A new website has been launched to allow people to see if their names and identities have been fraudulently used to make hard-to-trace political donations to Democratic candidates. The using of people as “mules” for campaign money is often referred to as “smurfing.”
The CheckMyDonation.org website was launched after questions were raised about ActBlue, a donation processing website used exclusively by Democrats and their chosen causes. ActBlue has been associated with fraudulent identity theft. Names of people, particularly the elderly on a fixed income, appear to be being used to launder donated funds from unknown sources — possibly from foreign donors.
Rep. Mary Peltola’s campaign has been caught up in the scandal and is listed in a complaint filed by the attorney general of Texas as an example of identity theft. See this story:
“There’s now more evidence that illicit overseas donors are using the corrupt Democrat donor platform ActBlue to exploit campaign finance loopholes and make donations in the names of people without their knowledge,” wrote House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X/Twitter.
CheckMyDonation.org is run by QuantumRed, a company hired by the U.S. House of Representatives under Johnson to help investigate donor identity fraud. QuantumRed is not under contract to run this page. It does so as a free public service to assist law enforcement.
“Law enforcement is investigating a new form of identity theft called ‘straw donors’ or ‘smurfing,’ in which fraudsters use the identities of innocent victims to make political contributions to candidates. CheckMyDonation.org is a free public service to identify potential victims,” the website says.
Using it is simple: You simply enter your own name or the name of someone whose donations to federal campaigns are of interest to you, and the information populates instantly and will list donations made under that name to federal candidates, regardless of party, and whether that donation was made via ActBlue or the Republican site, WinRed.
Palmer’s police chief, fired by the now-former city manager, was reinstated on Tuesday.
Police Chief Dwayne Shelton was back at the office on Wednesday, after having been stripped of his badge by Stephen Jellie, who was then immediately forced out of his city manager’s job by the Palmer City Council.
Jellie, who was hired from outside the state, had only been in his position as city manager since August. The current interim city manager, John Diumenti, made the announcement about Shelton’s return during Tuesday night’s council meeting.
Some members are still unhappy with the severance agreement with Jellie and also want an investigation into supposed deleted emails from his computer. Cindy Hudgins of Palmer has started a recall petition to try to remove Mayor Carrington from office because he didn’t follow what she believes would have been the proper procedure for designing Jellie’s severance agreement. She said it was done outside of the open meetings process.
Hudgins led a successful recall against three members of the council in 2022.
Carrington was elected mayor in 2022 after running unopposed. In order to recall him, Hudgins will need to get the signatures of a number equal to 25% of people who voted in the last election on Oct. 1, which was 230.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s leading small business advocacy organization, endorsed Nick Begich for election to the United States House of Representatives to represent Alaska’s At-Large Congressional District.
“As a small business owner, Nick Begich understands what it takes to build and grow a small business,” said Peggy Ann McConnochie, NFIB Alaska Leadership Council member. “He is deeply familiar with the issues impacting Main Street and recognizes the importance of a strong small business economy in Alaska. He has pledged to advocate on behalf of our members in Congress and we are proud to endorse him today.”
“Nick Begich will protect Main Street interests in Congress,” said Sharon Sussin, NFIB Senior National Political Director. “Through his experience as a businessman, Nick Begich understands how important it is to create an economic and regulatory environment that allows small businesses to thrive. We are confident he will proudly speak up for small businesses in Congress and are pleased to endorse him today.”
“The endorsement is issued from NFIB FedPAC, NFIB’s political action committee. NFIB FedPAC is funded by voluntary contributions by NFIB members over and above their membership dues. Decisions made by the NFIB FedPAC are managed by a member-driven grassroots evaluation,” the group said.
There are studies linking laughter and humor to positive changes in people’s lives. Indeed, laughter and humor are strong medicine; they draw people together in ways that trigger healthy physical and emotional changes in people’s mental and physical conditions.
Arkady Raikin (1911–1987) was a Soviet stand-up comedian and variety-show entertainer—the most popular and respected Soviet humorists of the 20th century. From his home base in Leningrad (known today as St. Petersburg), he toured the former Soviet Union and occasionally went abroad. In 1984, he moved his comedy company to Moscow and reopened it as the Satirikon (satire) theatre.
In his comedies, Raikin deftly ridiculed bureaucracy, official rudeness and corruption, Soviet inefficiency, consumer shortages, political wariness, various black-market shenanigans, and other daily practices of the socialist Soviet life, but never Soviet politics and ideology. He used skits, monologues, and impersonations in his performances.
