The Native village with the highest increase in voter turnout will receive a prize of $10,000 for its school from the First Alaskans Institute. European-heritage settlements need not apply.
That is according to an Alaska Native who works at the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, although no announcement has been made by the First Alaskans Institute on the organization’s website.
Three members of the Walker Administration sit on the 10-member board of the Institute: Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, Al Kookesh, a special assistant to the governor, and Valerie Davison, commissioner of Health and Social Services. Elizabeth Medicine Crow is the CEO and president.
The second highest turnout will receive $5,000. Both checks would go to the local school.
“Youth in villages- tell your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to go vote on November 6!! Parents, get out and vote so your school kids may benefit from this money!! Even if you don’t have school kids, get out and vote for the sake of the school! Get the money!!” Donna Bach wrote on Facebook.
While paying for votes is illegal, there appears to be no law against incentivizing an entire community to vote, although paying a village, or funneling money to the village school is a new concept in “get out the vote” tactics.
If Mark Begich, who is running for governor, ran a raffle for a million dollars for registered Democrats, would the State allow it? Unlikely.
But where it gets into the stickiest territory is that Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott is on the board of trustees for First Alaskans Institute, while at the same time is in charge of the Division of Elections.
Mallott, a Democrat, has an obvious stake in his own re-election. He cannot assert with a straight face that higher turnout in villages won’t benefit him.
Rural areas are least likely to vote Republican and have the least familiarity with Republican Mike Dunleavy, who will be on the ballot as well.
The Institute is the prime sponsor of this week’s AFN Conferences’ Elders and Youth Conference at the Dena’ina Center, which is underway through Wednesday.
Donna Bach, who broadcast the news of the village voting incentive on Facebook, is the director of Alaska Native Affairs at Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, which is also under the direction of the Governor’s Office. The news has since been shared by more than 100 Facebook users.
The Dunleavy for Alaska campaign has set a new bar for graphic design excellence, and Alaskans have collected the whole set of campaign signs just because they are so attractive.
But the campaign just took a graphical turn: The new sign is short on looks and tall on message: “Save the PFD,” it reads. The sign encourages people to text PFD to the number 55022. By doing so, you’ll get updates from the campaign between now and Nov. 6.
“Save the PFD” is one of those unique phrases that only Alaskans understand. PFD stands for Permanent Fund Dividend, and the fact that Bill Walker, the sitting governor, cut Alaskans’ dividend in half is one of the big campaign themes of the year.
So Walker is trying to explain himself — his sign. with his own “Saved the PFD” message, is seen on buses around Anchorage:
In the meantime, The Dunleavy for Alaska legacy signs already on roadsides and yards come in a wide range of colors and graphic representations that look like coveted Patagonia apparel decals:
All year, Gov. Bill Walker has been the least popular governor in America who is facing reelection, according to Morning Consult, which has been tracking governors’ popularity since 2016. But it’s gotten worse.
54 percent of Alaskans polled said they disapprove of the job Walker has done. During the first quarter poll, 52 percent disapproved of him. This is not the direction an incumbent likes to crow about, and you’re not likely to read a press release from the Walker-Mallott campaign about this abysmal result.
What has to concern Walker even more is that his approval rating slid from 29 percent in the first quarter to 25 percent in the third quarter.
That matches up where he has been in other polls, too — even the Ivan Moore poll, which leans left.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE THAT FAR DOWN? A NUCLEAR ATTACK
The “October Surprise” is almost an article of faith in political gossip circles.
KTVA reporter Rhonda McBride warns one is coming in the governor’s race. The target: Mike Dunleavy.
Art Hackney, political consultant to the stars, told McBride it’s coming. He’s heard it, she reported.
Progressive pollster Ivan Moore told McBride that an October Surprise is all but a certainty.
But what is it really? It’s likely an October Smear. With just 21 days left, there’s not much else for a low-performing candidate with a lot of cash to do.
Rhonda could not get them to say what the Walker camp has in mind, or if she did she is not telling the public. She’s laying the groundwork for what is likely to be rolled out next week, on Oct. 22 — something so vicious that the media will HAVE to pick up on the story. Reporters will not be able to ignore it.
