For decades, totems have stood as a sentry at the Permanent Corporation in Juneau. No more. The totems are moving from downtown to the Goldbelt Inc. headquarters near the Juneau International Airport.
Tlingit artists Ray Peck and Jim Marks carved the totems for Goldbelt, an Alaska Native corporation, which built and sold the building near the Douglas Bridge to the Alaska Permanent Fund in 1998; the totems stayed with the building as it became the headquarters for the Permanent Fund. But the sales contract was clear — Goldbelt could buy the art in the building back for $1.
The building, built in 1991 and then known as Goldbelt Place, is now the Michael J. Burns building, named for a former CEO of the fund, who died in 2015 after leading the fund for over a decade. It is situated at 801 W. 10th Street.
In 2021, Goldbelt President and CEO McHugh Pierre bought the art from APFC, with plans to raise the totem poles, called “Legions and Beliefs,” “Creation of Killer Whale,” and “Strongman,” at Goldbelt’s headquarters, now at 3025 Clinton Drive, Juneau.
Goldbelt will erect them as part of the corporation’s 50th anniversary celebration on Jan. 4, 2024.
“We’re honored to have been the caretakers of the totem poles for the last several decades. It is bittersweet to watch the totems leave our care, but at the same time see the positive impact of their return to Goldbelt,” said Permanent Fund CEO Deven Mitchell.
GRANITE STATE DEFIES PRESIDENT’S ELECTION MANIPULATION, KEEPS FIRST-IN-NATION PRIMARY STATUS
Team Biden and the Democratic National Committee gambled big when they tried to force New Hampshire off of its traditional position as the first presidential primary state in the nation. New Hampshire wasn’t messing around.
The Granite State rejected the Biden’s reordering of the presidential nominating calendar. The state has now set its primary date for Jan. 23, two weeks ahead of South Carolina’s Democratic primary, which is Feb. 3. The date was announced by Secretary of State David Scanlan this week.
Democrats, spearheaded by Biden, wanted South Carolina to go first next year, but by tradition and by state law, New Hampshire has always been first.
The defiance comes in the wake of a broader Biden aimed at reshuffling the primary calendar to ostensibly better reflect racial diversity within the party. But many see it as a brazen attempt for Biden to get an advantage, and some point out that the media has been relatively silent about the election manipulation already being displayed by Biden and the DNC.
The way the DNC set up its calendar, South Carolina would go, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire at the same time, and then Georgia and Michigan. The Democrats were looking for an advantage in states considered strong for them. Biden was demanding that New Hampshire back down from its own state laws.
In December of 2022 President Biden, in a letter to the DNC, emphasized the importance of ensuring that black voters have an early voice in the nominating process. There are not enough blacks in New Hampshire, Biden was arguing. Only 10% of New Hampshire residents identify as black, while 26% of South Carolina residents are black.
Biden advocated for an update to the primary process to align with racial quotas. DNC Chair Jamie Harrison echoed this sentiment, noting that the proposed plan reflects the diverse makeup of America. They did not explain why Hawaii, the most racially diverse state in the nation, according to the U.S. Census, should not be first to nominate.
New Hampshire Secretary of State Scanlan said, “We did not take the first-in-the-nation primary from anyone, and we will vigorously defend it.” He also criticized the use of racial diversity as a basis for altering the presidential primary calendar and questioned the fairness of such criteria in determining a state’s eligibility for early primaries.
No single state could perfectly mirror the entirety of America’s demographic composition, Scanlan said, and no state should be seen as more “American” than another in the context of the primary process.
In adherence to the DNC’s guidelines, President Biden did not file for the New Hampshire primary. His supporters in the state have initiated a write-in campaign, which will be a historic event in itself.
Juneau paints rainbows on its crosswalks and has an ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender expression. It’s the home of an active drag entertainment scene.
The Capital City has, for the third year in a row, won a perfect score in an index by the Human Rights Campaign that measures how good a city is to its gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer residents.
