House Bill 105 is the subject of a public hearing on Thursday, April 13 in the House Education Committee, with testimony taken at 5:15 pm.
The Thursday evening hearing can be viewed at Gavel Alaska at this link.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s parental rights bill preserves the rights of parents to know what is being taught to their children in school on subjects that have always been sensitive: sexuality and alternative gender identity. Should schools, run by radical teachers unions, be indoctrinating children with sex education in kindergarten without parents’ knowledge? That’s just one topic that’s sure to bring out opinions.
During the first public hearing this month, the calls to the committee were dominated by those who believe teachers and children should keep secrets about gender identity from parents. The teachers and LGBTQ activists said parents are the problem and cannot be trusted. What happens at school must stay at school, they told the committee. Many of those testifying appeared to be still suffering from childhood trauma.
The bill has opposition from many educators who view parents as the enemy. The matter involves whether sex education curriculum should be something that parents “opt into” so they have informed consent about what sexual material is being offered to their children.
Already, radical senators have introduced a different bill that would mandate “age-appropriate,” “science-based” sex education start as early as kindergarten. SB 43 is cleverly titled “An Act relating to health and personal safety education,” demonstrating the lack of transparency and honesty in education about which parents have grown concerned. Testimony on that bill can be viewed at this legislative link.
HB 105 provides more transparency for parents who are concerned that schools may be giving their children new gender identities without parents’ or guardians’ knowledge, or secretly giving them new gender names or alternative pronouns (he, her, ze, etc.)
In 1978, Congress enacted the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, giving parents the right to inspect curriculum being taught to their children. In 2016, the State of Alaska passed a parental rights bill, defining parental authority and ensuring that a parent could withdraw their children from any test or curriculum they deemed inappropriate.
HB 105 further defines parental authority and changes the language around human growth and development and sexual education from parental right to “opt out” to the requirement that parents must “opt in.”
The mainstream media has misled Alaskans about HB105, intentionally mischaracterizing the bill as somehow discriminating against gender-confused or alternative gender students.
HB 105 protects the privacy and safety for all students, by designating bathrooms and locker rooms according to biological sex or providing for the use of single-occupant facilities for gender-alternating students.
HB 105 protects students by allowing a counselor to withhold information from parents if there is reasonable belief that disclosure of the information would cause abuse, harm, or neglect.
HB 105 requires parental notification and permission to participate in sexual education, including gender identity, and to change a student’s name at school. HB105 protects children by establishing that parents, not school personnel, have the authority in their children’s education.
The bill is narrower than other parental rights bills advancing around the country in Republican-led states in response to an increasing trend in schools to push gender-bending or highly sexualized content on very young children. In Florida, a parental rights billalso covered medical procedures done to children without parents’ consent, such as gender reshaping or the prescribing of puberty-blocking medications. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed that bill one year ago.
The Dunleavy bill was introduced to the House on March 8, and has been referred to Education, Judiciary, and Finance. Because of its late introduction, it’s not likely to pass both bodies this year and the Democrat-controlled Senate is likely to run the clock out on the bill, even if it makes it out of the House.
Some flights in and out of Anchorage are being canceled Thursday because of ash from the volcanic eruption on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia has reached the skies in Western Alaska. Many of the cancelations involve flights to places like Bethel, Dillingham, and King Salmon. Even flights to and from Homer and Nome are showing up on the canceled/delayed list.
Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola was on a flight back from Honolulu, but her flight returned to Hawaii due to the suspended ash cloud. On Thursday, she was still was still on the ground.
Two dozen Alaska Airlines flights as of this writing have been canceled, and more airports are expected to be impacted across the state as schedules get backed up. For example, Fairbanks International Airport is now seeing delays.
The Sheveluch volcano in the Russian Far East erupted over the weekend, and flights that usually take a more northerly route have been heading across the Pacific Ocean at a much lower latitude than normal, avoiding the North Pacific.
The mainstream media in Alaska has ignored the meat of the matter at Robert Service High School in Anchorage, where Principal Allen Wardlaw has been put on administrative leave after a swarm of text messages attributed to him were circulated among students and staff throughout the district. News coverage has been sanitized to say exactly what the school district has revealed — which is little, since at this point it’s a personnel matter.
