There has been unparalleled testimony on HB105, the Alaskan Parents Rights in Education Act, to the House Education Committee. Supporters and opponents of the bill have inundated the House Education Committee, co-chaired by Rep. Jamie Allard and Rep. Justin Ruffridge.
Anyone listening to the oral testimony which began on March 30 would have believed that there was little to no support for this legislation. The opponents seemed to have had a monopoly on the phone lines. The first public testimony lasted for nearly 5 hours.
It was nearly impossible to get online to testify as was noted in the written testimony by various people. I waited three hours and 45 minutes on hold before I was able to give my two minutes of “freedom” testimony.
The oral testimony on March 30 was probably 90% opposed and 10% in favor of the bill. Many of these testifiers were from the local Juneau area and many were from the Education Industry.
While many were on phone hold for hours, local Juneau residents were able to walk into the committee room and within minutes asked if they wanted to testify.
To get a better picture of the support/opposition for this bill, one needs to review the written testimony. I reviewed 28 documents listed under HB105. These documents ranged from 25 to 91 pages. There were some duplicate emails that were not counted.
There were also many boilerplate or template emails which opposed the bill. These template emails merely required one to sign their names without really thinking about the bill’s contents.
At least 189 of these template emails were sent in by those who opposed HB105. These emails demonstrated that these opponents may have failed to read and understand the bill and resorted to a preformed template to voice their opposition.
This template email apparently came from a Planned Parenthood group which has allied with the teachers’ unions to control your children. They believe they know what is best for your child.
If one discounts the 189 template emails, Alaskans strongly support parents having the right to raise their children as they see fit.
These rights, as listed in HB105, include:
The right of a parent to opt-in their child for sex education, rather than opt-out
The right of a parent to know what is in their child’s school records. Prohibits schools keeping two sets of records, one for parents and one for the school
The right of parents to designate the official name for their child.
Sex education classes cannot begin until after a child is in 5th grade.
The right of a student to sex-based privacy in restrooms and locker rooms.
These rights are affirmed by the Alaska Supreme Court in Treacy v. Municipality of Anchorage stating, “that parents have a fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children.”
The bill states that schools must have “written permission from a parent before the name or pronoun used by a public school to address or refer to the parent’s child in person, on school identification, or in school records is changed; (8) requiring that a parent be informed in writing of the right to pursue legal action against a school district if the parent’s rights have been violated.” In other words, schools cannot call your child a girl if she is in fact a boy, without your written consent. They cannot call him “Mary” if his name is “Mark,” without a parent’s written consent.
The supporters of HB105 are backed up by the Federal Education Records Privacy Act, which states, “Parents or eligible students have the right to inspect and review the student’s education records maintained by the school.”
It would seem that if a school district maintains two sets of records — one for parents and one for the school administration as the Anchorage School District does — it would be a violation of federal law.
Districts should be aware that they may be jeopardizing millions of dollars of federal funding if they violate FERPA law.
While oral testimony is powerful, you can email your testimony to: [email protected].
That was fast — the IBEW and the AFL-CIO endorsed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the very day that he announced his reelection bid, making it that much harder for any Democrat primary challengers to build strong campaign war chests.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International President Kenneth W. Cooper said that Biden-Harris have led the most pro-union administration of his lifetime. He did not mention the president’s failure to make America energy independent or the increasing reliance on China for critical minerals needed for advanced technologies.
“The IBEW represents approximately 775,000 active members and retirees who work in various fields, including utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting, manufacturing, railroads and government. The IBEW is the most established and comprehensive energy union in the world dedicated to promoting members’ welfare, safe working conditions and interests, fighting for fair wages, and for the dignity and rights of all workers in America,” Cooper said.
“When the IBEW endorsed candidate Joe Biden in 2019, it was because of his commitment to creating good union jobs, protecting secure retirements, addressing climate change responsibly and investing in American manufacturing. President Joe Biden has delivered on all of these pledges: promises made and promises kept,” Cooper said.
“Throughout his first term, President Biden has been a steadfast ally of unions and American workers. I am confident that support will continue in his second term. The Biden-Harris administration has consistently advanced policies that empower workers, created opportunities for everyday people, and promoted the well-being of working families. As a direct result of these efforts, the Biden-Harris administration has overseen robust economic growth, increased worker wages and the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.”
