Liberty University has tapped one of Alaska’s most well-known religious leaders to steer the Christian university through some rough waters. The school in Lynchburg, Va. asked former Anchorage Baptist Temple Senior Pastor Jerry Prevo to serve as acting president of the university.
Jerry Falwell Jr. took an indefinite leave of absence, after he posted photos on Instagram that showed him and his wife’s assistant posing for the camera with their pants half unzipped. The woman was visibly pregnant and Falwell said it was meant to be a joke. He also said the drink in his hand was not wine but “black water.”
Prevo has served as chairman of the board of trustees for Liberty, which is the largest evangelical college in the nation, since 2003, and retired from ABT last year for health reasons after 47 years of church leadership.
“We have a world-class leadership team at Liberty University who will support me in running our operations on a day-to-day basis and fulfilling our spiritual mission unabated: Training Champions for Christ,” Prevo said in a statement.
“Please pray for us as well as the Falwell family as we embark on our academic year and so we may continue to be united in our common purpose and our faith in Christ,” he said.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has made an appointment with the Berkowitz Administration after receiving several confidential complaints about the Municipality of Anchorage’s use of CARES Act funds for purchasing housing and treatment centers for Anchorage’s street people.
The Berkowitz Administration is preparing to shove through a $22.5 million purchase of four buildings in Anchorage, and $21 million for first responders payroll reserve, which had already been budgeted in 2020.
Assembly member Jamie Allard has an amendment to strike the $21 million and instead make $18 million available for small businesses in the hospitality, tourism industry and small businesses.
$2.9 million would go for landlord and tenant relief, under the Allard plan, and $100,000 for the Eagle River Chamber of Commerce to make up for the lost revenues from the Bear Paw Festival.
According to the Department of Treasury Inspector General, the feds have spoken with the State of Alaska and have set two options for meetings this week with municipal officials. Assembly members have been notified.
The meetings will take place either Wednesday or Thursday, but the Assembly is taking up the spending package on Tuesday.
A grassroots group of Anchorage residents who have become alarmed at the mayor’s many restrictions and prohibitions will gather at the Loussac Library on Tuesday evening to protest.
The protest begins at 4:30 pm, before the Anchorage Assembly will arrive to discuss several major issues — all out of sight of the citizens, who are not permitted into the building, per the orders of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz.
“Take a stand. In 20 years, I will not tell my children that I watched their basic human rights being stripped away and I did nothing. I will tell them I stood up and showed up and gave it my all,” wrote organizer Elizabeth Welsh, who is the co-founder of Open Alaska, a group that started on Facebook and has 7,000 members.
Welsh says she doesn’t know how many will show up, but expects at least 500 based on the strength of the response she’s gotten.
Among items on the agenda for the Assembly is the $22.5 million in expenditures requested by the mayor for the purchase of four buildings to create a network of services for Anchorage vagrants and street people.
The package to purchase and renovate the buildings for Anchorage street people has come under scrutiny, as a portion of the funds would come from CARES Act monies intended to be used to alleviate economic hardships due to the COVID-19 virus. The municipality is still sitting on 85 percent of the $156 million it was given by the federal government.
The Berkowitz Administration is bringing down the legal and economic hammer on Kriner’s Diner.
In a filing with the Anchorage Superior Court, the mayor is asking that the diner and the restaurant’s attorney be ruled in contempt of court and fined $15,000 a day for every day it remains open in defiance of Emergency Order 15, which the mayor enacted 10 days ago, closing all restaurants to indoor dining for the entire month of August.
The only indoor dining allowed in Anchorage is at the Anchorage Airport, where service continues with social distancing and enhanced protective measures. It is on State property, out of the reach of the mayor’s power.
Judge Eric Aarseth on Friday ruled in favor of the Municipality, which asked for a temporary restraining order to force the restaurant at C Street and Fireweed Way to close. The judge wrote:
“The Plaintiff has demonstrated that the Anchorage public will suffer in-eparable harm by allowing businesses such as Kriner’s Diner to violate Emergency Order – I5. Specifically, that indoor dining exacerbates the risk of the spread of COVID-19. If infected with COVID-19, individuals face a significant risk of serious harm to their health to include death. The economic interests of Kriner’s Diner and businesses similarly situated are adequately protected by the ability to continue business operations by serving food outdoors, curbside, to-go orders or for delivery.”
