Today marks the 50th anniversary of Samaritan’s Purse— five decades of responding to disasters, wars, and famine.
The organization, now run by Franklin Graham, works to follow a biblical example of the Good Samaritan.
In Alaska, Samaritan’s Purse operates Operation Heal Our Patriots at its lodge at Lake Clark, where wounded or traumatized soldiers and their spouses take time to heal their relationships with each other and grow closer to God.
“Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.” Bob Pierce wrote those words in his Bible after visiting suffering children on the Korean island of Koje-do. His experience inspired him to found and lead Samaritan’s Purse in 1970 “to meet emergency needs in crisis areas through existing evangelical mission agencies and national churches.”
Franklin Graham came on board Samaritan’s Purse in 1974 and when Pierce died in 1979, Graham became the president. He brought the organization to Alaska, where it has responded to the needs of rural Alaskans. The group was active in the recovery of Eagle, Alaska, after the Yukon River flooded the town in 2009.
Samaritan’s Purse has built churches, community centers, and homes in rural Alaska. In 2007, it built a youth center in Hooper Bay, helping the community recover after a devastating fire of 2006. Other communities served have been Galena, Marshall, Nunapitchuk, and Togiak.
“I thank God for all He has done through Samaritan’s Purse over the past 50 years. Through His grace, we have been able to respond to emergencies worldwide to save lives, relieve suffering, and share the hope of the Gospel. To God be the glory,” said Franklin Graham.
Several Alaskans and former Alaskans have worked at Samaritan’s Purse, and the group maintains a hangar and cargo airplanes in Soldotna.
Democrats in the Alaska House of Representatives plan to put counselors, social workers, and even someone with a master’s degree in psychology into the center of laws involving gun confiscation for people that are thought to be dangerous.
Under HB 62, professionals in the helping fields would be required to report to a central state registry all credible gun threats made by Alaskans, even if that information is not corroborated.
It’s called a “red flag” law and it gives select professions remarkable power over citizens’ right to own firearms because, although the registry is supposed to be confidential, these professionals will be developing lists of people they think pose a danger and who own guns.
Social workers in charge of reporting on gun possession?
According to the proposed statute, yes. That is one of the more disturbing aspects of this proposed legislation, critics say, since social workers are, by their own definition, political actors and they oppose guns, generally.
“Social work is intrinsically political by virtue of the fact that it is concerned with social change and a quest for social justice,” according to a paper published in the SocialWorkHelper, a publication of the International Journal of Social Welfare.
A review of the field’s academic literature reveals that the social work profession is largely anti-Second Amendment and that social workers are continuously instructed by their peers to advocate for gun control.
The proponents of the red flag law also want law enforcement officers to be able to petition a court for a “gun violence protective order,” which would allow them to take guns away from people if they deem them to be “in crisis.”
Critics say there is no due process in red flag laws, and that makes them unconstitutional. Studies show that across the country, when a judge is approached by law enforcement to get an order that allows them to go into a person’s home and seize their guns, they often succeed in getting that order. But when the citizen shows up for the court hearing, those attempts to take their guns are more likely to fail.
What seems sensible in the laboratory of law doesn’t always work out in the real world, where the rationale used for gun confiscation may be a slippery slope, Second Amendment defenders say.
“The Democratic Party’s hard lurch to the left in recent years raises troubling questions about its approach to such questions. On campuses today, it is common to assert that ‘hate speech’ is akin to violence and, on the left, that the mere expression of conservative political ideas constitutes such ‘hate speech,'” wrote Jim DeMint, former senator of South Carolina. If hate speech is now considered violence, then what is the speed at which mere gun ownership will be considered a violent tendency?
The red flag laws are rushing toward passage across the country. If passed, Alaska would be one of 12 states to enact a red-flag law since the shooting at the school in Parkland, Fla. on Feb. 14, 2018 — one state every two months has enacted a red-flag law since that incident.. There are 17 states plus the District of Columbia that have an “extreme risk” law, such as is being proposed for Alaska.
