The Anchorage Assembly met in a special meeting midday on Thursday to override the mayor’s vetoes of select projects the Assembly had chosen to fund with American Rescue Plan Act funds. The Assembly opposed the veto based on the Assembly’s LGBTQ and Black-Indigenous-People of Color guiding principles.
The Assembly leadership laid a last-minute memo on the table at the beginning of the meeting describing its disagreement with the mayor over the projects.
The memo essentially calls the mayor a racist for vetoing the Assembly’s chosen projects.
The meeting was disrupted constantly by technical issues that made it difficult to hear the participants. The Assembly’s attorney Dean Gates was unintelligible while he described why the veto override was appropriate. But the Assembly leadership’s override memo said, in part:
“The mayor’s vetoes single out regional projects and projects for marginalized communities, such as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) Alaskans, LGBTQ+ Alaskans, new immigrants, and people facing homelessness.
“The elimination of funding for these projects goes against the Assembly’s guiding principles to invest once-in-a-lifetime ARPA funds in long-term projects that aid populations that need it most; address current, historical, and geographical inequities in our systems that have intensified due to COVID-19; and have a fair and positive impact across the municipality. Not only do the mayor’s vetoes undervalue these community-driven projects and invalidate the Assembly’s collaborative work, the mayor asserts that this valuable funding opportunity should be directed towards one-time municipal costs (where other alternative funding options are available) instead of impactful investments that will shape the community for years to come,” the memo read.
The memo went on to say the Assembly priorities focus greatly on LGBTQ and the Alaska Black Caucus’ “equity center.”
Assemblyman Chris Constant dramatically read an email into the record that he claimed was sent to the head of the Alaska Black Caucus from a member of the Anchorage community. The email said blacks are lucky to live in Alaska and not in Africa “chasing meerkats,” and Constant said there are obviously still “dark impulses deeply in our community” such as the letter writer.
The letter Constant made a part of the public record follows”
From: Stefan Kozma Date: August 5, 2022 at 10:37:28 PM AKDT To: cghodge—- Subject:White Privilege Card
“Are you seriously stupid enough to think that a Filipina was able to avoid a ticket because she showed the cops a joke white privilege card? This is the problem with your kind, always in victim mentality mode, always a chip on the shoulder and always super UPPITY. This is why nobody wants y’all living next door, or in the same classroom or even the same country. You live in Alaska due to the white man, you use white man’s technology on a daily basis and you have no idea how lucky y’all are not to be back in Africa chasing meerkats with sticks in loin cloths like y’all’s great great grandpappys. Show some respect and appreciation for god’s sake, y’all would have a lot more success in life with that attitude.“
However, the letter from Stefan Kozma appears to have come from a man who actually resides in Alberta, Canada, not from Anchorage, as Constant was presenting. In fact, there is no such person registered to vote in Alaska under that name.
Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel asked that sections of the veto be separated out so that she would be able to vote on the majority of the override. She has a conflict of interest since she leads the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, which skims money from the city to talk about homelessness, yet provide no services. Led by Zaletel, who makes over six figures, ACEH stands to gain from the veto overrides.
Assemblyman Kevin Cross argued with the Assembly leadership memorandum, saying the racist inference by the Assembly leadership is disingenuous. The Black Caucus is getting ARPA funds for a second time, he said, while the Assembly had not funded projects for the Polynesian community, for example. He also reminded the group that the parameters set by the Assembly included directions that no group that had previously been awarded ARPA funds would be awarded them again.
“I don’t think we should be funding studies,” he said. Rather, the Assembly needs to fund shovel-ready projects.
He also didn’t think more grants to push Covid vaccinations were needed.
“The pharmaceutical industry is making $98 million a day off the vaccines. They can pay for their own advertising. They don’t need us,” said Assemblyman Cross, adding that $250,000 to advertise vaccine availability would not make a dent.
Assemblywoman Austin Quinn-Davidson noted the “awkwardness of a bunch of white people talking about which groups of color ‘deserve’ or should get these funds. I find it personally very awkward and it’s a reminder to me why we need to diversify this Assembly and I will do what I can to continue trying to recruit members and candidates who reflect the diversity of our community.”
Quinn-Davidson supported the reelection of white Forrest Dunbar over challenger Stephanie Taylor, who is black. Quinn-Davidson also supported the election of freshman Assemblyman Daniel Volland over Stephanie Taylor for the new downtown district that was carved out by the Assembly to increase liberal strength on the body. Both Dunbar and Volland are white middle-aged males.
