Must Read Alaska’s weekly poll on topics of the day appears every Monday in the Must Read Alaska newsletter, which is read by thousands of Alaskans and others around the world on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
This week’s Question of the Week was: Who do you believe — the construction workers in Denali or the Park Service version of the flag ban controversy?
Readers of this publication have been closely following the account that began when construction workers at Denali National Park were ordered by the Park Service employees to not fly American flags from their trucks when using the Park Road to go between the Parks Highway and the bridge work site at the Pretty Rocks Landslide, near Mile 43.
The National Park Service at first vehemently denied it had told the workers anything about their flag flying. In essence, the National Park Service was calling the construction workers liars. On Monday, Must Read Alaska didn’t publish a newsletter, so this Question of the Week was in the Wednesday edition.
Here are the results: 98% of those who participated in the Question of the Week believed the construction workers.
The MRAK Question of the Week poll is not scientific, but gives a glimpse about whether conservatives generally believe official statements from government agencies that have been put on the defense.
It became clear from the FHA statement that the National Park Service had obfuscated when it issued its earlier statement, saying it had not told the workers to remove their flags. In fact, NPS had told the Federal Highway Administration project manager that someone had complained about the “noise” from an American flag on a worker’s truck, and instructed the FHA to tell the construction company to tell its workers to take the flags off their trucks when they pass through the park.
The Anchorage Daily News, in its latecomer report on the flag flap, launched into its story by taking the side of the National Park Service and the ADN and the NPS led a smear campaign against Sen. Dan Sullivan for standing up for the workers’ First Amendment rights.
“The National Park Service said Sunday it never ordered the removal of the American flag from vehicles involved with a construction project inside Denali National Park and Preserve despite reports circulated by right-wing media and amplified by Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan,” the ADN reported.
After the Federal Highway Administration gave its account, it became clear that an order had come down, but through another agency.
Read Must Read Alaska’s stories on this event as it unfolded:
According to the National Literacy Institute, approximately 40% of American students cannot read at a basic level. Alaska has felt this decline in literacy deeply, with many of our youth not being able to read past an 8th-grade level.
The system’s solution, per usual, has been simply to throw money at the problem. New buildings, administration positions, and extracurricular programs have sprouted like weeds, yet the literacy rate continues to choke.
Literacy is not just an academic imperative; it’s critical to freedom and financial prosperity. Literacy for All, a community literacy advocacy group, reports that 70% of adult welfare recipients and 75% of state prison inmates have low literacy levels.
With the alarming decline in literacy, and the education system’s apparent lack of results in around the problem, is there even a way for Americans to turn this around? Barbara Richter, a former educator, successful entrepreneur, and accomplished author believes that the literacy issue can be reversed. Recently on STAND, with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka, Richter provided insight into reversing illiteracy.
“What I would say is that a lot of this starts at home. If you can get people at home reading with their family, with somebody that they trust or that they love…You’ll get a spark.” Richter said. She further explained how teachers can fan that spark into a flame in the classroom, stating “If you’re excited about [a book], your students are going to be excited about it.”
Of course, reading at home is where literacy begins, but extending that mission into a failing school system seems like an insurmountable task. Richter, however, revealed that the solution isn’t as complicated as it seems.
When asked what made schools with better literacy rates superior in the area of literature, Richter answered: “Schools that had robust English programs, that had early intervention programs. You know things that you would expect.” Additionally, Richter stated that “…having professionals, you know, having educators, having librarians who you can go to and say ‘this is where I’m at, help me’…that can go towards creating a better literacy amongst our children…”
There you have it, folks. The solution to illiteracy is within our grasp, it’s just a question of whether or not we reach out for it.
If you want to hear more about Barbara Richter’s insight and solutions for the literacy rates in America, the tragic link between illiteracy and declines in freedom, and the importance of reading, you can catch the newest episode of STAND. You can also view the episode on YouTube, Rumble, and your podcast streaming platform.
Kelly Tshibaka is the host of the podcast, TV, and radio show STAND, and the 2022 Alaska Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. She co-hosts the show with her husband, Niki Tshibaka.
