HASN’T SAID IF ANCHORAGE STORES AMONG THOSE TO CLOSE
J.C. Penney will file for bankruptcy next week and start closing approximately 200 of it stores.
Recently, Neiman Marcus and J.Crew filed to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows businesses to stiff some creditors.
Penney is the remaining anchor store in the Fifth Avenue Mall in Anchorage, after Nordstrom closed last year.
The company did not say if Anchorage’s store would be among the 200 that will be shuttered, but with downtown Anchorage’s economy struggling under various economic perils, it appears likely. Nordstrom last year decided to not renew its lease with the Municipality of Anchorage, which owns that property.
The Anchorage store has been closed temporarily, under state and municipal mandates that shuttered hundreds of businesses in March and April.
Penney, which opened 118 years ago, has about 850 stores and is based in Texas.
MUST READ ALASKA READERS RAISED $8,000 TO KEEP IT OPEN
Ammo-Can Coffee shop in Soldotna has been able able to weather the COVID-19 shut-down storm, thanks to hundreds of Alaskans who pitched in to help the Floyd family business.
Tonight, (Saturday, May 9), will be the first jam and open-mic session since the shutdown. It starts at 7 pm, and the business is now open regular hours, with regular table service 6 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday, and 7:30 am to 11 pm on Saturdays. The coffee shop is located at 35559 Kenai Spur Hwy.
“We’re open, we’re having folks sign in at the door to comply with the ‘reservation required’ mandate, and we’ve got all the hand sanitizer that was sent to us from all over Alaska,” Jason Floyd said.
He added that Ammo-Can is following the state mandates and hopes people will turn out for music night because it’s summer on the Kenai Peninsula, and Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce has declared every business, large and small, open and “essential.” Businesses are ready to return to some semblance of normal, he said.
Last month, Must Read Alaska readers pitched in during a GoFundMe.com campaign to help save the coffee shop from having to close after state mandates shuttered all restaurants, except for take out, and then said they could only open if they had hand sanitizer at the door.
That was when hand sanitizer could not be purchased in small communities in Alaska, leading Jason Floyd to wonder if he would be able to stay in business. For businesses like his on the Kenai Peninsula, summer is the season to make enough to stretch through the long, quiet winters.
But with the $8,300 raised by the GoFundMe campaign, the Floyds were able to get caught up on their shop’s rent and other bills. They also welcomed the delivery of dozens of bottles of hand sanitizer from friends and well-wishers, including Ken McCarty of Chugiak, who flew a supply in for the coffee shop all the way from the Birchwood Airport north of Anchorage, shown in the story above.
Still, the state economy is on its knees, and business at the coffee shop is not exactly buzzing yet. It’s going to take a while for all businesses in Alaska to regain their footing, and it’s a process that might take years for some.
The Save Ammo-Can Coffee GoFundMe campaign will close in three days. All of the funds that have been sent for the Floyds have been remitted, except for $100, which will be mailed along with any final donations made between now and Tuesday.
Jason Floyd said that people can also help by giving Ammo-Can Coffee and other small businesses by giving a favorable review on TripAdviser if they like the products and service they get. Every gesture, big and small, has made a difference to his family’s future, he said.
ARE ALASKA DEATHS MISREPORTED? REP. VANCE WANTS ANSWERS
When Donald VanBuren died at South Peninsula Hospital, his death was listed as a COVID-19 death.
It turns out, the neighbors in Anchor Point knew better: The 90-year-old was dying with a body riddled with cancer and kidney failure. And yet, a test for COVID-19 came back positive, and so COVID-19 it is, at least on his death certificate.
VanBuren lived among a small settlement of homes down a dead-end road in Anchor Point on the Kenai Peninsula, and his neighbors kept an eye on him and helped him as much as he would allow, which wasn’t much. He had hardly any interaction with people recently, except a caregiver, who has tested negative for the coronavirus, according to sources.
To the neighbors’ knowledge, he has no family in the state, and mainly he just kept to himself as cancer took its toll. It appears he has distant relatives in other states, and once owned a business called Anchor Point Supply, but he’s been sick for some time and living alone.
Rep. Sarah Vance has called for an inquiry as to why VanBuren’s passing was listed as a COVID-19 death, when everyone in the area knew he was dying, and his only coronavirus symptom was “fatigue.” Neighbors say he was fatigued with cancer and kidney failure and plain-old “old age.”
Vance says that with no family around to raise questions, and with medical privacy laws as they are, the community is left to wonder what happened that made this death uniquely COVID, since he doesn’t seem to have contracted it from anyone.
Vance has written to the State’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink to ask for answers about the true cause of VanBuren’s death.
“What is the difference between dying with COVID-19 and dying of/from COVID-19?” Vance asked Zink in her letter. “What guidelines do physicians have in attributing the cause of death to COVID-19?”
She also wants to know if Alaska’s hospitals are being financially rewarded for reporting deaths attributed to the coronavirus, and what the state’s role is in confirming the information.
The matter came to light on Facebook, when a woman who lives nearby wrote that VanBuren had been dying of cancer and that she believes the death has been wrongly reported as a COVID-19 death.
