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Rob Forbes: Downtown project will revitalize Anchorage

By ROB FORBES

For decades, politicians, Anchorage Assembly members, and mayors have talked a big talk about the revitalization of Anchorage – and more specifically, our downtown.

We have achieved positive movement around the Dena’ina Center and the Anchorage Museum to the credit of past administrations. We are progressing with development in the downtown transit center that makes it feel safe again for our residents and tourists. 

Private ventures, such as the 49th State Brewing Company, led by Jason Motyka and David McCarthy, reinvigorated another community staple and transitioned a tired area into a booming thoroughfare of the downtown area.

Ginger’s Matt Gill took on the burden of mandates, Covid-19 closures, employee shortages, and inflation and has kept our storefronts and tourists’ full for the past few years. Now it’s time for us to rise up together to support a project that will take a significant leap in the right direction to jump-start our downtown revitalization project.

As you may have likely read in Anchorage Daily News or on Alaska’s News Source, longtime Anchorage property owners Peach Holdings, LLC plan to demolish and reconstruct the 4th Avenue Theatre after a long and storied history as an icon in the downtown area of Anchorage.

According to ADN, Peach Holdings owns all but one lot on the city block between Fourth and Firth Avenues along F and G streets, including the former Key Bank Building, which is currently undergoing a massive transformation. Mayor Bronson has come out in strong support of this new development stating “…the project will be a boost to our economy. Our downtown should be bustling with life.”

I agree wholeheartedly and will do everything within my power to support the project moving forward to provide our downtown with a fresh breath of air, investment, and modernization which is critical and necessary to become what our city is destined to be. We are a great city with great ambition. We must pursue ambition, risk, and innovation instead of living under the nostalgia which impedes our children’s future from attaining the infrastructure that bringabout high paying, quality careers in Anchorage.

I am encouraged by the statement made by Adam Trombley, the director of the city’s Office of Economic and Community Development when he stated that “This is an extremely complicated project,” and that “I’ve never witnessed such coordination between a developer and the municipality.” This is good news for Anchorage, not just for downtown Anchorage, but for all of us!

When the City of Anchorage decides that we will partner with private developers to move projects forward to revitalize our city – we all win. As risk takers and innovators, we must change our perceptions and preconceived notions that fuel an anti-development narrative jumbled with special interest jargon and bureaucratic red tape.

I will work tirelessly for this vision of our city and have every desire to work with the current and future administrations for the betterment of the people of Anchorage. With the knowledge I have accrued in start-up business ventures, real estate, and management, I will ensure this project rests in the interests of the people and that we can capitalize on the private investment offered by Peach Holdings.

Let this great moment serve as a catalyst for private developers. As our city grows and matures into what we are destined to be – the greatest northern city in all of America to visit, live, work, play and raise a family.

Kudos to Peach Holdings. Kudos to Mayor Dave Bronson. Now the work begins on the final act for the 4th Avenue Theatre.

Rob Forbes is a downtown candidate for Assembly for the 12th seat, and is the former owner of Shred Alaska, and partner of the newly developed Eureka small business center.

Poll: Most Americans want abortion limits

While the March On Women is threatening a “summer of rage” over abortion rights, new polling from the Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group reveal that most Americans actually support abortion limits.

57.6% of those polled by Trafalgar said “abortion should only be legal in specific circumstances.”

Democrats, by nearly 19 percent, say abortion should be legal all the way “until the moment of birth, including partial birth.” Only 4.5 percent of Republicans believe that should be legal.

Among all respondents, the poll found 11.6% said “abortion should be legal up until the moment of birth, including partial birth.”

The poll was conducted between May 5-8 and had 1,082 respondents of likely general election voters. The margin of error was calculated at 2.99%.

Last month, a draft decision from the Supreme Court was leaked to the media, showing that the majority of the justices had voted in February to overturn the landmark decision known as Roe v. Wade, which puts limits on how far states can go to determine abortion laws.