Before beginning my teaching career in Juneau in 1968, one of my favorite summer jobs was supervising the many food and game booths at the largest free fair in my home state of Michigan. Carnival games like tossing rings around the neck of a bottle or basketballs through a hoop were popular, and prizes were always awarded.
Many of the “carnival barkers” still used an expression from the 1920’s when cigars were given as prizes to encourage fair visitors to try again: “Close, but no cigar.” Cigars were more readily accepted as prizes in the early 20th century than they would be today. Today, if you go to a state fair, you will probably hear, “Close, but no stuffed toy.”
Now let’s talk taxes. At the City and Borough of Juneau Finance Committee meeting last Wednesday, Assembly member Greg Smith proposed reducing the property tax millage rate from 10.16 to 9.91 mills. It garnered four of the five votes needed to be further considered. Close, but no cigar.
The Finance committee eventually settled on dropping the mill rate to 10.04, a measly 1.2% reduction, which passed with seven votes.
Some Assembly members expressed the concern that a more substantial cut was just too “uncomfortable”, as there might be priorities that would require incurring more bond debt in the future. Sorry, not even close!
“Uncomfortable” for some Juneau families was seeing the median home value and corresponding tax bill jump an average of 23% since 2020. If viewed honestly, escalating property values over the last several years will cost the average homeowner over $1,000 more in tax annually while the Assembly’s proposed millage rate “reduction” only pares it back a few hundred dollars
Uncomfortable is the Juneau homeowner coming up with the cash for home maintenance, house insurance, mortgage payments and CBJ property taxes. Landscaping can be put off another year, a new or used car is out of the picture until prices drop, braces or glasses are higher priorities than school activities. Juneau still ranks the highest in urban Alaska for housing , groceries, and medical costs. Now that’s uncomfortable.
In the past three years Juneau has over-collected on our property taxes. For the past three years, the city’s two main sources of income (property and sales taxes) have produced millions in additional city revenue over actual budgeted needs. The City and Borough of Juneau stashed $16.3 million in an account for a new City Hall, brought up additional debt to pay off, added to our restricted budget reserves, and appropriated most of the rest of the millions to various community requests, some questionable.
The portion of Juneau’s tax millage rate dedicated to debt payment can be reduced drastically and still pay off our scheduled debt. It is past time to give our homeowner working families a break. Dropping the debt millage rate from 1.2 to .73 for a mill rate total of 9.69 would lower the average property tax payment by almost $300. Then consider additional reductions that can be offset by tightening spending. A good place to start.
This would be in keeping with past years’ property tax overcollections, the increase in sales taxes due to inflation and cruise ship visitors’ spending, and tens of millions of dollars in reserves and appropriations for large projects that have been turned down by voters.
The Assembly believes they know better than you how your tax dollars should be spent.
Close, but no cigar.
Ken Koelsch is a former mayor of Juneau and a longtime educator.
If the devil is in the details, bureaucracy is hell on earth. Though terrain familiar to the Biden administration, Republicans must prepare to navigate it.
Witness the debacle over liquefied natural gas exports, wherein the White House, by “pausing” most new approvals, has catapulted the energy security of key U.S. allies straight into the buzzsaw of its climate ambitions. (The category of exports that will continue to be authorized is tiny.) The Department of Energy claims that a multifactor impact study due in early 2025 is required to determine whether and how the moratorium will be lifted.
Under a certain conception of executive power, it should be simple enough for a second-term Trump administration to end this national embarrassment by pressing “resume” on the authorization process. But as analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have suggested, merely setting aside the study could provide a basis, however tenuous, for future litigation. In the modern administrative state, it is easier to open than shut the procedural door to delays.
Previous administrations have already published macroeconomic impact studies on the question of LNG exports from the U.S. The Obama administration paused its authorizations until its first study was released in December 2012, for example—curious timing, considering the election the previous month and the study’s actual completion in July of that year. Virtually every scenario in every study, including additional analysis in 2015 and 2018, has found net benefits to accrue.
