On Wednesday, search teams from the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center, as well as Department of Public Safety’s HELO 3, continued searching around Crescent Lake on the Kenai Peninsula near Moose Pass for the two missing men from a reported plane crash that occurred Tuesday. Search teams are still in the field searching with helicopters, divers, sonar, and boats.
The two occupants of the overdue Piper PA-18 Super Cub are currently listed as missing persons and were identified as:
41-year-old Utah resident Paul Kondrat, a commercial fixed wing pilot and certified flight instructor
46-year-old Anchorage resident Mark Sletten, who is an Alaska Command J3 and fighter pilot
On Tuesday afternoon, Alaska Wildlife Troopers had been notified that two hikers had witnessed a plane crash at Crescent Lake near Moose Pass on the Kenai Peninsula. The search for the crash commenced and Wildlife Troopers soon learned that the plane was overdue. An Alaska Air National Guard rescue team was dispatched by the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center to the site; however, they were not able to locate either male. The NTSB has been notified.
This story will be updated as more details emerge.
Nearly half of Americans report that the recent spike in inflation is making it harder to make ends meet, according to a new poll.
Monmouth University released a poll Wednesday showing 46% of those polled are “currently struggling to remain where they are financially.”
That figure is the highest point recorded by this pollster since President Joe Biden took office and far higher than during his predecessor’s term.
“In polls conducted between 2022 and 2023, this number ranged between 37% and 44%,” Monmouth said in its report. “In prior polls from 2017 to 2021, this sentiment was much lower at 20% to 29%.”
Prices have risen about 20% since Biden took office, a huge increase across all kinds of goods and services. Now, inflation is rising much slowly than the breakneck pace earlier in Biden’s term.
“Even with a declining inflation rate, prices continue to be much higher than they were four years ago,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in the report. “That’s the metric that has really mattered to many Americans over the past two years. Economic concerns may not be the top motivating factor for all voters but it defines the contours of this year’s election.”
However, prices continue to rise faster than economists would like. Inflation slowed last month, a reprieve after months of elevated inflation. Whether that slowing is a blip on the radar or a turning point remains to be seen.
For now, Biden has to grapple with the major price increase during his term this election cycle.
The polling does show an equal percentage of Americans think either Biden or Trump cares about their economic woes.
“The overwhelming narrative is that a large segment of the American public feels it is financially behind the eight ball,” Murray said. “It is true that voters who feel more comfortable with their economic situation are likely to support Biden. But despite continued Democratic efforts to tout rosy economic indicators, the tactic of telling financially pessimistic voters they should feel differently does not appear to be working.”
The poll surveyed 1,106 adults from June 1 to June 6.
Bowen Brantingham is a righthanded pitcher for the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks this summer, but his season is being cut short, as he has to complete his summer active duty stint as an Air Force cadet. And that’s OK, because it’s been a valuable experience for Bo, and perhaps the start of a beautiful relationship between the Chinooks and the Air Force Academy.
Bo Brantingham
Brantingham, a six foot, three inch righthander, is the first military academy student to play for the Chinooks. He led his high school team – John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri – to a state championship in 2023, striking out 13 batters in 6 and one-third innings of work in the deciding game. Before that game even started, the Air Force recruited him to play for the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
As one of his Academy coaches was placing players on summer ball teams, he approached Bo about the possibility of playing up in Alaska for the Athletes-In-Action team out in Chugiak.
Brantingham liked the idea, but knew his time would be short due to that summer training requirement. Speaking to Chinooks’ general manager field manager, Tim Cole, Bo got the go-ahead to play a shortened season, as Coach Cole has a deep respect for the military and knows it is important to the Chugiak-Eagle River community.
The Chinooks have close ties to the military. Assistant Coach Ted McGovern is a West Point graduate who retired from the Alaska Army National Guard as a full bird Colonel, and Chinooks Booster Club board member Austin Skelley is an Air Force Academy graduate and fellow Colonel who is currently serving at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Additionally, eight of the nine Booster Club Board members are either veterans or currently serving, or married to current or retired military members. The team’s annual Military Appreciation Night (one of the best attended games of each season) highlights the contribution of the military members who make up the Chinook fan base.
Brantingham was one of about a dozen freshman cadets on the Falcon baseball team, and he brought his winning ways with him to Colorado Springs as the Falcon baseball team won their conference.