According to Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock, this is a case of reporter’s itch, a condition known to make a journalist’s face blush.
“Rhonda couldn’t land an exclusive interview with Dunleavy so she’s taking her revenge by reporting that there’s an October surprise,” said Babcock. “She’s tossing her journalistic integrity out the window, reporting on gossipers gossiping about gossip, with no substantiation.”
Dunleavy has given interviews to some journalists, but not all of them — at least not to date. McBride may have a tough time landing an interview with him now.
Vince Beltrami and Gov. Bill Walker, signing a labor agreement this weekend.
“[Ivan] Moore says, based on what he’s heard in various political circles, an October surprise of some kind has been in the works for some time – one that could possibly cut into Dunleavy’s comfortable lead,” according to McBride.
“Based on what he’s heard in various political circles?” This is the Ivan Moore who does polling for Democrats. The political circles he runs in have just one mission — search and destroy rising Republicans.
That Dunleavy lead Moore referred to is comfortably in the high 40s, which is good for a three-way race.
Meanwhile, Walker’s disapproval rating is now the highest that it has been since he was elected governor: Just one in four Alaskan approve of his performance.
10 INTERVIEWED FOR THE KTVA POLL, BUT JUST ONE IS A REPUBLICAN?
In McBride’s story, she interviewed random people in Anchorage and it appeared to her that most of them like Bill Walker or Mark Begich for governor. She asked them who they favor for governor.
But Must Read Alaska ran the voter registrations on the 10 random people she interviewed to see what party they most likely identify with:
Four were Democrats
One was Libertarian
One was Republican
Two two were undeclared
Two didn’t show up in the voter registration lists at all
POLITICAL HARASSMENT TRAINER COMING BACK TO ANCHORAGE THIS MONTH
ACORN, an organization that fell into disrepute and collapsed in disgrace, still has a walk-on role in radical left-wing politics, and that role now extends north to Alaska.
Recently, an organizational remnant of ACORN was active in training Alaskans go to Washington, D.C. to protest the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — and intentionally get arrested in the process.
One of those protest organizer-trainers, Darius Gordon, will be back in Anchorage this month to meet with the Alaska Grassroots Alliance and debrief on their civil disobedience activities that were unsuccessful in blocking Kavanaugh.
Perhaps there will be more training ahead on ways to harass Alaska’s Republican politicians and how to proceed when arrested.
Gordon trained the Alliance in preparation for their D.C. arrest event, and several Alaskans were indeed taken away in handcuffs from in front of Sen. Dan Sullivan’s office. Gordon videotaped and posted it all on Twitter in September:
Gordon is also trainer in a specific technique known as birddogging, where protesters work in pairs to crowd a lawmaker, getting in his or her physical space.
These birddoggers practice tracking lawmakers, shouting at them in their face, as well as menacing them with their bodies by remaining close to impede their progress, while not touching them. They do it all without actually appearing to make an actual threat.
They are trying to provoke Republican lawmakers into a physical or verbal reaction that can be videotaped and shared on the internet. Much of CPD’s activity has the stated intent of turning voters against these conservative elected officials during the 2018 election.
Video footage of the Kavanaugh protests in September and October reveal numerous cases of birddogging, as trained by Gordon and the Center for Popular Democracy this summer.
Sen. Rick Santorum is verbally harassed by CPD bird-doggers as he tries to get into an elevator.Sen. Bob Corker is followed closely by a CPD bird-dogger, while on the other side of him, out of camera range, another birddogger blocks him from moving away.
“Birddogging” is a relatively new tactic that involves a video camera operator and persistent questioning of the tracked lawmaker in public.
As described by one left-wing site, “This form of simple, direct advocacy, when applied consistently, is amazingly effective –and yet, astonishingly rare. In 2018’s election year, birddogging is how we will win the policies we need. Together we can get trained up and plugged in to a national activist network that is going to play a huge role in 2018 and 2020, making sure than *everyone* running for office agrees to a bold progressive vision–that makes America sane again. Let’s get off the internet, and focus our energy on people who actually have the power to give us what we want, in person and in-public, especially when candidates are most accessible and amendable, during election season!”