Earning 100 points out of 100 three years in a row is something the municipality says it is proud of. It’s the only city in Alaska to receive a perfect score. In 2023 the Human Rights Campaign evaluated 506 cities nationwide are rated based on non-discrimination laws, the municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement and leadership on LGBTQ+ equality.
“We are very proud to have maintained Juneau’s perfect score for another year, because it shows that this isn’t a one-time effort,” said Deputy City Manager Robert Barr. “It’s an ongoing commitment to making sure that Juneau’s inclusive values are reflected in the city’s government.”
The scores include things like offering transgender-specific health care benefits to transgender employees of the city, having an LGBTQ+ liaison and/or task force in both the police department and in the city manager’s office, and reporting local hate crime statistics to the FBI.
In the pouring rain, 19 new law enforcement officers received their marching orders on Friday at a ceremony in Sitka. They had completed the basic Law Enforcement Training course at the Alaska Law Enforcement Training Academy and will hit the streets, trails, airports, and waters of Alaska to protect the peace in many communities, from North Pole to Juneau.
Graduates include:
Officer Mark Adams, Seward Police Department
Trooper Mohammad Alkarmy, Alaska State Troopers
Trooper Jacob Bairett, Alaska State Troopers
Officer Anthony Bates, Juneau Police Department
Trooper Ryan Bell, Alaska State Troopers
Officer Benjamin Bennett, Anchorage International Airport Police and Fire Department
Officer Bradley Bordner, Homer Police Department
Trooper Dylan Bowers, Alaska State Troopers (Lateral recruit attended an abbreviated eight-week academy.)
Trooper Colleen Bryant, Alaska State Troopers
Trooper Jason Cantor, Alaska State Troopers
Officer Kenneth Fahle, Anchorage International Airport Police and Fire Department
Officer Nicholas Irvin, Fairbanks Police Department
Officer Jaxon Letendre, Wasilla Police Department
Officer Tyler Nicholson, North Pole Police Department
Trooper Juan Olson Guzman, Alaska Wildlife Troopers
Officer Andrew Reynolds, Valdez Police Department
Officer Kenneth Scott, Anchorage International Airport Police and Fire Department
Trooper Alan Urban, Alaska Wildlife Troopers
Trooper Joshua Whitby, Alaska Wildlife Troopers
The ecruits completed more than 1,000 hours of training over the course of 17 weeks of basic Alaska Law Enforcement Training. Recruits received intensive instruction in more than 70 law enforcement-related topics, use-of-force and de-escalation, physical fitness, and many scenario-based exercises designed to prepare entry-level police officers and Troopers for successful careers in Alaska law enforcement. The training included being pepper sprayed and tased. For the numerous exams taken by the 2023 graduating class, the average grade point average was 92.12.
The class’ initial physical fitness test scores were 75%, but their final score, after 17 weeks of rigorous training, was over 91%. Each recruit completed over 120 hours of firearms training and fired over 2,000 rounds. They had to pass a written test for each firearm, with a minimum score of 80.
During the training, Seward Police Officer recruit Mark Adams shot a perfect score with his patrol rifle. Alaska Wildlife Trooper recruit Juan Olson Guzman shot a perfect buckshot score with his shotgun. Alaska State Trooper recruit Colleen Bryant qualified with all her guns, despite never having shot a gun before.
Alan Urban, Alaska Wildlife Trooper recruit, shot 193 out of 200 on the patrol rifle, a perfect score on the buckshot shotgun, a perfect score on the slug qualification, and 39 out of 40 on the handgun qualification. Urban also scored 100% on rifle written tests and 98% on the shotgun test. He received the 2023 Firearms Proficiency Award from the Academy.
Alaska Wildlife Trooper recruit Alan Urban receives the 2023 Firearms Proficiency Award from the Alaska Law Enforcement Training Academy.