“Within the first week of taking office, President Biden and Vice President Harris began appointing into the administration union officials who have dedicated their lives to advancing the labor movement’s core principles and worker’s rights, including a card-carrying union member for Secretary of Labor and a chief counsel for the NLRB who supports collective bargaining.
“President Biden has issued executive orders to reverse policies that have eroded unionists’ strength for decades, including industry-recognized apprenticeship programs (IRAPs) and rules that gutted federal employees’ collective bargaining rights. And then the Biden-Harris Administration went on the offense: mandating project labor agreements (PLAs) on federal construction projects, establishing the first-ever White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, and ensuring that skilled American workers benefit from historic federal investments.
The AFL-CIO also issued a quick statement: “The record is clear: Joe Biden is the most pro-union president of our lifetime. In the first two years of his presidency, Biden has delivered time and again for working people on the most critical issues we face, including making historic investments in good jobs, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, bringing manufacturing home to the United States, supporting educators and other public service workers, and strengthening the right to organize.
“The future of our country hangs in the balance—and like President Biden, we know there is much more to do. Over the next few weeks, the AFL-CIO and our unions will build on more than a year and a half of engaging our 12.5 million members as we gear up for 2024. We look forward to building on the progress of the past two years and finishing the job of creating an economy that puts working people first.
“We are working to build on the progress of the Biden–Harris administration’s past two years and finish the job of creating an economy that puts working people first,” the AFL-CIO said in a statement.
HB 99 passed out of a House committee today with the support of Republican Rep. Justin Ruffridge of Kenai, who voted with the Democrats.
The pro-stalking bill, sponsored by Anchorage Democrat Rep. Jennie Armstrong, would allow men to enter women’s bathrooms in stores, restaurants, bars, athletic clubs, work places, and anywhere that there is a public accommodation. Women would have no more bathrooms designated for them and their daughters. All bathrooms would essentially become open to both sexes.
The portion of the statute that this bill amends to include sex discrimination says, “‘public accommodation’ means a place that caters or offers its services, goods, or facilities to the general public and includes a public inn, restaurant, eating house, hotel, motel, soda fountain, soft drink parlor, tavern, night club, roadhouse, place where food or spiritous or malt liquors are sold for consumption, trailer park, resort, campground, barber shop, beauty parlor, bathroom, resthouse, theater, swimming pool, skating rink, golf course, cafe, ice cream parlor, transportation company, and all other public amusement and business establishments, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to all persons;” Read the current statute here.
Republicans in the Legislature were horrified that Ruffridge, a Republican, would flip and support a bill that is a direct attack on women’s and girls’ safety.
The bill left Community and Regional Affairs with only the opposition of Republicans Rep. Tom McKay of Anchorage and Rep. Kevin McCabe of Big Lake.
Rep. Ruffridge voted with Democrats against an amendment by Rep. McCabe that would have narrowed the bill down to not discriminating against gay people in employment. Ruffridge said it narrowed the bill too much.
McKay asked Armstrong who would protect our daughters in bathrooms when men walk into a women’s bathroom.
Armstrong, who considers herself LGBTQ as a “pansexual,” called McKay’s question offensive and said that LGBTQ are increasingly being characterized as groomers and perpetrators, but most of the crime is committed by straight males.
The bill now goes to House Judiciary, which is chaired by Rep. Sarah Vance, a Homer and South Kenai Republican.
The next step in the helter-skelter scenario begins. The Left has demonstrated that it can win pretty much any consequential election in Alaska, especially those in places with built-in voter fraud, excuse me with mail-in voting.
Fundamentally, there is no organized opposition to the Left and the mortal remains of the Republican Party are nothing more than a shell; the Party needs candidates more than candidates need the Party.
There is almost no meaningful private sector in Alaska and the oil industry might stir itself to look to its own interests but beyond that Alaska is a backwater in which it has little interest.
Light a candle for the physical health of the pipeline infrastructure, because if they had to spend any significant amount of money to fix it, they probably wouldn’t.
For those of you who don’t know; when the pipeline is no longer transporting oil, it has to be disassembled and the right of way restored, and thus ends the oil industry in Alaska amid dancing in the streets in San Francisco.
Whether with a bang or a whimper, the days of oil are about over. The fondest hope of those who fancy themselves to be Alaska’s ruling elite is that magical day when the corpus of the Permanent Fund is safely over $100 billion. Barring a monumental Biden gaffe, that magical day will come soon.