CPD trains people to birddog lawmakers not only at the U.S. Capitol, but in public places, including restaurants and airports, and to scream at them when they go into a restroom, as this woman birddogger did:
Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Cruz and members of the Trump Administration have experienced increased harassment from the group and its copy-cats.
Darius Gordon’s second visit to Alaska indicates that harassment will be the new norm from the Alaska Grassroots Alliance, which started training earlier this year for civil disobedience.
During one of their trainings in a church in Spenard, a heavy metal musician sprayed the group of pacifists with a can of pepper spray. He is currently in jail.
BUT HOW IS CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY RELATED TO ACORN?
ACORN, the international network of community organizations known as Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, became embroiled in a series of scandals that ended its its financial demise in 2010, after video footage became public showing ACORN organizers actively involved in promulgating voter fraud and other frauds in key states.
President Obama had several ties to the group, including using it for a get-out-the-vote effort on his campaign.
But at its height, ACORN was powerful, with chapters in over 100 cities in the U.S., and more internationally.
Its founder, Wade Rathke, eventually ended up in Juneaurunning the Mental Health Consumer Action Network, a fledgling advocacy group. He has since apparently returned to community organizing with ACORN International, which still exists, and he appears to live in Louisiana.
Although ACORN in the U.S. died an ignominious death, one of its key players, Brian Kettering, is now the head of the Center for Popular Democracy, founded in 2012. That’s the group that has become involved in radicalizing Anchorage Democrats and helping them get arrested in DC during recent weeks.
HOW ANCHORAGE ACTIVISTS KNEW WHAT TO DO
Darius Gordon arrives at the Anchorage Airport in August.
In August of 2018, Darius Gordon of CPD came to Anchorage to help the Alaska Grassroots Alliance organize a trip to Washington, D.C. where protesters planned to be arrested to try to prevent Sen. Lisa Murkowski from voting in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. He had funds to assist.
The strategy worked — at least in part. Murkowski voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, although he was ultimately confirmed.
Several of the Alaska protesters were arrested and had their bail posted by the Center for Popular Democracy. In fact, an unknown number of protesters from the Alaska Grassroots Alliance had their entire round trip to DC funded by CPD, and had their bail reimbursed as well.
The Center for Popular Democracy received money last year from the Open Society Foundation, one of the primary funding funnels of George Soros. About half of CPD’s funding comes from the Ford, Open Society, and Wyss Foundations. Reports for this year’s funding sources are not yet available.
While the heated battle over whether Ballot Measure 1 is a boon or bane to Alaska and its natural resources rages on unabated, we find ourselves wondering about the process that put it on the ballot in the first place.
The complicated salmon habitat ballot measure began life as an initiative, and, frankly, we are underwhelmed at how either side of the issue has presented its arguments. It is either a way to save Alaska’s salmon or destroy its economy, depending on who you listen to. Like most initiatives, this one serves Outside special interests.
Ballot initiatives seem all the rage among the uninformed who believe they are enhancing the notion of direct democracy by settling issues on the ballot and without a legislative process, but they present a real danger. They are, in essence, convenient back doors for monied special interests to artfully push their aims, neatly sidestepping pesky governmental checks and balances to avoid the fuss and muss of the legislative process. No vetting. No oversight. No public hearings. Certainly no discussion of consequences.
The recent deaths of the liberal lions Judge Stephen Reinhardt this year and Judge Harry Pregerson in 2017 has given Trump an opportunity to move the court more toward the center. Both of those judges were President Jimmy Carter appointments and were considered among the most left-leaning judges in the nation. A third judge, Judge Alex Kozinski, was conservative and was a President Ronald Reagan appointment, but retired last December, creating a third vacancy from California.
The Ninth Circuit has 29 judgeships, and with these three vacancies there are seven open seats total.
Previous to the nominations of earlier this week, Trump had nominated Bridget Bade, Eric Miller, and Ryan Nelson. He has one more nomination to make for this court. But these all will be bruising nomination battles, if history is any judge.