But on Saturday, the food kept being served at Kriner’s Diner and the mayor’s attorneys were drafting language to get a contempt-of-court order for actions the city calls “egregious.” Andy Kriner says if he is forced to close again, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to reopen.
The municipality used postings in the Facebook group called “Save Anchorage” to demonstrate that the action was willful, and quoted a post from the Kriners’ attorney, Blake Quackenbush, who cited it as a peaceful protest of an historic nature.
The municipal attorneys further cite that Quackenbush himself is encouraging his clients to disobey the court order. The attorneys quoted Quackenbush’s writing on Facebook, “We have a right to work and support our families and communities. Please, if you are healthy, get out and go to businesses and encourage businesses to have the courage to work. It’s crazy to think that we are fighting for a right to work and support our families.”
The Municipality is also seeking sanctions against Quackenbush for not advising his clients to follow the law.
The mayor is not seeking jail time for Andy Kriner and his wife Norann Kriner, but does seek a fine of $5,000 a day for each of them and $5,000 per day for their attorney, for a total of $15,000 per day, plus over $1,400 in legal fees for the city.
The public has shown broad support for the Kriner’s in their quest to keep their restaurant open during the mayor’s emergency shutdown of all in-dining establishments. The mayor says the city is in a precarious place with COVID-19 and that restaurants and bars must close their doors to all but take-out and outdoor dining. All other businesses remain open, but he has ordered people to work from home. There is no evidence that his administration is enforcing that portion of his order.
In addition to lines of people wanting to dine at Kriner’s to support the restaurant, an MRAK poll on Facebook has gone overwhelmingly in favor of the Kriner’s, with over 5,200 votes logged so far. The poll ends Tuesday:
In response, as of Monday, the restaurant will only do limited take-out food. There’s no beating City Hall on this one for the Kriners.
A protest is planned for Tuesday at the Loussac Library, where the Assembly meets. The protests is general in nature, but the emergency orders of the mayor are a key feature. A large crowd is expected to attend the protest, which will take place prior to the Assembly’s regularly scheduled meeting.
With the school year beginning and coronavirus not yet gone, getting America’s kids back to school full-time presents a major challenge. With over 50 million K-12 students in 130,000 schools and 14,000 school districts, a variety of plans have been advanced.
Predictably, in some places, some will use fear of the virus to leverage political gains.
While the federal government wants schools to reopen, some school districts are bowing to teachers who demand more money or threaten strikes. Teachers’ unions in some major cities under the umbrella of demandsafeschools.org have conditioned their return to the classroom on implementation of “racially just” schools.
This includes defunding police, federal bailouts of schools, canceling rents and mortgages, and a moratorium on charter schools and standardized testing.
In Alaska, Anchorage reversed plans for part-time classroom instruction and will conduct all classes remotely. Mat-Su and Ketchikan announced fulltime school 4 or 5 days per week. Haines and Skagway plan a hybrid approach combining online instruction with in-person classes.
Despite CDC guidance advocating school re-opening and a DHSS-established medium-level Covid risk environment, the Juneau School District inexplicably cancelled their hybrid plan in favor of a distance learning model. Reaction on social media was immediate and emotional. Concerned commenters noted “People will have to quit their jobs”, “This is going to impair learning for so many of our children”, “How can JSD ensure participation”, and “I can’t imagine the stress on parents.”
Proponents of in-classroom instruction worry about the damaging social, emotional, and economic effects of keeping students at home.
A July 29 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine by academic experts in education, epidemiology, and global health from Harvard and the University of St. Andrews concludes that children denied in-person instruction “will lose out on essential educational, social, and developmental benefits; neither the economy nor the health care system will be able to return to full strength given parents’ caretaking responsibilities; and profound racial and socioeconomic injustices will be further exacerbated. We believe that safely reopening schools full-time for all elementary school children should therefore be a top national priority.”