Despite the sensitive subjects and his being a Jew in an anti-Semitic era in the former Soviet Union, Raikin was celebrated both popularly and officially; he received the title People’s Artist in 1968 and the highest civilian award, Hero of Socialist Labor, in 1981.
Although he was born and raised in Riga, Latvia, Odessa was his favorite city in the Soviet Union. Odessa is a port city on the Black Sea in today’s southern Ukraine. It’s known for its beaches and 19th-century architecture, including the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater. The modern building was constructed by Fellner and Helmer architects in neo-baroque (Vienna Baroque) style and opened in 1887.
The culture of Odessa is a unique blend of Russian, Yiddish (language of the Ashkenazy Jews), and Ukrainian cultures and languages; Odessa itself has played a notable role in Russian and Yiddish folklore. The Russian language spoken in Odessa, likewise, is influenced by Yiddish and Ukrainian grammar, vocabulary and phraseology. As a result, many phrases sound inherently and uniquely humorous to Russian speakers and constitute a common theme of Odessa humor.
So, Odessa humor is a notable part of both Jewish and Russian humor (comparable to Brookline humor and speech patterns in New York). Since 1972, Odessa has been hosting the annual festival of humor—Humorina. For this and other reasons, Odessa was known as the “Capital of Humor” in the former Soviet Union.
In the early 1970s, Arkady Raikin performed in Odessa for the entire month. On the day of his arrival, he ordered a pair of trousers from Odessa’s well-known man’s tailor—Isak Shapiro. The tailor was honored to fulfill the order for such a prominent comedian. During the thirty days of Raikin’s performance in Odessa, Shapiro called the great comedian eight times for fitting his trousers.
Finally, at the end of Raikin’s thirty-day performance in Odessa, his trousers were tailored. When Raikin received his trousers, he noted with a playful smile, “Look, Shapiro, God created the World in seven days, and it took you 30 days to tailor my trousers.”
Then, the tailor squinted his trickery eyes, waved his arms wide open and replied, ”Mr. Raikin, look at today’s crazy World and look at these gorgeous trousers!”
Indeed, in today’s a socially divided and politically tense world, a touch of humor is a drive for peaceful reconciliation and social justice; small perfection is in the people’s doable reach rather than a hypothetical perfect World in the uncertain horizon.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
About half of voters polled by the Rasmussen Reports company expect violence to occur when the election results are revealed after Nov. 5.
In a quick poll conducted by Must Read Alaska on X/Twitter, 89% of respondents said they think Democrats will riot and ransack cities if Trump wins. That is not a scientific poll, however.
In the Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey, 51% of likely voters believe it’s likely there will be a violent reaction if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected president, including 26% who say such a reaction is Very Likely.
However, 47% also think a violent reaction is likely if former President Donald Trump wins, including 23% who say violence is very likely to follow a Trump victory.
The survey was conducted among almost 3,000 voters on Oct. 17, and 20-21.
Voters have strong feelings about this election with both presidential candidates evoking emotional responses from people. Those who do not like Donald Trump have severe reaction to him, known as Trump Derangement Syndrome. Already in this campaign cycle, at least two known assassination attempts have been made on Trump, and Kamala Harris continues to compare him to Hitler, stoking deep emotional responses from Trump-haters and providing cover for a violent reaction to his election.
This week, President Joe Biden said it is time to lock up Trump, before he bumbled his way into explaining he meant something different.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is a term traced back to the late political writer Charles Krauthammer, who first came up with the phrase “Bush derangement syndrome” in 2003.
Krauthammer, who was no fan of Trump’s, said Trump Derangement Syndrome is like a “general hysteria” that resulted in an “inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology” in Trump’s behavior.
Later, others have noted that the hatred some people have of Trump impairs their judgment.
“Signs of TDS can be observed along a continuum of reactions, ranging from verbal expressions of intense hostility toward President Trump to overt acts ofaggression and even violence against anyone supporting or anything symbolizing him. The recent assassination attempt on Trump’s life provides compelling evidence of the volatility and potential dangers of TDS if left unchecked,” writes psychologist Alex Pattakos Ph.D. in Psychology Today. “In the case of TDS, “Donald Trump,” broadly defined to include anything associated with him, has come to represent such an unconditional stimulus. As such, it triggers what appears to be an automatic response or reaction.”
Alaska conservatives are voting in greater numbers than ever since early in-person voting started on Monday.
Monday’s turnout for early voting across the state was 9,882.
That is as high as the total early-vote count was by Day 4 of early voting in 2022’s general election. Alaskans have been waiting in lines as long as an hour and a half to bank their votes early.