The court’s decision, while not final, is expected to be released in early summer and already threats are being made against the majority justices, as pro-abortion fanatics have marched in front of their homes, and some have threatened to burn them down. Virginia Gov.  Glenn Youngkin and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan urged the Justice Department to tighten security around those homes.

The issue of abortion is becoming the major political tug-of-war for the midterm elections, as Democrats believe the issue may turn the tide in their favor. For now, it appears Republicans will be winning seats across the nation, in a growing voter rebellion against Democrat-Socialists and their policies.

View the results of the poll at this link.

Legislature’s last hours is full of intrigue, at eases

It’s horse-trading season for the last hours of the Alaska Legislature’s regular session, and that means it’s also bill-stuffing season. Those legislators with bills they want to pass — and who haven’t been able to move them — will try to wedge their bill language into other bills that are already on the floor.

The piece of legislation most Alaskans are paying attention to is the state operating budget, which contains the Permanent Fund dividend appropriation. Alaskans have a dog in the fight because $3,850 per qualifying Alaskan is on the potential chopping block.

The conference committee — a body of six from the House and Senate — hammered out a negotiated amount of $3,850, and also reduced the overall budget by about $1.5 billion. The final budget deal went to the Clerk’s Office, and was to be on the desks of every legislator 24 hours before the end of tonight’s floor sessions, which is expected to go until midnight. There will be a final vote.

There are understandings and there are side conversations at play:

In the understandings department, the governor originally wanted a 50-50 dividend for the people, plus an “even-up” from what the Legislature took from their dividends last year. That’s what this amount of $3,850 represents. He also wanted the people to be able to vote on putting the way the PFD is calculated into the Alaska Constitution. That is an item he is not getting.

The budget and the dividend needs a three-quarters vote — a supermajority — to access the Constitutional Budget Reserve as one of the sources to pay for it. The short version is: If 11 legislators in the House and six in the Senate vote no, every Alaskans loses $550 from the dividend that now stands at $3,850. The supermajority is 30 in the House, 20 in the Senate, which will require a lot of anti-dividend Democrats to vote in favor of this budget.

If they don’t vote for this budget, word is that the governor will veto capital projects from their districts. This year’s capital budget is the largest in a decade, and it’s a target-rich environment for the governor to get what he can for Alaskans in terms of a dividend. Alaskans are facing the highest gas and heating oil prices of their lives, along with inflation that is over 11 percent for the essential goods and services they need.

For this vote, and for this dividend, lawmakers really have nowhere to hide. They will have a tough time explaining to the people of their districts why they voted against their interests.

As for side conversations, one wealthy Anchorage senator has been working the halls to try to knife the deal. Careful observers in the halls of the Capitol say Sen. Natasha von Imhof, who is an opponent of large dividends, has been visiting other lawmakers to get them to vote against the deal. Von Imhof is not running again for Senate and is said to be preparing to take the helm of the Rasmuson Foundation, her family foundation that some call the fourth branch of government and the second-most powerful branch of government, due to its endowment and therefore its control of the nonprofit sector in Alaska.

Last year, she implored her colleagues to not vote for a statutory dividend, in a speech that was shocking, in that she called it “greed and entitlement.”

“The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me,” von Imhof said to the Senate last year, describing the people of Alaska who support the statutory formula for the Permanent Fund dividend. She is working her magic again this year.

The operating budget vote comes at a price for all lawmakers. All of them who are up for reelection this year — and that is almost all of them but Von Imhof and Sen. Donny Olson — will have to face their voters to explain why they voted down the $550 portion of the PFD, and why they cost their district needed capital budget items such as road maintenance.

New in Juneau: Alaska senators bow heads for prayer for ‘magic and truth’ to Norse god Odin

The Alaska Senate usually starts out its floor sessions with a prayer or sometimes a thought for the day from a non-religious member. On Tuesday, the prayer was offered by one of the Senate pages, Ollie Zaldivar of Anchorage, who beseeched wisdom from a Norse god named Odin.

He offered the prayer that asked that he know magic and know truth. He referred to the god as “Allfather.”

