The Hill newspaper continues its inquiry into who in the Senate will be pivotal in the trial of President Donald J. Trump.
And the newspaper keeps coming back to Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. But now, more focus is on Collins, who is up for reelection in 2020, and is also in line for the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee. If she votes to convict Trump, she may have a better shot at reelection. Murkowski is not up for election until 2022.
“A Democratic senator who requested anonymity said the Democratic caucus is most focused on Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska),” the newspaper wrote.
“Susan Collins and Lisa are key. Everyone is watching them because Susan is up for reelection and we all know what the party did to Lisa, so she has an interest in being independent,” the anonymous senator told the newspaper.
In 2010, Murkowski lost the Republican Senate primary to challenger Joe Miller, but won the general election as a write-in candidate who depended on Democrats and moderates, and that event split the Alaska GOP into factions that to this day have not reconciled.
On Twitter, Murkowski’s and Collins’ office numbers are being published repeatedly with leftists imploring people to call their offices, as well as other offices of senators seen as sympathetic, such as Mitt Romney. An anti-Trump environmental activist’s Twitter posting is one of thousands of a similar nature that are appearing on the social media platform, which is dominated by progressive activists:
ANALYSIS: MAG EDITOR’S SWAN SONG IS CLASSIC ‘FIT OF PIQUE’
The Donald is a deeply flawed man. He had an unusual, not particularly happy or normal upbringing. He’s an imperfect president. Sometimes he is annoying.
If you like him, Donald Trump’s Twitter habit is hilarious. If you hate him, he’s a demon.
Trump is as different from most of his base as he can be — they are working class, maybe even the “silent majority,” while he is a multi-millionaire with a big mouth.
Americans knew this in 2016. And yet, evangelical Christians and millions of others — 63 million American voters in all — chose him anyway. They overlooked his failings and decided he represented good policy for restoring sanity and strength to our country.
Not all Republicans voted for him. Some recoiled; they wrote in John Kasich or another person. Others reasoned that Trump would be a far-better cry than having Hillary and Bill Clinton back in the White House. Those voters held their nose and voted for him.
And there were plenty who were on the Trump train from the beginning — they were the true believers. They didn’t need convincing that he was the right person for the job at this time in our nation’s history. They are his biggest cheerleaders today.
In a Must Read Alaska poll on Facebook this week, 94 percent of 2,900 respondents said the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives makes them more likely, rather than less likely to vote for Trump in 2020. Most who take part in MRAK polls are Alaskans, and most are conservatives. But not all. The polls make their way around liberal groups on Facebook, where they get plenty of reach.
Only 171 participants over the course of the 48-hour poll said they are less likely to vote for Trump because of the impeachment proceedings:
What are these Alaskans seeing in the impeachment proceedings that Christianity Today does not see?
They’re seeing the naked political ambition of partisan Democrats, “resist” radicals, pink-pussy-hatted hate-mongers, screaming liberals, and Antifa infiltrators taking over the Democrats’ party, and the news media growing more partisan by the day.
Last week, Christianity Today joined MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Washington Post in saying it is time to remove this president.
Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli published an editorial that is “so devoid of any pretense of understanding the Constitution I am genuinely embarrassed for evangelicals (of which I am a member). Christians must hold the publication accountable and call this out promptly and directly,” according to constitutional attorney Jenna Ellis, writing in the Washington Examiner.
In 11 months, (10, if you count absentee and early voting) Americans will have a chance to do exactly what Christianity Today hopes they’ll do at the ballot box: Vote for anyone but Trump.
By the time the Senate completes its trial of President Donald J. Trump, there will be but 10 months (or 9 months for early voters) before the election. Joe Biden will, by then, be the likely choice on the other ticket. He still leads the pack for the Democrats.
Will any evangelical actually vote for Biden, now that Christianity Today has declared Trump unfit? Doubtful. Neither will they vote for Elizabeth Warren, or Mayor Pete.
Editor Galli jumped into the fray as he had one foot out the door, leaving the magazine to pick up the pieces, even as evangelical leader Franklin Graham admonished the publication for getting it wrong.