“Just want this to be clear. I know this for a fact. It is not hearsay,” the neighbor wrote. “They tested him at the hospital, even though he had no symptoms, and he tested positive. But he died due to cancer and kidney failure.”
VanBuren was the 10th Alaskan to die whose death was attributed to COVID-19. Two of those deaths occurred while Alaskans were out of state, and the other eight died in Alaska. But if one of those deaths is not truly from COVID-19, it would be a reporting inaccuracy rate of 12.5 percent, something Rep. Vance believes deserves closer scrutiny.
Across the country, questions have been asked, but few answers have been satisfactory about why some people who are dying, and yet test positive for COVID-19, are listed as deaths from the coronavirus.
The federal guidance for those filling out death certificates specifies: “COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to the death.”
I had to get married to get my checkbook balanced, but I knew enough about the Executive Budget Act and State budgeting processes to ask questions and call BS.
My knowledge is dated, but my experience in dealing with the State is that dated knowledge is better because these days the State mostly runs on the “this is how we’ve always done it, principle.” Few seem to know or care whether or not that way is legal.
I’ve never believed that going to Legislative Budget and Audit for disbursement of the CARES Act subsidy money was appropriate.
I always viewed the Revised Program – Legislation or RP-L process as a way to move money between existing appropriations, not a way to make appropriations.
Maybe somebody is thinking my way, in that LB&A moved to act on CARES money to existing appropriations to State agencies. But now Rep. Chris Tuck wants a special session to consider the distribution to other entities.
Or maybe it is something very sinister.
First, a special session isn’t necessary because the Legislature is in Session already. That said, if they’re thinking clearly, the Legislature could adjourn and either move itself to special session or have the governor call a special session, in such a way that only a clearly delineated subject can be considered by the Legislature.
Relations between the governor and the legislative majorities are so bad that it is unlikely they would give the governor the opportunity to call the session. Therefore, if there is to be a special session, the Legislature will call itself into session and the agenda will be CARES Act allocation and, maybe, veto overrides. They’ll probably throw the vetoes in so there can be some horse-trading with the governor over where the CARES Act money goes.
That brings us to the sinister scenario. The legislative majorities are the chattel properties of the public employee union racket, the education racket, and the healthcare racket.
A session about CARES Act money is going to be about whether the money goes to local government and small business or whether the money goes to the rackets that own the Legislature.
This legislative leadership really doesn’t care about the People of Alaska. They care about making sure that every dime of available revenue goes to the union racket, the education racket, and the publicly funded healthcare racket.
You who are not in that exclusive club can just go bankrupt and die. They really don’t care. They really have no shame.
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.
Join Americans for Prosperity Health Policy Analyst, Charlie Katebi, and American Enterprise Institute Economist, Dr. Benedic Ippolito for a town hall healthcare discussion where they will take a look at healthcare through a re-imagined lens — the free market solutions. The event will take place via teleconference on May 13, at 12 pm.
Charlie Katebi
Charlie Katebi was a state government relations manager at The Heartland Institute from 2017 to 2019. His role included interacting with elected officials and staff, legislation tracking, and research and writing on various issues. Primarily he was responsible for proactively reaching out to lawmakers and allies in a dozen states to build Heartland’s presence as well as being another health care expert on staff.
Before joining Heartland, Charlie was a health care policy analyst at the Wyoming Liberty Group and also interned at the American Action Forum, FreedomWorks, and the Reason Foundation on issues ranging from regulatory policy to pension reform. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of British Columbia.
Benedic Ippolito is a resident scholar in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where his research focuses on public finance and health economics. He studies health care financing, the pharmaceutical market and its regulations, and the effect of health care costs on the personal finances of Americans.
Dr. Benedic Ippolito
Dr. Ippolito has been published in a variety of leading peer-reviewed academic and policy journals. These include the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Health Affairs, Tax Notes, and the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Tax Policy and the Economy. He also regularly writes for broader audiences, and his work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Health Affairs Blog, and STAT, among others. He has also testified before Congress.
Ippolito has a PhD and an MS in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA in economics and mathematics from Emory University.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services today announced three new cases of COVID-19 in Anchorage. This brings the total case count to 377. There were no cases reported on Thursday in Alaska.
The three cases reflect data from 12 a.m. until 11:59 p.m. on May 7 that were posted on the Alaska Coronavirus Response Hub.
Of the new cases, all three are female. One is aged 20-29; one is aged 60-69 and one is aged 70-79.
There have been a total of 38 hospitalizations and 10 deaths with no new hospitalizations or deaths reported yesterday.
Recovered cases now total 305, including 14 new recovered cases recorded yesterday. A total of 25,473 tests have been conducted. There are 10 deaths associated with COVID-19 in Alaska, although two of them were Alaskans who died out of state, and at least one of them may have been an elderly man already dying of cancer, according to a neighbor:
As anticipated, the Alaska Supreme Court has agreed to allow the Recall Dunleavy group to have its question put on a statewide ballot, if the group succeeds in getting signatures on its petition.
The court said in a filing today that “the conclusions of the superior court’s January 14, 2020 order that are challenged in this appeal are AFFIRMED.” And it said a full explanation would come later.
