other wonderful outcomes because of the PFD.
Sorry, I can’t buy into the progressive double speak of “Let’s end the PFD,” when we as a state have failed to cut an over bloated, ill managed and demonstrably inept state government; when we have failed to reform an education system which promises our children only one outcome, failure; when we have ignored the cost of health care to the point that private insurance carriers find it more cost effective to send patients for treatment to the Lower 48 with a companion, first class airfare, and per diem, rather than treat locally.
At the beginning of Alaska’s worst economic debacle, COVID-19, our state government showed its disdain for its citizens by continuing to be essential while the private sector was non-essential. When given the opportunity to come to the rescue, the Alaska State Legislature refused to pay the Alaska people their 2016 through 2020 PFD balances.
I wasn’t going to say anything, but the Communists of this state want the control of our natural resources, our political process and most of all our children.
I for one am standing and saying “NO!” to ending the PFD.
Let’s vote for a 32nd State Legislature to include men and women who will protect the PFD and reduce state spending.
Michael Tavoliero is a realtor at Core Real Estate Group in Eagle River, is active in the Alaska Republican Party and chairs Eaglexit.
Here’s what we know: Maria Athens, who describes herself on her Facebook page as news anchor and executive producer for Fox, ABC, CW, and Newsnet Alaska, is in jail. She was arrested and booked at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center on Friday.
Athens was charged with Criminal Mischief, Assault 4, and disorderly conduct. MRAK reported: “Athens had been preparing to broadcast an explosive story about Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, but the station manager, who was said to be her fiancé, was preventing her from going forward with the story.”
On Friday, Athens posted a video at 12:08 pm on her fan Facebook page. Athens told viewers: “Breaking news, according to reliable sources, Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has his male genitalia posted on an underaged girl’s website.”
I don’t know Athens and have never met her as far as I am aware. I have viewed some of her videos and they clearly carry a Theresa Obermeyer vibe.
Older Alaskans will remember Obermeyer as an eccentric, excitable, and passionate conspiracy theorist who would often make a scene at school board meetings.
If you’ve watched the Athens video, and I’m assuming most readers have, you’ll notice her excitement over the news she is teasing. If the story is true, and that is an enormously huge if, showing that much excitement and enthusiasm over a story of a young girl being exposed to the genitalia of an adult male tells us a lot about Athens.
And then there was her tacky and tasteless boasting at the end of the video: “You heard it here first.”
Journalist worth their salt fully understand their power to destroy politicians when they break incriminating stories about them that are sexual in nature. Athens’ gleefulness in her video is unsettling and disturbing.
After the video posted, my email machine and phone blew up with people asking me what I knew. I’ve since talked to several people and have heard some fairly crazy things. Not a single person I talked with would go on record so I can’t report any of it. To be honest, I don’t know what to believe at this point.
I do know what Athens did was wrong in enthusiastically and excitably teasing a story, without offering evidence to back it up and if true, would destroy a man’s reputation.
If Athens truly had the goods on Berkowitz, she should have calmly announced she’s working on a major story involving Anchorage’s mayor and ask the viewers to watch the evening newscast. But her hastily recorded tease with no evidence to back it up was a breach of journalism ethics.
Several Facebook commenters challenged Athens demanding proof. Initially, Athens responded to those requests with profanity dropping the f-word and insulting them.
She later posted a picture of a man who was nude from behind posting: Mayor Ethan Berkowitz #TakeThatHaters.
The video, which as of Sunday afternoon has been shared 974 times with more than 1,000 comments, is still up on Athens’ Facebook page.
The mayor’s office issued a press release stating the general manager of the station Athens worked for, Scott Centers, “has emphatically disavowed his employee’s comments.”
Yet as of Sunday afternoon, Centers, nor anyone with Coastal Television, has posted a retraction or clarification on their website. On Friday, at 9 pm, the station ran a rerun of a former newscast in place of the newscast where Athens promised to break her story about Berkowitz.