The nation remains conflicted about Trump, but he has won over support from some who did not vote for him the first time around. Why? Because he is just himself in a dangerous and unpredictable world, where despots and criminals rule, where our borders have become a sieve through which traffickers and terrorists pass. He’s not afraid to take on the corrupt leaders of other nations.
The fact that other leaders across the world do not like Donald Trump is refreshing. They also didn’t like George W. Bush. They don’t like “strong defense” American presidents, while those in other countries fawned over Barack Obama, and still pine for him today.
Democrats miss the Obamas. Who can, after all, forget about the limit of chicken tenders allowed American school children under Michelle Obama’s lunch program, while her own daughters dined like princesses at the exclusive Sidwell Friends prep academy?
All the while, in the post-Obama era, the American economy is growing again and prosperity is spreading across the land. The president has restored our military strength, and taken on the Deep State, is putting reasonable judges on the courts and is unwinding the Obamacare disaster.
Did most Americans vote for Trump? No, 65 million cast their fate with Hillary Clinton, who ran on a theme of her extensive political experience (who can forget her “reset” with Russia?), who denounced Trump and his base of support as bigots (“basket of deplorables”), who promised an expansion of President Barack Obama’s socialistic policies, such as Obamacare and open borders. She promised free college tuition. She promised to restrict gun ownership.
Trump, on the other hand, had no actual political experience. He is from a hardball, tough world of business deals, some of which succeeded, others that ended poorly. He’s been married three times. He’s the ultimate wheeler-dealer who broke all the conventional political rules going into the 2016 general election, surviving a field of 17 Republican candidates, many of whom had a lot more experience than he had, and a lot fewer ex-wives.
He wasn’t supposed to win; the smarties of the chattering class predicted that Clinton would sweep him off the map.
There are flawed leaders throughout history in every nation, but this impeachment is ultimately about the Constitution, not about moral failings or personal distaste.
Christianity Today’s retiring Editor Mark Galli once authored the book, “Jesus, Mean and Wild.” It’s about how the meek and mild “nice guy” Jesus is mythical. Instead, he presents him as a militant Messiah, unmanageable and a reflection of an untamable God.
While in Galli’s world view, Jesus could be mean and wild, he’s not giving that same latitude to human leaders that make him sick with hatred.
He wrote that Trump’s failings will “crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel. And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.”
M-Kay. Galli conveniently forgets that we live in an insane world, and that Trump has handled foreign and domestic affairs masterfully in his three years.
Trump is not the president all of us would want to spend Christmas with. He is coarse and urbane. He’s a certain kind of person, informed by his own experience of the world. He’s a bit of an oddball. He’s not your classic Christian … or is he? There is nary a Christian reading this today who can clear the moral high jump of pro-abortion, anti-Second Amendment Nancy Pelosi.
With the unrelenting attacks of the vitriolic Left, Trump is more like the president this country needed to keep in check our constitutional rights and secure our nation’s fundamental underpinnings. To the extent that Congress has let him, he has delivered on his promises, including the recent complete overhaul of NAFTA with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
The question will be to voters — evangelicals, women, African American, disaffected, young, old, rich, and poor — to decide if we still need this kind of president for four more years.
What Christianity Today last did was merely to give comfort to Trump’s political enemies and the media, (but we repeat ourselves) at a time when the Democrats needed that kind of boost. They’re losing ground as Trump gains support. The magazine provided just noise, and the noise did not have the effect intended.
The Native Village of Barrow is the latest major Native entity to withdraw from the Alaska Federation of Natives.
In an announcement on Friday, the village council said it took a vote on Dec. 16, and the outcome was unanimous.
“Native Village of Barrow will be focusing efforts on local issues of cultural, traditional, social, environmental and economic importance to NVB and its membership,” the council said.
The decision comes after Arctic Slope Regional Corp. said it would leave AFN at the end of this year.
Doyon, another Native Corporation, is said to have also chosen to sever its membership, and Calista and Koniag are is also leaning toward leaving, Must Read Alaska has learned.
The Native Village of Barrow is a separate entity from the City of Utqiaġvik, formerly known as the City of Barrow, which is the largest community on the North Slope.
The Native Village of Barrow is a federally recognized Alaska Native Inupiat “tribal entity.” Its president is Muriel Brower, and Arnold Brower Jr. is Vice President.