Asked if Alaska met his expectations, Bo said they pretty much exceeded them. The baseball quality has been awesome, the state is beautiful, and the daily discipleship has been a blessing. The Chinooks are the only faith-based baseball team in Alaska, and the players are required to attend daily discipleship classes between gym time and heading to the ballpark.
Bo said he came to the Athletes-In-Action team as a Christian, but the discipleship classes provided him with spiritual growth as the young men take deep dives into the Bible.
When Colonel Skelley, an Academy graduate himself, heard about Bo coming to Chugiak, he asked Coach Cole if the Skelleys could serve as Bo’s host family. That was an easy call for everyone, so Bo has been able to live with, and receive further leadership and religious mentoring from, the Colonel and his family. It’s been a win-win situation for Bo, the Skelleys, and the Chinooks.
The experience has given Skelley a vision for what he hopes to be an ongoing relationship between the Academy and the Chinooks. If he can help arrange future Falcon baseball players to conduct their required summer duty in at JBER, then they should be able to stay the entire summer. Again – a win-win situation.
Bo has pitched well for the Chinooks this season, and it appeared the big league scouts were paying attention when he took the mound this past weekend against Goldpanners in the Scout Weekend series. He pitched five solid innings, giving up only two runs while scattering a handful of base hits.
Coach Cole will again hand the ball to Cadet Brantingham on Thursday night as Bo is scheduled to start the 6 p.m. game against the Anchorage Bucs at Mulcahy Stadium.
After the game, he will change out of his Chinooks’ uniform, fly to his summer training site, and put on his Air Force cadet uniform. Hopefully, he will be back next summer, and will bring some fellow Falcons with him.
Tim Barto is past president and coach of the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks. He is also vice president at Alaska Family Council.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Pfizer’s Covid shot in November for “unlawfully misrepresenting the effectiveness of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine and attempting to censor public discussion of the product.”
Paxton’s alleged Pfizer made “unsupported claims” and made the public think the protection from the “vaccine” was durable. Additionally, information was withheld from the public, while Pfizer used a campaign of intimidation to con people into believing they were doing the right thing to protect their loved ones. Paxton saidthis was in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practice Act. The lawsuit is still pending.
Just recently, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach also sued Pfizer, alleging the company “made misleading claims” about the effectiveness and safety of the shot and the potential side-effects. Kobach says Pfizer provided misinformation and misled Kansas citizens into believing the shot had minimal side effects, and that the company hid information concerning the shot’s link to myocarditis and pregnancy complications. Kobach said Pfizer misled Kansans by telling them the shot was effective, even while it knew its “effectiveness” waned over time. Nor did the shot protect against all the variants the Covid virus spins off.
Kobach went on to state that Covid-19 cases continued to rise even after a widespread vaccination push in which some areas saw more deaths of vaccinated persons than those not vaccinated.
The lawsuit notes: “How did Pfizer respond when it became apparent that its vaccine was failing, and the viability of its cash cow shot was threatened? By intimidating those spreading the truth and by conspiring to censor its critics, Pfizer labeled as ‘criminals’ those who spread facts about the vaccine. It accused them of spreading ‘misinformation.’ And it coerced social media platforms to silence prominent truth-tellers.”
Kansas seeks from Pfizer, “civil monetary penalties, damages, and injunctive relief from misleading and deceptive statements made in marketing its COVID-19 vaccine.” In the complaint, Kobach alleges Pfizer deliberately hid, suppressed and omitted material facts relating to the COVID-19 vaccine. The “most egregious” facts dealt with safety of pregnant women and problems with heart conditions. Add to this the fact the shots weren’t effective with new variants, nor did the jab even stop viral transmission.
“Pfizer marketed its vaccine as safe for pregnant women,” Kobach said. “However, in February of 2021 (they) possessed reports of 458 pregnant women who received Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine during pregnancy. More than half of the pregnant women reported an adverse event, and more than 10% reported a miscarriage.”
There have indeed been research reports on pregnancy and miscarriages. Some government reports stated there was no higher risk for “vaccinated” Covid women. Other research reports showed there was an increase in major maternal child side-effects.
Pfizer had started a research project on pregnant women but ended the study prior to completion. The research project was overcome by events as the government had already stated the jab was okay for pregnant wome,n despite having limited data to support that conclusion. And pregnant women believed they were doing the right thing, rolling up their sleeves.