On the other side, many who oppose re-opening schools claim that students, teachers, and their families risk death by returning kids to classrooms. It appears, however, that these concerns are based more on fear than science.
The experience of countries where schools re-opened (or never closed) demonstrates that susceptibility, infectiousness, or both, are lower among younger children. School re-openings haven’t led to increased case counts in Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Taiwan, or Singapore. The United Kingdom, which leads Europe in Covid-19 cases and deaths, plans to reopen schools full time this month with appropriate precautions.
In Alaska, children aged 10 years or younger comprise only 4.7% of all COVID-19 cases – fewer students than comprise one classroom. Only one person under age 19 has been hospitalized. No deaths have been recorded for anyone under the age of 30.
In the first week of August, Alaska’s COVID-19 resident case numbers and deaths remain among the lowest of all states. Alaska had 3,280 total cases with only 2,407 active, 32 current hospitalizations, and 24 total deaths – with approximately 58 percent of all cases concentrated in the Anchorage area.
Juneau’s numbers are even healthier. At time of this writing, of Juneau’s 96 total resident coronavirus cases, only 8 were active with no current COVID-19 hospitalizations, and no local deaths.
How does this translate into the necessity to close Juneau schools?
Clearly, a “one-size fits all” approach makes little sense when Covid-19 statistics vary widely among different regions and communities.
Remote learning, especially for young children, is a poor substitute for full-time in-classroom instruction. Younger children require monitoring and continuity of instruction as well as help navigating required technology. Parents forced to stay at home with their children are often ill-equipped to provide it.
Science, education, and economic factors, therefore, argue in favor of full-time classroom instruction. This is most critical for elementary school age children – presuming community health resources are not over-taxed. And that certainly seems to be the case in Juneau and many other Alaska communities.
Teachers with risk factors can be excused and tasked with online learning or other assignments. Some families may opt to keep their children home. As much as possible, these situations should be accommodated.
But, if we believe children come first, then fears must be overcome in favor of science and common sense.
Win Gruening retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations.
Mayor Ethan Berkowitz tried to explain his leadership decisions during his press briefing on COVID-19 on Friday. He seesawed between calm and reassuring to emotional and angry.
He pleaded. He seethed. He broke down and cried. He said it was a “long eventful week.” There had been protests against his administration. There had been civil disobedience against his mandates.
Berkowitz said the number of coronavirus cases is still too high in Anchorage, and that the city is in a “precarious” place with the virus.
People need to cooperate with the city’s mandates to shut down restaurants. But he could not explain why he didn’t shut down gyms and seafood processing plants, even though he was asked by reporters. He deflected the question to his chief health officer Natasha Pineda, who dodged the question and moved on. It was her last day, anyway, and no reporter would hold the mayor’s feet to the fire on the question of why some businesses are getting special treatment, and why bingo halls are on the shutdown list.
One bright spot for him for the week: Pineda revealed that University of Alaska Anchorage polling shows most Anchorage residents agree with masks and shutdowns.
Berkowitz said he was glad to see that masks are now normal in Anchorage. He said that some people chaffed at first, but now it’s just a normal thing to put a mask on.
“Substantially, almost everybody has started to wear masks,” he said. “That’s making a real difference. That’s making us safer.”
The mayor said more help is on the way financially from the federal government, but failed to explain why his administration is sitting on 85 percent of the CARES Act funds it has already received.
Rather than dispersing it to businesses that are being crushed by regulation, the Berkowitz Administration is hoping to hold onto much of the funds in order to roll out a massive plan for the city’s vagrant population, which will use a combination of federal funds, the new alcohol tax, and proceeds from the sale of the city’s electric utility.
The mayor acknowledged the restaurant/tourism industry has borne the brunt of his closures and that this Tuesday the Assembly would meet to discuss a relief package for the hospitality and tourism sector.