It’s possible reopening the Obama playbook was the Biden team’s plan all along. After all, Secretary Granholm didn’t commission a new study in 2021, or in 2022, or in 2023. By waiting so long, the DOE can now claim that the cumulative volume of its authorizations is approaching the upper limit of the range that the 2018 study examined. Under the duplicity theory, approvals resume under a second Biden term as soon as the study is released and the election fades away.
But maybe the administration doesn’t even have a plan. It could be sheer incompetence. Gas exports offend the sensibilities of the Democratic base, but Appalachian swing states reap the economic rewards and European allies are desperate to detach themselves from Russian energy. Political operators will try in vain to triangulate even if it is impossible. We can imagine them now, hunched over the asphalt between the West Wing and the Eisenhower building, desperately chalking angles with a compass and ruler.
More ominously, Energy Secretary Granholm may be laying the groundwork for a Kafkaesque application process designed to punish an industry this administration has only ever pretended to tolerate. The fact that DOE’s approving authority is now housed in the Office of Resource Sustainability is suggestive, as is the Fiscal Year 2025 budget request to triple programmatic funding for export authorizations, primarily in the form of “anticipated studies and environmental reviews.”
In any event, undoing what the Biden team has done will take careful work by a putative second-term Trump administration. Putting the matter to rest on a more permanent basis will require legislative action, chiefly amending the Natural Gas Act signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938. In the meantime, “death by study” works both ways.
Tristan Abbey is a senior fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics. He previously served as a staffer at the White House and the U.S. Senate.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
According to new documents from the federal government, word came down, in fact, from the National Park Service through the Federal Highways Administration official in the park that a noise complaint had been made, due to a construction worker having a flag on his truck while on the Park Road, and that the flag must not be flown while workers are driving the road.
The story from the federal government keeps changing.
“At no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles. The NPS neither administers the bridge project contract, nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies related to the contract or contractors performing the work,” the statement from the National Park Service read last week.
The National Park Service said the American flag flies in multiple locations throughout Denali National Park, including at campsites, on public and private vehicles and at employee residences.
However, when citizens went to check on Sunday, there was no flag flying at the Denali Park headquarters and workers on duty were not able to locate the flag.
The Federal Highway Administration, which is overseeing the contract for bridge construction work inside Denali National Park, has reiterated that the demand came from the Park Service.
Granite’s media statement “attributable to a Granite Spokesperson“:
Granite is a 100+ year-old American company. We are currently serving as the general contractor for the FHWA at the Polychrome site in Denali National Park. One of the Polychrome project’s partnership goals is to preserve the park’s natural elements and maintain park visitors’ experience by keeping a low profile as we go about our work, and we are mindful of this goal when planning our work and supporting the project. On May 16, 2024, our client notified us that a visitor complained that one of our vehicles was creating a noise disturbance by traveling through the park with a mounted flag and our client asked that the flag be removed. We always work to be responsive to our client’s concerns and complied. Our interest is in safely completing this important project while being considerate of park visitors and their desire to enjoy the scenery and wildlife. We are excited to partner with FHWA on the construction of this important project.
Granite is America’s Infrastructure CompanyTM, and we proudly display our nation’s flag at our offices, plants, and jobsites in Alaska – and across the United States.
The official statement from the U.S. Department of Transportation (for Federal Highway Administration):
“The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) fully supports the display of American flags, and hopefully we can clear up some of the confusion about this incident. FHWA is currently administering the contract for ongoing work at Denali National Park to ensure visitors will be able to safely access the park via a new bridge. As is always the case with construction work in our national parks, the goal is to minimize impacts and noise for both visitors and wildlife as much as possible. NPS staff relayed concerns to FHWA — as it does with all feedback related to the project — regarding single occupant vehicle traffic, as well as a visitor complaint about flags on vehicles while the vehicles were in motion. FHWA brought both concerns to the responsible contractor, who addressed the situation per their usual process.”
This corroborates, in part, the version of events that came from construction workers, who said an FHA worker told Granite that the National Park Service had received a complaint about a flag on workers’ trucks early in the season. The complaint came before the tour buses started running on May 15.