In June of 2021, the CDC warned that the Covid jab was having a negative effect on the heart such as myocarditis and pericarditis, especially in young men.
Yet when Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEO, was asked in January, 2023 if the jab caused severe myocarditis, he said, “We have not seen a single signal, although we have distributed billions of doses.”
“However, Pfizer knew the United States government, the United States military, foreign governments and others have found that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine caused myocarditis and pericarditis,” Attorney General Kobach said.
Kobach also pointed out this was a cash cow for Pfizer. The company “earned $75 billion in just two years thanks to its ‘misrepresentation’ of the vaccine.”
Pfizer has claimed “the lawsuit AG Kobach is without merit.” “The representations made by Pfizer about its Covid-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based,” the company said in a statement.
But Kobach says that five additional states will be joining his lawsuit—the only confirmed state of the five is Idaho.
Who wants to bet Alaska won’t be one of the five? As the truth keeps coming out through Congressional hearings etc., more and more lawsuits will surely follow.
Linda Boyle, RN, MSN, DM, was formerly the chief nurse for the 3rd Medical Group, JBER, and was the interim director of the Alaska VA. Most recently, she served as Director for Central Alabama VA Healthcare System. She is the director of the Alaska Covid Alliance.
After President Donald Trump endorsed Nancy Dahlstrom for Congress, Republicans across the state have become fired up, and all of the activists seem to have an opinion. Although they aren’t abandoning Trump, many have told Must Read Alaska that Trump was fed some bad information before he made his endorsement, during which he insulted Nick Begich.
Valley Republican Women of Alaska, one of the major Republican activist groups in the state, met on Tuesday night and passed a resolution wholeheartedly supporting Begich. The resolution says nothing of Dahlstrom, but reiterates the club’s endorsement of Begich.
VRWAK club was originally formed by Sarah Palin supporters when she was running for governor in 2006.
After acknowledging that the club supports Trump for president this year, the resolution said that Begich has reached out to all areas and demographics of Alaskan voters since he filed for Congress in July of last year, and that he exhibits the qualities they value, including America First Values, the club wrote. He is endorsed by Rep. Byron Donalds, Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Scott Perry, the Freedom Caucus and Vivek Ramaswamy.
“In pursuit of respect and dignity Nick Begich has run a positive, solutions-oriented campaign focused on the future. Promoting a unified and prosperous Alaska,” the resolution said.
“Be it further resolved, the Valley Republican Women of Alaska stands with NICK BEGICH FOR ALASKA in his bid for U.S. Congress. Nick has our full endorsement and support as we continue to pray for our nation and seek the unity in that which we preach. Nick Begich is the right choice at the right time for Alaska,” the resolution concluded.
Begich came in third in 2022, after Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat; and Sarah Palin, the Republican political influencer who joined the race for Congress 30 minutes before the filing deadline, and five months after Begich filed. In July of 2023, Begich filed again, and Dahlstrom jumped in six months later.
In Anchorage, Judy Eledge, the president of the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club, said her club supports Trump but believes Alaska Republicans know best about their candidates and she would have preferred that he not get involved in this race.
Juneau’s city-owned Bartlett Regional Hospital is in the news, presenting the community with yet another challenging situation.
According to hospital officials, over the last five years, competitive pressures and inflationary increases have contributed to a deterioration in financial performance. Additionally, the pandemic accelerated the movement of medical treatments to out-patient facilities, which insurers reimburse at much lower rates.
BRH is losing about $1 million per month and without trimming costs or finding other revenue sources, the hospital will run out of cash and could be forced to close within three years.
While it’s possible that the hospital could be sold, it’s doubtful it would survive in the same configuration or offer the same services as it does now.
And therein lies the conundrum facing city leaders.
Selling the hospital or curtailing non-core programs and services will resolve the immediate financial challenges now but present less quantifiable social service challenges in the future.
Community outreach events on June 4 and June 10 generated significant public testimony about Bartlett programs and services being considered for elimination or reduced service. Those programs include hospice and home health services; Rainforest Recovery Center (a 16-bed residential and outpatient treatment program); Bartlett Outpatient Psychiatric Services; Crisis Observation Services Crisis Residential and Stabilization Services for Adults and Adolescents; and the Aurora Behavioral Health Center (serving autism patients).
While these services are deemed non-core programs, all received passionate support as high-need services without suitable local alternatives. Annual losses attributed to each program ranged from $813,000 for hospice and home care to almost $4 million for Rainforest Recovery Center.