Connecticut was the first state to pass a red flag law, after a mass shooting at the Connecticut State Lottery in 1999. Thirteen years later, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened in Connecticut, with 26 people killed, in spite of the law.
Connecticut’s law allows onlylaw enforcement to petition for a gun’s removal, and the law has been used more than 1,500 times since its passage — more than once a week.
Not all law enforcement officers are on board with the red flag movement. Colorado’s legislature passed a red flag law that took effect Jan. 1, but several Colorado sheriffs are on the record to say they will not enforce the law in their counties. In December, opponents of the law held a “We Will Not Comply” rally at the state Capitol in Denver.
In Oregon, the red flag law is also applied with variability. In conservative parts of the state where ranchers and farmers dwell, peace officers have ignored the law, while in the more Democrat-controlled and urban parts of the state, petitions to take guns away from Oregonians have been used 166 times in two years since the law was enacted.
House Bill 62is sponsored by Democrats Rep. Geran Tarr, Harriet Drummond, and Andy Josephson. The NRA rates them 64 percent, 21 percent and 36 percent respectively on Second Amendment issues.
The bill is in House Judiciary, which is chaired by Rep. Matt Claman, rated 43 percent by the NRA.
The Washington Post reported that JP Morgan Chase will stop lending to companies doing oil exploration or drilling above the Arctic Circle. That would include all companies that work in Alaska’s oil patch.
The decision is due to pressure from climate change organizations and because the bank leadership believes that the Arctic is particularly vulnerable to climate change.
The bank is also phasing out investment in coal, it announced Monday.
The move follows the lead of Goldman Sachs, which announced it will not lend to companies engaged in oil extraction in the Arctic.
An analyst at the investment firm Raymond James told the newspaper that loans to Arctic projects are rare, and the move has little practical value.
“Oil and gas activity in the Arctic is so slim anyway that lending for such activity is essentially meaningless,” analyst Pavel Molchanov told the newspaper.
Reuters reports that details of the oil-and-coal phase out plan will be rolled out on Tuesday at an investor conference along with a climate change initiative that sets up a $200 billion fund to finance sustainable projects.
In my first column in this series, I indicated the average math proficiency in the Organized Borough is 39.45 percent and in the Unorganized Borough it is 25.17 percent. Average English language arts (ELA) proficiency in the Organized Borough is 44.30 percent and in the Unorganized Borough it is 28.85 percent.
Next to health care, education is the largest total spend for the State of Alaska every year. With this state provided documentation, could a reasonable person conclude the root and existential cause of this large spend is the state’s government education system itself?
In 2018, former Eagle River/Chugiak Senator Anna MacKinnon understated the dilemma when she said, “We always see districts asking for more money to do exactly what they’re doing. And I’m telling you, it appears the system is broken.”
There is no appearance.
The system is dysfunctional and mangled.
This is a fact wrapped by the reality of the State’s own website, skewered by undeniable data revealing our failure and a failing future roasting over an unattended and chaotic fire fueled by obstinacy, unintelligence, and myopia and sprinkled with a bit of denial and delusion.
Our local, state and federal employees as well as our local, state and federal policy makers (state legislators pay attention!) who are responsible for this clearly known epic failure should not be fired. They should all voluntarily resign for this tragic outcome like failed samurai falling on their swords en masse.
Alaska’s children are failing to meet the state’s own education proficiency standards. Regardless of whoever wants to assuage these facts with whatever rationale, excuses and prevarications, the state’s own Department of Education and Early Development has posted the data for all of us to see. The result is our own failure to educate our progeny in the two most vital education prerequisites, math and English language arts. Without these, our children will fail in modern society.
How can any Alaskan adult not be angry and demand immediate competent measurable change?
Going back to the state’s website, the “Overall School Index Value” is the “sum of the school’s performance points in each indicator with the appropriate weight applied”. The more government gets involved in the execution of education, especially the federal government, the more hierarchically obtuse and profusely dogmatic the outcome – with the financial benefits going to everyone but our own children.
