The 65-foot Princeton Hall, built by the Presbyterian Church with the help of students at the old Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka to ferry missionaries around Southeast Alaska, is for sale. It was owned most recently by Bill and Kathy Ruddy, both who passed in recent years.
For about 80 years, starting in the early 1900s, the “Presbyterian Navy” visited Native villages in Southeast Alaska. The Anna Jackman was the last of them, and it was sold by the Alaska Presbytery (and renamed the Discovery) after ending mission service in 1982.
The Princeton Hall is well-known by old-timers in Juneau, where it has been home-ported.
Missionaries from the Lower 48 and Alaska Native evangelists who became Christian because of their efforts used the boats to spread the gospel in towns, fishing villages and logging camps throughout Southeast Alaska, said the Rev. David Dobler, pastor to the presbytery for Alaska Presbytery, who was later elected to lead the Presbyterian Church as moderator of the General Assembly.
“Their names evoke the mission heritage of Southeast Alaska: the Ruby, the Lindsley, the Marietta, the Good Tidings, the Vermay, the Princeton, the Princeton Hall and the steel-hulled Anna Jackman, among others.” Dobler was quoted in a story about the Presbyterian Navy at this link.
“I don’t know why, but the Presbyterians were the only denomination that organized their evangelistic work in Alaska by a system of boats,” said the late Kathy Ruddy, who was an elder at Chapel by the Lake Presbyterian Church in Auke Bay, quoted in the same story. “That’s one of the reasons the Presbyterian Church is so prominent in many Native communities.”
The details of the wooden yacht, as listed on Craig’s List:
Engines – 215HP John Deere main engine with minimal hours (3,745.4 hrs). – 8 KW auxiliary engine with minimal hours (3,465.5 hrs).
Meticulously maintained every year: – Painted, oiled, cleaned, and planked regularly – NEW Dickeson oil stove – July ’23 – NEW sump pump – May ’21 – NEW washing machine – May ’21 – NEW Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) with 20HP motor – April ’21
Interior – Spacious, ample space to entertain or spread out – U-shaped galley – Large dinette area with table that can seat 8 – One main bedroom, two bunk rooms, and captain’s quarters – Two heads (bathrooms) with showers
From the time he took office, President Joe Biden signaled “a clear commitment to science” and pledged sweeping initiatives to elevate the role of science in the federal government.
But instead of science, the Biden Administration immediately leaned into the concept of “indigenous knowledge” and allowed Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to use the loosely defined knowledge to cancel seven oil and gas leases in Alaska.
“Interior claimed that its environmental review supporting the cancellations was made with ‘the best available science and in recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of this area’” according to Protect the Public Trust, which filed a complaint against the Biden Administration.
The complaint, which is not a lawsuit, was filed with Mark Lee Greenblatt, who heads up the office of the Inspector General of the Department of Interior; Arati Prabhakar, who is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy secretary of Interior; and Alondra Nelson, deputy director for Science and Society White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The watchdog group said that the White House, through the Council on Environmental Quality and Office of Science and Technology Policy, subsequently backed away from its own policy commitment by providing guidance that encouraged agencies to “promote and enable a government-wide effort to improve the recognition and inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge” in research, policy, and other decision making.
In canceling the Alaska leases, Interior claimed that its environmental review was made with “the best available science and in recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of this area ….”
Protect the Public Trust says that equating indigenous knowledge with objective data and science is in conflict with principles of scientific integrity found in federal law and Interior’s own guidance on scientific integrity in place at the time the leases were cancelled.
“The American public can rightly hold serious concerns that the Biden administration’s decision making, through the use of Indigenous Knowledge, is susceptible to manipulation without even the pretense of adhering to scientific principles,” Protect the Public’s Trust Director Michael Chamberlain wrote in the complaint, which can be read here:
The White House explains indigenous knowledge this way:
“Indigenous Knowledge is a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, innovations, practices, and beliefs developed by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples through interaction and experience with the environment. The Biden-Harris Administration has formally recognized Indigenous Knowledge as one of the many important bodies of knowledge that contributes to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States and our collective understanding of the natural world.”
“Federal decision making is best when informed by all forms of knowledge,” said the president’s Science and Technology Advisor and OSTP Director Prabhakar. “This Guidance will help Federal agencies integrate Indigenous Knowledge in their work—from research, to environmental rulemaking, to co-management of lands and waters.”