The magic of $100 billion is that at least in the minds of the proponents of this scheme, at $100 billion in the corpus the Permanent Fund can support ongoing operations of State government and maintain the fund in perpetuity. I believe you are delusional if you believe that, but we’ll discus that later.
At $100 billion, Alaskans become trust fund babies. We don’t really need natural resource or other economic development. We don’t need a private sector other than what is minimally necessary to get our laundry done and our cars and machines fixed. Visualize the Juneau economy statewide. We don’t have to care if they disassemble the pipeline; all we have to do is wait for the check to come from the Department of Revenue.
First, that means we need to lose some population. We need to get our population down to a minimal service population so we can get our laundry done, our food served, and routine service work done like fixing lawnmowers and the like.
Then we have our healthcare workers, our education workers, and our unionized public employees. Then we have a large, maybe larger than any of the other three, population of government dependents. Our tiny private service population and the government rackets above are the Alaska res publica. The rackets are easy to please; just give them more money, and they can buy politicians who would just love to give them that money. Those who work behind the counters and in the repair shops can just hope for some largesse. Maybe the Legislature will come up with some extra special stipend for people who repair electric cars.
This is the brave new world the smart people envision. Alaska becomes the longtime greenie dream of a big National Park. Almost nobody does any of that nasty physical work or builds anything; we don’t need to build anything because we have everything we need and our $100 billion to keep it going.
A third or more of our population does nothing but wait for the check and maybe make babies. It already doesn’t matter what teachers or other unionized employees do; nobody evaluates them and only a few of us mutter in the wilderness about why we spend so much for so little.
The medical types will shed all of those with private insurance or Medicare. I’ve already learned that it is easier, better, and other than the airfare, cheaper to go to the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. When they get rid of all us surplus people, it is lefty Utopia!
All that said, I’ve been around government for a long time. I quickly learned that the immutable law of public finance in Alaska is, “however much money there is to spend, will be spent.” I can point you to a long list of candidates for office who promised to rein in spending only to lose to someone who promised to spend more. Sarah Palin vs. Frank Murkowski is the best example of that.
We flirted with the trust fund baby plan in this budget; we’ve scratched up every dime we could get without borrowing, and some of what we’ve done is technically borrowing, and we’re spending every dime of it. They’ve put up an attractive number for a PFD that will probably keep the masses sullen but not mutinous.
If we try to live on this “spend it all” margin, even at $100 billion, the State will be broke in five years. Alaska’s congressional and legislative delegation will be crawling to Washington, D.C. on their hands and knees to beg for money.
Welcome back to 1960. Much of America wasn’t happy to have Alaska join the union. The US was mostly just responding to Soviet anti-colonial pressure by offering statehood to two of its territories, Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska was just viewed as a welfare burden, and until the Cook Inlet oil discoveries, rightly so. Cook Inlet is all but gone and Prudhoe Bay is badly depleted. There is some opportunity for more development on the North Slope but not so long as the communists, excuse me, Democrats are in charge.
Looking at the operating budget, my “back of the matchbook” estimate is that it would take about 10%/yr just to maintain current service levels. Executive Branch wages alone cost about 4%/yr. to maintain.
State investment accounts in good years have been returning 7% or so.
The best investment earnings we could expect are not enough to keep up with the incremental cost increases in government operations, and that requires you to assume that the Legislature won’t pile on new expenses “for the children” or some other such foolishness.
It will be 50 years in Alaska this September. I haven’t called the real estate agent or bought the “for sale” signs, but it has been on my mind.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
There is a controversy stirring around Robert Service High School, but parents eager to make sense of what their children are telling them have been left with more questions than answers by the slow and tight-lipped Anchorage School District.
While many residents are shocked by this seemingly out-of-the-blue event involving allegations of drug use and sexual impropriety among senior staff, the warning signs were there. Accounts of the goings on at Service paint a picture that raises questions about how ASD is running operations. Internal staff surveys point to deeper systemic problems.
In the School Climate and Connectedness Survey for 2022, only 19% of employee respondents at Service High School believed “the principal and other leaders in the school make good decisions.” Teachers who took the survey clearly rang the alarm bell on Service’s leadership.
The nearest comparable school was Dimond High with 28% of teachers similarly concerned. Nearly two-thirds of the same respondents at Service High did not believe “decisions are made based on what is best for students” and a whopping 72% did not believe “the principal looks out for the personal welfare of school or staff members.”