Described as a wise, one-eyed old man, writes the description in Wikipedia, “Odin has by far the most varied characteristics of any of the gods and is not only the deity to call upon when war was being prepared but is also the god of poetry, of the dead, of runes, and of magic.”

After the prayer, typically Sen. Lyman Hoffman asks, in the tradition of the Senate and House, that the prayer “be spread across the journal,” but this time he did not make the request.

Instead, Hoffman looked over at Sen. Gary Stevens, who rose and did the deed, asking for the the traditional “spread across the journal.”

Sen. Gary Stevens ask that the prayer be spread across the journal.

As a legislative floor staff, Zaldivar is one of several who work for the entire Senate.

Oddly related, Sen. Bert Stedman has a wooden bust of Odin that sits in the Senate Finance Committee on a shelf overlooking the table that the committee members gather around to decide on legislative matters coming before them.

A wooden bust of Odin, Norse god of war and magic and other things, sits in Senate Finance.

House subcommittee UFO hearing was first in 50 years on ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’

By CASEY HARPER | THE CENTER SQUARE

A House subcommittee hearing drew national attention Tuesday for its unusual focus: UFOs.

The House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee held the hearing Tuesday on “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” also commonly called UFOs.

The Congressional hearing, the first of its kind in decades, allowed lawmakers to raise an array of questions about what UFOs, or UAPs, are, how they are identified, and what should be done about them.

A Pew Research Center survey from last year found that 65% of surveyed Americans “say their best guess is that intelligent life exists on other planets.”

“A smaller but still sizable share of the public (51%) says that UFOs reported by people in the military are likely evidence of intelligent life outside Earth,” Pew said. “Most of this sentiment comes from people who say that military-reported UFOs are ‘probably’ evidence of extraterrestrial life (40%), rather than ‘definitely’ such evidence (11%)…”

That survey came just before the release of a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June on UAPs.

“In a limited number of incidents, UAP reportedly appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics,” the report said. “These observations could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception and require additional rigorous analysis. There are probably multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations based on the range of appearances and behaviors described in the available reporting.”

The report added that the objects pose a danger to flights and possibly even to national security.

“Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall ‘other’ bin,” the report said.

The “other” bin has drawn attention for decades. During the hearing, images from the Department of Defense showed several UFOs, drawing a wide array of speculation online.

“This phenomenon is real and perplexing, and it is past time that Congress and the Administration gives it the attention it deserves,” said Christopher Mellon, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Others criticized Congress for giving attention to the issue when other problems like inflation and the baby formula shortage have not been fixed.

Some lawmakers raised concerns about the national security implications, especially if the UFOs are foreign aircraft. Scott W. Bray, deputy director of Naval Intelligence, said there have been several near misses with these kinds of objects and U.S. military aircraft.

“Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way,” said Rep. André Carson, D-Indiana, who chaired the hearing. “For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis. Pilots avoided reporting, or were laughed at when they did. DOD officials relegated the issue to the back room or swept it under the rug, entirely fearful of a skeptical national security community.”

Overall, though, Americans do not see UFOs as a major concern.

“When asked to think about U.S. national security, most Americans (87%) say that UFOs are not a threat at all (51%) or a minor threat (36%),” the Pew survey said. “One-in-ten say UFOs are a major threat to U.S. national security.”

Free Beacon: Leaker, liar, turncoat, nut job

STEVE SCHMIDT’S ABASEMENT MAKES PUBLIC WHAT WE’VE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME

By WASHINGTON FREE BEACON

No Books. No Money. Just the Truth. That’s the title of the meandering Substack post Steve Schmidt threw up last week at the tail end of a two-day Twitter bender. In that time, he didn’t take more than an hour away from the keyboard, tapping out stilted and overwrought attacks against the late war hero John McCain and his daughter, Meghan.

Since then, he’s widened the aperture, lashing out at the living, from Republican lawmakers (New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts) to journalists (Maggie Haberman, Matt Lewis, Jonah Goldberg) and another subset of former colleagues (sorry, Lincoln Project).