The media is avoiding the actual firestorm in the community that has led to Wardlaw being placed on administrative leave. It’s difficult stuff to write about.
A Facebook page has revealed numerous text messages attributed to Wardlaw that indicate he put the “service” in Service High School. The Anchorage School District administration is now investigating Wardlaw, but the court of public opinion has not been charitable.
Must Read Alaska has sifted through several of the controversial text threads circulating around Anchorage households via text and social media apps such as SnapChat, and found a few that are almost printable, but some readers may not wish to continue, because not every vile comment is fully redacted. The ones below are just a handful of many that are said to be associated with educators in the Anchorage School District. The most shocking ones are not included here.
To be clear, because these text threads are found on social media and are allegedly linked to Wardlaw does not make these communications illegal. The discovery of them causes Anchorage parents concern because it gives the appearance some school administrators are engaged in unwholesome sexual activities. These are people responsible for the education of Anchorage students, and values of parents may be at odds with administrators’ values.
MRAK has clipped off identifying information from these text messages and lightly redacted the most sexist, racist, and degrading insults. All of these and more are easily discovered on Facebook for those wishing to review the rest of the material:
Anheuser-Busch InBev is the largest beer maker in the world, producing six of the top 10 beer brands by volume, and enjoying sales of well over $1 billion a year.
Now, in a marketing debacle that will be taught, studied, and written about by MBA students for decades, Bud Light has cratered the company’s reputation.
Bud Light had been pure gold in the advertising industry since the 1980s, long before the Spuds McKenzie, the female bull terrier party animal mascot of the 1980s, and the hilarious “Real Men of Genius” ad campaign of the late 1990s became woven into popular culture. Bud Light brand building has been right up there with the NFL, arguably the most successful marketing organization on the planet.
But that was not good enough for Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, the newly named vice president of Bud Light. The image of the company was just too “fratty,” she explained in a recent podcast, during which she insulted the customers that have sustained the brand for decades.
The beer’s new mascot would in 2023 become a man all dolled up like a preteen girl: Dylan Mulvaney.
Heinerscheid believes she is on the cutting edge because the beer label had been in decline. On the “Make Yourself at Home” podcast she explained how she is on a mission to evolve the brand:
“So I have this super clear mandate. We need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. And my, what I brought to that, was a belief in ‘OK, what does evolve and elevate mean?’ It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men,” Heinerscheid said.
“And representation is … at the heart of evolution. You’ve gotta see people who will reflect you in the work. And we had this hangover. I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor,” she explained.
And that, beer lovers, is how transgender activist Mulvaney came to be the new face of Bud Light. Mulvaney, a TikTok star and transgender personality who has done incredibly well in the famous-for-being-famous space, has brought his version of come-hither trans sexuality into the brand best known for a low-calorie, low-carb buzz, with notes of hops and malt.
The real marketing men and women of genius over at Budweiser forgot one thing: Don’t hate your customer.
When it launched Heinerscheid as its new VP during the Super Bowl, she explained to Forbes magazine that the 2023 Super Bowl ad, featuring people dancing as they are on a phone call hold, was the company’s new shift to showing real people, especially women.
“This campaign is meant to feel different, to be lighter and brighter, with a confidence and magnetism, and it’s really critical to depict real people and real places,” she told Forbes. “What I need to do to help this brand to evolve … this is my passion point.”
Heinerscheid told Forbes that Bud Light has been “everything to everyone, and as a result, we’ve not been (mindful) about where it shows up.”
Then she spoke to the importance of women. Her top strategic priority was to make sure that women were represented: “Female representation is a personal passion point of mine.”
By April 1, Heinerscheid decided that real people were not the market and female representation was not the priority.
Instead, a wholly manufactured TikTok personality, famous for skipping around a little girl’s bedroom like a pre-pubescent girl, is the real person that represents the brand.
Pro-tip: You’ll never be able to replace all the customers you lose at once with your new target market.
It looks like Bud Light is targeting pre-teens. Dylan Mulvaney does play-act the role of an underage girl. But that is a targeting mistake for another column.