“Also, I’m just so tired of us all fighting all the time and I think we don’t need to pit groups against each other. You know, we can acknowledge that there’s so much money, we made our best decision collaboratively, we all compromised and what we ended up with was a package that didn’t include everyone. And that doesn’t mean we can’t go find funds.”
The vetoes passed 8-3 for the section Zaletel was not able to vote on, and 10-2, and 11-1 for the rest of the vetoes.
THINGS CAME TO A HEAD WHEN THE MOM FOUND THE DAUGHTER’S SCHOOL IDWITH HER NEW MADE-UP NAME
By KELSEY BOLAR| INDEPENDENT WOMEN’S FORUM
On a small, unassuming cul-de-sac in Alaska, the mother of two young daughters came face-to-face with the growing phenomenon of adolescent girls identifying as the opposite sex due to a social desire to appear transgender. Critics call the social contagion theory “unfounded” and “absurd.”
But for Susie, whose name I’ve changed to protect her family’s privacy, she watched it unfold in her own neighborhood, inside her own home.
After returning in 2020 to the U.S. from a four-year assignment abroad, Susie’s family settled into a house on a street where two out of the eight girls identified as boys. At the local high school where their daughter would soon attend, at least another 10 girls identified as the opposite sex. Shortly after moving there, Susie’s oldest daughter, who had just turned 15-years-old, also said she felt like a boy.
Susie’s daughter was still wearing skirts and makeup. Growing up, she never had ‘tomboy’ tendencies or showed signs of gender confusion. Susie didn’t believe that her daughter’s sudden transgender identity was anything more than a phase, so she and her husband chose not to make any drastic changes, settling on a “wait and see” approach. They wanted to give their daughter time to experience and explore her feelings, without giving into the lie that their daughter was anything but her biological sex.
But every institution surrounding them, from health professionals, to the public school, and a local LGBT support group, rushed to validate their daughter’s gender confusion, treating it as real. Worse, they intentionally deceived Susie and her husband, using their daughter’s birth name and female pronouns in official communications, while using her made-up name and male pronouns behind closed doors.
As a new school year commences, the situation is still ongoing. Susie’s daughter tells her mom that she’s still confused about her gender, but the school sees no nuance in that confusion. Instead, school officials affirm her feelings as a boy, against Susie and her husband’s objections.
One of the first things Susie and her husband did after their daughter said she was transgender was find a therapist who they thought could explore why her daughter felt like a boy. The therapist introduced Susie’s daughter to a local online community of children who also identified as transgender, which Susie thought might help. By meeting people whose gender identity had been a struggle since early childhood, Susie thought her daughter might realize what she was experiencing was different. But that’s when Susie realized that all the children identifying as transgender were just like her daughter.
“They were all 12 and up. And it was all recent,” Susie said.
The group was supposed to be monitored by an adult who was affiliated with a local LGBT group. But when the conversation veered into a discussion about the leather pride flag, which indicates an interest in kink, it became clear that it lacked adult oversight.
“That’s totally inappropriate,” Susie said. “He, or whoever it was, was not moderating the conversation or taking into account that these kids are barely in middle school.”
After participating in the group, Susie said attempts to talk to her daughter about her gender confusion went from open and productive to hostile. Using new buzzwords she picked up, such as “dead name,” which refers to a birth name a person who identifies as transgender no longer uses, her daughter would lash out and instigate fights that never used to occur in their home.
Sensing their daughter’s mental health was declining, Susie and her husband decided to sit in on a session with the therapist. During that session, they learned the therapist had been using male pronouns and her daughter’s made-up name from their very first meeting. This had been going on for about six weeks, and Susie and her husband had no idea.
Susie and her husband tried to explain to the therapist why they needed time to process their daughter’s feelings and weren’t ready to implement changes such as using male pronouns or her new made-up name. For starters, it was the first time Susie’s daughter had vocalized these feelings face-to-face with her father. Prior to that, she had only confided in her mother. But instead of listening or asking her daughter questions, Susie said the therapist turned on her and her husband, pitting them against their daughter by suggesting their support was insufficient and offering to “talk to the school” on their daughter’s behalf.
“My jaw hit the floor,” Susie said. “We love our daughter so much and we would never disown her or abandon her for any reason. There’s nothing on this planet that could make us do that. Then to have someone step in and treat us like we aren’t doing what’s good for her when they have known her for two months — we’ve known her for her whole life.”
