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‘Faces of Choice’ ad that wasn’t shown during Super Bowl

Suzanne Downing
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‘Faces of Choice’ ad that wasn’t shown during Super Bowl

A powerful video created to be shown during the Super Bowl LIV broadcast on Fox TV was rejected by the network, but the Faces of Choice organization may have the last word, as hundreds of thousands of people have now seen the ad on social media and in churches — and the group didn’t have to pay $5.6 million for 30 seconds of prime time airtime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1YciyJG3WQ

Several versions of the ad are in circulation on social media.

Lyric Gillett, founder of Faces of Choice, told reporters that Fox strung her along since July, but ultimately blocked her ad, while allowing ads that celebrated drag queens and political candidates.

The ad, which features the stories of real people who survived abortions, was also shown in mega churches around the country on Sunday morning, prior to the big game.

SB 115: Alaska motor fuel tax would double in July

Suzanne Downing
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SB 115: Alaska motor fuel tax would double in July

SB 115, sponsored by Sen. Click Bishop of Fairbanks, would raise the motor fuel tax from 8 cents to 16 cents beginning in July (and from 5 cents to 10 cents for marine fuel), a plan that would raise about $35 million for the state treasury.

The Senate Finance Committee will hear details of the plan on Monday during its scheduled meeting at 9 am. Public testimony will be heard. Introduced last year, it has no other committees of referral, and may be fast-tracked for approval this session.

Currently, the 8-cent tax is levied on diesel and gasoline purchased for highway use. Diesel and gas for marine use is taxed at 5 cents per gallon, aviation fuel is 4.7 cents per gallon, and jet fuel is 3.2 cents per gallon.

Under the proposal, the tax rate would double for highway and marine fuels, but not increase for aviation or jet fuels.

The state fuel tax is levied in addition to any local sales taxes. The State has a refined fuel surcharge of .95 cents per gallon, appling to refined fuel when it is first sold, transferred, or used in Alaska.

Alaska’s fuel tax rate was enacted in 1970 and has remained unchanged, which means it has lost 82 percent of its purchasing power, Bishop notes. With the proposed increase, Alaska would still have the lowest marine fuel tax in the nation, but instead of the lowest gas tax, it would be the third lowest.

According to a recent report by the American Petroleum Institute, the national average for state motor fuel tax is 25.01 cents for gasoline and 25.86 cents for diesel.

The additional revenue for the State would be placed into the General Fund, but directed to a specific account. AS 43.40.010 directs taxes levied on fuel for a) watercraft, b) road vehicles, and c) off-road vehicles be deposited into three separate accounts that are designated for water and harbor facilities, maintenance of highways and construction of highway projects, and trails and shelter construction and maintenance.

EXEMPTIONS

Exempt from the tax is fuel sold to heat private homes or commercial buildings; for use by federal, state and local government agencies, and charitable institutions; for sale or transfer between qualified dealers; for use in foreign flights (jet fuel), and exports; and for fuel sold as bunker fuel (residual fuel oil or #6 fuel oil).

Motor fuel for off-road use (other than fuel used for aviation or watercraft) is eligible for a partial refund of 6 cents per gallon. Refund claims must be submitted within one year of the date of purchase.

…And they’re off: Anchorage candidates set for ballot

Suzanne Downing
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…And they’re off: Anchorage candidates set for ballot

ALSO, THE 5 PERCENT TAX ON ALCOHOL RE-VOTE

The Jan. 31 filing deadline for the April municipal election in Anchorage has come and gone and the ballot is set. The last day to withdraw is Feb. 4. Ballots will be in the mail to voters on March 17 and the mail-in election ends on April 7.

In addition to candidates, the Anchorage Assembly is asking voters to once again approve an alcohol tax. Voters turned it down just a year ago, but the Assembly liberal majority wants to try again.

This time, the question on the ballot has a lower threshold: Only 50 percent plus one vote is needed to pass the 5 percent tax that is estimated to raise up to $15 million per year for social services such as substance abuse, child abuse, homeless services and other public safety issues.

Only Assembly members John Weddleton and Crystal Kennedy opposed sending the tax question to the ballot.

