No final decision and no decision final: The Alaska Division of Elections is evaluating its membership in the ERIC database system, which is the Electronic Registration Information Center that helps states keep their voter rolls accurate.
Nine of 33 member states have dropped out of ERIC membership because of concerns about the organization’s partisan origins, current political biases, connections with leftist groups, and various data policies that appear to favor Democrats.
The Pew Charitable Trusts, which gets funding from George Soros, was party to the creation of ERIC with an initial grant, but has no official role with the organization currently. Yet suspicions remain. Pew Charitable Trusts has given grants to several states — including Alaska under former Gov. Bill Walker — to take part in ERIC.
Earlier this year, three more states — Missouri, Florida and West Virginia — left ERIC. Then Ohio and Iowa left at the same time. Recently, the Texas legislature passed a bill to withdraw from ERIC. That bill has passed both the House and Senate.
That leaves only 24 states and the District of Columbia that will be part of the ERIC information-sharing system by this fall.
“As Secretary of State, I have an obligation to protect the personal information of Florida’s citizens, which the ERIC agreement requires us to share,” said Florida Secretary of State, Cord Byrd, when Florida withdrew on March 6. “Florida has tried to back reforms to increase protections, but these protections were refused. Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC.”
“I cannot justify the use of Ohio’s tax dollars for an organization that seems intent on rejecting meaningful accountability, publicly maligning my motives, and waging a relentless campaign of misinformation about this effort,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose wrote in his letter explaining the separation from ERIC.
Alaska officials, however, are continuously weighing the value of staying, because the information is still valuable to law enforcement officers who are investigating voter fraud, officials said. But these officials are keenly aware that as fewer states participate, the value diminishes.
The dues to belong may be also higher with fewer participants.
The remaining members of ERIC are:
Alaska Arizona Colorado Connecticut Delaware Georgia Illinois (Iowa leaves June 2023) Kentucky Maine Massachusetts Maryland Michigan Minnesota Nevada New Jersey New Mexico (Ohio leaves June 2023) Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina (Texas has voted to leave, date uncertain) Utah Vermont (Virginia leaves August 2023) Washington Wisconsin
With current and projected turnover in city leadership, Juneau citizens might consider new ways to meet the challenges facing their community.
Understanding how these challenges affect Alaskans’ perception of Juneau as the state capital is important. Juneau is a multi-faceted city shaped by tourism, mining, recreation, and a lively arts and culture community. But its core identity as Alaska’s capital city is foremost in people’s minds.
Juneau City Manager Rorie Watt recently announced his retirement effective Sept. 30. CBJ Treasurer Angie Flick was recently selected to replace outgoing City Finance Director Jeff Rogers on June 30. After a nationwide search, Fred Hauser was hired to replace retiring Juneau School District Superintendent Bridget Weiss on July 1.
While I haven’t always agreed with their policy choices, it’s not helpful to critique out-going holders of these jobs. Serving in high-visibility leadership positions is rarely easy and usually a thankless job. All deserve credit for their public service and dedication to the city and school district.
But, anytime leadership changes, there is an opportunity to re-examine best practices, priorities, and goals.
During my 25-plus years as a member of the Alaska Committee, an organization dedicated to improving and enhancing Juneau as Alaska’s Capital City, I have seen a lot of positive changes. But there seems to be a diminishing public awareness of how local actions affect statewide opinions of Juneau as a capital city.
While our economy is finally emerging from a pandemic with schools back in session and the future looks brighter, many challenges remain.
At the top of the list of challenges facing Juneau city leaders will be:
making Juneau a more affordable place to live
improving student achievement and educational choices in Juneau schools
as a by-product, making Juneau a better and more welcoming capital city.
These challenges deserve equal attention. They are largely not “money” problems. If they were, we would have solved them long ago.
Affordability and availability of housing is a multi-layered issue. It’s more than just making more land available, subsidizing projects, or hiring a housing director. Bureaucratic processes, over-regulation, restrictive zoning and a “not-in-my-backyard attitude” can stymie even the best of projects.