Susie’s daughter lived a happy, healthy childhood until the sixth grade, when she made friends with a girl while living abroad who was self-harming. After that, Susie said her daughter also began self-harming, though superficially, which prompted Susie to seek therapy for her daughter. A year and a half before they moved back to the U.S., a child psychologist diagnosed Susie’s daughter with anxiety, depression, and “failure to adapt.”
After her daughter began identifying as a boy, Susie e-mailed the therapist from overseas to ask if, during their 18 months together, the issue of gender identity had ever come up. The therapist told Susie that her daughter “did not meet any of the criteria or give any indication [that being transgender] was a genuine thing for her,” Susie said. The therapist was “99% certain that this was a phase.”
The therapist recommended that Susie and her husband continue the “wait and see” approach they were currently pursuing, which meant showing love and consistency while setting healthy boundaries for their daughter.
Susie and her husband stopped booking sessions with their daughter’s new therapist in Alaska and to Susie’s knowledge, that therapist never contacted the school. But unbeknownst to them, the school was already transitioning their daughter behind their backs.
Shortly after classrooms reopened for in-person learning in the spring of 2021, Susie’s daughter had an anxiety attack at school. Susie suggested that she visit with the school counselor, whom she had told about her daughter’s gender exploration, and how she and her husband wished to handle it.
“At the time I thought the counselor was indicating to me that she understood and agreed with what I was saying,” Susie said.
But in fall 2021, at the start of the next school year, Susie found her daughter’s school ID, which featured her new, made-up name.
The fact that the school was transitioning her daughter behind her back came as a surprise to Susie, since the school was still communicating with her using female pronouns and her daughter’s birth name. To avoid upsetting her daughter, Susie waited to confront the school. But that winter, Susie decided to email the counselor asking how her daughter’s name would appear in the yearbook. Susie was told she would receive an email from the faculty member in charge of the yearbook. But instead, she received a phone call from the school counselor and the curriculum advisor.
“They proceeded to tell me, I have no say over anything my daughter wants to go by or what’s in her record or anything,” Susie said. “The only thing I had a say over was what her name was on her transcript. And the only way that changes is with a court-documented name change. But otherwise, their wording to me was that it was illegal for me to insist on a certain name or anything in the yearbook or on her ID.”
Susie was at work when she received the call. She followed up with an email asking for the legal basis for the school’s actions. They told her their legal reasoning was based in Title IX.
Title IX is a federal statute that outlaws sex discrimination in education. The Biden administration recently proposed new rules that expand the law to cover “gender” and “gender identity,” giving schools an excuse for socially transitioning children while keeping parents in the dark. While the Biden administration certainly intends to push these controversial and potentially illegal rule changes, those rules are not yet in effect and schools are currently free to respect parental rights.
“The fact that they were using guidelines to fight me kind of caught me off guard,” Susie said. “I had to educate myself.”
A couple of weeks later, Susie had a follow-up conversation with a representative from the school district. She explained how her daughter’s former therapist, whom she had worked with for 18 months, didn’t think her daughter’s transgender identity was genuine. She asked why the school was refusing to get on board with the approach she and her husband wanted to take.
The district representative told Susie they don’t need a diagnosis to call her daughter whatever she wants to be called. When pressed to explain how they differentiate between what is a casual declaration and a mature, well thought out decision, the representative told Susie, “They watch the child.”
Susie was never told who was watching her child. She was simply told, “They observe them and see how they dress and what type of activities they participate in.”
At the time, Susie’s daughter still wore skirts and makeup.
With a new school year beginning this month, Susie logged into the parent portal to check her daughter’s information. The name she filled out when enrolling her daughter was changed, then grayed out with no ability for her to edit.
“Obviously, someone who isn’t her parent or legal guardian entered this on her enrollment paperwork,” Susie said. “How do you stop the school from doing something that they’re not telling you that they’re doing?”
Susie hasn’t been able to find a new therapist whom she can trust, and feels betrayed by her local public school.
“I thought parents and the school were supposed to work together for the well-being of the child,” Susie said. “It doesn’t feel like that’s happening.”
Susie feels alone and, in many ways, abandoned in how she’s attempted to navigate her daughter’s gender confusion. But in her community, she’s far from alone in having a child who identifies as transgender.