Currently, it is nearly impossible for conservatives to argue before the court and have any Republican-appointed judges on the panel. And the Ninth Circuit is known to have many cases reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, earning it the nickname “The Nutty Ninth.” (About 78 percent of the cases appealed from the Ninth to the Supreme Court are reversed.)
All three who were nominated this week are considered conservatives, are from California and are members of the conservative Federalist Society.
Patrick Bumatay
Bumatay, 40 is with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, but his assignment is as counselor to the U.S. Attorney General’s office in Washington, D.C. He has a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from Harvard University, where he was the articles editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a publication seated in conservative and libertarian legal scholarship. He clerked for Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit , and Judge Sandra Townes, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Bumatay is a member of the Federal Bar Association, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and the National Asian Pacific Islander Prosecutors Association.
His resume is extensive, including Counselor to the Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.), Counsel, Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.), Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California (San Diego, CA), Associate, Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason Anello & Bohrer, P.C.(NYC), and Counsel, Associate Attorney General, Office of the Associate Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.).
As a federal prosecutor, he has worked on organized crime and narcotics cases for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego, and has argued before Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He currently advises the U.S. Attorney General on national opioid strategy, transnational organized crime, prisoner and reentry policies, and other criminal matters.
Bumatay assisted curing the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Bumatay comes from a Filipino heritage.
Bumatay would also be the nation’s second openly gay federal appeals court judge and the first on the Ninth Circuit.
Kenneth Lee
Kenneth Lee, 43, is a partner, Jenner & Block LLP, a Los Angeles law firm. A graduate of Cornell University, he has a law degree from Harvard University.
He clerked for Judge Emilio Garza, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. From 2006-2009, he was associate counsel to the President. While at the White House Counsel’s Office, he represented the White House in congressional and provided the president and senior White House officials advice on a wide range of legal issues.
Lee has represented numerous consumer class action lawsuits over the years, representing companies in a variety of industries. He has argued appeals before the Second, Fifth, and the Ninth Circuit.
Lee is active in pro bono work for the poor, indigent, and prisoners, with a focus on constitutional rights. The Federalist Society lists him as an expert on topics food and drug law, class actions, and the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Daniel Collins
Daniel Collins, 55, is a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, a Los Angeles law firm. He earned a bachelor’s degree fro Harvard University and his law degree from Stanford Law School.
Collins clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia, of the U.S. Supreme Court.
He was Associate Deputy Attorney General, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.); Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California; and Attorney-Advisor, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.).
As a federal prosecutor, he tried more than 60 cases, including eight jury trials. He has argued 36 cases before the Ninth Circuit, four cases in the California Supreme Court, and at least one case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
One way to quickly make Alaska Psychiatric Institute safer for both staff and patients?
Shut down dozens of beds in the hospital, drop patient capacity to half, and send violent mentally ill people to jail.
That’s what happened in the past few weeks, and the Alaska Correctional Officers Association is concerned.
According to the union, the Department of Corrections announced it would begin incarcerating the mental health patients who are referred to and who currently reside at API. The announcement wasn’t made to corrections officers, however.
“Alaskans who believed their loved ones were getting the care they needed are now being treated as criminals by Governor Walker and Commissioner Dean Williams,” the group’s press release says, taking a direct shot at the governor and the Corrections commissioner.
ACOA says against the wishes and safety concerns of corrections officers, the state has relabeled mentally ill patients as “Title 47 mental health “holds.” That allows the state to send these mentally ill people to prison indefinitely.
Correctional officers say they are not trained to deal with violent mentally ill people, and because they are not criminals, these inmates cannot be kept with other inmates. They must be placed in segregation cells, full mental health units, or just left in booking areas.
“How is DOC going to keep these vulnerable mental health patients safe in this environment?” ACOA asks.
But for API, the situation has become even more dire than when a scathing report came out several weeks ago that said the facility was unsafe.
When there’s no bed available at API, patients are often left in emergency rooms, but local Anchorage hospitals are drowning in psychiatric patients they are holding because there’s nowhere for them to go.