Alaska already has alcohol tax, including the highest wine tax in the nation, at $2.50 a gallon. Beer is $1.07 a gallon and hard liquor is $12.80 a gallon. Other communities have alcohol taxes, such as the 3 percent booze tax in Juneau, which is added onto the overall 5 percent sales tax to make alcohol taxed at 8 percent.

Here are the candidates who will appear on the ballot:

District 1 – Seat B – Downtown Anchorage: Incumbent Christopher Constant is unchallenged. A registered Democrat, he was elected in 2017.

District 2 – Seat C – Eagle River/Chugiak:  Jamie Allard, Stephany Jeffers, and Roger Branson have filed. Incumbent Fred Dyson did not file. Allard, a Republican, ran for House District 14, losing the primary to Kelly Merrick in 2018. She is an Army veteran and worked in the Dunleavy Administration’s first year. Jeffers unsuccessfully ran for House District 12 as a Democrat in 2018. She is registered as an undeclared. Branson, a Republican, is new to campaigning, and has a website that explores his struggles and victories with mental illness.

District 3 – Seat E – West Anchorage: Incumbent Austin Quinn-Davidson, MoHagani Magnetek, and Nick Danger have filed. Quinn-Davidson is registered as nonpartisan but is part of the liberal majority on the Assembly. Magnetek is a flamboyant activist who is running on a transgender activism platform. Danger is Republican who chairs the Alaska Safety Advisory Council; he ran unsuccessfully for the Assembly seat in 2018, getting less than 2 percent of the vote in a crowded field.

District 4 – Seat G – Midtown Anchorage: Incumbent Felix Rivera, Christine Hill and Enrico Tutaan have filed. Rivera is Democrat and part of the liberal majority on the Assembly. Hill is Republican activist in her second run for Assembly. Tutaan is undeclared, and works as a success coach at Anchorage School District.

District 5 – Seat I – East Anchorage: Incumbent Pete Peterson, David Walker and Monty Dyson have filed. Peterson is Democrat who served in the Legislature and is a liberal vote on the Assembly. Walker and Dyson are Republicans. Dyson is an assistant pastor at Anchorage Baptist Temple.

District 6 – Seat K – South Anchorage: Incumbent Suzanne LaFrance and Rick Castillo have filed. LaFrance is nonpartisan and a liberal member of the Assembly. “Rick for the Six” Castillo is Republican and a veteran who works in telecommunications.

School Board Seat C: Incumbent Dave Donley and James Smallwood have filed. Donley is Republican who also has served in the Alaska House and Senate. Smallwood is Democrat who has run for office before but not successfully.

School Board Seat D: Incumbent Andy Holleman, Phil Isley, and Dr. John C. Cates have filed. Holleman, Isley and Cates are undeclared.

Mike Gravel cries foul on DNC; has evidence on tape

Suzanne Downing
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Mike Gravel cries foul on DNC; has evidence on tape

FORMER ALASKA SENATOR SAYS BLOOMBERG BUYS WAY IN

Former presidential candidate Mike Gravel says the Democratic National Committee emphatically told him that they could not change the rules for any one candidate when they disqualified him from a debate last year.

Six months later, the party changed the rules for billionaire Michael Bloomberg so he can take part in the upcoming Democratic debate.

In July of 2019, the Gravel campaign contacted the DNC after receiving over 65,000 unique donors, which was a threshold needed to be on the debate stage.

Gravel, a former Alaska U.S. Senator, was making his second run for president in 2019, and although he had enough unique donors, he was disqualified from the debates for not having high enough poll ratings.

 Back then, the DNC required candidates to poll at 1 percent or above in three DNC-approved polls.

But those polls were excluding Gravel’s name, the candidate pointed out. Gravel is a far-left Democrat and considered an outsider. He said he never thought he could win, but wanted to steer the debates to issues that matter to him; he is strongly anti-war.

[Read: Gravel meets donor threshold for Democratic debates]

“On the call, a senior official swore that they would never change the debate rules for any candidate. Six months later, they did exactly that,” the Gravel team wrote.