The survey results show that there is little hope from Service High teachers that anyone above the principal will step in to help prevent future misconduct.
These surveys are conducted for a reason. Will ASD use the information it has to investigate and be proactive? Or will administrators wait until another outrageous incident occurs and move in quickly for damage control? Based on the experience that one teacher has relayed to me, I believe the latter is the most likely outcome.
Such one-sided results in the survey are indicators of a hostile and dysfunctional workplace, in which both teachers and students suffer.
How can we hope to pull Alaska out of our abysmal ranking in education in this environment? We need to ask ourselves what kind of person we require to lead our teachers and set the example for our children.
Michelle Obama said, “People that are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.” Robert Service High School’s principal was neither lifting people up nor bringing them together.
What happened at Service is a small part of the story. This year alone, several schools in the district have had one or more teachers walk away from their post mid-year because they could no longer take the environment created by administrators. Being “in it for the children” was no longer enough reason to keep taking the abuse, according to one teacher I spoke with, who asked for anonymity. She described a “keep quiet and keep your head down” mentality.
Teachers are afraid to ask questions or speak out for fear of retaliation as well as complete lack of support at the district level. They pay union dues hoping for support because they have no idea how to stand up for themselves in situations involving sexual or other harassment, discrimination, mental abuse, and outright dishonesty. Unfortunately, in many of these situations, it seems the union sides with senior leadership against lower-level teachers by default, according to my source.
ASD teachers know that more than one principal has been moved across the district to serve at another school when facing misconduct allegations instead of being held accountable, far more often than you can find in a Google search.
A May 2019 article published in the Anchorage Daily News about the removal of the school district’s chief of Human Resources tells you all you need to know about how ASD feels about releasing such information.
“In a statement Monday, the school district said it doesn’t comment on personnel matters or ongoing investigations,” the story said. Innocent until proven guilty is the American way, but so is the sixth amendment right to a speedy trial, and this is a right owed to the public as well as to the accused. As the four-year anniversary of that statement bears down on us, few details have been released to the public.
Teachers, parents and students deserve due process and transparency on “personnel issues” regardless of how uncomfortable it may be. The culture of secrecy and hiding information from public view has crept into every corner of ASD and it will be no shock if we hear nothing more of what comes next for the Service High School principal.
I urge you to demand answers, transparency, and accountability in these dealings. These injustices create a toxic work environment that alienates our best and brightest teachers. When our children’s safety and education is at stake, parents cannot afford to be left in the dark.
Jay McDonald is an Anchorage parent and US Army veteran. This is the first in a series he is writing with the help of Anchorage School District teachers who are afraid to speak publicly.
President Joe Biden launched his reelection bid on Tuesday, saying that his first term was about fighting for democracy, and accusing “MAGA extremists” of “lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms.”
His prepared video roll for social media was clipped together with imagery of an America in which he and Vice President Kamala Harris are good and that features Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, former President Donald Trump, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as bad for the country.
At the same time, the Republican National Committee released a video that uses artificial intelligence and powerful video to darkly imagine what another four years would be like under the “weakest president” America has ever had.
NIGHTMARE: What if Joe Biden, the weakest president we’ve ever had, is re-elected? pic.twitter.com/b5HvY9GEr0
The election is in November of 2024. Already announced Republicans are former President Donald Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, talk show host and author Larry Elder, former Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
Democrat candidates include Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and New Age spiritualist Marianne Williamson.
Biden is 80 and by the time he would finish his second term, he would be about 86, as he was born in November of 1942.
His dementia is evident and he slurs his way through his speeches. He has held few press conferences, and is carefully scripted for every occasion. He has given only 54 press interviews, the fewest since Ronald Reagan was in office. Biden’s predecessor gave 202 during his first two years, and Barack Obama gave 275 interviews.
Even the New York Times has taken note of Biden’s lack of accountability: “But as Mr. Biden prepares to announce his bid for a second term as soon as Tuesday, he is accelerating the demise of traditions that have underpinned the relationship with the news media for decades. The president’s strategy of keeping the press at arm’s length is a bet that he can sidestep those traditions in a new media environment. And it is public evidence that Mr. Biden’s political strategists want to protect him from the unscripted exchanges that have often resulted in missteps and criticism.”