“My daughter’s friend group at school, everyone is something. No one is themselves, for lack of better words. Everyone’s a different gender,” Susie said, adding:
“Girls going through stuff collectively in high school and middle school together, and influencing each other is nothing new. Every girl has been through it, but I think what makes this different is that it is becoming a human rights issue and it’s being taken on by adults that don’t necessarily play a part in a child’s life. And it’s being championed by people who don’t have children or don’t have children dealing with it. I feel like if I were to start using the preferred name and pronouns, I feel like that’s kind of the nail in the coffin. That’s me saying, ‘Yes, there is something not right about you as a female. So you should definitely identify as a male because you don’t act the way a female should act.’ And I would never want to put that thought in her head. And frankly, it makes me sad that she has that thought in her head to begin with — and that it’s being fed by the school and that former therapist.”
Susie’s now-16-year-old daughter recently said that going to school makes her “want to throw up with anxiety.” Often she asks not to go to school at all. Right now, Susie said the school is the only place that’s using male pronouns and her daughter’s made-up name.
“If she’s trying to get away from school because it makes her feel bad, and she wants to be home where we absolutely affirm her as a person, but we don’t affirm this identity, to me, that speaks volumes,” Susie said. “Her safe place is where we’re letting her be herself.”
Kelsey Bolar is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Forum. She is also an editor of BRIGHT, a morning newsletter for women, by women, a senior fellow at The Steamboat Institute, and a contributor to The Daily Signal and The Federalist. Her work has been featured in USA Today, National Review, The Washington Examiner and more.Bolar is a frequent guest on Fox News, Fox Business, and was featured as a speaker on the 2018 CPAC panel, “#UsToo: Left Out by the Left.”Previously, Bolar worked for The Heritage Foundation as a senior writer and producer. There, she co-hosted the weekly podcast, “Problematic Women,” produced videos that received millions of views, and regularly appeared on radio and TV.
The Division of Elections is a busy place these days, with workers burning the midnight oil. Getting answers is not always easy. Here are some housekeeping dates to keep in mind:
On Friday the Division will be at the deadline to receive receive absentee ballots for the primary election mailed from within the U.S., U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and from overseas.
Sept. 2 is when the regular primary election results will be certified.
Sept. 5 is the deadline for candidates to withdraw from the general election ballot. Tara Sweeney has already withdrawn from the regular congressional race. Most state House and Senate races only have two or three candidates in them; few will drop.
For the special general election conducted Aug. 16 for the congressional vacancy, Aug. 31 is the final count for the first-choice votes on the ranked choice ballot.
Aug. 31 is also when the Division of Elections will run the tabulation on the second choice, meaning that the third-place finisher will be dropped and his supporters, if they made a second choice, will have their votes reassigned to that second choice.
About Chris Bye: It’s a great gift for the Libertarians, who managed to get someone into the final four for the general election for Congress with candidate Chris Bye.
In the primary, Bye got 1,087 votes, or 0.61% of the vote on a crowded ballot. But then Tara Sweeney dropped out, and she did so in time for Bye to be able to move up onto the ballot.
“Chris Bye is an Alaskan, a husband, a father of 4, a combat veteran, an Alaskan fishing guide, a youth soccer coach, former youth shooting coach and an avid outdoorsman. He is not a politician. His family is not connected to politics nor big money. He is not a DC insider. Chris is just a regular Fairbanks guy who firmly believes in Liberty and Freedom for all.
“Chris dedicated half his life serving this great nation, as both an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army and later as a commissioned officer. And retirement did not dull the desire to continue that service. He has also witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of policies made in Washington D.C., so far removed from the realities Alaskans face. It is this first-hand evidence that draws him into serving beyond the Fairbanks and Fort Wainwright community by running for Congress.
“He will not pretend to have all of the answers. He will look to all Alaskans, especially those directly affected, to help solve the problems facing us. While we may not always agree, constructive dialogue including diverse perspectives is essential to creating the best Alaska, not just for certain groups but for everyone. We can do better. We owe it to our children to do better. And it starts by electing representatives who work for us, not just a party. It’s time Alaska.”
About Mary Peltola: She has a shot at winning the temporary congressional seat for Alaska, which we wrote about earlier.Some fun facts from Washington Post reporter Dan Zak: Her first role model in life was musher DeeDee Jonrowe, (who happens to be a Republican), who holds the fastest Iditarod time for a woman and is a three-time runner-up in the race. Peltola grew up dog-mushing.