In a separate statement to Alaska Public Media, FHA reported that it was about “the noise a bridge worker’s vehicle-mounted flag was making while travelling the Park Road.”
Last week’s statement in full from the National Park Service:
Reports that a National Park Service (NPS) official ordered the removal of an American flag from a Denali bridge construction worker’s vehicle at Denali National Park are false. At no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles. The NPS neither administers the bridge project contract, nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies related to the contract or contractors performing the work. The American flag can be seen at various locations within Denali National Park – at park facilities and campsites, on public and private vehicles, and at employee residences – and we welcome its display this Memorial Day weekend and every day.”
The statement is carefully worded. The order to not fly the flag was reportedly not on the job site itself, which is under the purview of the Federal Highway Administration, but when vehicles went to and from the job site on the Park Road, which goes through the park from the Parks Highway. Must Read Alaska has verified the claim being made by construction workers, who stand by their version of the events.
A few weeks after the National Park Service had told workers in Denali National Park not to drive through the park with American flags on their trucks, because it offended someone, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland on Friday raised the “pride flag” over a federal memorial site in Washington, D.C. She used government employees to assist her.
“This Pride Month and every month, the @Interior team works to build a country that represents and welcomes each of us. I’m honored to celebrate our vibrant LGBTQI+ community worldwide and their countless contributions to our shared, equitable future. Happy Pride Month, everyone!” Haaland wrote on X.
This Pride Month and every month, the @Interior team works to build a country that represents and welcomes each of us. I'm honored to celebrate our vibrant LGBTQI+ community worldwide and their countless contributions to our shared, equitable future. Happy Pride Month, everyone! pic.twitter.com/6OU55MoQkE
— Secretary Deb Haaland (@SecDebHaaland) May 31, 2024
Replacing Rep. Laddie Shaw of South Anchorage may be impossible, but Republican Lucy Bauer intends to do her best. She filed with the Division of Elections as a candidate for House District 9, where Shaw has served since first winning in 2018. Shaw is not running again this year.
Already in the race is Lee Ellis of Girdwood, who changed his voter registration to Republican not long before filing for office. He is the owner of a brewery in the ski town that is in the most southern part of the Anchorage municipality.
Bauer has served on the Anchorage Municipality’s Board of Ethics and is the operator of assisted living homes in Anchorage. She has been a major financial contributor to numerous Republican candidates in recent years.
The California Legislature has passed two bills banning plastic bags for shoppers — again. The last time the California Legislature passed a bag ban, it was for single-use bags, and the result was an overall increase in plastic bags in landfills, due to stores switching over to providing the “reusable” bags that are thicker.
The California single-use bag ban went into effect in 2016, after which plastic bag waste increased by 47%.
“SB 1053 closes the loophole to the original ban on film plastic bags enacted 10 years ago that has allowed stores to sell customers thicker plastic bags that meet certain recyclability standards. However, the truth is almost none of those bags are recycled and they end up in landfills, polluting the environment,” Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, the sponsor of the Senate bill, said.
“California’s original ban on plastic bags hasn’t worked out as planned, and sadly, the state’s plastic bag waste has increased dramatically since it went into effect,” Blakespear said.
In Anchorage, the Municipal Assembly passed a bag ban in 2018, and it went into effect in September of 2019 after being signed into law by former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. The law makes it illegal for a retailer to provide any plastic shopping bags for a purchaser to carry away goods. Retailers are forced to charge for paper bags they provide to customers.
There has been no study released in Anchorage that shows whether the 2019 bag ban has led to the increase or decrease in waste at landfills. The Anchorage ordinance is different from California’s, which had allowed for the “multiple use” plastic bags to be sold. But beginning in January of 2026, only bags made with at least 50% recycled paper may be provided in California.
The article printed in the Anchorage Daily News on May 23, “For Alaska politicians, renewable energy is about the economy not the environment,” was written as if the author thought the environment should be more important than the economy.