Many indigenous groups in the Americas employed mystical shamans, and some groups practiced human sacrifice (Natchez, notably). For others, such as the Cherokee, Hopi, and Navajo, indigenous knowledge included beliefs malevolent beings or spirits who could create harm or death to their tribes. Some of the beliefs included elements of witchcraft, magic, and spell-casting. Many practiced a form of animism, in which all things have spirits.
Protect the Public’s Trust is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting ethics in government and restoring the public’s trust in government officials.
“A loss of trust in public officials resulting from their abandonment of dispassionate, bedrock scientific principles in one area, can result in citizens rejecting or simply ignoring even the most scientifically sound directives in other areas,” the group says.
Honoring Presidents Day the past few years has become a challenging task, to say the least.
The current White House resident is, aside from being an unabashedly awful chief executive, in the throes of dementia for all the country to see. In occupying the office that traditionally came with the title “Leader of the Free World,” his cognitive decline is being played out in front of the rest of the world, many of whom look to the United States for leadership.
It is an unfortunate and embarrassing situation.
Joe Biden’s failed policies can be debated, although the debate can usually and quickly filters down to the fact that Joe Biden is not Donald Trump. His cognitive decline, which was obvious four years ago, is now undeniable, despite the formatted and rehearsed comments from administrative officials that their boss is “sharp” and “on top of things.”
For those of us who have watched family members suffer through the agonizing loss of their mental faculties, the situation is most uncomfortable.
Dad passed away two years ago now, after nearly a decade in which his ability to think, reason, and remember slowly declined, only to quickly decline at the end. It was sad and frustrating on so many levels, for him, for his children and grandchildren, and most notably for his wife. Mom was his caretaker, seeing it her duty to take care of her husband until the end, and it nearly did her in.
Dad was a couple weeks shy of his 94th birthday when he died. Mom will be 92 in a few months. A vivacious gal who has always been liked by everyone – friends, neighbors, church members, Little League parents, and professional colleagues. While some people may have found reasons to not like Dad, I honestly never heard anyone say they didn’t like Mom. I used to tell her all the time that she would live to at least 100, but caring for her husband took a toll on her.
My siblings and I expected Mom to experience sadness and perhaps some confusion after Dad’s funeral, but we also saw it as an opportunity for her to get out of the house and live again; to go to church, play bridge with the gals, get in some water aerobics, volunteer to decorate for holidays and weddings, and visit with friends and neighbors. The reality, however, has been just the opposite.
The sadness and confusion dissipated for brief moments, but a mild stroke made those brief moments rarer. Her unstable gait led to a series of falls, resulting in a broken leg, sorely bruised ribs, and a concussion, all of which led to further sadness and confusion, accompanied by a heavy dose of frustration.
The frustration is greatest when she is cognizant that she can’t think the way she used to, when she can’t remember why she called or whom she called. While she may mistake me for my brothers, once she realizes it’s me she’s talking to, Mom then asks about my five kids by name – to include their spouses’ and boyfriends’/girlfriends’ names – and how they’re doing with work or school as the case may be, and she’s remarkably able to pull that information out of the recesses of her mind. It’s a refreshing respite and it’s actually quite fascinating.
Watching the commander-in-chief struggle to remember names, fundamental lines from the Declaration of Independence, or his means of exiting the stage, is not fascinating. It’s troubling. Having witnessed the ravages of dementia firsthand, it’s painfully uncomfortable watching Joe Biden mumble, forget what he was saying, and trip over himself. It makes many of us want to see that 25th Amendment invoked . . . until we remember who’s waiting in the wings.
Kamala Harris is the most incompetent, unqualified human being to ever be vice president. And that’s saying something. Her polling numbers reflect it, and the idea of her taking over the executive branch somehow seems even worse than keeping it in the shaking hands of an increasingly angry geriatric. A few Democrats have been making noise about pulling the plug on the Biden re-election, but they know they can’t win with the least popular vice president in history, and they know that pulling a woman of color from their ticket will anger their far left supporters for abandoning the sacred altar of affirmative action.
Donald Trump has a unique opportunity here. If he can comport himself in a decent and – to be blunt – presidential manner, sticking to his accomplishments as president and articulating them clearly without being demeaning, he can highlight the sad state of mental acuity with the incumbent without even mentioning it. And he’ll handily win a trip back to the White House.