Property taxes are also having a dramatic impact on housing affordability. With a 20% increase in Juneau property assessments over several years without a corresponding reduction in the millage rate, property owners and renters have been negatively impacted. Legislators and private employers are struggling to find housing for their staff.
The Juneau Community Foundation recently purchased and donated to the State a former office building next to the Capitol which will be turned into 33 apartments for legislative housing. This is just another example of generous donations by the city and other Juneau organizations that have improved the Capitol complex over the years. However, while this latest gift will be helpful, it will do little to lower the overall cost of living in the community.
There’s no reason affordability, education, and capital city goals cannot be complementary, or even work in tandem. For example, there is a continuing shortage of workers in Juneau. School and private sector partnerships can help cultivate employment interests, good work habits, and customer service skills critical to being a good host city.
Student proficiency in math, science, and language arts should remain a primary focus. But not everyone is cut out for a college degree. Can we better prepare students for our specific local workforce? Can we partner with the tourism, mining, and retail industries to grow bookkeepers, boat captains, pilots, mining technicians and diesel mechanics?
If educational improvements are only seen through the lens of more funding, conflict will continue. As school populations decline, it’s clearly evident that school building consolidations are necessary and must be considered.
I hope that in the process of interviewing prospective candidates for the superintendent position, our school district clearly articulated its facility and enrollment challenges. In years past, many legislators chose to bring their families to Juneau and enroll them in our schools during legislative session. That’s a worthy goal for our school district to consider – a “big picture” capital city perspective.
Juneau’s cost of living and the quality of our schools have an outsized influence on whether people choose to live here, work here, or stay here. If they don’t, we suffer economically, employee recruitment issues will increase, and state and federal government offices will be more likely to move. More significantly, Juneau will be perceived as a poor steward of Alaska’s capital.
Will city leaders accept and promote our capital city’s larger responsibility to all Alaskans and the notion that nothing is “off the table” when considering how best to move forward?
After retiring as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in Alaska, Win Gruening became a regular opinion page columnist for the Juneau Empire. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is involved in various local and statewide organizations.
Former President Donald Trump dismissed reports in the mainstream media on Wednesday that federal prosecutors had notified him about an impending indictment in the ongoing Justice Department investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Taking to his social media platform, TruthSocial, Trump asserted his innocence and said he had done nothing wrong.
“No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong.” He further expressed his belief that he has been a target of a weaponized Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump listed various episodes from his presidency, including the Russia investigation, the Mueller Report, and the Ukraine phone call, which he referred to as “SCAMS & WITCH HUNTS.”
The New York Times and other outlets had earlier reported that reliable sources confirmed federal prosecutors had officially informed Trump’s legal team that he is a target of another investigation into his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
The notification, which reportedly came from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, is considered a significant development in the investigation and indicates an increasing likelihood of criminal charges being brought against the former president.
The specific timing of when Trump’s legal team received the notification regarding his status as a target in the special counsel’s inquiry remained undisclosed.
House Republicans in the Oversight Committee have decided against holding a vote to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress, but they are not letting up in their investigation into corruption in and around President Joe Biden and his family.
The decision came as the Oversight Committee, scheduled to meet Thursday, received an offer from the FBI that would allow all committee members to review a document from 2020, which is at the core of the investigation. It’s a document that for weeks the agency has refused to say even exists.
Committee Chair James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky made the announcement late Wednesday.
“After weeks of refusing to even admit the FD-1023 record exists, the FBI has caved and is now allowing all members of the Oversight and Accountability Committee to review this unclassified record that memorializes a confidential human source’s conversations with a foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Joe Biden,” Comer said on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability released its prepared resolution and accompanying report recommending that the House of Representatives find FBI Director Wray in contempt of Congress during its Thursday morning meeting.
“We have been clear that the FBI must produce the unclassified FD-1023 record to the custody of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. To date, the FBI has refused to comply with our lawfully issued subpoena and even refused to admit the record’s existence up until a week ago. Once Director Wray confirmed the record’s existence, the FBI started their coverup by leaking a false narrative to the media. The case is not closed as the White House, Democrats, and the FBI would have the American people believe. The FBI created this record based on information from a credible informant who has worked with the FBI for over a decade and paid six figures. The informant had first-hand conversations with the foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Biden. And now, Attorney General Barr has confirmed that the record was given to the U.S. Attorney in Delaware for the purpose of that investigation,” said Chairman Comer. “Americans have lost trust in the FBI’s ability to enforce the law impartially and demand answers, transparency, and accountability. The Oversight Committee must follow the facts for the American people and ensure the federal government is held accountable.”