The ACLU has sent a “Don’t make us sue you” threat to Gov. Mike Dunleavy over his not rehiring an exempt agency employee who worked at the Alaska State Council on the Arts. The former employee had made disparaging remarks on social media about the Dunleavy Administration, and now she wants her job back.
One of my fonder memories of my days with State labor relations was then-Marine Engineers and Confidential Employees representative Greg O’Claray sidling up to me, usually out on the eighth floor smoking area of the Juneau State Office Building, where he handed me a copy of a grievance or unfair labor practice filing and said: “Don’t make me do this to you.”
This tactic is usually just a shakedown and I usually said, “Make my day,” or words to that effect — but more colorful.
Sometimes Greg was right, and sometimes we could make a deal. Greg was one of the last of the old-time union reps; if he gave you his word, he was good for it. But if you just thought you had his word, something bad was going to happen.
The ACLU is trying to do something like this to the governor, who has already demonstrated that when the lefties start screaming that they’ll huff and puff and blow his house down, he’ll run out the back door. I can’t blame them for trying again; it has worked several times. They got to “count coup” on me, but there will be another day.
Readers should understand what the American Civil Liberties Union really is. Once upon a time to be a member of the American Bar Association, America’s only closed-shop union, you had to take an oath that you were not a member of the Communist Party and did not support the overthrow of the U.S. government.
That meant lawyers who were Communist Party members or open sympathizers couldn’t practice law. So, the ACLU was formed of lawyers who had sympathies for the Communist Party, but no direct ties to the party; the common terms are “fellow travelers” or “progressives.”
These were the lawyers who could practice and who could defend Communist agents and apparatchiks in U.S. courts. They wrap themselves in all sorts of “virtuous” causes, but that is the essence of their being.
So now, they’re defending the “First Amendment rights” of public employees, mostly loud-mouth leftist public employees. Public employees, as public employees, don’t have First Amendment rights; when you walk in the office door or use your title, you’ve checked constitutional rights at the door because you have become the government.
The controlling authority is, somewhat ironically, a Ninth Circuit case involving Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti. Garcetti fired an assistant district attorney for statements he made in his official capacity. It went to the Ninth and the Court held that in his official capacity, the AAG was the government and his speech didn’t have First Amendment protection. The Constitution doesn’t protect the government; it protects you from the government.
If you are a public employee, you can express a personal opinion so long as you make it clear that the opinion is your own, and not an opinion rendered in your official capacity. If you’re far enough up the food chain to be recognizable, your personal opinion cannot be distinguished from government opinion, so you must explicitly offer a disclaimer.
Those of you who know me from my Juneau days know that I could be both a loudmouth and a smartass, but I was always careful to provide the disclaimer that the opinion was my own, not that of the government I worked for.
I don’t agree with some of the Administration’s actions about exempt service employees. I really don’t think they’ve gotten good advice from Law, whether by competence or design. I never much trusted the Department of Law; your mileage may vary.
The controlling authorities in federal law are some Chicago cases involving the Daley Machine. The Supreme Court held that to “serve at the pleasure” of an elected or appointed official an employee had to have policy level authority.
In labor law the term is “formulate or effectuate” management policy and the test is something like that. A lot of State employees in the partially exempt and fully exempt services don’t have policy level authority, so it is a risk to just ask for their resignation or treat them as “serve at the pleasure” employees.
Some years ago the Alaska Supreme Court held that all employment contracts in Alaska contain an “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.” That is legalese for saying that a judge gets to substitute his/her judgment for yours if you’re a governor who fires a public employee. If that judge is a Democrat, a Republican governor’s action is likely to violate the “covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”
There are some serious and undecided issues regarding the rights of exempt and partially exempt State employees. Kevin Jardell, then a deputy commissioner, and I, then a division director, once threatened late in the Murkowski Administration to form “Art and Kevin’s Union” of all Murkowski appointees. We weren’t serious but we posed a serious question; there was nothing in the law that would have prevented us from doing it, and Tony Knowles or Sarah Palin would have had one helluva time firing us and replacing us with their friends.