If you’re one of the most successful brands in the history of marketing, and if you’re hating on your existing customer while you search for a better customer, maybe this Bud blunder is on you.
Real Men of Genius and Spuds McKenzie, the campaigns that built the brand, spoke to America with humor and storytelling.
Perhaps it is not just the customer that Bud Light has decided to hate. Perhaps the corporate geniuses, looking for that ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) preferential scoring for investors, have simply decided to hate Americans because they are not woke enough for the “evolving” brand of beer. Good luck with that strategy. This Bud, America, is definitely not for you.
Don’t look now, but everyone’s favorite group of left-wing (nut) warriors is trying to shove radical candidates onto the Chugach Electric Board of Directors. Let’s disappoint them.
The Alaska Center (for the Environment and every other woke issue) has endorsed the following three candidates for Chugach’s board: Shaina Kilcoyne, Susanne Fleek-Green, and Jim Nordlund.
Kilcoyne is the most dangerous of the candidates, as she is a true believer in #ClimateCult mentality that we need to stop traditional energy use and development today.
The combination of her background fighting against Alaska’s resource-based economy, her climate-warrior activities, her involvement with the Alaska Venture Fund (anyone heard of the ‘big brother’ New Venture Fund, and its leading funder, George Soros?) and her proud co-authoring of the Municipality of Anchorage’s Climate Action Plan – a boondoggle for ‘green’ energy advocates but bad for Anchorage taxpayers – mean Kilcoyne would be an unmitigated disaster for Chugach’s members and ratepayers.
Fleek-Green, a current superintendent with the National Park Service and a Cal Berkeley graduate (not exactly a pro-development background), would team with Kilcoyne to push Chugach away from reliable and low-cost Cook Inlet natural gas toward less-reliable, higher-cost renewables as a primary source of our electricity.
Nordlund, a former state legislator and previous Chugach board member, is seeking to continue the board’s lurch leftward. His candidate statement confirms he believes in a move toward renewables and away from gas. Nordlund, although the most rational of the three endorsed candidates, still gave the Alaska Center enough supportive information endorsing the ‘go-green’ agenda to get their support.
Chugach ratepayers need only look westward toward Fire Island to see that wind isn’t a consistent source of power (this morning, as I write this, only two of the eleven are turning in our continued snowfall), or at our monthly bills to see the “FIW renewable energy adj” line-item, which is an additional cost associated with integrating Fire Island into the grid.
Rational, everyday Alaskans know solar is unreliable approximately half the year, and we know that integrating all those so-called solutions into the grid is expensive. Why would we vote for people who want to take Chugach down a path that lowers reliability, increases cost, hurts ratepayers, and only increases reliance on Communist China, who controls the supply chain for ‘green’ energy technology?
Voting for the Chugach board begins this week and ends with the Annual Meeting on May 19th. Even if you haven’t voted in the election before, it is time to start this year!
We’ve seen the activation of the Left in municipal elections throughout Southcentral Alaska. Don’t let the same extremists take control of our energy grid – when you get your packet, turn it in, and remember (and reject!) the three candidates who want to move Chugach away from reliability and toward radicalism.
Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs and opportunities. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @PTFAlaska.
The people in charge of Anchorage’s schoolchildren have some explaining to do.
Screen shots of text messages said to be between school administrative employees at Service High School and Clark Middle School are swirling through social media in Anchorage.
Must Read Alaska has asked the school district how it intends to handle the situation, and whether it will put any of these school administrators on administrative leave while an investigation is conducted. But so far, this publication’s questions have been ignored by the district’s communication director, MJ Thim. The school district Communication Director MJ Thim acknowledged the questions from MRAK and is looking into the matter.
In short, the messages appear to indicate that a love relationship gone sour has resulted in the exposure of text messages between two or more people that could be seen as career-ending.
This is occurring a week after the district shut down the Family Partnership Charter School, the most successful school in the district, because its board was “dysfunctional.”
Parents have also asked the district how it intends to address the highly unsavory messages, which are accusations that even involve illegal drugs being used by senior school officials. Parents reported to Must Read Alaska that they have been ignored as well.
The text messages include crude references to women, the use of the words “f—,” “cum bucket” and “whore.”
