Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has declared a state of emergency and has suspended the state’s excise tax on motor and locomotive fuel for the next month.
The executive order, which the governor says is necessary because of high inflation, takes effect at 12 a.m. on Wednesday. It remains in effect until 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 12.
“From runaway federal spending to policies that hamstring domestic energy production, all Bidenomics has done is take more money out of the pockets of the middle class,” Kemp said Tuesday.
“While high prices continue to hit family budgets, hardworking Georgians deserve real relief and that’s why I signed an executive order today to deliver it directly to them at the pump,” the governor said. “Working with partners in the General Assembly, we’ll continue to help Georgians weather the economic headwinds caused by this president, his administration, and their allies in Congress.”
Georgia collects more than 31 cents per gallon for gasoline and 35 cents per gallon for diesel fuel.
On Monday, AAA said Georgia’s gas prices have steadily declined for the past two weeks. As of Tuesday, Peach State motorists are paying an average price of $3.57 per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline, up from $3.242 a year ago and below the national average of $3.836.
That’s less than in California, which also has a high tax on gas. Drivers in California are paying an average of $5.439 per gallon — 51 cents of that is tax. Washingtonians are paying $5 per gallon, including a tax of more than 49 cents per gallon. Alaskans pay more than $465 typically, much higher in rural areas. Alaska has a gas tax of just under 9 cents.
Oil prices are generally higher than the nation has seen since November, with West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, staying above $85 per barrel, the Houston Chronicle reported Monday. “A strong U.S. jobs report last week stirred rumors of possible action at the Federal Reserve, but it was Saudi Arabia’s decision to extend production cuts through the end of the year that crowded out most of the economic indicators last week.”
“Despite the uptick in crude oil prices, Georgians are feeling some relief at the pump,” Montrae Waiters, AAA-The Auto Club Group spokeswoman, said in a Monday statement. “Gas prices may ebb and flow until we get beyond hurricane season and its threats to Gulf Coast oil and gas production and refining.”
Total U.S. crude inventories, including what is left in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, fell below 800 million barrels this week, a level not seen since 1985. The country has just 46 days worth of supply in total reserves, an all-time low. During the Trump Administration, the U.S. had a record 92 days of reserve inventory, double what it has today.
Last week, President Joe Biden canceled all of Alaska’s pending oil and gas leases on the North Slope. Since he campaigned for president, he has pledged to end oil and gas leases on all federal land.
Rep. Mary Peltola is flying with President Joe Biden back to Washington, D.C. on Air Force One. Peltola put out a press release that said she and the president will spend the time discussing his trip to Asia and “the role of oil and gas. “Alaska’s role in Pacific Rim strategy and energy markets.”
Congress reconvenes on Tuesday, Sept. 12.
Peltola gave remarks Monday at the Joint Base Emendorf-Richardson commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on America by terrorists, in which she talked about how even as far away as Alaska, people experienced the impacts.
“While Alaska may be far from Ground Zero, we too felt the impacts of that day. Many of our brave soldiers were deployed overseas in the following years, where they fought and some died in the service of this nation. Everyone standing here today is in their debt,” she said.
Perhaps not everyone feels the debt — Peltola voted against funding troops earlier this year because the bill did not induced enough provisions for accommodating transgenders in the military.
“I thank the President for taking the time to visit us on this day, and for sending so many members of his administration to Alaska in recent weeks. As they toured the state with our Senators and me, they learned about our unique needs, and came to understand the vital role that Alaska plays in our nation’s security. Alaskans are proud to be America’s first line of defense, and on behalf of us all, I say: welcome, Mr. President,” Peltola said.
Peltola has endorsed Biden for president and said earlier she is frustrated that he canceled oil and gas leases in Alaska.
On the anniversary of 9-11, the Biden Administration announced another prisoner swap with Iran, a country that wishes death to America.
The offer is five Iranians for five Americans, and Biden has sweetened the pot by unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds for the country, with which United States severed diplomatic relations in 1980. Iran is considered a terrorist state.
Sen. Dan Sullivan quickly issued a comment about the deal.
“On this somber, sacred day, it’s outrageous and insulting that Americans received the news that the Biden Administration has cut a sweetheart $6 billion-deal with Iran,” Sullivan said. “While I welcome any American hostage being freed and reunited with their family, this deal with Iran only serves to incentivize the terrorist regime to take MORE Americans hostage. I also seriously doubt the $6 billion dollars unfrozen will not end up fueling Iran’s efforts to destabilize the Middle East, oppress its own people, and target Americans and our allies. This deal rewards the malign behavior of the largest state sponsor of terrorism, a regime with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands.”