Kamala Harris can then retire to be a trivia contest answer, and Joe Biden can get the care he needs out of the spotlight.
Tim Barto is vice president of Alaska Family Council, a regular contributor to Must Read Alaska, and son to a saint of a Mom.
According to the latest YouGov poll, Alaskans are the most interested citizens in America who would favor their state seceding from the United States.
Some 36% of Alaska residents would support the state divorcing the United States and becoming a fully independent nation. The average among all the states was 23%, which is a number that would be a bit lower if Alaska’s high percentage was removed from the average. Alaska is clearly an outlier in this poll.
YouGov surveyed 35,307 U.S. adults between February 2 and 5. The question was whether respondents would “support your state seceding from the U.S.”
Must Read Alaska is running a similar survey in its Monday newsletter, which can be found at this link.The survey is toward the bottom of the newsletter.
Following Alaska, the states with the highest percentage supporting their state’s secession were Texas at 31%, California at 29%, and New York and Oklahoma at 28%
On the lower end of the scale 13% of Minnesota respondents supported secession, and Ohio, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were just above Minnesota at 14%.
About one-third of those polled (31%) told the pollster that states have a right to secede from the country, while 43% of respondents said there is no such right.
The respondents were split by party: Republicans and Independents were more closely divided on this question, while most Democrats reject the right to secession: 22% said there is such a right and 55% said there is not, YouGov reported.
Also, half of Democrats (49%) said they think of people who want their state to secede from the U.S. as “mostly traitors,” compared to 26% of Republicans who think that.
Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel using sample matching. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets came from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification was weighted to the estimated distribution of last June, (34% Democratic, 31% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 3%, YouGov reported.
House Joint Resolution 7 would require the State of Alaska pay the annual Permanent Fund dividend according to a formula in statute, rather than by the “what’s leftover” process, which is what the Legislature now uses.
The House will take it up on Monday during the floor session.
There is a statutory formula for the dividend, of course, but the Legislature ignores it, and has since 2017.
“The trust between the government and the people of Alaska was broken in 2016 when Governor Walker vetoed a portion of the annual dividend and the Alaska Supreme Court ultimately determined that dividends were subject to the annual appropriations process. While the legislature could choose to follow the law and appropriate the dividend according to statute and separate it from the budget, they have not done so. Instead, the permanent fund dividend has been subjected to the budget process, where the dividend competes with government spending and often becomes the deficit reduction solution,” wrote Rep. Ben Carpenter, the sponsor of the resolution.
“Neglecting to constitutionalize the PFD would permit lawmakers to continue avoiding their obligation to address the shortcomings of Alaska’s fiscal and economic planning, placing the Permanent Fund at risk. Constitutionally enshrining the Permanent Fund Dividend will provide for the maximum benefit of all Alaskans and ensure the prosperity of the Permanent Fund for generations of Alaskans to come,” Carpenter said.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin told a group Friday that he will not enter the 2024 presidential race as a third-party candidate. He had been exploring running under the No Labels group, which has registered in 16 states to participate in the presidential election.
No Labels is NOW on the ballot in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah, and has filed for access in 14 others.
That means No Labels is in search for another candidate. And it means that Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski won’t be Manchin’s running mate, as many have speculated. He is rumored to have also considered Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, as a running mate.
“I will not be seeking a third party run, I will not be involved in a presidential run,” Manchin said Friday in West Virginia. “I will be involved in making sure that we secure a president who has the knowledge and has the passion and has the ability to bring this country together. I just don’t think it’s the right time.”
“We’re talking with several exceptional leaders. We have our own internal process,” said No Labels Co-chair Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis on MSNBC.
Manchin, a Democrat, is also not running for reelection to his Senate seat for West Virginia, which polls show is likely to be won by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican.
As for Alaska’s senator, political analysts have said that Murkowski, who isn’t up for reelection until 2026, may instead decide to run for governor of Alaska that year.
Senate Bill 140, a bill that has various funding components for Alaska school districts, is on the calendar for the Alaska House on Monday when the House gavels in at 11 am.