Teachers have gotten the text messages sent to them and students and Service High School have seen the messages as well. Must Read Alaska has copies of several of the messages.
One teacher wrote, “I’m just trying to get some traction on this. I’m embarrassed to be a teacher with ASD. Female teachers do not feel comfortable around him, female students do not feel comfortable around him. The way he talked about women, the derogatory terms, racial slurs, makes me sick to my stomach.”
Must Read Alaska will update this when the school district responds or other events unfold. Readers with tips on this story may leave those tips in the comment section.
E-cigarette maker Juul will pay $462 million to six US states that sued the company for marketing its addictive products to minors. The company did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, which also included California, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia.
Juul Labs Inc has now settled with 45 states for more than $1 billion. It is still in court in Minnesota in a separate lawsuit that includes Alaska, Florida, Michigan and Maine.
Juul has also settled over $1.7 billion in claims to local government jurisdictions and individuals.
In 2002, the State of Alaska filed a lawsuit against Juul Labs, Inc. and the Altria Group, Inc., the parent company of Philip Morris USA and one of the major investors in Juul for their roles in causing a dramatic rise in youth e-cigarette use.
The Juul e-cigarette had quickly dominated the e-cigarette market, and was popularized youth-oriented features that included fruity flavors, reduced harshness to mask high nicotine content, a discreet vapor cloud, and a high-tech design.
Alaska’s complaint alleges that Juul successfully employed the marketing strategies previously used by Big Tobacco, with updates for the digital era, including youth-oriented social media campaigns and paid “influencers.”
The State’s Complaint alleges that Altria then conspired with Juul to maintain and expand the youth e-cigarette market JUUL had created, working to cover up Juul’s youth marketing just as Big Tobacco tried to cover up its own youth-targeted marketing in the past.
According to the 2019 Alaska Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 45.8% of Alaska high school students have tried e-cigarettes, with 26.1% reporting e-cigarette use, a significant increase from 2017, when 15.7% of Alaska high school students reported using e-cigarettes. Alaska’s complaint alleges that this dramatic rise is a direct result of the marketing strategies used by Juul and Altria to target teenagers and youth.
The Alaska complaint alleges that Juul and Altria violated the law in four ways: (1) by creating a public nuisance under Alaska law; (2) by violating Alaska’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act in marketing and promoting e-cigarette products to youth; (3) by negligently developing, marketing, and selling Juul vaping products; and (4) by conspiring to maintain and grow a market based primarily on sales to youth. The lawsuit seeks damages, including amounts necessary to fund public health efforts aimed at addressing the youth vaping crisis, as well as abatement of the public nuisance.
Garrett Elder, accused of bilking at least 130 Alaskans out of tens of millions of dollars through a phony investment scam called Tycoon Trading, is evidently cooperating with federal prosecutors and will avoid a lengthy trial. Instead, he will plead guilty and get a five-year sentence, court records show. His next hearing date was suddenly changed on Monday from April 14 to May 15, so that the settlement can be finalized.
But many of his victims are furious that the settlement leaves them high and dry, and believe the attorneys for the U.S. District Attorney Alaska have not done their job.
Victims tell Must Read Alaska that the DOJ has been lazy and has no idea of just how far the scam reaches. They say that in addition to wire fraud, they believe that money laundering has occurred, possibly through some of the dozens of shell companies that appear to have been set up by Elder or his late father Chris Elder or other members of the family — businesses that seem to have no real existence except on paper. The extraordinary number of these businesses is at least a red flag, the victims say.
Victims include one widow whose dying husband gave all their money to Garrett Elder so that his wife would be take care of after his passing. Elder took all the money and lived a high-fling lifestyle. The widow ended up with nothing.
Victims believe that Garrett Elder is now duping prosecutors, just as they were duped, because he is a skillful manipulator. No one — not even the prosecutors, evidently — can believe that such a wholesome-looking young man would continue to rip people off until the month he was caught.
“Garrett’s been interviewed by several and one individual at the FBI said that it was difficult to reconcile the image of the clean cut and painfully honest young man being interviewed against the charge of him having stolen $15mm and I agree; Garrett Elder is a manipulative liar of Machiavellian level skill. I would wager much that his wife never had a clue what he was up to until the final 48 hours of the company. The other employees were apparently shocked at the announcement on the last day which was ‘yeah, all the money’s gone; we’re closed. Go home,'” one victim wrote.