Peltola’s first piece of legislation as an Alaska legislator was a gun ban, which was reaction to a school shooting in Bethel — pre-Columbine, in 1997. Peltola doesn’t believe citizens need what she calls “weapons of war.”
Peltola won 45 percent of the latest batch of ballots counted, about 21,000 ballot, which boosted her total vote to 39%. If the rest of the ballots break the same way, she’ll be close to 40% and may become the overall winner of the special election with the secondary votes of Palin and Begich. Remember, Peltola started with just 7% of the vote in the primary.
Ranked choice polling:
As of July 7, 2022, the major polling and analysts ranked this seat either solid or likely Republican:
Endorsements: Congressional candidate Nick Begich receivedthe endorsement this week of the Ketchikan District 1 Republicans.
District 34 Republicans (Fairbanks) endorsed Frank Tomaszewski running for State House, Sen. Robb Meyers for re-election to Senate seat Q, and Kelly Tshibaka running for U.S. Senator. They voted in favor of censuring Sen. Click Bishop, a Republican who is running for reelection.
District 9 Republicans (Anchorage Hillside) endorsed Roger Holland for Senate Seat E (new).
President Joe Biden has unilaterally forgiven college loan debts for Americans making less than $125,000.
But not really. Instead, what he has done is transfer the debt to millions of Americans who either didn’t take out college loans or who have paid off their loans through their own labor. And Biden has perpetuated the university racket of jacking up prices for education on families.
“I understand not everything I announcing today is not going to make everybody happy,” Biden said. But then he defended his decision, calling it “responsible and fair … Let’s be clear. I hear it all the time, ‘How do we pay for it?’ We pay for it by what we’ve done,” Biden said, but he didn’t outline what that meant by “what we’ve done.”
Even some college graduates disagree with Biden.
“I cannot believe I gave two legs for my tuition. What a dope I am. Ooh-rah!” said Army combat veteran and double amputee Joey Jones, pointing out that many Americans gave some of the best years — and best limbs — of their lives to earn their tuition.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the “student loan socialism is a slap in the face to working Americans who sacrificed to pay their debt or made different career choices to avoid debt. A wildly unfair redistribution of wealth toward higher-earning people.”
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said the decision “baptizes a broken system,” and “forces blue-collar workers to subsidize white-collar graduate students. Instead of demanding accountability from an underperforming higher education sector that pushes so many young Americans into massive debt, the Administration’s unilateral plan baptizes a broken system. This deeply regressive action — which fails even to acknowledge that most debt is held by folks with graduate degrees — will do nothing to jumpstart the reform higher education desperately needs.”
On social media, the White House announcement was met with a majority of scorn:
Social media response to the announcement was negative.
Since the 1980s, the cost of four-year university education has tripled, even after adjusting for inflation. Federally guaranteed Pell Grants now cover less than one third of a college education, while they used to pay for 80 percent of a four-year degree. The university tuition inflation racket has harmed working families the most, and a typical graduating senior has incurred $25,000 in debt. For many, the debt is much higher, and for degrees that will not get them the kind of employment that will pay for them to live the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.
“President Biden believes that a post-high school education should be a ticket to a middle-class life, but for too many, the cost of borrowing for college is a lifelong burden that deprives them of that opportunity. During the campaign, he promised to provide student debt relief. Today, the Biden Administration is following through on that promise and providing families breathing room as they prepare to start re-paying loans after the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic,” the White House said.
The debts are being transferred to taxpayers, and with 87,000 new IRS agents being hired by the Biden Administration, there will be an IRS agent in every farmhouse in America ensuring that families pay for someone’s degree in gender intersectionality studies.
Biden’s plan loan forgiveness program will cost taxpayers around $300 billion.
Biden also extended a pause on federal student loan payments for what he called the “final time” through the end of 2022. He was set to deliver remarks Wednesday afternoon at the White House to unveil his proposal to the public.
The White House fact sheet on student loan forgiveness is at this link.
The Anchorage School District’s policy states parents may opt their child out of sex education and that the curriculum is to be sent out to you two weeks before the class is taught.
Yet a parent notified Must Read Alaska that she had opted her children out of sex education, and they still ended up attending a class.
Another parent notified Must Read Alaska that students at Dimond High School are being subjected to what many would consider sexual grooming in its sex education classes. The students were paired up boy-with-girl to ask each other very intimate sexual questions. The teacher teaches this course to grades 9-12.