Schmidt, in what is obviously a mental unraveling, denies any responsibility for McCain’s decision to tap Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. He claims he didn’t even sit down with Palin until after McCain had made his choice and that, in the end, he didn’t even vote for the old man.

“This was a lapse in John’s judgment, not mine,” he writes. “My mistake was leaving John McCain alone in a room with her.” Schmidt elaborated days later in an interview with the Kyiv Post. “The first time I had a conversation with her was after the decision had been made,” he said of Palin, adding that he went “bananaramas” over the decision—whatever that means.

Well, there was a book! It was called Game Change, and Schmidt and his fellow turncoat Nicolle Wallace were the primary sources for it. The book eventually earned Schmidt a red-carpet appearance with Woody Harrelson, who played him on the big screen.

According to Game Change, Palin’s vetting was hardly outsourced. The authors describe an hours-long conversation between Schmidt, Palin, and McCain aide Mark Salter that took place before her selection at the Flagstaff, Ariz., home of McCain supporter Bob Delgado. Schmidt “wanted to be sure Palin was ready for what she’d face and would toe the line.”

But he and Salter, by their own account, dropped the ball. “They asked her nothing to plumb the depths of her knowledge about foreign or domestic policy,” the book recounts. “They didn’t explore her preparedness to be vice president. They assumed she knew as much as the average governor, and that what she didn’t know, she would pick up on the fly. They weren’t searching for problems. They were looking for a last-second solution.”

It wasn’t just the book. There were news reports, too! A 2012 New York Times article chronicled how Schmidt had parlayed the disastrous McCain campaign into fame and fortune through “self-criticism and challenges to his own party.” (Sound familiar?)

“It was Mr. Schmidt who first championed Sarah Palin as Mr. McCain’s running mate, a bold move, he told Mr. McCain, that could win him the White House,” reporter Adam Nagourney wrote. “My regret,” Schmidt told Nagourney, “is I should have been the guy to say, ‘Stop, it’s too risky.’ As opposed to the guy saying: ‘Let’s take the risk. We have to win this.'”

Was Schmidt lying then, or is he lying now? That’s a trick question. He’s been lying the whole way. That includes his complaint that, when the McCain campaign ended, “Sarah Palin lashed out at Nicolle Wallace and me” and “smeared us as disloyal leakers.”

Schmidt’s public self-abasement has made clear for all to see what was evident to those who served on the campaign: He is disloyal and he did smear Palin in an attempt to preserve his reputation with the same reporters who breathlessly regurgitate the bullshit of a deranged man 14 years on. (Attention, New York Times reporters, the link to your archive is here.)

Now Schmidt says he’s converting to Judaism. We hope that’s a lie, too, but if not, we await the epic Twitter thread denouncing Hashem. It can’t be long.

This editorial, written by the staff of the Washington Free Beacon, is used with permission.

Which congressional candidates have missed or met their Ethics in Government Act financial disclosure deadlines?

Sarah Palin, Josh Revak, Adam Wool, and Andrew Halcro are among the many candidates for Congress who have neglected to file a required financial disclosure with the Clerk of the House of Representatives.

The Ethics in Government Act requires members of Congress, officers, employees of Congress, and candidates for Congress who intend to raise more than $5,000 to file a financial disclosure. They must file within 30 days of becoming a candidate, or May 15 of the year they become a candidate.

Several candidates for Congress did file their disclosures on time: Nick Begich, Jeff Lowenfels, Tara Sweeney, and Chris Constant are among them.

Santa Claus of North Pole has filed a statement saying he will not be raising more than $5,000, so he is not required to file with the Clerk.

The late filing fee is not excessive — the lagging candidates will be charged just $200 for filing 30 days or more after the deadline.

The financial report details all the investments that each of the candidates have, income they’ve earned, and businesses they own. The statements show details such as how much their spouses make. Because the special election to fill Alaska’s one seat in Congress is coming at such a rapid pace, this particular filing with the Clerk of Congress is the only real sense that the public has about whether a candidate has the wherewithal to continue a campaign, if they are not raising funds from supporters.