At this point the story is gone so viral, the mayor should call a news conference no later than Monday and answer directly questions from reporters over the video. He should tell us directly if the nude picture Athens posted was indeed of him and if so, how did she get it.
There may be no legitimacy to it and we all certainly should hope that’s the case. But the mayor’s constituents need to hear directly from him on this matter.
The Anchorage Daily News, as of this writing, Sunday afternoon, has yet to report on the very story everyone’s wondering about. Do you think there would be a media blackout from the paper if the story involved, say, a conservative Attorney General? Not bloody likely.
Channel Two News finally weighed in on the story on Saturday when Maria Downy posted to her Facebook page: “We did not report on the story since we don’t report on unsubstantiated rumors (which there were against both involved) but now it has led to criminal charges of assault against the reporter.”
But Athens was arrested on Friday afternoon and KTUU didn’t have the story on any of its Friday evening newscasts. What changed? As much as Downey and crew wanted to keep a lid on the story, they obviously changed course after they saw how viral it went on Facebook.
It’s painfully obvious KTUU and the ADN are pro-Berkowitz in their coverage. Refusing to cover the story confirms their ongoing built-in bias.
Athens is expected to be released from jail on Monday and at some point, she’ll have to back up her claims against the mayor.
If she doesn’t, we’ll all know this was nothing more than a publicity stunt by a journalist who should have never been hired in the first place.
Dan Fagan hosts the number one rated morning drive radio show weekdays on Newsradio 650 KENI. He splits his time between Anchorage and New Orleans.
Candidate Paul Dale pulled the “Hitler” and “white supremacist” cards out of the deck in trying to flip House District 29 — Kenai — to the Democrats.
In what critics are calling the dirtiest gutter politics seen on the Peninsula this election cycle, Dale said Rep. Ben Carpenter believes Hilter was not a white supremacist.
That is not what Carpenter said, but the lawmaker learned a good lesson the day he gave an interview to the Anchorage Daily News. The story rolled out with the Hitler narrative and went around the mainstream media far and wide.
What Carpenter actually said was that fear drives bad decisions, and the Legislature was being driven into bad decisions over COVID-19 by their fear, in the same way that Hitler was driven by his fear of “others” who were not Germans. Carpenter could have said it more eloquently, he later admitted.
But Dale didn’t want to discuss facts; he was busy smearing Carpenter as a racist.
Dale is running as a pretend independent for the House seat, but all of his supporters are Democrats and he is paying thousands of dollars to the Alaska Democratic Party for campaign support.
His “Hilter” accusations about Carpenter are such personal and vicious attacks that former Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock raised the question about why Dale has allowed himself to be used by the Democrats this way.
“Why are the Democrats not running on issues? Why is every Democrat campaign a personal attack on their opponents. It’s because the Democrat platform is deeply unpopular,” Babcock said.
It’s possible that the viciousness is matched by the odds of Dale winning: Only two districts in the state have fewer Democrats than District 29 — District 30 and District 8. It’s a safe seat for a Republican, which is why Dale may be reaching deep into the bag of dirty tricks to deceive voters.
Linking Carpenter to white supremacy because he understands history with more nuance than most is akin to calling Dale a supporter of child sacrifice because he supports state-funded abortion, Babcock said.
Neither candidates Glenda Ledford nor Doug Holler received over 40 percent of the vote during the Oct. 6 Wasilla municipal election, and now there will be a runoff on Oct. 27.
The original candidate list included Stuart Graham, who has been eliminated for the runoff. Holler received 238 votes, with Ledford getting 210, and Graham receiving 166.
That put Holler in the lead with 38.6 percent of the vote, and Ledford second at 34 percent.
The Wasilla City Council is scheduled to certify the rest of the election results at the Oct. 12 regular meeting.
The winners for City Council are Timothy Johnson, who ran unopposed for Seat C, and Simon Brown for Seat D.