The boy-girl pairs were to pretend these were speed-dating questions. These questions didn’t ask speed-date questions like what you like to do for fun, what’s your favorite movie, or where do you want to go in your life,
These were questions included: “How do I use a female condom?”; “Does the size of a guy’s foot really predict his penis size?” “How can I prevent premature ejaculation?” “What does popping the cherry mean?” “What is cunnilingus?”
There are many more even sordid questions most would never think about asking another student.
This particular teacher even shows dildos in the classroom. Is this what Anchorage taxpayers are paying for?
It may be somewhat “educational”, but many parents would question if it is appropriate.
Parents need to ask for the “course syllabus” in their student’s sex-ed classes so they can opt their student out of these classes. Ask to see the lesson plan.
Parents, keep an eye on your students and ask them to bring sex education materials home for your review.
The Dimond High School students were admonished that there should be no pictures taken in the classroom, but some pictures have made their way into social media. The Dimond High School administrators had to do something.
The Dimond High School assistant principal sent out an email to staff stating that the above content was well within curricular expectations and expectations outlined in the course syllabus.
This is one more example of the sexual grooming of our students.
Parents and students have the legal right to opt out of sex education classes per AS 14.03.016. The ASD has even put this state law into its guidelines for teachers and administrators. These state that the district must notify parents of not less than two weeks prior to the teaching and presentation of sex education, human reproductive education and human sexuality education and provide for the objection to and withdrawal of a student from such activities.
Parents, you have the power and the right to determine if your child should be subject to this. You can reach the Anchorage School Board at the email address: [email protected]
Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt can be reached at: [email protected].
David Boyle is the education writer for Must Read Alaska.
When presented with what could have been a test by an intelligence arm of one of America’s most challenging international trading partners, the family of former Gov. Bill Walker made an unusual decision: They brought back a pile of U.S. currency from China to Alaska.
A written receipt that is a public document shows that over $24,000 in U.S. cash was deposited in the Alaska treasury shortly after former First Lady Donna Walker returned from China, where she had been invited to speak at a women’s and children’s cultural conference, and where she had brought two of her daughters and a daughter-in-law, all at the expense of the Chinese government.
Must Read Alaska first reported on the junket in 2017. But what MRAK heard, but did not know at the time, is that the State was reimbursed for the cost of the trip with cash to the Walker entourage.
For unexplained reasons, the Chinese government decided to pay the State of Alaska back with cash to cover the cost of the trip. Given the dates in question, the cash was presumably given to Donna Walker and/or her travel companions and brought through U.S. Customs on their way home. The conference Donna Walker spoke at took place on June 21, 2017, and the receipt for cash is dated June 26, 2017.
Madame Peng visited Alaska with her husband, President Xi Jinping on April 7, 2017. In Anchorage, they met Donna, the politically ambitious wife of Gov. Walker. On May 15 the Chinese had extended the invitation to Mrs. Walker to speak at the conference they had set up.
“Meeting President Xi and Madame Peng was a high honor for Governor Walker and me,” First Lady Walker said in her statement at the time she was invited to travel to China with her daughters. “To have that wonderful visit followed up so quickly with this generous invitation is quite remarkable and we do look forward to building and strengthening our relationship with China which has long been Alaska’s largest trading partner. To have the opportunity to extend that economic relationship into social and cultural arenas is exciting and important. I am grateful to play a small role.”
It’s unclear if the conference was specifically designed for Donna Walker and whether the entire trip was a set up to help the Chinese understand more about what kinds of people they were dealing with in the Walker Administration. Another possibility was that the Chinese were testing Alaska’s governor and his influential wife. Walker was eager to work with the Chinese on a gasline.
It’s unusual for governments to pay other governments in cash unless something untoward is happening. Billions of dollars move back and forth between the U.S. and China every day, but moving cash via elected officials or their spouses is a highly unconventional way to transfer funds between governments.
Receipts shows cash into the Alaska treasury about the time Donna Walker returned from China.
In the reconciliation documentation from the State of Alaska that Must Read Alaska has, the paperwork shows “received $24,054 from China.”
The Line description says “3RD PARTY REIMBURSEMENT FOR CHINA TRIP.” That matches the deposit slips.
The trip authorizations for the Walker family show the timeframe for the trip, and the line description details expenses for each member of the entourage.