Committee members will be able to view the document in a “secure location,” according to sources. The FBI will allow Comer and ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, to review two additional documents in question.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced the appointment of Jerry Moses as the director of the State of Alaska’s Washington DC Office. In this role, Moses is responsible for representing Alaska’s interests by working closely with federal agencies and members of Congress.
The position of DC director has been vacant for months. Former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes left in March. Before that, the role was held by Kip Knudson, who retired last year. The governor has been recruiting and interviewing for the new director.
“It is a pleasure to welcome Jerry Moses to this administration. I know that Jerry’s knowledge and experience will prove to be an invaluable asset for Alaska in our nation’s capital,” Dunleavy said.
Moses brings to the role 15 years of working in Washington DC. Prior to joining the Dunleavy Administration, he served as the vice president of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Moses also held the position of senior counsel to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, where he worked on critical issues affecting Native American communities.
Born at Mt. Edgecumbe, Sitka, and raised in Fairbanks, Moses has deep roots in Alaska. He is a graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he earned his undergraduate degree. Moses earned a law degree from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, and a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard University TH Chang School of Public Health. He started his new job this week.
A Washington Poststory this week bemoaned the end of permanent ice in the Arctic’s oceans, noting that the original estimate of 2050 was likely to be sped up to somewhere around 2035.
Anyone who has followed this guessing game knows it is nothing other than a fear-over-facts narrative by the climate cult; designed to sustain income streams for the various eco groups and clicks for mainstream media outlets who amplify every Chicken Little cry of pending disaster.
In 2013, an excellent article in Forbes outlined the numerous times climate ‘experts’ predicted the end of year-round Arctic ice. Guesses of ice-free periods starting in the mid-2010s didn’t come true, nor did the Guardian’scommentary from 2012, pinpointing 2015 as the year of final demise.
More recently, alarmists have been all over the map with their predictions: 2022 (which, obviously, was a big miss) from a 2018 study authored by a Harvard professor and his team; 2032 from a 2016 study, 2035 in the Post and plenty of other outlets, and 2050 from numerous climate doomsayers.
If the doom-and-gloom crowd can’t get ice levels correct, how do they expect anyone to believe their larger arguments around the ‘climate crisis’, global warming, sea-level rise and global extinction?
Reminder: We said “almost comical.” Their misses would be comical if it wasn’t for the damage the climate cult does to America’s energy economy, our national security and our standing among the world’s power structure.
That’s why Power The Future will continue to fight, and we appreciate you joining us.
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 director of the Bureau of Land Management, formerly associated with eco-terrorism tree spiking activists, was in Anchorage this week, where she signed four more Native land allotments for veterans who had been serving overseas during the Vietnam War, and thus had missed their ability to apply for the land they were entitled to.
Tracy Stone-Manning was in Alaska to survey the Ambler Access proposed road to the state mining district and talk to tribal leaders in the region. The The Ambler Access Project is being developed in close consultation with the tribes and communities throughout the NANA and Doyon regions.
While Stone-Manning signed the four land transfers, bringing the total signed to 12, there are hundreds to go.
The Alaska Native Vietnam-era Veterans Land Allotment Program of 2019 is open to all eligible Alaska Natives who served in the armed forces between Aug. 5, 1964, and Dec. 31, 1971. The law governing this land transfer removed the requirement for personal use or occupancy mandated under previous laws. Applications have been accepted since Dec. 28, 2020, and will be received until Dec. 29, 2025.
The land allotment program gives the opportunity for these eligible Vietnam-era veterans or their heirs to select up to 160 acres of federal land in Alaska under the 2019. Over 2,500 Alaska Native veterans or their heirs are eligible to apply.