Victims have provided Must Read Alaska with extensive documentation, and it appears to check out. Garrett Elder and members of his family did, indeed, set up an extraordinary number of limited liability corporations in a short period of time. There’s no evidence they could have run that many businesses.
In fact, some victims say that it has the same look and feel that the crypto-currency exchange FTX had before it melted down and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried ended up on an ankle monitor.
The Tycoon Trading victims point out that companies normally have income, employ people, and bring something of value to the community. But there are so many businesses relating to Elder and a web of other people in his immediate orbit that seem downright fake to the victims, who say the government has barely scratched the surface:
“Do you have a company? Do you have a family? If you have both, what do you think a reasonable number of businesses between the few of you might be? Let’s look at the number of businesses between the original members of Tycoon Trading for a moment and see if this seems about right to you ,” victims wrote to Must Read Alaska, with the promise their identities would be kept confidential.
Here are some companies that some of the Elder family collectively hold wholly or partially, or had recent membership in:
– AB-GP, LLC – Alaska Private Equity LLC
– Alaska Private Equity 2, LLC
– Azalea Woods Subdivision – Big Boys Toys & Pawn, LLC
– Black Swan, LLC – Buck Wilder and Associates, LLC
– Elder Enterprises, LLC – Evangelo’s LLC
– Faith Bible Fellowship of Big Lake – Goats on a Roof LLC
– Guidance DPC LLC – Home Water, LLC
– Intentional Legacy Holdings, LLC – Karis Integrative Medicine LLC
– Tycoon Trading LLC – Westwood Water Company, Inc.
There are several other paper entities in other parts of the country including C&E (Chris and Elizabeth Elder) Revocable Trust, Alaska Private Equity 2, LLC (formed by Chris Elder in Wyoming during April of 2020 / SEC Form D @ $25mm), the Daily Bread Fund LLC, formed by Garrett Elder two months later in 2020 in Wyoming (filed SEC form D @ $30mm).
Another person, Jordon Trice, who was involved with Daily Bread Fund and one of Garrett Elder’s companies, Mizuna Capital, also appears on corporate documents.
Of note, even after the Alaska Division of Banking and Securities ordered Garrett Elder to cease and desist his activities in October, and just before the Justice Department formally charged Elder, he transferred his entire interest in Mizuna Capital to Trice in January of 2023. The Division of Corporations in the Department of Commerce stamped the approval of the transfer.
The question that the victims want the Justice Department to answer is, where is the money? They don’t believe all of it has been squandered, because they think it’s hard to squander $34 million in just a couple of years. They want to know if some of it has been squirreled away, maybe under a bed, maybe in silver, or maybe in one of these other family-associated companies.
As for the timeline of Tycoon Trading, here’s what the victims have researched on their own, because they feel they are not getting any help from the Justice Department, but have been instead advised by the DOJ to not get attorneys.
2012 – Standard Investments formed by Blake and Natalie Elder – Tycoon Trading formed as family-owned business – Chris Elder / DUI with firearm
2016 – Family endows Garrett Elder w/ $10k-$20k seed money
2017 – Garrett squanders entire family endowment. Family is aware. – Tycoon Trading completes first catastrophic failure of fund. – Garrett solicits investors from outside the family. – Garrett attracts $500k. Conceals prior catastrophic failure. Squanders outside investor’s money, provides falsified performance reports. – 11-2017 Chris & Amy Elder divorce
2018 – Garrett completes second total fund failure. – Investors notified of failure. Garrett hides the fact that he had intentionally falsified interim performance reports. – 02-2018 Balance of Elder family abandon Tycoon Trading ownership by removing their names from official Biennial Report. None of the formal change of ownership documents were filed such that all remain owners. – 03-2018 Garrett reported as new sole member of Tycoon Trading LLC. – Garrett continues to solicit new business. Now views investors as income source. Gets millions from new clients.