I don’t know who there is in State government who can actually think seriously about this, but the State really needs to clarify its rights and duties in dealing with these employees. The Dunleavy Administration started all this by just asking the Division of Personnel for a list of all “at will” employees, whose resignations they demanded. Well, the right answer is that there are no “at will” employees, as that term has common meaning. The question needs a subtle and nuanced answer, which the Administration has not received.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
Must Read Alaska comes to you every day, determined to give Alaskans a conservative home for news, events, and context. In fact, MRAK has hardly missed a day of publishing during 2019, and this website has had over 7.6 million views and nearly 28,000 comments on stories.
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WILL DEMOCRAT GALS DRESS ALL WHITE, ALL BLACK OR…?
Just two days after she led the impeachment of President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday invited the target of her partisan dagger to deliver his 2020 State of the Union address on Tuesday, Feb. 4.
The address is given before a joint chamber of the House and Senate. Trump accepted the invitation.
Trump’s speech could come at the same time as his Senate trial for the articles of impeachment, if and when Pelosi sends those articles to the Senate. She has delayed that action, saying she needs more information from the Senate about how they intend to conduct the trial.
During his last State of the Union address, the women Democrats in the House dressed in all-white ensembles, just as they had the year before for his speech. Their group-think fashion choice was mirrored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who clapped in an exaggerated fashion when Trump spoke of working together in a spirit of cooperation.
“We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution, and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good,” Trump had said, just before Pelosi’s now-immortalized alligator clap.
The year prior, the Democrat women of the House wore all black, to protest Trump and as a nod to the MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter.
Will the Democrat women don their whites again on Feb. 4? The odds are they will, since 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote.
In 2017, Rep. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat, said the all-white garb was intended to send a message to the Republican Party:
“Democratic members will wear suffragette white to oppose Republican attempts to roll back women’s progress,” Frankel wrote on Twitter. So the white is about women’s progress, which refers to abortion, in Frankel’s world, unless she really thinks that women will lose the right to vote.
Must Read Alaska predicts there will be a run on white in the F Street Stores in Washington D.C. in February. But the ladies may want to add a bit of irony for their accessories. It was the Republican Party that led the fight for women’s right to vote.
In 1878, at the request of Susan B. Anthony, a Republican senator from California introduced the 19th Amendment. It was defeated four times by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
It wasn’t until the Republican Party regained control of Congress in 1919 that the Equal Suffrage Amendment passed. It still needed to be ratified, which didn’t occur until 1920, when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.
Of the nine states that voted against ratification, eight were held by Democrats. Twelve states, all Republican, had already given women the right to vote before the amendment was ratified.
Twenty-four hours after the U.S. House Democrats voted in favor of impeaching the president, Alaska candidate Alyse Galvin has still made no public statement on the historic matter, the third time in history a president has been impeached by the House.
Galvin has held coffee meetings in Anchorage and Fairbanks, and may be making private statements in small, supportive groups, but her social media account has not mentioned a word about where she stands on impeachment of the president, a man who has received her harshest words in the past. She’s issued no statement. In fact, in the past 48 hours, all she’s done is post a fundraising video pitch on Facebook. And announced her swag shop for stickers and shirts.
“We have stickers, shirts, and hoodies for every campaign supporter on your holiday shopping list!” she wrote.
It may be that she has studied the polling in Alaska, and knows that her probable opposition to President Donald Trump would not play well among the undeclared voters whom she seeks to woo. She is, after all, running as a nonpartisan who is not a registered Democrat but who is in the Democrats’ primary and who has been endorsed by the Democratic Party. But she needs those undeclared voters.
Galvin has picked up the pro-abortion endorsement of NARAL and Planned Parenthood.
Congressman Don Young issued the following statement on impeachment:
“From the moment President Trump was elected, Congressional Democrats have been working to undermine him; trying to undo the results of the 2016 election. Frankly, this has been a political stunt all along. The impeachment process is very serious, and if Democrats are so intent on removing the President from office, they should leave that up to the American people to decide on election day, and not through an entirely partisan process with a pre-determined outcome. House Democrats tried to take down President Trump with the Mueller Report and failed. When this circus makes its way to the Senate, they will fail once again.