“We wanted to give everybody as many chances as we could,” says the senior DNC official, who is not named on the tape. “And I think that it’s a very generous set of rules. But I think the broader issue is we can’t change them later on for the benefit of any candidate. That’s kind of our rule No. 1 for us here, and it doesn’t matter who it is. We didn’t change them for Governor Bullock, and we can’t change them for anybody.”

The Democrats in January changed the rules to allow former New York former Mayor Michael Bloomberg to take part in the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas, Nevada. The DNC eliminated its individual donor threshold for Bloomberg, who is a self-funded candidate.

Democrats like Michael Moore pointed out that the DNC didn’t change the rules for minority candidates like Julian Castro or Cory Booker, but was responding to the millions of dollars Bloomberg could bring to the defeat of President Donald Trump. And top DNC party officials are deeply worried that Sen. Bernie Sanders is gaining traction across the polls. They dread having the avowed Socialist at the top of their ticket, and Joe Biden is looking more damaged by the day with the fallout from the impeachment of the president and the scandal involving Biden’s son’s associations in Ukraine.

A nationwide Hill-HarrisX poll showed Bloomberg surging past Sen. Elizabeth Warren to 3rd place, which has to be a disappointment for the Warren campaign, which has invested heavily in a ground game in Iowa for months. The two had been even in third place in December.

  • Biden 29%
  • Sanders 17% (-2)
  • Bloomberg 11% (+4)
  • Warren 9% (-2)
  • Buttigieg 5%
  • Yang 4%
  • Steyer 4%
  • Klobuchar 2%
  • Gabbard 2%
  • Bennet 2%
  • Delaney 1%
  • Patrick 1%G

Plan to fast-track signatures on recall petition hits molasses in January

Suzanne Downing
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Plan to fast-track signatures on recall petition hits molasses in January

The Recall Dunleavy Committee had a rough week. After being jubilant over a huge set of wins on Jan. 10, when the committee’s lawyers swept the tables in Superior Court, the case to remove the governor had run into a wall.

[Read: Can Gov. Dunleavy get a fair shake in this court?]

The Superior Court judge who had just ruled in favor of allowing the group to start collecting signatures on a recall petition on Feb. 10, changed his mind. He sent the matter on up to the Alaska Supreme Court, washing his hands of further controversy.

But by then, the recall committee had scheduled training sessions for phone bank volunteers and signature gatherers, and had rented the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage for three days for a Recall Dunleavy festival, where the push to get over 71,000 signatures would get off to a strong start in mid-February.

Attorneys Jahna Lindemuth and Scott Kendall, former attorney general and former chief of staff to Gov. Bill Walker, are now heading up the recall of Dunleavy. For them, this is personal.

They had been cocks of the walk in the courthouse on Jan. 10, when the judge went through the motions of oral arguments, and then granted them an insta-win.

But if they started out January as lions of the court, they ended January as lambs.

This ruling was a big setback, and possibly a costly one, for the plans to stage their major media fanfare on Feb. 10, when the recall activists and paid employees would descend on the Division of Elections to pick up the petition booklets, while knowing full well the Supreme Court had not yet calendared the case.

The cart, it seems, was before the horse and on down the road a stretch:

  • Volunteer phone-bank training was scheduled for Feb. 4 at AFL-CIO Hall.
  • The signature-gathering training was to take place at the AFL-CIO Hall in Anchorage on Jan. 29, and at the IBEW Hall on Feb. 5-6.
  • Then on Feb. 15-17, the group had already rented the Sullivan Arena to stage their three-day signature festival from 9 am to 8 pm daily.

All that planning is in question now that the recall petition’s validity, and whether the “stay” on collecting signatures in advance is Supreme Court material; the sides are awaiting the decision on when oral arguments will be made.

The Recall Dunleavy legal “dream team” of former Gov. Bill Walker is pushing for oral arguments sooner rather than later.

The Stand Tall With Mike group, which joined the defense of the governor as a legal “intervenor” in the case, is the sole reason for the slowing down of the race to recall the governor. The Division of Elections, represented by the Department of Law, had found no justifiable harm to allowing the petitioners to ramp up their campaign to unseat the governor. But Stand Tall With Mike lawyers said their side would be irreparably harmed if Recall Dunleavy Committee started juicing up the case in the court of public opinion.