Travel authorization for former First Lady Donna Walker. There are several other travel authorizations in the tranche of documents.
Although there is no evidence that any money was skimmed off from the cash gift, the Chinese test may be whether a foreign entity is either corrupt or naive enough to take cash that is offered. Perhaps the first family did not understand how the communist Chinese think about these sorts of interactions. Most politicians know better than to receive cash in such a scenario; cash is compromising. But the Walkers didn’t find it problematic.
China has used the coercive “soft power” approach in its in-roads into the countries of the African continent. As reported by the George W. Bush Institute, First Ladies are used by China to soften the target in unsophisticated countries:
“Development aid and trade aren’t the only ways China is gaining ground in Africa. Shifting relationship dynamics through soft power are also helping China gain influence on the continent. The term soft power was first introduced by Joseph Nye in 1990. It refers to getting others to share your objectives through the presentation of one’s own culture, political values, and policy rather than through coercion. From education exchanges to cultural centers and foreign aid to high-level envoys including first ladies, countries have used soft power tactics for broader benefit.”
“During her 1972 visit to China with President Richard Nixon, Mrs. Nixon’s warmness resonated greatly in China. Her appreciation for her visit to Peking and subsequent discussions during one of the trip’s many galas marked the start of “Panda Diplomacy” and the tenure of China’s pandas at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Decades later, her vibrant red coat still stands as an icon of the historic visit,” the institute writes.
“But nearly five decades after Mrs. Nixon’s tenure, similar soft power tactics have been embraced by China in its own vigorous engagement across the African continent. Their rapid success stands as yet another warning on the imperative for U.S. leadership and partnership abroad,” the institute writes.
“Stepping outside the limited and often hidden role occupied by her predecessors, Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan has leveraged her podium in support of key diplomatic interests of the regime. Barely a year into her tenure as first lady, her early influence even earned her a place among TIME Magazine’s 2013 list of ‘Most Influential People.'”
“During their first international trip as President and First Lady in 2013, Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan visited Russia and three African nations. TIME described the Chinese First Lady’s presence on the trip as a “one-woman charm offensive…humanizing the communist regime.” Garnering attention for her trendsetting and charismatic presence, Ms. Peng has been compared to influential peers, including fellow first ladies and royalty like the Duchess of Cambridge.”
Bribery by the Chinese is documented extensively in international news reports, including this story from Axios.
By November of 2017, Gov. Bill Walker had signed major agreements of understanding with communist Chinese companies to build a gasline from the North Slope to tidewater, aligning Alaska with the Chinese government to finance, design, build, and buy contracts for the natural gas that would flow for decades.
This week, Sinopec, one of the companies that Walker signed an MOU with, was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for not having transparent accounting practices. The United States is now in the process of unwinding some of its dealings with China, as China aligns more closely with Russia.
Bill Walker is now running for governor again, but in the years since he was removed from office by voters, he has set up a company trying to take over the Alaska gasline project. Walker and former Alaska Gasline Development Corporation President Keith Meyer held a press conference to announce their Alaska Gasline & LNG, LLC, with partners Bernie Karl of Fairbanks and and Laborers Local 341.
The state’s Alaska Gasline Development Corporation has shown little interest in the Walker offer to take over the gasline project, saying it was looking for investors with more financial heft.
“State of Alaska policymakers have made it clear that adequately funded third parties will need to fund Alaska LNG construction and lead the project forward. Any party with the appropriate resources and qualifications to help advance the Alaska LNG project is welcome to participate in the strategic path for Alaska LNG that the AGDC board defined this past spring,” AGDC said in 2020, in response to the Walker proposal.
The states have declared war on “Zuck bucks.” As of this writing, at least 24 states and four counties have banned or restricted private funding for elections. Despite some left-wing intransigence, across the country Democrats and Republicans agree that funding for elections must be transparent and above partisan influence.
But Big Philanthropy disagrees.
In April, I documented the next stage in the Center for Tech and Civic Life‘s (CTCL) strategy to corrupt elections: the launch of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, an $80 million campaign to centralize control over elections in Washington, D.C., using “redesigned” ballots, a flood of taxpayer funds, and a permanent expansion of the vote-by-mail bureaucracy.
Funding for the alliance comes from a little-known group formed in 2018, the Audacious Project, which operates as part of the foundation responsible for TED Talks.