An example of what the Biden campaign would like to downplay was evident on Monday. At a White House event for Teacher of the Year on Monday, the clearly feeble president was led by First Lady Jill Biden out of the White House and to the Rose Garden by the hand, as she visibly tugged him along like a child. Once he took the podium, he slurred through his speech, reading from a massive screen set up behind the teachers who had gathered.
Notably, Biden’s campaign launch video shows Vice President Kamala Harris twice, indicating that he intends to keep her as his running mate.
The launch video positions Biden as the defender of democracy and avoids the uncomfortable topic of his economic policies that have led to hardship for so many Americans.
Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms. I believe this is ours.
In addition to his radical social agenda that has begun to erase the biological definition of male and female and that has taken aim at the family unit by saying that children belong to the government, Biden has crippled the nation’s economy by increasing federal spending by $10 trillion.
Since he took office, he increased debt projections by $6 trillion over 10 years. National debt is now nearly $32 trillion. His executive orders alone have increased spending by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. His inflation-driving economic policies have increased the Congressional Budget Office’s projection of interest payments on the debt by $3.6 trillion over those 10 years.
In fact, Americans now make 3.6% less a week than they did before Biden took office, and inflation has jumped to 15%. Workers, through inflation eating away at their incomes, have lost the equivalent of $7,400 worth of income in two years.
Under his proposed budget for FY 2023, spending is $73 trillion, or 23.4% of gross domestic product, the highest sustained level in American history. Taxes will be $58 trillion, or nearly 19% of gross domestic product, also the highest sustained level in history. Deficits would be $14.4 trillion, or 4.7% of GDP, the highest sustained level in history.
Biden’s current budget has the debt growing by $16 trillion over 10 years, or $50,000 for every American. By 2032, that debt would be $135,000 per citizen.
Under CBO’s current projections, the gross federal debt would increase from $31.7 trillion today (123 percent of GDP) to $52 trillion (132 percent of GDP) in 2033. The CBO’s most recent projections have the debt growing to $154 trillion by 2053, which would equal more than $1 million per American household ($540,000 after adjusting for inflation) — more than four times current median household net worth.
Under Biden’s budget, however, defense spending would fall to the lowest level as a percent of GDP since before World War II.
Municipal lawsuits against oil companies filed in state courts will now remain in those courts, as the US Supreme Court rejected attempts by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, and other companies to move the lawsuits to federal courts.
This decision means that cities seeking to hold energy companies accountable for the harms caused by burning hydrocarbons will continue their legal battles in state courts, which are generally seen as more aligned with such claims.
There are numerous climate change lawsuits pending in state courts across the country, and the Biden Administration supports keeping them at the state level, as state courts are typically considered more liberal than federal courts on climate-related issues, and President Biden wants to see more pain inflicted on oil companies, but not pain associated with the White House.
For several years, oil companies have been facing over two dozen climate change lawsuits at various levels of the US court system, seeking damages related to climate change impacts. Many of these lawsuits allege that the oil companies were aware of the dangers of fossil fuels and engaged in fraud and created a public nuisance. Resolving these claims in federal courts has been challenging, according to observers.
In the recent Supreme Court decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the only justice who favored moving a lawsuit filed in Boulder, Colo., to a federal court. Other cases are pending in states such as Maryland, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and California.
The court’s ruling did not indicate how the Supremes would decide the merits of the cases.
The Kenai Peninsula-Clarion is reducing its print editions to two days a week, starting May 3.
The Clarion is owned by Sound Publishing, the same news company that owns the Juneau Empire, which is also moving to a twice-a-week print edition. The newspapers will be focusing more on their online news offerings, as the printed word becomes more expensive to produce and distribute, and as more readers adapt to a 24-hour digital news cycle.
The economics of printing just two days a week are uncertain at best. The fewer the people who subscribe to newsprint editions and the fewer the copies that are printed, the more expensive it becomes maintain staff to print the small number of copies and distribute those papers, as subscribers become spread out and paper deliverers can not make enough money to make it worth doing a route. Eventually, newspapers will shut their presses down altogether. In Juneau and in Kenai, the newspapers will be printed in the Seattle area, and flown up to Alaska, adding weather and flight delays to the mix that may make it increasingly an impractical option.
Some newspapers have not chosen to experiment with this bridge to the future, but to make the leap altogether. For example, on Feb. 26, The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register stopped printing altogether, and moved online.