The increasing competition from Southeast Alaska Health Consortium is also a factor. Originally funded by the Indian Health Service and intended to provide medical care to the Native community, SEARHC has aggressively expanded its facilities throughout the region. With over 1,200 employees, they now serve 27 communities throughout Southeast Alaska including Juneau. In Sitka and Wrangell, SEARHC operates both local hospitals after financial pressures compelled city governments to cede control.
SEARHC now offers pharmacy services, dental care, primary care, specialty care, imaging, and laboratory services to all Southeast residents, not just Native patients. Their urgent care clinic in Juneau competes directly with BRH’s emergency room. SEARHC’s newly expanded facilities in Juneau may soon compete with the hospital’s short-stay surgery center – one of Bartlett’s largest revenue producers.
Some testifiers noted that SEARHC does not compete with other medical providers on a level playing field. Indian Health Service funding amounted to about $85 million last year, which SEARHC received through the Alaska Tribal Health Compact to treat Native clients. However, SEARHC also billed over $100 million to Medicaid and Medicare for many of those patients, effectively “double-dipping” to add to their profit margin.
BRH statistics reflect that 50% of Rainforest Recovery Center patients are SEARHC beneficiaries but the hospital receives no reimbursements from SEARHC for their care. SEARHC can choose to “cherry-pick” more lucrative medical services to offer while deciding to avoid the financial drag of services that may be money-losers.
SEARHC’s 15-person board includes representatives from all over the region. Neither SEARHC’s board meetings nor its records are open to the public except for limited financial disclosures.
In contrast, Bartlett Regional Hospital is a public entity with full transparency in all its operations. Bartlett board members, appointed by the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly, are from Juneau and must be responsive directly to citizens. BRH is therefore more likely to address Juneau’s health concerns and challenges and tailor its services to meet the specific needs of the local population it serves.
There’s no guarantee that any Bartlett Regional Hospital medical service now being provided will be offered if the hospital is sold to SEARHC or any other outside entity. Only the citizens of Juneau and their elected leaders can ensure that these services are provided and funded.
This is just one of several challenges facing the community. The fate of Juneau’s hospital should be a top priority for the current Assembly, and any new members elected on October 1.
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.
Alaskans will vote on a ballot initiative this November proposing to raise the minimum wage to $13 an hour next year, which then would jump to $15 per hour by 2027.
When a similar law was passed in California it resulted in the loss of jobs for low-income workers.
It is also important to note that current wages for entry-level jobs in Alaska are already higher than what this legislation will achieve. We should ask ourselves why we are voting to enact a law that is not needed and who else might benefit from it.
California passed a similar new minimum wage law that went into effect on April 1 of this year. I covered that in a previous article, which you can read at this link.
However, as a brief update, since California’s new minimum wage has gone into effect, over 10,000 low-wage workers have been fired from their jobs because their employers could not afford to pay the new higher wage or found cheaper alternatives like automation to replace workers. Instead of helping employees, the new law put them out of work and into the unemployment line. I wonder what all of these now unemployed workers in California might say to the politicians who passed this legislation.
The second issue is the need for this law in the first place. On Sunday, I stopped by the Kenai Walmart. This business provides entry-level jobs, and their employees are the likely target of the new minimum wage initiative. Prominently displayed at the entrance to the store is a sign advertising that they were hiring and offering a starting wage of $16 per hour.
That wage is already higher than what is required in the ballot initiative, even when it goes into full effect in 2027.
It isn’t just Walmart. A relative of mine found a summer job in Homer and every business she talked to pays more than Walmart does.
There are entry-level jobs available today in Alaska that pay far more than what this proposed minimum wage initiative accomplishes. While I have only given a couple of examples from the Kenai Peninsula, it looks like job demand has created a need for employers to pay higher than the current minimum wage to attract employees. That is how the capitalist system is supposed to work.
How about the other side of that argument? What happens when job demand does not create higher wages, but they are forced on businesses anyway?
That example was in the news this week. It involves employees of a small business called The OCF Coffee House, a small chain of coffee shops in Philadelphia. The employees decided they wanted more money for doing the same job, so they unionized and demanded higher wages.
The business owner concluded that he couldn’t raise coffee prices and would be unprofitable to pay higher wages to employees, so they closed the three shops. Now all the workers are unemployed. The lesson from this incident is that the best way to get a higher wage is to look for a better job, not trying to force an employer to pay more for the same work.