“We’re doing everything we can to make sure that the CARES funds that have been released to the municipality will be disbursed to places where they can do the most good,” he said. The municipality must spend the money before the end of the year or return it, and it cannot receive more funds from the federal government until is begins to let go of what it has. But to date, only 15 percent has been released to help people in Anchorage.
“We’ve already put out more than $1 million to rental and mortgage assistance,” Berkowitz said. The municipality has received over $156 million in CARES funding. “We’ve disbursed already $1 million in business assistance.”
He mentioned another $10 million of assistance for child care providers, for which applications have already started to come in.
Berkowitz also showed anger at misinformation about his relationships with restaurants that seem to receive special favors with street closures so they could set up outdoor dining, and advance notice that restaurant closures were coming, so they could clear out their inventory. His voice shook as he said that his restaurants — Snow City, South, and Spenard Roadhouse — had no special information about the closures.
Must Read Alaska reported last week that Berkowitz has shared business interests with one of the owners of Crush. While he doesn’t own Crush, one of his business partners of his other restaurant entities does own a portion of the wine bar, for whom the city blocked off G Street to set up tents for dining. The city has also blocked off parking next to Snow City Cafe so it could have outdoor seating on Fourth Avenue.
He said it is false that his restaurants had advance notice and that those spreading that information were leaping to the wrong conclusions. He said he was not angry, but disappointed, and that those discussing it online had turned it into a partisan issue.
“What I am gratified by is how much compliance there has been. How the overwhelming number of businesses in this community are doing what’s necessary. I know it’s easy to follow the outliers. They have received a disproportionate amount of publicity for what they are doing,” he said.
He said it has become partisan and that science should matter.
“Those who are politicizing a response to a pandemic are really jeopardizing public health, and they’re also putting our economic wellbeing at great risk. And they ought to be held accountable for it,” he said.
Then he expressed anger at the nation:
“You look across the world and we are a laggard in terms of our ability to deal with this pandemic. You know, this is the United States of America, and we’re supposed to be a leader. We put a man on the moon. We solved all kinds of problems. And we’re behaving almost like a a failed state here. And that is the result of people injecting politics into what should be a rational decision.”
Almost all of the businesses are complying with AO-15, the mayor said. As for Kriner’s Diner and other restaurants who are defying him, he said it was a heavy day for him, but the law has to apply to everybody.
“There is no joy in this decision,” he said. “I’m hoping with concerted effort this community can work harder to bring the numbers down so we can get to a position where we can relax some of these restrictions.”
Berkowitz didn’t say what the acceptable target is for allowing restaurants and bars to reopen, and no reporter asked him to be more specific on how many cases of COVID-19 are acceptable.
As for next steps on Kriner’s Diner, he turned that question over to Kate Vogel, his municipal attorney, who indicated the city will take a harsh position against Kriner’s, should the restaurant persist in remaining open.
One reporter pitched a softball question to Berkowitz about how his children are doing. He paused for a long time, and worked to compose himself as he said it has been hard to have his children hear things about him that are not true. His voice broke.
“The virus poses a lethal threat to all of us,” Berkowitz said.
DEMOCRATS’ ACT BARS NATIVE CORPORATIONS FROM GETTING AID
Rep. Chuck Kopp, a Republican incumbent in District 24, says he supports House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s HEROES Act, according to a recent communique from ASEA, the largest public employee union in Alaska.
The HEROES Act is the Democrats version of the next CARES Act relief package for Americans suffering from the economic impact of government and economic shutdowns.
“The HEROES Act is a critical piece of legislation that will better address the needs of local government and have provisions in there including hazard pay – [Public Employees] are certainly in high risk situations – we have hundreds of groups of employees on the frontline that are making sure our state is running during a very difficult time,” Kopp was quoted as saying in the union’s press release dated June 18.
Kopp was part of a group of seven Republicans who left the Republican House majority in 2019 to form up a coalition with Democrats. In doing so, they gave enormous power to House Democrats, a decision that played out when House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Democrat, made his appointment to the Redistricting Board earlier last month. The person making the appointment to the board should have been a Republican since the Republicans had a clear majority in the House before the seven gave away that authority.