My past commentaries have pointed out that a viable economy and the well being of the Alaska citizens during cold weather is much more important than counting carbon dioxide molecules and many other environmental concerns. We are in the habit of taking care of the environment, but no matter how much we can care about the environment, we must have a focus on the economy of Alaska and the energy of Alaska.
Without a viable economy there would not be enough people left in Alaska to produce enough CO2 to raise a plant during the summer. Without a viable economy, without an adequate supply of energy our environment would be at great risk. Trees would become the primary source of heat as long for those people left in Alaska.
I’ve heard it said a number of times that Alaska is warming 2 to 4 times faster than the rest of the planet. Since I live here, and have for a long time, it has not seemed to me to be warming much at all.
I did a little research. The USDA (US Department of Agriculture) has a statement on line at “Alaska and a Changing Climate” from the USDA Northwest Climate Hub: “Alaska is at the forefront of climate change. Because of its northern latitude and seasonal changes in sea ice, the state is warming at two to three times the rate of the global average. Rising temperatures can be tied to most of the effects of climate change in Alaska. Reduced ice coverage, including shrinking glaciers, retreating sea ice, and thawing permafrost, are all serious impacts of rapid warming.”
I looked at some recent reports and recent data and found that they are comparing current annual average air temperatures with average annual air temperatures from the past. For years in which there are no extreme low temperatures (e.g. -30 to -60 degrees F) the average anomaly appears to 8 or 9 degrees, but the high temperatures for the year are pretty much what we are used to. It is not that we have hotter weather; we just have less cold in the winter. With the “less cold” winters there is some warming of the surface soil, some deeper thawing (or less freezing) of the active layer into the upper portion of the permafrost and there has been some warming of permafrost to depth of 50 ft., but it is still frozen.
I think there is some dishonesty in how data and information about Alaska are presented to the public. In other words, people are lying about the climate.
I had difficulty finding soil temperature measurement profiles, from the upper soil level, the active layer that freezes and thaws annually. It looks like researchers are more focused on monitoring CO2 and methane in the upper soil layers, than they are of the temperature profile of the active layer. What I did demonstrate to myself is that Alaska is not warming 2 to 4 times faster than the rest of the planet. The past two winters also indicate that we may be getting some of our extreme cold back to balance out the years that weren’t so cold.
Sean McDermott wrote a commentary, “There’s nothing radical about protecting the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska,” published in the Alaska Beacon May 23. His first sentence began with “With climate change rapidly reshaping the Arctic…”
Aside from the eroding of river banks and coastal features along our shore line, I question whether there is rapid reshaping of the Arctic. We have had a warming that has extended the growing season and which also reduced some of our discontinuous permafrost in the southern areas of the State. McDermott compared the Northwest Arctic Boroughs push for heat pumps and solar power as more positive than advocating for future oil development. One has nothing to do with the other. Solar panels and heat pumps are a local issue that is being addressed because there is no central power source that can distribute energy to the remote communities. Oil and gas development is about Alaska’s economic viability. The solar panels, wind turbines ,and other alternative energy sources for remote communities in Alaska need to be paid for somehow, and a very active Alaska economy is a good way to do it.
And there is something radical about the change in the management of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. We’re seeing an extreme change from earlier policy that greatly affects Alaska’s ability to have some control over how it drives its economy.
Alaska needs to provide some defense against the radical announcements about the condition of the Arctic and ensure that certain data are collected and maintained for those, who really care about conditions in Alaska, to refer to as daily decision are made. The Data should be at least air temperature, soil temperature profiles (with active layer and permafrost, heating degree days, precipitation and snow depth. Let’s find out if we really have a warming problem,
I’ll be discussing some of the other features of Alaska and the world which may demonstrate that we are not in danger from our weather.
And to reflect on this last legislative session, if there is one producer who would say that a reduced royalty payment for Cook Inlet Natural Gas would make all the difference such that they would be able to begin drilling new gas wells in Cook Inlet, then the legislature should be called into special session. It would be for the good of Alaska.
Robert Seitz is an electrical engineer and lifelong Alaskan.