Justice Stowers dissented from the ruling in part, “regarding grounds for recall numbered 3(a) (separation of powers) and 4 (mistaken veto), and I therefore dissent in part.”
The ruling is a victory for the Recall Dunleavy Committee and means they can collect signatures with confidence that their recall question will, in fact, be put before voters. They have reportedly collected 34,900 of the 71,252 signatures needed for a recall vote.
Wednesday night’s Mat-Su School Board meeting was dedicated to hearing from those who oppose the removal of five books from the English curriculum at district high schools, including The Great Gatsby.
Most who testified were from the borough, but notably, the ACLU of Alaska gave prepared testimony opposing the board’s action from a newcomer from New York City.
Triada Stampas, the policy director for the ACLU of Alaska, told the board that the ACLU has a long history of opposing censorship of any kind.
“From books and radio to film, television, and the Internet, we have consistently fought to make sure Americans have the right to say, think, read, and write whatever they want, without fear of reprisal. The First Amendment does not allow the government to get rid of or limit the use of books or ideas because they are controversial, unpopular, or offensive. Opposition to censorship is especially important in our schools, because students do not lose their constitutional rights ‘at the schoolhouse gate,'” Stampas told the board.
Stampas worked for the New York City Food Bank for over 10 years before taking a job in Alaska with the ACLU. She is a Harvard graduate with a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University.
Her testimony, like 90 percent of the other testimony given to the board on Wednesday evening, asked for reinstatement of the following works of fiction: The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, and The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
All of the books have their place in literature, but even liberal literary critics find The Great Gatsby to be lacking in merit.
“The book is short, easy to read, and full of low-hanging symbols, the most famous of which really do hang low over Long Island: the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock; the unblinking eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, that Jazz Age Dr. Zizmor. But the real appeal of the book, one assumes, is what it lets us teach young people about the political, moral, and social fabric of our nation. Which raises the question: To our students, and to ourselves, exactly what kind of Great Gatsby Package are we selling?,” writes Kathryn Schulz in New York Magazine, a liberal publication.
“It is an impressive accomplishment. And yet, apart from the restrained, intelligent, beautifully constructed opening pages and a few stray passages thereafter—a melancholy twilight walk in Manhattan; some billowing curtains settling into place at the closing of a drawing-room door—Gatsbyas a literary creation leaves me cold. Like one of those manicured European parks patrolled on all sides by officious gendarmes, it is pleasant to look at, but you will not find any people inside,” Schulz argued.
“Indeed, The Great Gatsby is less involved with human emotion than any book of comparable fame I can think of. None of its characters are likable. None of them are even dislikable, though nearly all of them are despicable. They function here only as types, walking through the pages of the book like kids in a school play who wear sashes telling the audience what they represent: OLD MONEY, THE AMERICAN DREAM, ORGANIZED CRIME. It is possible, of course, to deny your readers access to the inner lives of your characters and still write a psychologically potent book: I give you Blood Meridian. But to do that, you yourself must understand your characters and conceive of them as human,” she wrote.
“Fitzgerald fails at that, most egregiously where it most matters: in the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby. This he constructs out of one part nostalgia, four parts narrative expedience, and zero parts anything else—love, sex, desire, any kind of palpable connection. Fitzgerald himself (who otherwise expressed, to anyone who would listen, a dazzled reverence for his own novel) acknowledged this flaw. Of the great, redemptive romance on which the entire story is supposed to turn, he admitted, “I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy.”
Instead of understanding his own characters, Fitzgerald seemed to be preoccupied with “precision-engineering his plot, chiefly, and putting in overtime at the symbol factory,” Shulz said.
But the ACLU of Alaska wants it featured in English classes, because if the school board is opposed to it, then the ACLU will favor it, regardless of its merit.
It’s time to retire The Great Gatsby as a “taught” book in high school. Thousands of other titles are more worthy, and to lean on this one is laziness on the part of educators. (This is a point that the author of this blog tried to make to Mr. Ed Ferguson, high school English literature teacher at Juneau-Douglas High School, many years ago, without success.)
The Mat-Su School Board will continue with testimony two weeks from now, at its next regularly scheduled meeting. Meanwhile, readers should feel free to discuss the merits of The Great Gatsby or any of the other works in question, in the comment section below. There will not be a quiz.
In a short video released just before the weekend, Kenai Peninsula Mayor Charlie Pierce declared all workers “essential” and said the Kenai Peninsula is open for visitors.
He gave a “shout-out” to the people of Alaska. “We’re essential down here. Everyone of us. All of our large businesses, our small businesses, we’re all open,” Pierce said, as he stood by his truck.
“If you want a place to go, you want a beautiful drive, there’s not a prettier drive than going along the Turnagain Arm, and heading south. You get to that sign that says, “Welcome to the Kenai Peninsula, well you are welcome here.”
He went on to remind people to practice what they’ve been taught about social distancing, and hand-washing, but reiterated that Alaskans know how to do that.
Pierce is the first mayor of any Alaska community to get himself on record and to welcome visitors from around the state to get out and enjoy summer with the bold message that “all Alaskan workers are essential.”