The HEROES Act has a number of controversial provisions and, offered by the Democrats in the House, is more or less dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate:
It bars Alaska Native Corporations from receiving aid.
The bill extends the $600-per-week unemployment “bonuses” through the end of January 2021. This provision is being blamed for employees refusing to return to work.
Another $1,200 check and up to $6,000 per family would be released.
Another $1 trillion wold go to state and local authorities.
The bill expedites green cards for migrant workers.
The bill overhauls banking for cannabis businesses.
$5 million is included for Congress’ tech equipment.
HEROES takes money back retroactively from the CARES Act.
The 1,800-page stimulus bill may have still more surprises in it.
McConnell called the bill an “unserious product from an unserious majority,” which was loaded with non-pandemic related pork spending. It passed with a nine-vote advantage, with 14 Democrats voting against it.
The HEALS Act is the Republican legislation for another rescue package, and negotiations are ongoing between Democrats and Republicans.
While the battle over whether Anchorage restaurants can remain open under Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’s Emergency Order 15 heats up, Berkowitz has submitted to the Assembly a resolution requesting funding for a $7 million tourism and hospitality industry relief program.
The state has allocated nearly $157 million in CARES Act funds to the city in three payments – $117 million, $20 million and third, $20 million. Each of the last two payments is contingent upon 80 percent spending of the previous payment.
Berkowitz, facing a sticky political wicket as some eateries have balked at obeying his order to shut down inside dining, is asking the Assembly, slated to meet today in a special session at 1:30 p.m., for $7 million “to be distributed to eligible small businesses and/or employees impacted 30 by COVID-19.”
The mayor is asking for a first CARES Act disbursement of $5 milllion, with another $2 million when the city receives its second payment from the federal funds. The disbursements would be distributed “either directly by the MOA or by a nonprofit partner,” the resolution stipulates.
The $7 million is a start, we suppose, in aiding industries crippled by COVID-19 and efforts to thwart the virus, but whether it will put out the economic and political fires Berkowitz’s emergency orders have ignited remains to be seen.
Must Read Alaska has learned from two sources that the mayor has directed Municipal Light and Power to shut down the power supply for Kriner’s Diner, the little cafe on C Street and Fireweed Way that has refused to shut down, despite Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ Emergency Order 15.
MRAK reached Andy Kriner this afternoon, and he said the power was on, but that he learned that if he was not closed down by 4 pm, ML&P would shut off electricity, per the mayor’s direction.
Kriner’s court date was today, and Judge Eric Aarseth told him that he must obey the order of the mayor to close his inside dining operations. Outdoor dining and curbside pickup is still allowed in Anchorage, but indoor dining is forbidden under the mayor’s rules. The judge stated the order has the weight of law.
Kriner said his diner is not a good location for outdoor dining since it is on a busy, noisy intersection, and the food he serves is not a fit for take-out.
Kriner remained open long after the court hearing and closed by 3 pm because the cafe was running out of food.
The establishment has been popular since the mayor’s shutdown orders went into effect on Monday and has run out of inventory every day this week.
Kriner said he planned to open on Saturday morning, as usual. He also said that ML&P workers were spotted on his property today near his outdoor freezer. Friends of Kriner’s were rounding up generators on Friday and rumors were flying on Facebook.
Also today, Wings and Things had a stop-work order taped to its windows. That restaurant, too, has defied the mayor’s orders to shut down, as has The Red Chair, Jackie’s Place, and Little Dipper Diner. At the airport, restaurants continue to serve indoor dining, as they are on property owned by the state.
Jackie’s Place wrote on Facebook:
I have had conversation. I have my loyals that come every day. I have been on top of what it has taken to stay open. Open, close, 25%, 50%….. I’ve had some days to think about this. I have spoke with folks, with Andy, and many others….this morning, my staff. Today we will take a stand with what we feel is fair … Masks upon entering please…. We will be open for business 8-2 today.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy weighed in on the current status of Alaska hospitals and COVID-19, with this message on Twitter, in an apparent attempt to quash the fear-mongering about hospital capacity.