What concerns corrections officers the most is that they were not told that psychiatric patients were heading to their facilities. Two are at the Anchorage jail, and one is at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center.
A memo from the DOC Health and Rehabilitation Services Director Laura Brooks outlined how the Title 47 would work.
“Due to staffing and safety concerns, API is shutting down units in the hospital which will drop their bed capacity to approximately 36 (from their usual 78). These units will remain closed until they can bring their staffing up to a safe level; there is no reopen date at this time. Per statute, when someone is waiting on commitment to API but there are no open beds, the individual may be held at a local hospital or correctional facility —this is very similar to the Title 47 alcohol holds we are all familiar with. The primary difference is that the T47 alcohol holds expire after 12 hours but there is no time limit for a T47 MH [Mental Health] hold. With bed space at API extremely limited, and local hospitals resistant to taking T47 holds, we can expect many of these individuals who are awaiting API commitment to end up in our facilities. I do not know how many T47 MH detainees we will see or how long they may remain with us.”
Brooks also gave staff detailed instructions on how T47 patients were to be evaluated and treated, which included outlining their right to access to mental health services and medications.
“This is new to all of us so please be patient as we work through a new process,” Brooks wrote.
The Department of Corrections is experiencing management turnover. While Williams is commissioner, he has an acting Director of Institutions, an Acting Deputy Director, and an Acting Chief of Time Accounting Officer, all key roles.
The appointment of Dean Williams as Commissioner of the Department of Corrections in 2016 was fraught from the beginning. The ACOA union was upset that Williams had written a report critical of officers filled with what they said were false narratives. They issued a press release in 2016 saying that Williams was putting the entire inmate population at risk, and that he had created an opening for himself to become commissioner.
Schneider tackled a 25-year-old woman, tried to strangle her, said he was going to kill her. She lost consciousness believing that. When she came to, he’d ejaculated on her face and hair. He said he wasn’t going to kill her, he had needed her to think that to sexually gratify himself. Then he drove to his job as an air traffic controller.
The woman did everything right. She called 911 and went to the hospital. Detective Brett Sarber said she was so traumatized she could barely speak. But she did. The detective did everything right. He got her to trust and talk to him, gathered physical evidence, filed charges and Schneider was quickly arrested.
The things I can’t reconcile are the apparent lack of support for the victim and Schneider’s sentence.
Three days after the assault, she appeared telephonically at a bail hearing. She opposed releasing Schneider to his wife’s supervision, an ankle monitor, and a $30,000 performance bond, saying she feared for her safety. The prosecution agreed with the arrangement. Schneider got to go home. The victim had to live in fear. She testified at grand jury shortly after this. That was the last time records show she appeared in the case.
Over a year later, the prosecutor said he tried to reach her by phone for the sentencing. He said he would have had to send a detective to contact her. He should have. The investigators who handle these cases are dedicated. I believe Detective Sarber, who she trusted, would have gladly contacted her and offered to accompany her to the sentencing. I believe he would have done the same for a trial.
The Department of Law’s website describes Victim-Witness Coordinators. Their job is to stay in touch with victims, answer their questions, provide support and connect them with services. I relied on the ones I worked with immensely. I’ve seen no mention of their role with this victim.
Schneider was sentenced to two years with one suspended and credit for time on “house” arrest. No jail time to serve. The prosecutor agreed to this. He said the sentencing range for Schneider’s offense, given his lack of criminal history was, zero to two years. That’s partially true.
What wasn’t said is he could’ve filed statutory aggravators and argued they should significantly increase that range. Schneider’s case warranted two statutory aggravators:
His conduct manifested deliberate cruelty.
It was among the most serious included in the definition of the offense.
Schneider’s conduct was sadistic. It was about power, terror and degradation. The assault Schneider pleaded to can include bruising someone with a broom handle. The victim in this case might’ve died.
The prosecutor said he agreed to no jail time so Schneider would agree to sex-offender treatment, which couldn’t otherwise be ordered since he wasn’t convicted of a sex crime. I’m for treatment. But not to the extent it gets leveraged for no jail time. Deterrence can be effective, too.