In the filings, it’s clear that Chris Constant does not have enough personal wealth to sustain his campaign for Congress without financial help, while Jeff Lowenfels can pay for much of his own campaign, as can Nick Begich.

For the ones who are no-shows on the filings, it’s not clear if they are trying to keep their finances quiet or if they simply haven’t raised over $5,000. In the case of Palin, it’s unlikely she has not raised more than $5,000. Her upcoming fundraiser in the swanky Ponte Vedra, Florida is an indication that she has raised a significant amount of money already and will be the fundraising powerhouse for this special election.

The filing deadline for the Federal Elections Commission report is a separate schedule. The deadline for the pre-primary FEC report is May 30, and the July quarterly report is due July 15.

Senators are trying to kill SB 140, the bill that would ensure gender protection for girls in sports

The bill that protects girls in sports from transgender takeover was tabled today by the Alaska Senate, over the objections of Sen. Shelley Hughes, the bill’s prime sponsor.

Voting to kill the bill through the tabling process were Democrats Tom Begich, Elvi Gray Jackson, Lyman Hoffman, Scott Kawasaki, Jesse Kiehl, and Bill Wielechowski.

Also trying to kill the bill were Republicans Josh Revak, Bert Stedman, Gary Stevens, and Natasha von Imhof, and Click Bishop.

The only Democrat to try to save the bill for the floor vote was Donny Olson.

The vote was 11-8, with Republican Lora Reinbold excused.

Already stripped out of the bill were protection for college women’s sports. SB 140 only applies to sports competitions for K-12. The bill defines gender as that which a person is born with, not assigned later, or chemically created gender attributes.

Many staffers in the Legislature are transgenders or gay, and they are being hired in groupings by each other, according to sources in the Capitol.

Von Imhof was overheard by multiple senators commenting,

Before the floor session she was talking about it on the floor and was heard to say, “Josh [Revak] will vote for to table. If wants to have any chance of winning, he better.” Revak is running for Congress.

Others overheard Von Imhof telling Hughes, “We have more important bills to work on than this piece of shit.”

Mob rule wins: Activist judge says no to redistricting board, orders Democrats’ map to be used for elections

An Anchorage Superior Court judge has become a one-man redistricting committee working on behalf of the Alaska Democratic Party.

Judge Thomas Matthews, who has consistently ruled in favor of Democrats during litigation over Alaska’s new political boundaries, ruled against the Alaska Redistricting Board’s most recent attempt to create a Senate seat in Anchorage that would accommodate all of the wants and desires of constituents, Democrats, Republicans, and the court itself.

Maps for House and Senate districts are redrawn every 10 years to adjust for population shifts. The current mapmaking process, which is a political exercise, started last August but has been in litigation since December. Most court challenges were tossed by the Alaska Supreme Court. Only in contention now is the Eagle River “Senate pairings,” which decides which voters are paired with Eagle River to create a Senate district that has the appropriate number of residents.

After a prior map was tossed by Matthews because it had north Muldoon in the Senate seat that equally represented Eagle River and Muldoon, the redistricting board went back to the drawing board, took public testimony, and drew a new map.

The new map created a district a Hillside district, which is socioeconomically similar, stretching from Eagle River to Girdwood. Democrats and Girdwood residents challenged the map in court.

In his decision released Tuesday, Matthews relied again heavily on the public testimony that was given, rather than the existing process of a redistricting board, which has met and debated maps since August.

Democrats in Anchorage organized over 600 pieces of testimony, some of them being the same people testifying every single day to oppose the map, just as they had opposed the previous map. Only one map will be acceptable to the Democrats, and that is the one that gives them a Senate seat advantage.

The Alaska Redistricting Board will need to make a decision: Will the board appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court or use Map 2 for the current election, as Judge Matthews has demanded? Map 2 is the Democrat-approved map and Matthews has ruled that the election under way must favor the Democrats in Anchorage.