This was the first ALET class that primarily used handguns with red-dot optics, as the academy’s firearms training moves away from pistols with iron sights. This was also the first class that shot to the Department of Public Safety’s new handgun qualification standard. The previous qualification was created in the 1980s and modeled around the revolver. The new qualification focuses on skills that law enforcement officers are encountering these days — high intensity, short duration, and close contact engagements.
Since about 60% of all law enforcement engagements are around vehicles, the academy brings vehicles on to the range for realistic training.
Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockrell expressed confidence in the new officers who completed the Alaska Law Enforcement Training Academy.
“Completing the world-class training at our Sitka based academy is no easy feat. I welcome these new law enforcement officers to our noble profession. Their work will enhance the safety and security of our state,” he said.
“I commend the new law enforcement officers who have successfully completed the rigorous Alaska Law Enforcement Academy,” said Gov. Mike Dunleavy. “I appreciate your dedication to serving and safeguarding Alaskans throughout our great state, and for the positive impact your service will have on future generations of Alaskans.”
Alaska’s renown coffee company, Kaladi Brothers, is closing one of its most iconic locations — in the heart of downtown Anchorage. The company cited safety concerns for staff and customers alike.
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce the closure of our Downtown cafe at West 6th Avenue on Friday, December 1st. Our highest priority is the safety and well-being of our staff and customers, and while we have put forth our greatest efforts in mitigating the safety issues that affect them, we no longer feel that we can responsibly operate within this space,” the company wrote on social media.
Kaladis will open two blocks away inside the Conoco Phillips Atrium, at 700 G Street. That location has private security, but it may mean fewer hours for the coffee purveyor. It won’t be open Saturdays or Sundays at that location.
“We have loved having this cafe and being a part of the Performing Arts Center for the past 18 years, and have endless gratitude for the staff and customers who have joined us along the way,” Kaladi Brothers wrote.
Downtown Anchorage has deteriorated over the past few years, as have the downtown areas in many cities, such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Seattle, dozens of stores have moved out of the urban core due to rising crime and drug-addled homeless vagrants.
Kaladi Brothers started out in Anchorage on April 14, 1984, when founder Brad Bigelow rolled out the cart that he and his father had built. He parked it on the corner of Fourth Avenue and F Street in front of the Visitor Information Center, becoming the first espresso cart in Alaska. He went into full- scale commercial roasting in 1986, and opened his first retail espresso counter in 1988. Tim Gravel later became co-owner, president and CEO of the company.
Three weeks after being elected House Speaker, Congressman Mike Johnson released a batch of tapes of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol mostly peaceful protest that turned ugly at times on a House of Representatives committee website.
Johnson first announced Friday on X, “Today, I am keeping my promise to the American people and making all the January 6th tapes available to ALL Americans.”
He then posted a linkto the Committee on House Administration’s website where the files are located. Note: The files do not open in the Safari browser, but appear to work in the Chrome browser. More footage is being uploaded by the committee; only the first tranche is now online.
This is same footage that had been blocked from the public by the previous speakers Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy, although McCarthy had released much footage to Tucker Carlson.
“To restore America’s trust and faith in their Government we must have transparency. This is another step towards keeping the promises I made when I was elected to be your Speaker,” Johnson wrote on X/Twitter.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Chairman of the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, announced that United States Capitol Police video footage from Jan. 6, 2021 would be made available to the public through another method: in person at the subcommittee’s offices in Washington, D.C.
“Starting today, all video footage previously released to media outlets will be uploaded to an online viewing room for public access. This includes all videos released to Tucker Carlson and other media. Following the initial tranche of footage, the Subcommittee will continue to populate the viewing room with additional footage for public view,” Loudermilk wrote.
“The goal of our investigation has been to provide the American people with transparency on what happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and this includes all official video from that day,” Loudermilk said. “We will continue loading video footage as we conduct our investigation and continue to review footage. As I’ve said all along—the American people deserve transparency, accountability, and real answers supported by facts instead a predetermined political narrative.”