Remember my friendly conversation. I’d assumed Eagle River High School was the praised school based on that chat.
Here’s what is on the state’s website for Eagle River High School. Attendance is 94.06 percent. Not bad. Grades served 9 through 12. These students are the future of our community. Awesome.
Number of students is 841 and number of teachers is 38 yielding a student teacher ratio of 22.12-to-1. Not bad. A little higher than the national standard of 16:1.
Here again are the startling realities of the data presented in the state’s website.
With a sampling of 247 students tested (almost 30 percent of the 2018/2019 enrollment), the average math proficiency at Eagle River High School is 50.20 percent and with a sampling of 251 students tested (almost 30 percent of the 2018/2019 enrollment), the average ELA proficiency is 48.61 percent.
In other words, of the tested students, more than 49 out of every 100 students tested at Eagle River High School are not meeting average math proficiency and more than 51 out of every 100 students tested at Eagle River High School are not meeting average English language arts proficiency.
I can’t see this as success. Can you?
Michael Tavoliero is a realtor at Core Real Estate Group in Eagle River, is active in the Alaska Republican Party and chairs Eaglexit.
An old album of photos of interest to collectors of Alaskana has turned up at the auction house of Elstob & Elstob in the town of Ripon, North Yorkshire, England.
The album contains black and white photos of Nome and the surrounding area during the gold rush, all taken by Frank Nowell, a well-known Alaska photographer and miner of that era.
Nowell traveled to Alaska in 1886 to start a dairy farm, and made it to Nome during the gold rush of 1900, where he chronicled the towns that sprung up overnight, preserving a record of the businesses and the people of the era, with a special eye for the Native population of Eskimos. Nowell was also involved in mining in the Juneau-Berner’s Bay Area, where his father had started several mines.
How the 25 photos made it to England in a classic black-paper album is anyone’s guess, but the auction house expects the album is affordable and will go for as much as $150 US dollars.
A legislative librarian who works for the State of Alaska continued her lawsuit against the State of Alaska this month, as she and her attorneys argued to a judge that her surgery to make her appear more female should be paid for by the state treasury.
Jennifer Fletcher says the surgery is medically necessary and sued the State of Alaska in 2018 to pay for the transition surgery.
The oral arguments were Feb. 19 in front of U.S. District Court Judge Russel Holland. Lambda Legal represented Fletcher, and the Department of Law’s labor and state affairs attorney, William Milks, represented the State of Alaska.
The case made by Fletcher is that surgery that makes a man’s body conform to that of a woman’s shape is medically necessary.
“AlaskaCare singles out transgender employees for unequal treatment by categorically depriving them of coverage for surgical treatment for gender dysphoria, which is the clinically significant distress that can result from the dissonance between one’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth. This exclusion contravenes a well-established medical consensus that such surgical treatment can be medically necessary and even life-saving,” the lawsuit says.
It goes on to argue that sex is assigned at birth based on the existence of certain genitalia, and that this practice is wrong-headed.
“An individual’s sex is generally assigned solely on the basis of external genitalia at the time of birth. Other sex-related characteristics such as chromosomes, hormone levels, internal reproductive organs, secondary sex characteristics, and gender identity, are typically not assessed or considered during the assignment of sex at birth.”
The argument leads to a conclusion that gender is mistakenly assigned at birth, since such assignment based on genitalia is unreliable.
The lawsuit says that gender dysphoria can lead to severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation or suicide. If untreated, it gets worse over time, Fletcher’s lawsuit claims.
“The longer an individual goes without adequate treatment, the greater the risk of severe harms to the individual’s health,” the lawsuit says.
Fletcher, who started working for the State of Alaska in 2012, transitioned to living openly as a woman in 2014. She legally changed her name to Jennifer Rae Fletcher and has updated her legal documents, including her driver’s license and passport to indicate she is a woman. She went to Thailand to have vaginoplasty and mammoplasty surgeries. Vaginoplasty is generally a penile inversion done to to create a vagina, and mammoplasty involves breast implants.