More just would have been no agreement by prosecutors on the sentence. They could have argued the statutory aggravators called for significant jail time, letting defense counsel argue the defendant would voluntarily get treatment in exchange for some leniency.
The judge didn’t have to accept the sentence the parties proposed. He could have rejected it as too lenient, which would have entitled Schneider to withdraw his plea. The prosecutor would have then been negotiating with the leverage that the court was not going to accept no jail. The judge could’ve deferred sentencing and ordered a pre-sentence report.
Alaska law requires judges balance certain factors in sentencing. They include:
Defendant’s potential for rehabilitation
Seriousness of the offense
Harm done to the victim
Need to deter the defendant and others
Community condemnation
Restoration of the victim and community.
In KTVA’s footage of the judge’s remarks, he said it was clear the primary goal of the agreement was to facilitate Schneider’s rehabilitation. He embraced this. He brushed off deterrence of Schneider, saying he didn’t know what could be done to deter him. (That’s frightening. A pre-sentence report might’ve provided some insight.) He made no mention of deterring others. For community condemnation, he spoke of forgiveness.
There was no mention of the victim or her harm. The courtroom of white-collar professionals, including the defendant, all placed more value on the defendant’s possible future than the victim’s and what she had already suffered. If I, a professional with self-advocacy skills and status impacted by my trauma, were the victim, I suspect the sentence would’ve been different.
The prosecutor said the defendant losing his job was like a life sentence. It wasn’t. It was a collateral consequence of his criminal conduct. But to a prosecutor and judge, loss of their professional status and livelihood is terrible to contemplate. Both men identified with that more than the woman’s loss. She didn’t have socio-economic status. She was a 25-year-old Alaska Native woman without stable housing. She depended on the prosecution and the court to stand up for her.
To the victim, I’m sorry. You deserved better. Perhaps we will become better for your courage.
Val Van Brocklin is a former state and federal prosecutor in Alaska who now trains and writes nationally and internationally on criminal justice, leadership, and ethics.
National Education Association-Alaska, the powerful teachers union, is spending $50,000 to oppose gubernatorial candidate Mike Dunleavy, through a group it formed called Educators Against Dunleavy, which shares the same Main Street address as the NEA in Juneau.
With that $50,000, the group purchased $30,000 worth of digital advertising at ADN.com, going negative against Dunleavy. The remainder of the $20,000 went to the ad agency, Rising Tide Communications.
Why would the National Education Association oppose the first Alaska governor who comes from the public school community, and whose entire career was as a public school teacher and administrator — and a rural educator, at that? And the only gubernatorial candidate hopeful who has lived in the Arctic?
Mike Dunleavy when he was a public school teacher in Kotzebue.
TEACHERS, PARA-EDUCATORS, SECRETARIES, AND JANITORS HAVE A CHOICE
Educators who disagree with the NEA-Alaska’s position on this race are now free to withhold their dues, which are going to oppose a rural school teacher who spent six years teaching in Koyuk and several years in Kotzebue. After seeing how the math works on the $50,000 spend against one of their own, they may want to decide to send their contributions to candidates themselves — or not.
Subsequent to the Janus decision by the Supreme Court, public employees can easily opt out of their union dues, and no longer even have to pay the “agency fee.” To do so, send or deliver a letter to your school district payroll department saying you no longer wish to have union dues taken from your paycheck. The human resources department is required to honor your wishes without causing you any additional steps. Keep a copy of your letter.
If you get pushback from your district human resources department, the Alaska Policy Forum has legal resources to help you enforce your rights.
POP QUIZ – DO THE MATH – IS NEA SPENDING YOUR DUES WISELY?
Story problem: For every dollar that NEA-Alaska spent opposing Mike Dunleavy through Educators Against Dunleavy, how much of it was used for ads vs. being siphoned by the ad agency?
(Extra points for those who figure out this is the same percentage that gets siphoned off in administrative costs in our public education system. Your answer must be turned in by Nov. 6.)