Also, beginning November 20, the subcommittee will allow any U.S. citizen to access Capitol Police video footage of the Capitol from Jan. 6, 2021 by scheduling an appointment to view the videos in person in the subcommittee’s offices in Washington, D.C.This is the first time the general public will be allowed to view and request clips from all USCP video footage from the Capitol Police cameras at the Capitol for that day. Click here to view the full policy.
Northern Justice Project and the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska filed a constitutional lawsuit against the Mat-Su Borough School District for putting 56 books from school libraries into a review committee to determine suitability for different grade levels.
The 56 books, out of school collections that have over 600,000 titles, had been removed after being flagged by members of the community as deserving of review by the district’s Library Committee, which is now in the process of reviewing the books.
Two out of 600,000 books in the district school libraries were removed by the superintendent, using his own judgment about the books’ liability they carried for being pornographic in nature.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, says that because the books are removed, the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of students in the Mat-Su School District are being violated.
The suit was filed on behalf of eight plaintiffs, including six parents of minor children and two current district students over the age of 18, who claim that the review of the books violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution to free speech, press, and political expression.
The press release from Northern Justice Project and ACLU makes no mention of the fact that the books have not been removed permanently, but that a committee is responding to parent and community concerns by taking those concerns seriously and reviewing the books, with an eye toward possibly classifying them for different ages.
For example, several of the books are on the theme of rape, and some of the books are about the rape of children, such as Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”
At least one of the books that were removed for review have never been checked out of the library — at least not in the past decade, according to computer records.
“The removed books also include books with protagonists of color or LGBTQ+ protagonists and non-fiction reference materials discussing adolescent health and development,” the litigants said in their press release.
Plaintiffs in this case are asking the court to reinstate all 56 removed books to school libraries, and asking the court to rule that the committee review process is unconstitutional.
In other words, there can be no standards of decency set for school library materials, according to the litigants. Playboy magazine, adult books of a sexual nature, and graphic novel depicting rape and incest — all would be allowed if Northern Justice Project and the ACLU were in charge of schools.
The library committee was established also to protect librarians and teachers from lawsuits. In a state where there is a high degree of sexual assault of children, a teacher who assigns a book about child rape is introducing literature into classrooms where there are likely more than one victim of these kinds of crimes. If a guardian complains, the teacher or librarian could face civil penalties or even lose their license.
“All students have a constitutional right to inquire, to study, and to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their world. As the Supreme Court ruled over 40 years ago, ‘the school library is the principal locus of that freedom.’ Mat-Su School District needs to respect that right,” said Northern Justice Project’s Savannah Fletcher, advocating for no limits to pornographic material for children.
“The District acted in a way that put its personal views and prejudices ahead of the fundamental rights afforded to Alaskan students. Removing classic reads and award-winning literature from bookshelves violates students’ rights to receive ideas and information. This is a foundational component of the rights of young Alaskans to exercise freedom of speech, press, and political expression. Book banning in any public setting is unacceptable,” said the ACLU’s Ruth Bostein, also advocating for unlimited pornography for children.
“As a parent to a biracial child, my child needs to be represented in books. I believe that book banning only further promotes intolerance, suppression of ideas or information, and creates seclusion making at-risk youth all the more at-risk. I am joining this lawsuit to send the School District the message: enough is enough,” said plaintiff Dawn Adams, who is associated with the Mat-Su Health Foundation’s R.O.C.K. Mat-Su program to end child maltreatment.
The timing of the lawsuit is key. It comes after the liberal candidates for the Mat-Su School Board lost to the conservative candidates during the November borough elections.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers in Soldotna responded to a bear attack on the Hidden Creek Trail near Skilak Lake on Thursday.
A 72-year-old man had been attacked by a bear after he accidentally got between a sow and her cub, Troopers said in a dispatch report. A second person who was with the victim was unharmed. The two men were hiking the trail to go fishing at Hidden Creek, where there are still a few salmon dying or dead in the creek.