In 2018, the AlaskaCare plan began covering transition-related hormone therapy, but still does not pay for transition-related surgical treatment.
In October, Judge Holland sided with Fletcher when the State asked for the case to be dismissed, and he scheduled the oral arguments for this month. Regardless of Holland’s decision, the case can be appealed by either party; it is in the federal court system.
In 2014, Alaska voters legalized the commercial production, growth, and sales of marijuana by voter initiative.
Measure 2 went into effect five years ago this month. It allows adults 21 years or older to possess and use marijuana and associated cannabis projects. In 2016, the first first retail marijuana store opened in October 2016.
Marijuana is America’s most commonly used psychotropic drug after alcohol. So how is Alaska doing? Two years after legalization, the state conducted a survey, and 2017 numbers were recently released in a report.
According to the Department of Health and Social Serivces, 9,000 people under the age of 18 used marijuana during the previous 30 days, about 22 percent of all traditional high school students.
More Alaska students use marijuana than smoke cigarettes. The students using marijuana the most were 11th and 12th graders, and students in alternative and correctional schools. The pattern of usage among Alaska youth tracks with the national average.
Although that number may seem high, cannabis use among high schoolers peaked in the late 1970s, when more than one-third of seniors (37 percent in 1976) reported using pot in the past month.
Some 15.4 percent of Alaska adults used marijuana during the past 30 days. Among Alaska Natives, that number is 24 percent.
Smoking marijuana, as opposed to dabbing, eating, or vaping, was the favorite form of consumption among all Alaskans (96.3 percent), and especially among Alaska Natives (99.3 percent).
Ten percent of Alaska adults used marijuana on 20 or more occasions during the prior month, something considered “heavy use.” That equates to 54,000 Alaska adults being heavy users of marijuana, or over 7 percent of the entire population of the state (including all ages).
Between 2015 and 2017, the prevalence of marijuana usage among Alaska adults was higher than the national average.
Adult heavy use increased significantly between 2015 and 2017. The prevalence of marijuana use among Alaska adults was higher than the national average.
Nine percent of women who delivered a baby in Alaska in 2017 said they used marijuana at least once while they were pregnant. This translates to about 900 births in the year.
Among those mothers who breastfed their babies, marijuana use was lower than non-breastfeeding mothers. Still, one in ten breastfeeding mothers reported using marijuana at least once since delivery. About 6 percent of Alaska mothers of 3-year-old children said they had used marijuana in the past month.
According to the survey, fewer people believe that marijuana usages is harmful, compared to the national average. Only 19 percent of Alaska high school students believe there is a great risk from using marijuana once or twice a month, and only 3 percent of those using marijuana think it’s risky.
One in 10 high school students who drive had operated a vehicle while high in the past month, and 16 percent had driven while high at some point since getting their license.
As for medical uses of marijuana, the number of medical marijuana registry patient cardholders dropped dramatically, from more than 1,700 in 2014 and 2015 to only 404 in 2019. And yet, 1-in-10 users reported using marijuana for medical purposes in past 30 days.
Another population that showed high usage is the gay/lesbian/bisexual community, 28.9 percent of which uses marijuana, compared with 15 percent of the heterosexual population.
By October 2019, Alaska had licensed 102 retail stores to sell marijuana. Businesses are located throughout the state. State marijuana regulators have not set limits on the number of licenses by person or entity.
Marijuana products sold and with that, tax revenues have risen steadily. From January-October 2019 more than 17 tons of taxed marijuana products changed hands on the legal market, generating more than $17 million in state tax revenue.
Sen. Mia Costello, photographed above (left, with Rep. Sara Rasmussen), had surgery to pin together a fractured hip on Friday, after she took a spill on the ice at the skating rink in Juneau last week.
At first, she was told by doctors it was just a bruised hip, but after hobbling around for a couple a week, she went back in and received a different diagnosis, and immediate surgery.