If not for the Stand Tall lawyers, who are billing by the hour, the petition books would already be at the printer and they would be available for pick up on Feb. 10. The momentum would be off and running again.

The Alaska Supreme Court is likely to side with the Recall Dunleavy “dream team” lawyers in the end, and allow the recall matter to go before the voters in some form or another. But the oral arguments could be anytime this year. The Stand Tall With Mike group has agreed to an expedited hearing schedule, the terms of which are still being negotiated with the Recall Dunleavy group.

Alaska Democrats will have a dozen on their caucus ballot

Suzanne Downing
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Alaska Democrats will have a dozen on their caucus ballot

OR IS IT ELEVEN? ONE CANDIDATE HAS DROPPED

Alaska Democrats taking part in their party’s privately run primary on April 4 will have 12 candidates to choose from for their presidential nominee:

  • Michael Bennet, age 55, senator
  • Joe Biden, age 77, former Vice President
  • Michael Bloomberg, age 77, former New York mayor
  • Peter Buttigieg, age 38, mayor
  • John Delaney, age 56, former representative
  • Tulsi Gabbard, age 38, representative
  • Amy Klobuchar, age 59, senator
  • Deval Patrick, age 63, former governor
  • Bernie Sanders, age 78, senator
  • Tom Steyer, age 62, businessman
  • Elizabeth Warren, age 70, senator
  • Andrew Yang, age 45, businessman

Jan. 24 was the application deadline for presidential candidates to apply to the Alaska Democratic Party for inclusion on their ballot.

John Delaney has announced he is dropping out of the race, but he and the other candidates have already paid $2,500 each to the Alaska Democratic Party to take part in the party’s first-ever private primary — a method of caucusing by ballot, rather than by standing around a gymnasium.

If the ballot hasn’t been sent to the printer, Delaney’s name will likely be dropped. Others will probably drop before the Democrats hold their primary, leaving some ghost candidates still on the ballot.

The Democrats’ ballot will include a ranked choice voting. Participants will be able to choose and rank up to five candidates, in the order they prefer. How they will handle ghost candidates is still an unknown.

They’ll also be executing an ambitious mail-in ballot program at a time when they don’t have a digital director to manage mailing lists and data files. The Democrats’ data director parted ways with the party on Jan. 10, and the FBI has been called in to investigate.

[Read: FBI interviews Alaska Democratic Party]

The Democrats are in the middle of their State Central Committee meeting, a quarterly event. This week, it’s in Juneau at the Baranof Hotel and surrounding watering holes, where Democrat activists can also rub shoulders with their legislators.

Then, Democrats must turn their focus to training volunteers to run their primary in every one of the 40 House districts.

On Feb. 13, Districts 29 and 30 Democrats will be treated to an informational meeting at Phormation Chiropractic Office on Kenai Spur Hwy. The meeting starts at 5:30 pm, one of many to take place around the state this month.

On Feb. 19, the party will mail to every registered Democrat some information explaining the ways in which a voter may cast a ballot in the 2020 party-run process, which is a radical change from its past practices. All Democrats registered with the Division of Elections as of Feb. 1 will receive the information.

Absentee ballots can be requested on the state party website beginning Feb. 19, and must be postmarked by Tuesday, March 24.

In-person voting will take place on April 4 in these communities, and possibly others: Anchorage Fairbanks/North Star Borough, Juneau, Mat-Su Borough, Kenai Peninsula, Dillingham, Bethel, Nome, and Kotzebue.

Tozzi

The party has settled on Anchorage Democrat Wigi Tozzi as its presidential primary director. Tozzi was one of the leaders of a recall effort in 2013 to oust Lindsey Holmes, a former representative for House District 19 who switched from Democrat to Republican while in office. That recall effort fizzled after Holmes declined to run for reelection.

How Lisa Murkowski saved the Supreme Court

Suzanne Downing
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How Lisa Murkowski saved the Supreme Court

AND CONGRESS, AND THE REPUBLIC, FOR THAT MATTER

It cannot have been easy, but Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been here before, with a pivotal vote and pressure from the Left.