Jeff Skoll, a billionaire who bankrolls a film-production company (Participant) famous for producing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, is part of the project. Ditto for MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos), the third-wealthiest woman in the world. So are investment billionaires Steve Jurvetson, Nat Simons, and John Arnold. The latter two fund the professional left via Sea Change Foundation and Arnold Ventures, respectively.
The Audacious Project engages in what left-leaning philanthropoids call “big bets” grantmaking—projects that aim to fundamentally transform health care, climate policy, elections, etc., under the guise of “charity.” It’s 21st-century social engineering, largely funded by an establishment that earned enormous fortunes through American markets and rule of law and now use their wealth to destroy those things.
The election for the temporary seat for Congress just got a little more real for Democrat Mary Peltola of Bethel, once considered a long shot in the initial field of 48 candidates to replace the late Congressman Don Young through the end of his current term. As more votes are counted, the late arriving ballots have increased her lead over Sarah Palin and Nick Begich.
Begich lags 3 points behind Palin out of the 175,512 ballots counted. Palin lags 7.5 points behind Peltola.
The special election has had 190,296 votes cast so far, making it one of the highest turnouts in Alaska primary history. Just a few more votes are expected between now and Aug. 31, the cutoff for overseas and absentee ballots.
On Tuesday, the Division of Elections counted 21,199 ballots of the 35,983 uncounted ballots they had in hand. The next count will be on Thursday, the division said; it has about 14,784 ballots in hand to count as of Tuesday. Five precincts are still unaccounted for.
While the division has run the ballots through the tabulator, it has only counted the first votes on the ranked choice. The division does not have the information about where the second choices went. Once all the first votes are counted, the tabulation for the second votes will take place. With Nick Begich coming in third, his votes will be discarded and voters for Nick will have their second choices assigned to the remaining candidates. Currently, there’s no telling where those votes will go — Mary Peltola or Sarah Palin — or whether a majority of the Begich voters just chose to not mark anyone in second or third place.
After the election is certified, the division will release all of the second and third place votes for the three candidates on the special general election ballot. It won’t be until that information is released that the public will understand what all voters did with their ranked choice ballots.
Alaskans have not elected a Democrat for Congress since the first Nick Begich was elected in 1971. He died in a mysterious plane crash in 1972 and Republican Don Young was elected in a special election in 1973, and served until his death on a place on March 18, 2022.
Peltola has raised $379,087.93 since the start of her campaign on April 1, and spent $254,299.32. As of July 27, she had $124,788.61 cash on hand, which was more than what Palin had at the end of the reporting period. But her fortunes have likely changed with her solid showing in the special primary and general election, and her good placement in the regular primary, where she had a 36.1% showing in a field of 10 candidates, placing her far in front of Sarah Palin and Nick Begich.
A surprise visit at the Southcentral Foundation Employee Family Center by the Municipality of Anchorage Health Department found disturbing instances, some of which appear to border on child abuse.
The June 17 investigation confirmed some of the allegations in reports the municipality had received, including:
Children in the infant and toddler rooms were being hit on their hands, arms, butts, and mouths for normal developmental behaviors;
Children in the infant and toddler rooms were having their mouths covered for crying;
Caregivers in the infant and toddler rooms were sleeping while caring for children;
Children were being talked and/or yelled at to “shut up” and were being called “bitches” and “bastards;”
Children were being left alone on the diapering table.
“Upon completion of the investigation the department found the following allegations to be unsubstantiated: caregivers are caring for children while high on marijuana; a caregiver is physically restraining children and covering their mouths for 5 to 10 minutes; caregivers in the toddler room are unaware of how children are receiving injuries; a vaping pen is being used on site that can be smelled throughout the facility; and children are being left to sleep on u-shaped pillows,” the report said.
However, the facility, which has a capacity for 96 children, was out of compliance with the following:
The administrator failed to appropriately supervise and discipline staff;
A child in the toddler room went up to a caregiver crying and the caregiver walked away;
An infant child was put to sleep in a heavy winter sleeper in a room with a temperature of 78.1 degrees Fahrenheit;
A caregiver left a child alone on a diapering table;
Several staff have slept while caring for children;
A caregiver in the infant room was physically disciplining children on the hand and hovering a hand over a child’s mouth to quiet the child;
A caregiver was calling infants “big cry babies” and one child a “crack head;”
A caregiver failed to wash her hands after diapering.
The facility was issued a warning notice and it submitted a correction plan to bring it into compliance. According to reports, several staff members of the facility have since been fired.