Some 298 applicants have completed the application process so far. Another 286 applications are in process, and 51 applications are in draft survey status. It’s slow going at the BLM for getting the land to the veterans, most of whom are in their 70s or 80s.
The federal government is being pressed to reveal evidence of unidentified flying objects, after a former intelligence official is on the record saying that the government is in possession of “intact and partially intact” vehicles of alien origin.
David Grusch, an ex-official who spearheaded the analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) for a Department of Defense agency, contends that these extraterrestrial crafts are known to the US government. Grusch shared his alarming revelations with the Debrief, declaring that information on these vehicles is being unlawfully withheld from Congress.
UAP is the new preferred government acronym for what most Americans know as UFOs.
Grusch’s 14-year tenure in US intelligence ended suddenly in April, following what he describes as retaliation for turning over classified information regarding the alien vehicles to Congress. His departure and subsequent revelations have fueled renewed interest in the study of UAPs and the potential existence of extraterrestrial life. He has become a whistleblower.
Corroborating Grusch’s claims, Jonathan Grey, a current US intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, confirmed the existence of “exotic materials” in an interview with the online publication called The Debrief. “We are not alone,” he said.
Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat running for president, commented on the revelation in a Twitter post that jokingly referred to the movie “Men in Black.”
This information surfaces amidst a recent uptick in sightings and reports of alien ships, revitalizing the discussion around extraterrestrial visits.
But it raises questions about whether the government has been truthful about what it knows about extraterrestrials, or if this is an election-year distraction for political gain. If the government was untruthful before, what makes its information more credible now? With a presidential election on the horizon, will this be the new national emergency, as the Covid-19 virus was in 2020?
The reality is, this has been simmering for years among military pilots. In 2021, the Pentagon released a report documenting over 140 instances of UAP encounters that couldn’t be explained, including military footage showing apparently inexplicable happenings in the sky. Navy pilots have spoken of their frequent encounters with strange craft off the coast of the United States.
One of the authors of The Debrief article, David Blumenthal, spent 45 years as a writer for the New York Times. He said that he and co-author Leslie Kean took this story to The Debrief because the Washington Post was taking too much time and the authors were under pressure to publish it quickly,. This indicates the story was getting leaked out to other media and the two were fearful of getting scooped.
According to a report this year in Popular Mechanics, former U.S. Air Force personnel told the Pentagon about their encounters with UFOs back in the 1960s. The officers reportedly recently told the government’s “All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office” (AARO) that they had several encounters with the objects near U.S. military bases. The AARO office was set up by the Pentagon for investigating UAP sightings.
“Former U.S. Navy officer Sean Cahill, who claims to have witnessed the infamous ‘Tic Tac’ incidentsighted off the U.S.S. Nimitz aircraft carrier in 2004, said on Twitterrecently that he wants more information on UFOs. He urged his followers not to let ‘those [with] agendas and cognitive blocks … use the current balloon flap to muddy the water.’ He added: ‘Don’t take the bait; demand identification and evidence of each incident’s origin.'”
Tucker Carlson returned to the digital airwaves on Tuesday, with his first episode of commentary on his new chosen platform — Twitter.
Fox News fired Carlson in late April, a sudden move many speculate was part of the fine print in the settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, which had filed a defamation lawsuit against the network.
“Tucker on Twitter” Episode 1 garnered over 25 million views in the first four hours. Carlson talked about the war in Ukraine, the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River in Kherson Oblast, and who may have been responsible for blowing up the dam, which he called an “act of terrorism.” Serious flooding downriver has resulted, necessitating the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. Russia and Ukraine have each blamed the other for the dam’s demise. Carlson has his theories.
His first episode runs 10 minutes and had acquired over 31,500 comments, hundreds of thousands of “likes” and over 109,000 retweets in the first four hours after its launch. With the reach of over 25 million views, he has far surpassed what he had on Fox News, where he was the highest rated. In February, Carlson drew an audience of 3.5 million views, making “Tucker Carlson Tonight” the highest-rated cable news show.
Since he was fired from Fox, the ratings for that Fox time slot have dropped by 50% and the network’s audience among 25- to 54-year-olds has shrunk by 66%.