This time, it wasn’t about a Supreme Court Justice’s confirmation or an Education secretary nominee. It was about the Supreme Court itself and its very credibility with the American public.

Today in the Senate, Murkowski voted against the introduction of witnesses and more documents in the impeachment trial of the president. Senator Dan Sullivan was already a “no” vote, and was being ignored by the political pressure groups.

There were consequences: Instantly, Murkowski was excoriated by the Left on social media, while her colleague Mitt Romney was just as instantly disinvited from the 2020 Conservative American Union CPAC 2020 conference.

The final vote was 51 against witnesses, and 49 in favor. Only Sen. Susan Collins and Romney crossed over from the Republican position to the Democrat position, leaving Murkowski once again in a situation that had profound implications:

If Murkowski had voted for documents and witnesses, there would have been a tie, and Chief Justice John Roberts would have been called upon to break the tie, putting the Supreme Court right in the middle of what is clearly a partisan battle, one that began in 2017, when Donald Trump took the oath of office.

In no small way, this Murkowski vote mattered. She had the pivotal vote.

And Sen. Elizabeth Warren made it easy. Warren had, just Thursday, posed a question aimed directly at the Supreme Court Justice, challenging his credibility on national television, as she forced him to read it aloud:

“At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court and the Constitution?” 

Roberts read the question, and then paused. A sense of shock went through the Senate. He kept his composure. Warren, as readers know, is running for president and so has a dog in the fight.

In describing why she was a “no” vote, Murkowski today indicated that having the Supreme Court Chief Justice being asked by Warren to wade into the politics at hand was bad for the Republic.

“It has also become clear some of my colleagues intend to further politicize this process, and drag the Supreme Court into the fray, while attacking the chief justice,” Murkowski wrote in advance of the vote today.

[Read: Murkowski to vote no on witnesses, no on polarization]

Murkowski was prescient. As soon as Warren’s question was read by the very man who would have had to break the tie, social media ads started tagging Roberts from the group called “Demand Justice,” an anti-Justice Kavanaugh group.

The political pressure from the Left was shifting from Murkowski to the Supreme Court Justice himself:

The Senate tie would have put Roberts in a position of making one of three choices: Break tie to have witnesses, in which case he’d be in the middle of the trial to follow; break tie against witnesses; or refuse to rule altogether. Whichever way he would rule, he was going to get hammered.

The decision by Murkowski to vote “no” is consistent with her wanting to protect our institutions. If the House is so broken, and the Senate is now embroiled in the House’s dysfunction, the last thing Murkowski would want is to drag the third branch of government into what’s a bitter partisan battle.

Murkowski took a stand to save the pillars of the republic. Readers may send her a note at this address.

In defense of the unborn, where are Republicans?

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
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In defense of the unborn, where are Republicans?

By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO

On January 29, 2020, nine Alaska Republican House members voted against moving HB 178, an act which would interpret the right-to-privacy clause of the Alaska State Constitution to include the unborn.  

The nine were Bart LeBon, District 1; Steve Thompson, District 2; Kelly Merrick, District 14; Louise Stutes, District 22; Chuck Kopp, District 24; Mel Gillis, District 25; Laddie Shaw, District 26; Jennifer Johnston, District 28; and Gary Knopp, District 30. Mark Neuman, Republican, District 8, mysteriously got up and left the House chamber just before the vote and was held absent, which may raise constituent questions.

The Constitution of the State of Alaska declares, in Article I, Section 1, that “all persons have a natural right to life,” and the Constitution of the State of Alaska further declares in Article I, Section 7, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”.    

My personal belief is these sections have always applied to the unborn, a person, a human being regarded as an individual, yet our state government and our own legislature, those representing us, have not caught up with the fact that “the science is settled.”

SETTLED SCIENCE  

We hear so much today from the Left regarding climate change and the “science is settled”, yet those of us who have a smidgen of discernment, curiosity and inquiry know that is almost never the case as science continues to discover something new continually regarding this and so much more.