The $6 billion comes as a waiver for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar, free from U.S. sanctions.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed the deal last week, a month after U.S. and Iranian officials said an agreement in principle was in place.
The Department of State designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. Iran continued its support for terrorist-related activity in 2021, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various terrorist and militant groups in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East, according to the State Department.
Congress had not been informed about the details that involved the $6 billion until Monday.
The state of Washington has a goal of ending the sale of new gasoline vehicles by 2035. It also has created a Transportation Electrification Strategy, or TES, to ensure “that electric vehicle incentives and infrastructure are accessible and available to all Washingtonians.”
However, it’s going to need a lot more charging ports.
According to the Electric Vehicle Council, the state will need 3 million by 2035. It’s not yet known whether this includes both private and public charging ports, but the price tag is in the billions of dollars.
Either way, the state has a long way to go.
Currently, there are roughly 4,500 public EV chargers in the state, mostly level 2 charging ports and just under 1,000 direct current fast charging ports.
Charging infrastructure is one of the critical aspects of making EV use en masse practical. Recently US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm went on a road trip across the country to promote EV use, but the fleet hit a snag when there weren’t enough chargers for them all to use.
To meet the 3 million mark, Washington state will need to install 250,000 ports every single year starting this year – in 2021, just 460 were built.
Then there’s the cost, a topic that was raised at the state Electric Vehicle Coordinating Council’s most recent meetingon Wednesday. The council is preparing a draft update to the TES, which will include more details about the EV charger requirements.
Regarding the goal of 3 million charging ports, EV Council Co-Chair Tonia Buell said “my biggest question is how are going to do that?” She also told meeting participants that she did not know of any funding sources at this time that might cover the costs.
Those costs will vary depending on the type of charger installed. The average cost of installation is $300 to $1,500 cost for single EV port level 1, $6,000 for single EV port level 2, and $10,000-$40,000 for DC fast charging port.
However, in an email to The Center Square, Buell wrote that this just represents the equipment side of installation costs, which can be three times higher. According to the Oregon Department of Transportation, the total installation cost for a 350kW DC fast charging port can be as high as $172,000.
While a level 1 charger cost is estimated to be far less, it’s not considered practical for EVs used daily. A 30-minute charge on a level 1 port will only get a vehicle five miles, whereas a DC fast charger can provide enough energy for an EV to go 200 miles or more.
Even if the state only needed to install level 1 charging ports, the estimated price tag would still be $3 billion, and $18 billion if only level 2 charging ports were installed.
The TES draft update will include a forecast of what types of charging ports will need to be built.
Right now, there are 104,000 all-electric vehicles registered in Washington, placing it fourth in the nation in terms of total EVs. Another challenge for the coordinating council is how to get more drivers into EVs, which can cost more than what many households earn annually.
The TES draft update will be available for comment next month. The state Department of Commerce will submit the final draft to the state Legislature by the end of the year.
Evidently, many of us got it wrong when we celebrated saving girls’ sports for girls last week.
What the State Board of Education did, according to news sources not named Must Read Alaska or The Watchman, was ban transgender athletes from competing on girls’ teams. The take was that the Board’s actions would keep transgender athletes – biological males who self-identify as females – from playing with and against true females in competitive events.
This type of thinking and over under analysis is indicative of the focus on victimhood that the transgender movement, indeed almost all leftist movements, promote. And it is what former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines is up against as she fights the insane idea of letting biological males compete as females.
For those of you not familiar with her story, Riley Gaines was a first team all-conference athlete who tied for fifth place in the 2022 NCAA 200-yard freestyle championship.
The swimmer whom she tied was from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2018 to 2020, this UPenn swimmer competed on the school’s men’s team as William Thomas. Then, he decided he was actually a woman, so he changed his first name to Lia and his school and the NCAA went along with the charade, allowing him to compete on the women’s team.
Thomas won the 500-yard women’s freestyle in 2022, claiming the exalted title as the first transgender athlete to win a women’s NCAA championship. He also tied Riley for that fifth place finish in the 200-yard freestyle, but was the one publicly awarded the fifth place trophy because the NCAA wanted to do it that way, presumably to fully display their wokeness. Riley received her trophy in the mail.
Riley has taken that most unjust experience and used it in a desperate effort to save women’s sports. Disappointed at the lack of outrage from female athletes whose hard work and love of sports are being usurped by a man who thinks he’s a woman, Riley filled the leadership void by speaking out loudly and often.
She, being gifted with common sense and the ability to tell men from females, acknowledges the need for female sports. Males, at least past the onset of puberty, are bigger, faster, and stronger, so if girls and women are to have the opportunities to participate fairly in sports then a distinct category for them must exist.