The injured man was medevaced to a local hospital with what are believed to be non-life-threatening injuries and is reported to be in stable condition.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers were assisted by Central Emergency Services and an officer from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All personnel are out of the field and the bears have departed the area, the Troopers said. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will be continuing the investigation.
Bear attacks in November are not that common in Alaska, as the animals are heading into torpor, the state that most people call hibernation. They are coming out of hyperphasia, their feeding and gorging phase. Winter maulings are not unheard of, however, according to MRAK hunting sources, because the bears are not truly hibernating.
Brown bears only typically attack when they sense a threat, which is why people are advised to not fight back when they are being attacked, but to drop to the ground, keep vital organs down toward the ground and neck covered, and try to not appear as a threat. This advice doesn’t apply to an attack by the occasional predatory brown bear.
Hidden Creek and Skilak Lake is at about milepost 45 on the Sterling Highway.
New Hampshire is the freest state, according to the 2023 Cato Institute “Freedom in the 50 States” report, and Florida ranks No. 2. Alaska comes in at No. 15. and New York State is at No. 50, the worst in terms of personal freedom. Many of the Democrat-run states are in the bottom tier.
The Washington, D.C.-based libertarian think tank ranks, the 50 U.S. states according to how their public policies affect individual freedoms in the economic, social and personal spheres.
Alaska is an unusual state because of its enormous oil and gas reserves and revenues, the report notes.
Alaska’s fiscal policy “scores fluctuate wildly depending on the global price of oil. With the end of the commodity boom in the 2000s, corporate income tax collections plummeted in Alaska, and the state buffered the decline with large withdrawals from its enormous rainy-day fund. Alaska has one of the highest cash-to-liability ratios of any state. The rise in Alaska’s ranking from 41st overall in 2007 to 15th today is driven entirely by fiscal policy, mostly declining state tax collections because of economic conditions but also real improvement in the size of government,” the study says.
But Alaska’s enviable net asset position has also made for something of a “resource curse” in the state’s expenditures, although Alaska has improved recently on these measures.
Government employment is 17.5 percent, but it was 20 percent in 2002.
“Government consumption is similarly high, but it hit its 21st-century low in 2022. Although local taxes outstrip state taxes, which are the lowest in the country—lately by a wide margin—local jurisdictions are so consolidated that virtually no choice exists among local government options,” the institute reports.
Labor union policies drive Alaska’s scores lower: “The labor market is far more regulated than one would expect for such a conservative state. There is no right-to-work law; the state has strict workers’ compensation mandates and a high minimum wage ($10.85 per hour in 2022). Many occupations are licensed in Anchorage and Fairbanks, where about half of the state’s population lives. Insurance is heavily regulated, and the state adopted a price-gouging law in 2020.”
However, the state gives more practice freedom to nurses and dental hygienists, recognizing full hygienist independent practice in 2022, does not zone out low-cost housing, and has one of the nation’s best civil liability systems, an area in which the state has improved a great deal during the past 25 years, according to Cato.
Personal freedom scores are high due to low drug arrests, legal marijuana, homeschooling freedom, and gun rights.
“The state’s civil asset forfeiture law is among the worst in the country, which probably accounts for why local police do not bother to ask the Department of Justice to ‘adopt’ many cases. The burden of proof is on the owner of the property to prove innocence, property is subject to forfeiture from mere probable cause, and the proceeds largely go to law enforcement. Sales of all alcohol, even beer, are prohibited in grocery stores. Alcohol taxes, especially for beer, are also among the highest in the country. Gambling freedom is low, and the cigarette tax is high at $2 per pack in 2022 ($5 a pack in Juneau). There is almost no school choice at all,” the report notes.
The 2023 edition updates and expands on the six previous editions of Freedom in the 50 States, examining state and local government intervention across various policy categories – from taxation to debt, from eminent domain laws to occupational licensing, and from drug policy to educational choice.