2020 – 04-2020 Chris Elder forms Alaska Private Equity 2 w/ SEC Form D claiming value of $25 million. – 06-2020 Garrett Elder forms Daily Bread Fund w/ SEC Form D claiming value of $30 million. – 10-2020 Chris and (new wife) Elizabeth Elder buy Evangelo’s Restaurant, valued at $2 million for $6.85 million.
2021 – 07-2021 Garrett Elder forms Mizuna Capital in Anchorage. – 07-2021 Garrett Elder forms Mizuna Matata in Delaware. – 12-2021 Garrett Elder forms Northern Financial Services. – 12-2021 Garrett Elder forms Buck Wilder & Associates.
2022 – 09-20-2022 Garrett Elder attempts to purchase a nearly new Porsche 911 Turbo S Coupe
– 10-02-2022 Some members advised of fund’s (now third) catastrophic failure. All the money is gone.
2023
01-18-2023 Garrett Elder transfers 100% ownership of Mizuna Capital to Jordon Trice, who owns Aspen Alpha Advisers.
“Is it possible that dear old dad started a fictitious company w/ zero value and two months later Garrett did the exact same thing? That certainly appears to be the case,” one of the victims wrote.
“Does that mean then that you should highly suspect the motives of the DOJ when they say Garrett was a really bad trader? Investors talk about money being lost. That’s a misnomer; money is not lost, it is moved. In this case, is it likely that Garrett traded your money with he and his dad’s companies and if the DOJ gets their way he’ll get out in five years and be spending your coin?” one victim wrote.
Photo credit: Garrett Elder from his Facebook account.
A musician and artist who moved from Texas to Portland, Ore. and drove cab for a decade without a single customer complaint was knifed to death by a tiara-wearing transgender activist passenger on Easter Sunday.
Reports from the Oregonian newspaper avoid noting that the assailant, Moses J. Lopez, is a transgender activist with a history of violent threats.
But Post Millennial, a conservative news website, published an account from investigative writer Andy Ngo, who detailed some of the suspect’s known offenses. Ngo noted that police also avoided identifying the suspect by pronouns or gender identity.
Six days before the murder of driver Reese Lawhon, Lopez was arrested and charged with felonies for using a knife to threaten a shopper at a Bi-Mart in nearby Hillsboro, Washington County. Lopez, 30, was released without bail and headed to Portland.
Just before the Hillsboro arrest, Lopez had been charged with two felony counts of unlawful use of weapon and two counts of menacing in Coos County. Lopez was released from that jurisdiction as well. He missed his court hearing on April 6, and a warrant was issued for his arrest — three days before he allegedly murdered Lawhon.
According to Ngo’s source who saw the cab’s security video, Lopez entered the cab while wearing a tiara and women’s clothing. Lopez gave an address to Lawhon and several minutes into the ride, Lopez suddenly plunged a blade deep into the neck of the unsuspecting driver.
“Around 6:40 p.m. on Easter Sunday, American Medical Response employees in an ambulance traveling on Southeast Water Avenue near Southeast Washington Street spotted a person exiting a Radio Cab with bloody clothes, according to a probable cause affidavit.
“They saw the person, later identified as Moses J. Lopez, drop what appeared to be brass-style knuckles with an attached blade, the affidavit said. Medical personnel treated the suspect for a hand injury, and later found Lawhon dead inside the Radio Cab with two stab wounds in his neck, according to the court document.
“Portland police arrived shortly after. An onboard camera recorded the attack.
“Video footage showed that Lawhon picked up a fare around 6 p.m. outside Voodoo Doughnut at 22 S.W. Third Ave. The passenger asked to be taken to Southeast Third Avenue and Washington Street, and then gave a different location when they arrived. When Lawhon went to put in the new address, he was attacked.
“Lopez was detained, and pleaded not guilty to unlawful use of a weapon and second-degree murder charges Monday.
Second-degree murder indicates that the district attorney does not believe the murder was premeditated. Legally, first-degree murder is premeditated while second-degree murder means it was intentional, but unplanned.
The victim, who was a well-known musician in the Portland music scene, drove for Radio Cab for over a decade, and “never had a customer complaint,” according to Radio Cab spokesperson Darin Campbell. Lawhon was also an accomplished artist.