That is what Title IX was all about. Passed into federal law in 1972, when only about 320,000 girls and women were participating in high school and collegiate sports, Title IX has helped catapult that number to over 3.6 million. The goal was to ensure equal opportunity for female athletes. Title IX acknowledges that separate sports programs are needed because females can’t compete on the same level as men.
Feminists lauded Title IX because it gave more equal opportunities for female athletes, but now many self-proclaimed feminists are joining the call for the inclusion of biological men in women’s sports. After 50 years of arguing that female athletes need exclusivity, they are now arguing that women’s sports should be inclusive to men . . . who identify as women, to be sure, but men, nonetheless.
This absurd twist of logic, common sense, and science has people on the left fired up. They are so convinced that transwomen are women they shout it at people who disagree. This was most notable when Riley visited San Francisco State University to speak on the matter. Nothing gets leftists angrier than people exercising their rights to free speech if the speaker doesn’t speak to their orthodoxy, and Riley was certainly going against their orthodoxy.
Shouted down and physically assaulted by a frenzied mob, Riley had to barricade herself for three hours from the proponents of tolerance because campus police and the administration did nothing to protect her. (University spokespeople did, however, offer an apology. They apologized to their trans community for the deeply traumatic episode they had to endure. Riley is suing.)
Riley is finally being joined by other true female athletes who also feel passionate about saving their sports, and that’s a good thing because it is that group that is being hurt the most, and it is that group that should have the say in how their sports are run.
One such person who spoke out early on, and received the full brunt and hate of the alphabet mob is Kim Russell, the Women’s lacrosse coach at Oberlin College in Ohio. Russell was a two-sport athlete in college, then became a highly successful college coach.Her appearance and personality are anything but traditional conservative, as she is seen as a barefoot free spirit and referred to as “the hippie love coach,” a moniker she appreciates.
No matter. Even such typically progressive bonafides were not enough to assuage the insufferable intolerants that lead the movement that sees no distinction between women and men who decide they are women.
Following Thomas’s “victory” in the NCAA swimming championships, coach Russell had the temerity to write a public congratulations to the second place swimmer, Emma Weyant, referring to her as “the real woman who won the NCAA 500-yard freestyle event.”
The Oberlin College administration, as far left a group of academicians as you can find, would have none of that. Coach Russell was labeled transphobic and transgressive, words that would impress George Orwell himself, and was called in to face a verbal firing squad of administrators, mediators, and – worst of all – the young women she coached. She was accused of being hateful and was publicly questioned why she could not possibly think that a transwoman is a woman.
Somehow, Russell mustered the strength and determination to continue coaching at Oberlin. But she has seen the darkness of intolerance and the spewing hatred that comes with daring to speak her mind and stand up for women athletes.
That is what we face as we joust at the sacred windmills of the left. Ideas that a few short years ago were considered ridiculous have now taken on meaning and given purpose for a portion of society that seems to be on a never ending search for meaning and purpose.
Riley Gaines is not only gaining the ire of the radical left, but she is gaining the attention and respect of people who believe in the natural order of male and female, and who appreciate her courage. She and Kim Russell are fighting to save women’s sports, and they deserve our respect and support.
Tim Barto is a baseball coach and Vice President of Alaska Family Council.
Warriors stood and sat at attention while the Commander-in-Chief read remarks from a teleprompter on Monday, with the snow-capped Chugach mountain range in the background at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
President Joe Biden read words from a screen pertaining to heroism and history to an audience that included U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola. Also attending and greeting the president’s arrival was Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson.
Biden’s visit included stopping for jet fuel and observing the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America. He is returning from a visit to Vietnam.
None of the veterans from the Alaska House of Representatives were invited, but invitations were sent to Democrat Party, non-military elected representatives, such as Rep. Jesse Kiehl of Juneau, Cliff Groh of Anchorage, and Ashley Carrick of Fairbanks. Veteran legislators Will Stapp, Stanley Wright, Laddie Shaw, Kevin McCabe, Ben Carpenter, and Jamie Allard were snubbed by the White House. All are Republicans. It’s unclear if Rep. Andrew Gray, a Democrat, received an invitation; he serves in the Army National Guard.
One legislator who is a veteran said he would not have attended anyway, after watching Biden’s speech in Vietnam, which was marked by incoherence, and the statement that he was just following orders from his staff.
Rep. Justin Ruffridge has been on the defense this summer, as conservatives in District 7 on the Kenai Peninsula press him about his controversial vote on a bill that would have created new protections for transgenders in public accommodations.
HB 99ended up tabled in the Judiciary Committee, but it first had to be heard in the Community and Regional Affairs Committee of the Alaska House of Representatives.