Also, absentee ballots requested from the Division of Elections now exceed 10% of the entire voter roll in Alaska. The deadline for requesting an absentee ballot is Saturday, Oct. 26. Information at the Division of Elections on how to have a ballot sent to you by mail is here.
Anecdotally, voters tell Must Read Alaska that there are a lot of conservatives in line with them. At the Gambell Street voting location in Anchorage, people waited for an hour to vote on Tuesday. Those who voted there Monday waited for 90 minutes.
In Fairbanks, about 100 voters were in line at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the third day of early voting.
The Republican National Committee has a new program this year called “Swamp the Vote,”which is to encourage conservatives to get their ballots in quickly, which helps their candidates turn their focus attention to those who haven’t voted yet. Banking votes economizes the efforts of the campaigns and helps the campaign donations go farther.
“Republicans must win – and we must use EVERY appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats, they are destroying our great country! Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail, or in person we are going to protect the vote,” the Swamp the Vote website says.
“Do your part to fix the damage Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have caused by Swamping Them with Votes. Request your absentee or mail ballot or pledge to vote early in-person today! You can also confirm your voter registration details or pledge to vote on Election Day.”
There are 11 days remaining in the 2024 general election that ends Nov. 5.
The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report Wednesday saying that the Biden-Harris Administration spent nearly a billion dollars promoting COVID-era messaging, much of which turned out to be untrue or misleading.
The Congressional report examines the $900 million spent by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on COVID-era messaging to the American people.
“Americans cannot afford another botched government response to a future pandemic,” the report said.
The report cites “errors and failures” in the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s “We Can Do This” advertisements and marketing materials.
The report said that much of that taxpayer-funded marketing included incorrect information about vaccines, the danger to children, masks and more, according to the report.
“Much of the scientific content directly featured in or alluded to in Campaign ads and other promotional material was drawn from CDC recommendations, guidance, and research, critical parts of which proved to be deeply flawed,” the report said.
For instance, the report cited the CDC telling Americans that taking the COVID-19 vaccine would prevent them from getting COVID, something that turned out to be false.
“This ultimately had a negative impact on vaccine confidence and the CDC’s credibility when proven untrue,” the report said.
In another instance, the report points out that federal health officials and the CDC initially downplayed the need and usefulness of masking only to later reverse course and strongly urge Americans to mask, even outdoors.
“Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), advocated against mask wearing on February 5, 2020, stating ‘Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,’” the report said.
“By April 3, 2020, the CDC completely reversed course and announced new mask wearing guidelines, recommending that all people wear a mask outside of the home,” the report continued, adding that “In December of 2022, after leaving the Biden White House, former COVID-19 coordinator, Ashish Jha, freely admitted what many had been saying all along—’[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.’”The report also pointed out that “The CDC had inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks” and that “the CDC consistently overstated the risk of COVID-19 to children.”
“The CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans ages six months and older, which has made the United States a global outlier in COVID-19 policy,” the report said.
That marketing was used by lawmakers and local and state officials to justify extended lockdowns on businesses, which hurt the economy and put many small business owners out of business or to justify school closures, from which research now shows students have still not recovered.
“While the Biden-Harris administration’s public health guidance led to prolonged closures of schools and businesses, the NIH was spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money trying to manipulate Americans with advertisements—sometimes containing erroneous or unproven information,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., sain in a statement.
“By overpromising what the COVID-19 vaccines could do—in direct contradiction of the FDA’s authorizations—and over emphasizing the virus’s risk to children and young adults, the Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system,” he added.
Reporting has shown that during the pandemic the federal government successfully pressured social media companies to censor Americans’ posts on COVID-related issues that did not toe the party line.
Meta CEO and Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year in a public letter that he regretted complying with those federal requests.
“Our investigation also uncovered the extent to which public funding went to Big Tech companies to track and monitor Americans, underscoring the need for stronger online data privacy protections,” McMorris-Rodgers said.
The lawmakers on the Republican-led committee pointed out that the federal government’s pushing of unproven or incorrect medical data has led to an overall distrust of federal health agencies and vaccines on the whole.
“The entire premise of the Biden-Harris ‘Stop the Spread’ campaign was that if you got vaccinated for COVID-19, you could resume daily activities because they said vaccinated people would not spread the disease,” Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said in a statement. “Despite lacking scientific basis, the administration bought into this CDC claim and misled the American public. As a result, vaccination coverage with other vaccines appears to have declined, I believe because of a growing distrust of information coming from our public health institutions.”
Gallup released polling data in August showing that fewer Americans now say childhood vaccines are important, “with 40% saying it is extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated, down from 58% in 2019 and 64% in 2001.”