“No water polo for me for six weeks,” she quipped. Costello, who is one of the more athletic legislators, broke her finger playing water polo in last fall.
She is part of a water polo team while she serves in Juneau. She’ll be recovering in Juneau for a few weeks while her hip heals, and doctors advised her not to fly for the time being.
In college, Costello was a star swimmer, the first Harvard woman swimmer to qualify in an individual event for Division 1; she was and NCAA All-American swimmer and qualified for the Olympic trials.
“It is our duty as Alaskans to be at the forefront of climate change mitigation strategies and new resource opportunities.” – Alaska Center Climate Action Plan
Alaska’s elected officials share a common goal of solving Alaska’s structural revenue-expense imbalance. No more short-term band aids – we need long-term solutions.
Despite fossil-fuel naysayers, the oil industry will continue as Alaska’s main revenue source (outside of the Permanent Fund) in the near future. Seafood, tourism, and mining will also contribute as significant components of the economy.
Win Gruening
But the mining industry, more than any other, has the most potential for growth (and to put our people to work year-round) by providing the world with key components for electric-vehicle batteries and aid in the advancement of other critical green technologies.
In 2017, the World Bank released a report, titled “The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals in a Low-Carbon Future.” The report details how wind turbines, solar panels and batteries are all incredibly reliant on a myriad of minerals.
For more than a century, Alaska has produced a variety of minerals, especially metals produced from hard rock. Today, Alaska only produces gold, silver, lead, and zinc in large quantities. Alaska was the top silver producer in the U.S. in 2017, and zinc and lead were the state’s top two foreign exports.
According to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), our state has over 7,400 documented prospects. Alaska ranks 5th out of 83 worldwide jurisdictions in overall investment attractiveness by mining and exploration companies and ranks 3rd in mineral potential. (Fraser Institute Annual Survey of Mining Companies, 2018).
In 2018, DNR reported production of almost 16 million ounces of precious metals (gold and silver) and about 825,000 tons of base metals (lead and zinc). This is only a fraction of the estimated reserves potentially available for exploration and development in Alaska.
A report from McDowell Group, an Alaska-based economic consulting firm, says mining employed 9,200 Alaskans directly and indirectly during 2018, and injected $715 million in payroll into the state’s economy. Mine workers were among the highest-paid with an average annual salary of $102,100. Mining employees live in more than 60 communities throughout Alaska.
Estimated revenues to the State of Alaska from mineral-industry-specific fees, rents, sales, royalties, and taxes amounted to more than $148.6 million in 2018. An additional $34.2 million was paid to municipalities.
Thousands of everyday products require mined metals, including electric vehicles. The minerals extracted from our mines are used in many of the technology tools we use today, from laptops to complex space-age devices.
The rise of green energy technologies required to reduce carbon emissions is expected to lead to significant growth in demand for a wide range of minerals and metals, such as aluminum, copper, lead, lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, silver, steel, zinc and rare earth minerals such as neodymium-used in magnets and electric vehicles.
The study points to the fact that most rare earth metals come from China or other areas of unrest, corruption, and human rights abuses such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Alaska’s environmental awareness, regulations, and labor practices are clearly superior to most countries where mining occurs. Furthermore, there is real concern America could potentially be held hostage by China and others that have control of rare-earth metals and minerals that are critical to America’s economy and security.
Objections to the expansion of existing mines like Greens Creek or Kensington near Juneau as well so potential mining projects like the Herbert River and Constantine prospects, or the rare-earth Bokan Mountain project in Southeast Alaska, are short-sighted. These projects would stimulate our economy, reduce dependence on foreign mineral sources, and improve global environmental quality.
Mining can and should be one of the cornerstones of true diversification of our natural resources and state and local economies. Gov. Dunleavy’s formation of the Alaska Development Team to help advance mining projects as well as stimulate other areas of the economy is a welcome start.
If we open our minds to the possibilities, Alaska can be a leader in the effort to supply our nation’s critical mineral needs. If we don’t, others will take advantage and it will be an opportunity lost.
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.