It started out last year as a bill sponsored by Sen. Lyman Hoffman to bring more broadband to rural Alaska districts through a grant program that had matching state and federal monies. It would benefit not only rural villages but Quintillion, the company bringing fiber optic cable connectivity to much of the Arctic, even though Starlink would be vastly cheaper.
Through time, the bill has been added to and debated, and now contains pay incentives for teachers, and an addition to the base student allocation, sometimes called the BSA. The BSA is the permanent funding formula that is calculated on a per-student basis.
Also in the bill is an increase in correspondence school funding and the governor’s plan to pay teacher bonuses that would be between $5,000 to $15,000, something that is outside the BSA.
The amount that the BSA would be increased could be $300 per student, or could be over $1,400 per student, but it looks like most in the House will settle in the $600 range. More changes to the bill are expected on the House floor, as several dozen amendments are predicted to be in the works. The total cost of SB 140 could be substantial, as this fiscal summary from January shows (in thousands):
State education officials, teachers’ unions, and Democrat lawmakers are arguing for a $1,413 BSA and they are expected to put up a fight for more money. The bill will have to go back to the Senate if it passes the House, due to the many changes, and the Senate is likely to have its own ideas; these differences are typically sorted out in a conference committee between the two sides to reach a compromise.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic reopened debate last week over what constitutes “misinformation” regarding the Covid-19 virus and vaccines. The hearings were titled, “Assessing America’s Vaccine Safety Systems, Part 1.”
Chairman Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican, detailed shortcomings in vaccine safety reporting and vaccine injury compensation systems, which have led to confusion about the efficacy of vaccinations. Wenstrup, who is a doctor, noted the dismissive answers from the federal government, and claims from the government that anyone not satisfied with official answers was pedaling “misinformation.”
The complex and convoluted system of overlapping injury reporting systems, such as VAERS — the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System — was not structured to handle the massive influx of injury claims caused by the Covid-19 vaccine, he said. Only 11 injury claims out of the more than 12,000 claims that have been filed in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program have been compensated.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican member of the committee, said, “I’m not a doctor, but I have a PhD in recognizing bullshit. There have been over 1 million VAERS reports for vaccine injuries and deaths caused by the experimental COVID vaccines. As of Jan 1, 2024, only 11 victims have been compensated.”
She said that it was known early on that children were of almost no risk, and neither were healthy young people. Covid mainly was a danger to obese, elderly and health compromised, she said. And yet even Dr. Peter Marks, the lead witness in the hearing, had been recommending the vaccine for babies as young as six months, something she called “shameful.”
“Some people are trying to belittle these reports, but these reports come from people — people that died, people that got injured,” said Greene. “In 2021, there were 706,767 reports on VAERS for vaccine injuries and deaths. In 2022 it was 206,676 … it was going down because the [vaccine] mandates stopped.”
I’m not a doctor, but I have a PhD in recognizing bullshit.
There have been over 1 million VAERS reports for vaccine injuries and deaths caused by the experimental COVID vaccines.
As of Jan 1, 2024, only 11 victims have been compensated.
Dr. Marks, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, tried to defend the federal government’s response.
When asked by the committee if the Food and Drug Administration is able to process the number of VAERS reports that have been submitted on the Covid vaccines, Marks said, “the avalanche of reports was tremendous, and required re-tasking people on the fly. We had to usually staff up and had many meetings working to increase our ability to go through these reports. What the public sees on the VAERS page is a small fraction of the information we sift through.”
Wenstrup noted that “VAERS has been the source of attention and controversy since the beginning of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout. However, concerns about these data are usually met with dismissive replies. They often point to the fact that VAERS is ‘unable to prove causality’ and contains reports of ‘people being hit by a car after vaccination.’ They say that VAERS is being misused by anti-vaccine advocates and that it is ‘misinformation.'”
He said that many legitimate questions have been raised by Americans and the federal government’s answers were contradictory.
“During her testimony before this committee last June, Director [Rochelle] Walensky assured us that CDC had ‘a responsibility to comb through every single [report to VAERS].’ People who have submitted reports to VAERS have told my staff they were never contacted by CDC or FDA officials. A recent British Medical Journal investigation found this too,” Wenstrup said.
Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat from North Carolina, disputed the criticisms of VAERS: “In listening to today’s hearing, one might be led to believe that reports submitted to VAERS are the most meaningful measure of adverse health events and should be the sole basis for evaluating whether the Covid vaccines are safe. However, my understanding is that VAERS is just one surveillance program within a multilayered vaccine system that CDC operates, and that submissions to VAERS, which are unverified, can be submitted by anyone, regardless of how likely a vaccine is to have created an adverse event, and can act as early warnings to prompt deeper investigations through these other surveillance programs.”
Recent analysis of the VAERS database on mortality from Covid-19 vaccines shows a spike in adverse effects and deaths, but the government appears to now be dismissing the accuracy of the entire VAERS database.
A pie chart showing what is purported to be all reported vaccine deaths in the VAERS database since 1988 has been making its way through social media. Its source and accuracy are unknown, but similar information is found at the nonprofit OpenVAERS.com, which reports on the lack of transparencyat the FDA and CDC regarding adverse effects.
Other takeaways from the hearing:
The Biden Administration mandated the Covid-19 vaccine without a sufficient system in place to compensate individuals injured by the vaccine mandate policy.
HRSA Director at the Division of Injury Compensation Programs George Reed Grimes said, “At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we had not had a direct appropriation with the CICP. We also had only four staff.”
The FDA accelerated the Covid-19 vaccine approval process to seemingly meet arbitrary mandate timelines set by the Biden Administration.
Executive branch officials from the CDC and FDA agreed in the committee that the federal government can never guarantee a vaccine is 100% safe.
Dr. Marks said, “No pharmaceutical is 100% safe.”
Shortcomings in vaccine injury reporting and vaccine compensation systems, as well as ineffective government messaging during the pandemic, deteriorated public trust in vaccine safety.
“We probably have not done a good enough job of communicating sometimes the actual numbers of deaths versus what’s in VAERS,” Dr. Marks said.
Balanced conversations about the integrity and credibility of vaccines are important for restoring trust in America’s public health system.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy met with Yukon Premier Ranj Pillai in Whitehorse, Yukon last week; the two leaders inked an agreement to work on a memorandum of understanding on the Alaska Highway, which is badly gutted with frost heaves throughout its section from Whitehorse to the U.S. border near Tok. The frost heaves between Burwash Landing and the border are so bad they send vehicles with unsuspecting drivers airborne, breaking axles and busting exhaust pipes.
Dunleavy said Alaska is going to help with the cost of the highway repairs and also work to get some U.S. federal money to smooth out the frost heaves, since Americans are the primary users of the highway, as they drive from the Lower 48 to Alaska with either freight for Alaskans or vacation maps.
Dunleavy said talks went well and will continue between the two leaders, including working on a transportation corridor agreement and food security cooperation. It was his first trip to the Yukon.
“The Alaska Highway is the only road link between Alaska and the Lower 48, and the vast majority of traffic on the Canadian portion of the road is American,” Governor Dunleavy said. “By working cooperatively with our neighbors in the Yukon, we can help ensure that people traveling to or from Alaska on the road are able to do more safely with fewer road hazards.”
The MOU outlines an agreement between the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities and the Yukon Department of Highways and Public Works to repair and improve a section of the Alaska Highway damaged by melting permafrost. The project will be included in Alaska’s 2024-2027 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program, which is currently a point of dispute with the Biden Administration.
Meanwhile, over in Ottawa, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said last week that the Canadian federal government will stop investing in new road infrastructure, and instead work on getting people out of their cars and into “active transportation” like bicycles and walking, and into public transportation.
Guilbeault said existing road network in Canada “is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have.” The Trudeau government is putting an end to road expansion, he said. Instead, the government will use federal funds on projects to adapt to climate change and fight climate change, Guilbeault said.
“There will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network,” Guilbeault said, as reported by the Montreal Gazette. “We can very well achieve our goals of economic, social and human development without more enlargement of the road network.”
Guilbeault tried to step out of the pothole of his own creation on Wednesday, saying that what he meant to say was no new roads would be built in Canada, but that existing roads would be funded for maintenance.
Yukon is the most western part of Canada and is the smallest Canadian province and the second least populated. At 186,272 square miles and 44,975 people, it is rich in minerals and depends on the Port of Skagway to export its ore. It is the fastest-growing province in Canada.
The Alaska Highway was built mostly by Americans during World War II. It enters the Yukon near Watson Lake, and stretches 550 miles further to the Alaska border at mile 1,903.