Every few years, moderate and conservative voters seem to find themselves in the position of voting against propositions generated by left of center entities. We haven’t yet reached the insanity of the California ballot which features dozens of initiatives and propositions, but the few that do make the Alaska ballot are usually suspect.
Our November 5 general election will be an exception.
For Alaskans who prefer limited government, less regulation, fiscal responsibility, and traditional and transparent elections, you can advance those political values by voting Yes on Ballot Measure 2. Furthermore, you will be striking a blow against one of the biggest “dark money” campaigns in Alaska history.
Ballot Measure 2 is entitled “An Act Restoring Political Party Primaries and Single-Choice General Elections.” It would repeal “jungle primaries” and restore traditional primary and general elections where the highest vote-getter wins.
Passage of this measure will restore Alaska’s electoral system to what it was prior to 2022 and what had been in place for over 20 years. It would repeal all the electoral provisions incorporating “top 4” primary rules and “ranked-choice voting” (RCV) in the general election.
Amid the avalanche of deceptive outside dark money ads blasting the airwaves and social media, you might be tempted to believe that democracy will end if we change our method of voting back to what served us and most Americans well for hundreds of years.
Don’t be fooled.
RCV proponents claim the system improves voter confidence by providing more candidate choices, decreasing negative campaigning, and ensuring majority rule. Yet, experience in Alaska has not borne this out. Many elections remain uncontested or with only one challenger, negative campaigning has not been reduced, and because of “exhausted ballots,” there is no guarantee that candidates will win by a majority of votes.
Furthermore, RCV is more expensive, generates confusion, and the lack of transparency caused by complicated counting and delaying final results for weeks has contributed to further diminishment of trust in our electoral system.
Despite RCV promoters’ claims that RCV electoral systems are sweeping the nation, it is a mixed bag at best. As of October 2024, only three states, Alaska, Maine, and Hawaii (for special Federal elections only), had implemented similar systems. Ten states have statutorily prohibited RCV. While voters in four states—Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon—are considering in 2024 whether to enact RCV, voters in Alaska will decide whether to repeal it and voters in Missouri will decide whether to prohibit it.
RCV boosters cannot afford to allow Alaska to succeed in deciding for themselves how they would prefer to run their elections as it would undermine their mantra that RCV has been wildly successful. Accordingly, opponents under the name “Vote No on 2” have collected over $12 million to defeat Ballot Measure 2.
The primary donors to that campaign are left wing Democrat political organizations from out of state that have virtually unlimited funding. Just three organizations, Article IV, Unite America PAC, and Action Now Initiative, have collectively contributed $10.5 million. Their contributions are funding a TV, radio, and social media campaign blitz that will run non-stop through election day.
And they are playing fast and loose with the facts.
One ad, featuring a veteran, states: “Many veterans like me choose not to register with a political party and that’s why I’m voting no on Measure 2. Measure 2 would force thousands of veterans and active-duty military to join a political party just to participate in Alaska’s primary elections.”
This is not true. In fact, reverting back to our traditional system of primaries would allow independents, non-partisans, and undeclared voters to vote for any primary candidate they prefer – regardless of political party.
Another ad states: “Alaska finally has an election system that isn’t controlled by political parties or special interests.” Given the amount of money funneled through left wing Democrat organizations to influence this campaign and the original campaign where RCV passed by the thinnest of margins, that statement doesn’t pass the red-face test.
Alaskans have an opportunity this time around to set the record straight by voting YES on Ballot Measure 2.
After retiring as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in Alaska, Win Gruening became a regular opinion page columnist for the Juneau Empire. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is involved in various local and statewide organizations.
The Division of Elections has mailed out a second informational postcard to voters to show them how ranked-choice voting works. It’s something the division does to help people who are confused by the odd voting system that Alaska now uses.
This time, unlike the Division’s official voter instruction sent earlier this fall, the candidates are listed as Candidate A, Candidate B, Candidate C and Candidate D.
On the prior instructional offering from the Division of Elections, a candidate named “Harris” was listed in the presidential column, and the division, for unknown reasons, illustrated for voters how to mark “Harris” first for president.
That caught the eye of critics who said that the Division of Elections appeared to be trying to swing the vote toward Kamala Harris.
Division Director Carol Beecher has been explaining on talk radio that it was essentially an error and that the new flyer corrects the problem with unintentional bias.
The Division made another mistake in the official voter pamphlet, when it listed House District candidate Mia Costello as a Democrat. The division sent a correction to all voters in that district showing Costello as a Republican.