The bill title says it is “An Act relating to and prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.”
The voting record is clear: To get the bill moved out of committee required a majority vote. Three Democrats voted to move it — Rebecca Himschoot, Donna Mears, and C.J. McCormick. (Himschoot is a no-party member who caucuses with the Democrats).
Republicans Kevin McCabe and Tom McKay voted against the bill.
Ruffridge has been telling people on the Kenai that there was no vote, and that the Must Read Alaska story is fabrication.
But Republican Ruffridge was a “no recommendation.” That made the vote 3-2, and passed the bill along to Judiciary.
Mason’s Manual says that a “no recommendation” vote is the same as an abstention, and in the case of what would be a tie vote, it prevents the tie, which prevents the bill from advancing.
Anything other than a “do not pass” in this vote was a “pass.”
While characterizing them as different from the boosters people have received to ward off Covid, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new Covid shot on Monday, one that will be pushed to the public along with their seasonal flu vaccines.
The FDA is attempting to normalize the Covid shots as the same as other vaccines that people get throughout their lives, starting in infancy.
The FDA says the new vaccines are formulated to more closely target currently circulating variants and to provide better protection against serious consequences of Covid-19, including hospitalization and death.
“Today’s actions relate to updated mRNA vaccines for 2023-2024 manufactured by ModernaTX Inc. and Pfizer Inc. Consistent with the totality of the evidenceand input from the FDA’s expert advisors, these vaccines have been updated to include a monovalent (single) component that corresponds to the Omicron variant XBB.1.5,” the FDA said in its statement.
The shots will be given to people 5 years of age and older regardless of previous vaccination with a Covid-19 formula, if it has been two months since their last dose of any Covid-19 shot.
Also:
Individuals 6 months through 4 years of age who have previously been vaccinated against Covid-19 are eligible to receive one or two doses of an updated mRNA Covid-19 vaccine (timing and number of doses to administer depends on the previous Covid-19 vaccine received).
Unvaccinated individuals 6 months through 4 years of age are eligible to receive three doses of the updated authorized Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine or two doses of the updated authorized Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine.
The FDAsays it is confident in the safety and effectiveness of these updated vaccines and the agency’s benefit-risk assessment says it demonstrates that the benefits of these vaccines for individuals 6 months of age and older outweigh their risks.
Individuals who receive an updated mRNA Covid-19 vaccine may experience similar side effects as those reported by individuals who previously received mRNA Covid-19 vaccines as described in the respective prescribing information or fact sheets, the agency says.
The updated vaccines are expected to provide good protection against Covid-19 from the currently circulating variants, the FDA says. “Barring the emergence of a markedly more virulent variant, the FDA anticipates that the composition of Covid-19 vaccines may need to be updated annually, as is done for the seasonal influenza vaccine.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet Sept. 12, to discuss clinical recommendations on who should receive an updated vaccine, as well as further considerations for specific populations such as immunocompromised and older individuals.
Manufacturers have publicly announced that the updated vaccines would be ready this fall, and the FDA anticipates that the updated vaccines will be available in the near future.
“Vaccination remains critical to public health and continued protection against serious consequences of Covid-19, including hospitalization and death,” said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “The public can be assured that these updated vaccines have met the agency’s rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality. We very much encourage those who are eligible to consider getting vaccinated.”
The updated mRNA vaccines are each approved for individuals 12 years of age and older and are authorized under emergency use for individuals 6 months through 11 years of age. As part of today’s actions, the bivalent Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines are no longer authorized for use in the United States.
The Ketchikan Police Department and the Ketchikan Fire Department are seeking information about a fire that engulfed the American Legion Hall in downtown Ketchikan at about 1:21 am on Sunday.
“We are asking anyone who may have witnessed the incident or has video surveillance footage of the area to come forward with information. Your cooperation could be instrumental in helping us determine the cause of the fire and ensure the safety of our community,” the police department said.
Update: Police arrested Joseph Schacher Jr., 28, and he is currently jailed at the Ketchikan Correctional Center. He has been in trouble with the law previously for assault, harassment, and violating conditions of release.
The Joseph T. Craig American Legion Post 3, more than 100 years old, was pouring smoke out of its attic space, causing fire alarms in the neighborhood to go off, when fire crews arrived. The inferno was fought for hours.
Ketchikan Fire Department was aided by the North and South Tongass Volunteer Fire Departments. One firefighter ended up at the hospital due to shortness of breath, but police say that no one was believed to be in the building at the time of the fire.
In photos posted online, it appears that the American flag quilt that hangs on the wall was still standing and recognizable.
Photo credit: Hunter Davis, via Facebook. The flag quilt on the wall of the American Legion.