This is the same for just about everything science envelops with one exception. The major branches of science include chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, and biology.  In the science of biology is that one exception. And that is the answer to the question of life at conception.

The question of the life at conception science has concluded that indeed it is settled.  It is life and therefore life at conception is a person, a human being regarded as an individual.

Pythagoras who first proposed that the Earth was round sometime around 500 B.C. waited patiently and posthumously for centuries before our collective body of knowledge and experience agreed with him.  Thus, overcoming centuries of denial, ignorance and unintelligence, we now take for granted something that was not only denied for centuries, but those who denied at the time the conventional thought of “flat world” were persecuted, tortured and put to death.  

Like this universal cognition and after navigation, observation and experience, we as the human race using scientific methodology have reached conclusions about our natural existence. These conclusions stand until someone or something provides a new component to introduce new hypothesizing.

Yet at this rare moment of exception, where science and social standards actually have the remarkable opportunity to agree and co-exist not just scientifically but morally, these nine legislators have decided to ignore the facts.  

  • The fact that a new human embryo, the starting point for a person, a human life regarded as an individual, comes into existence with the formation of the one-celled zygote, a fertilized human ovum, is pronounced by scientific findings throughout the scientific world as an undeniable conclusion.  
  • The fact that, at the moment of conception, the entire genetic road map of a person, a human being regarded as an individual, is created within the fertilized human ovum is an undeniable conclusion.
  • The fact that the human embryo, the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation through this genetic map, becomes known as a fetus, a person, a human being regarded as an individual,is an undeniable conclusion.  
  • The fact that the human fetus, a person, a human being regarded as an individual, to birth, is alive and cognizant of its environment is an undeniable conclusion.

Nowhere is the denial of these undeniable conclusions more evident than with the Alaska House where these nine Republican legislators not only ignore their own Republican Party platform and arrogantly and defiantly deny the proof which science has promulgated. The arrogance and defiance of this is morally wrong.

Will we as Alaskans willingly allow this to go unchallenged?  Will we as Alaskans allow these Alaska House representatives to continue the disaster of our lifetimes known as abortion?  

We as Republicans have primaries and elections coming up this year.  It is time that we put the unborn first in front of all these nine Alaska House representatives and adopt House Bill 178.

Michael Tavoliero is the chairman of House District 12-14 of the Alaska Republican Party.

Declared: U.S. health emergency declared, includes quarantines

Suzanne Downing
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Declared: U.S. health emergency declared, includes quarantines

With travel limitations and quarantines, the United States is implementing temporary measures to proactively and aggressively prevent the novel coronavirus from spreading in the country, the White House said.

Any US citizen returning from Wuhan or who has been in Wuhan, or the Hubei province in China during the past 14 days will be under 14 days of mandatory quarantine. The quarantine will be at an appropriate quarantine facility, not in their homes. Department of Homeland Security has not identified those facilities.

Any U.S. citizen who have been in the rest of mainland China in the previous 14 days will under go proactive health screening, and up to 14 days of monitored self-quarantine.

President Donald Trump has temporarily suspended entry of foreign nationals who post a risk of transmitting the disease, including foreign nationals who traveled in China in the last 14 days. To be clear, if they remain outside the United States past the 14-day period, they may enter the U.S. under normal conditions.

The order is effective as of 5 pm on Sunday.

The president’s task force said it’s likely that more cases will be identified in the U.S., including person to person transmission, but the risk still remains low. And the White House wants it to remain low.

More Americans are expected to enter the U.S., but as of 5 pm Sunday, incoming flights from China will be funneled through JFK, Chicago O’Hare, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Honolulu, and Los Angeles International, said Secretary of Homeland Security Kenneth Thomas Cuccinelli.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates…

There is no travel ban to China, but all three carriers to China are taking down their flights to China voluntarily. The U.S. has put its highest travel alert on China, a “do not travel.”

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, there has been a significant decrease of passengers going between the U.S. and China. The number of U.S. citizens has been rising, however, in the past week, as Americans return home.

Watch the entire press briefing from the White House coronavirus task force, which starts at the 38 minute mark in this YouTube video:

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