If this ballot initiative is not needed in Alaska, we should ask Cui Bono: Latin for “who benefits?”
Let’s look at who sponsored this initiative. Two of its three sponsors are Democrats. Ed Flanagan was the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Labor in the Democrat Tony Knowles Administration. Genevieve Mina is the Democrat representative for Alaska House District 19 who is running for reelection this year.
Since Rep. Mina feels so strongly about the issue of minimum wages paid in Alaska, I have to wonder why she didn’t introduce it as a bill in the Legislature. Instead, Rep. Mina chose to sponsor it as an initiative. The initiative process in our state constitution is designed so that citizens can bypass the legislature to enact legislation from the grassroots. The sponsorship of this initiative by Mina and Flanagan makes it appear that this is not a grassroots movement, but was instead a partisan effort from leaders of the Democrat party.
We should ask if the Democrat party is the prime beneficiary of this initiative process. You can bet Democrats will campaign on this issue in the upcoming primary and general elections. They will pretend to be the friend of low-wage workers, despite this legislation being potentially harmful to them like it was in California, and despite it being unnecessary because wages have already grown higher than what this initiative accomplishes.
Call me a cynic but lying to low-wage workers with the promise of helping them economically, despite not actually doing so is a pretty despicable thing to do.
Greg Sarber is a board member of Alaska Gold Communications, the parent company to Must Read Alaska.
In an extensive document published this week, the Department of Interior says that the government was built dams on the Columbia River that harmed the tribes in the region. It is an admission of governmental guilt.
Dams blocked fish migration and flooded thousands of acres, as hydropower was delivered to a growing population of the Northwest.
Washington residents get 60% of their electricity from hydropower from these dams, but in the quest to restore salmon and habitat, the Gov. Inslee Administration is pushing for the removal of some of the dams; now the federal government may do the same, as this report will become part of tribes’ litigation against the dams and the federal agencies that built them.
Washington leads the nation in electricity generation from hydroelectric power. In fact, it accounts for about 25% of the nation’s total hydroelectric generation, according to the Energy Information Administration. The dozens of dams in the Columbia basin watershed are also critical to the nation’s food supply.
“Acknowledging the devastating impact of federal hydropower dams on Tribal communities is essential to our efforts to heal and ensure that salmon are restored to their ancestral waters,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
The Biden Administration’s in December announced a 10-year plan based on an agreement with tribes and state leaders to include removing four dams on the Snake River, part of the Columbia River watershed. The plan comes with a promise of more than $1 billion, plus previously appropriated billions. The removal of the dams is expected to take 10 years.
Washington has been using more and more electricity as electric vehicles become popular in the state. According to the Washington Department of Ecology, 20% of all vehicles sold in Washington last year. were EVs, more than twice the national average of 9.5%. Inslee has signed a law banning the sale of any new gas-powered car in the state after 2035, pushing more and more consumers to turn to hydropower to fuel their vehicles, at the same time dams providing power may be dismantled.
The average residential electricity ratein Washington is low due to hydropower. It averages 13 cents/kWh, which is 26% lower than the national average rate of 17 cents/kWh.
In Anchorage, the Democrat-run Assembly is also also working on a plan to force the removal of the Eklutna River dam, which provides up to 25% of electricity to Anchorage and provides power to the Mat-Su Borough; it also provides the majority of the city’s water supply.
The push for hydropower project removal is coming at the same time the Biden Administration has also set extreme goals for phasing out all vehicles that are not powered by electric batteries.
Climate protesters from Just Stop Oil sprayed orange paint on ancient Stonehenge in southern England. Two protesters were arrested in what Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a “disgraceful act of vandalism.”
Just Stop Oil is an international group that has spray painted other things orange, like private airplanes and public buildings. The group says the pigment is made of corn flour and will wash away in the rain. As its name indicates, it wants an immediate end to all oil, gas, and coal production.
Stonehenge is a 5,000-year-old circle of stones that is one of the world’s most famous prehistoric sites, thought to have been built around 2,500 B.C. It is a World Heritage Site.
According to Just Stop Oil’s website, the pigment was made of an “orange cornflour” that will wash away in the rain.
The group recently took responsibility for smashing the glass protecting the original copy of the Magna Carta at the British Museum in London.