“I have seen no evidence of an impeachable offense. That is why I voted NO on both articles. It is my great hope that the House can now return to the people’s business. I am going to continue doing the job I was sent here to do: fighting for Alaska, and making our state and country a better place for future generations.” – Congressman Don Young
After the vote on impeachment the House gaveled out; it will convene Jan. 7.
Congressman Young is returning home to Alaska for the Christmas holidays. He’ll be ringing the bell for the Salvation Army in Anchorage in the days leading up to Christmas. Between lunch at the Lucky Wishbone and constituent meetings, Young has a full schedule over the holidays.
Sen. Shelley Hughes made it official this week, filing for reelection for Senate Seat F, Palmer.
Hughes has lived in Alaska 43 years and in Palmer 29 years. With her husband Roger, she raised four children and now is grandmother to seven. She served for four years in the State House, and three in the Senate.
In her last election, she was primary challenged by Steve St. Clair and Adam Crum, and won in the solidly Republican district.
There’s a primary challenge in Eagle River. Ken McCarty has filed as a Republican against incumbent Rep. Sharon Jackson, who serves Eagle River District 13. McCarty applied to be chosen as representative when Rep. Nancy Dahlstrom became the commissioner of Corrections at the outset of the Dunleavy Administration, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy selected Jackson to serve out that term. This will be Jackson’s first run for the seat. She was previously a candidate for lieutenant governor.
Rep. Tammie Wilson filed for the state primary this week, but did not specify if she is running for her own House seat or if she’s going to challenge Sen. John Coghill, as has been rumored.
Both are up for re-election; Coghill filed with Alaska Public Offices Commission in November for Seat B, Fairbanks / North Pole.
While Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment enterprises in the world, has caved to radical environmentalists by saying the company won’t invest in Alaska’s Arctic oil, it’s investing heavily in oil development in the Russian Arctic.
Goldman Sachs, in fact, is investing in unregulated dirty oil.
The bank is pouring its resources into the independent Irkutsk Oil Company, known as INK. Along with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Goldman Sachs is a minority shareholder in INK, which operates the Yarakta oil field in Irkutsk, as well as in Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Siberia.
In Russia, environmental laws are merely suggestions. There is little enforcement and the industry is notorious for leaks, spills, and contamination, especially in far-flung Siberia. Corruption is just a cost of doing business in Russia, and Goldman Sachs is a party to that system of doing business, and the U.S. government can’t do a thing about it.
“INK is not subject to the U.S. sectoral sanctions that apply to Russia’s biggest energy firms and which place restrictions on the type of financing they can attract from Western creditors. INK’s minority shareholders include Goldman Sachs and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD),” according to a report from Reuters in April.
Goldman Sachs International has a 3.75 percent stake in INK, which works in both the Irkutsk region and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in eastern Siberia.
INK told Reuters that it plans to invest $3-4 billion into the Arctic oil field over the next three years, and develop more of its gas business with four new processing plants.
Building up the Russian oil industry while taking a pass on Alaska’s Arctic is just another calculation on profitability for Goldman Sachs. But its decisions, profitable as they may be, have global consequences, both environmentally and geopolitically.
Analysts predicted the move would make Syrian President Bashar al-Assad even more dependent on Moscow and less able to withstand Russian demands. Russian oil, then, makes Russia more influential in that war-torn region of the Middle East.
“The Kremlin has sought to wield the main influence over Syria and reap geo-strategic and business benefits from its military intervention in the eight-year Syrian war and its propping up of the Assad government,” according to Voice of America.
Goldman Sachs has a history of making deals with some of the world’s biggest polluters and baddest political actors. People like Moammar Qaddafi in Libya.
According to Goldman Sachs’ oil analyst Michele Della Vigna, there’s still money to be made in Big Oil. “In our view, the first wave of final investment decisions will likely take the form of brownfield developments with quicker payback, particularly in West Africa, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea. We should see a strong recovery in the number of projects in 2019 and 2020, led by Big Oils’ deepwater and liquefied natural gas investments. We expect roughly $120bn in LNG projects during those two years as the industry catches up with the production gap resulting from four years of low investments and strong underlying demand,” she said, in a Goldman Sachs publication.
In other words, the company is still investing in oil. But it’s investing in other countries, where regimes are corrupt and environmental organizations don’t have influence.
