On Thursday at 6 pm, the Anchorage Assembly is having a public hearing on its new reapportionment maps. These are the new lines for the Assembly seats, and it’s all about Democrats vs. Republicans. So far in the reapportionment process, the Democrats have asserted control over the new Anchorage political boundaries.
The Assembly is considering four maps. Three of the maps — 6, 11, and 12, are all similar; the fourth is one that the liberal Assembly fought to keep from the public, as it is offered by conservative Jamie Allard, who represents Chugiak/Eagle River.
Map 6 is offered by a hard-left group called Anchorage Action, which says it is nonpartisan. The map is designed by Robert Hockema, a Democrat affiliated with the Meg Zaletel campaign for Assembly. In the Map 6, Anchorage Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar’s home has a line drawn around it so that he will be in District 1. If he loses his current race to challenger Stephanie Taylor, which seems likely, he can run for a District 1 seat. If he wins reelection, this would still be his last term, but he would be able to run again in the new district.
Map 7 links South Anchorage and Eagle River. Offered by Robert Hockema, a Democrat affiliated with Assemblywoman Meg Zalatel’s reelection campaign, the map has maintains what is basically the existing boundary near Zaletel’s home address. Both Zaletel and Dunbar are at the bright edges of their proposed districts, the result of careful planning by the mapmakers. Map 7 also draws a line around Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar’s house.
Map 11 is offered by Assemblyman John Weddleton of South Anchorage. It appears to be the least gerrymandered, although it chops up Spenard and downtown Anchorage. It keeps Dunbar and Zaletel in their districts.
Map 12 is offered by Jamie Allard, Assemblywoman from Eagle River. It follows natural boundaries better than any of the other maps, does not create special carve-outs, and also protects the conservative stronghold of Eagle River, while Maps 6 and 7 weaken Eagle River’s already marginal influence. Allard has fought to have her map considered, and the chair of the Reapportionment Committee, Chris Constant, has fought to exclude her map.
The public can be forgiven for not knowing about the public hearing. There’s little information being circulated by the leftist-controlled Assembly, which will ensure its people are there to support the Democrat maps.
After Thursday’s special public hearing, the Assembly will have a Friday work session on the maps, and then another public hearing will be held next Tuesday. The Assembly is anticipated to rush through the process and vote on it before the April election.
As I predicted shortly after it happened, the State paid off the two psychiatrists that the Dunleavy Administration fired from the Alaska Psychiatric Institute at the beginning of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s Administration. The $400,000 and change was a bargain.
The State has lots of employees who should simply be paid off or sent home with pay and ordered not to represent themselves as State employees.
Alaska Psychiatric Institution psychiatrists are one of the reasons for the development of the Exempt Service of State employees. The Alaska Constitution, almost uniquely, requires a “merit system” of employment in State government, whose personnel system is an exemplar of positivist law.
The Constitution called for a merit system of employment and the early legislatures set out to lay that out in statutory language. The State Personnel Act (AS 39.25 et seq.) sets out the contours and limits of a merit system.
The State Pay Plan (AS 39.27 et seq.) sets out what you could legally get paid. Other statutes set out how much leave you could earn and retain, and how much you could earn in retirement.
The whole idea of a mid-Twentieth Century government employment system was that everything would be in statute and regulation with administrative appeal processes. If judicial action was required it would be a matter of application of clearly expressed law. Fond hope!
The objective system quickly ran into practical reality. The aborning Alaska Marine Highway System had a personnel and pay system based on Washington ferry union contracts, which couldn’t be reconciled with the State’s statutory pay schemes. Teachers had an elaborate system of pay and benefits based on Bureau of Indian Affairs practice and local school district patterns, which likewise couldn’t be reconciled with the statutory schemes.
There were many other types of employees who simply couldn’t fit into the ordered pegs and holes of the State Pay Plan and thus was born the Exempt Service, those employees who weren’t susceptible to recruitment and pay under the statutory scheme. One of the most visible was the head psychiatrist(s) at API; you just couldn’t recruit a shrink for what the State paid even a governor or commissioner.
These guys at API were making well north of $200,000 wages and benefits. Nobody ever accused me of being a nice guy on these sorts of cases, but if I could have settled these cases for about a year’s wages and benefits for each of them without facing an Alaska jury, I’d have done it in a heartbeat.
In my time, I’d authorize six figures to settle a case of wrongful discharge anywhere in Alaska other than Anchorage without hesitation. Alaskans love to give State money away when they’re sitting on a jury. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that the money that they’re giving to someone is their money. I don’t know that I’d want to face a jury even in Anchorage these days.
I’ve written about this in previous columns and had numerous discussions with officials about it; “exempt” as in “Exempt Service” doesn’t mean that the employee is exempt from all labor laws, a concept hard for some to grasp.
I’m told that the Governor’s Office, in those early days, had asked the Division of Personnel for a list of all “at will” employees of the State. In my time, the answer would have been “there are none,” but Personnel gave them a list of all employees in the Exempt Service. Well, all the vessel employees of the ferry system are in the exempt service, but they’re under union contracts and are about as far from “at will” as you can get. The teachers are exempt. The emergency firefighters are exempt. Being in the Exempt Service only means you’re exempt from the State Personnel Act and the Pay Plan; it doesn’t necessarily mean that you serve at the governor’s pleasure.
The Governor’s Office either didn’t ask the right question or somebody didn’t give them the right answer.
The whole State Personnel Act needs a fresh look from the perspective of the modern world. The workplace has changed a lot since it was originally enacted in 1961. We learned painfully in the 1980s’ oil price crash that when the union contracts expired, we really didn’t know how to run the government. It pains me to say that in some ways the federal government has done a better job in distinguishing groups of employees.
Most of the “Partially Exempt” service are true political appointees and do serve at the pleasure, but not all of them do. Division Directors are true policy makers. The upper level assistant attorneys general are policy makers. Below that, it becomes a case by case question. It is especially an issue in Law where in the lower levels of the attorney classification many are researchers, brief writers, and briefcase toters with no policy-making responsibilities.
Then there is the fact that the Judiciary Branch has arrogated to itself power over the Executive Branch by contriving a “covenant of good faith and fair dealing” in employment relations that gives somebody in a black robe the authority to substitute his/her authority over that of any Executive Branch manager.
In a sane world, the Walker Administration would have shut attorney and now litigant Libby Bakalar up or fired her if she wouldn’t shut up. I know I’d have had no trouble walking into her office with a couple of empty boxes and telling her to pack up and get out. I’ve read the court decision more than once and I can’t really figure out what the Dunleavy Administration did wrong other than fire a Democrat.
In the case of the API psychiatrists, any reason, no reason, but not an illegal reason was the standard, so all they had to do was walk in with the boxes and tell them that they didn’t fit in the plan any more. Yet we have a lawyer with a low IQ — a judge — deciding he knows better.
That said, if I’d have been facing it, I’d have just ponied up the money to keep from facing a jury or a lawyer with good social connections and a low IQ judge.
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.
History teaches us that nations, in some ways, are like people. While having many things in common, each is unique. As with people, a nation’s behavior is often understood in terms of the psychological attitudes and style that characterize its personality.
A failure to understand cultural complexity of a nation’s psychological behavior in the historical context creates tensions between governments and often leads to political conflicts.
From the mid–1980s through the 1990s, I taught several academic courses at the University of Alaska Southeast, namely: “How Soviets View the World,” “Russian Character in Russian Literature,” “Russian History,” and “Russian Language.”
The central focus and objective of these courses, in addition to the subject matter, was to explain to my students that every culture, including Russian/Soviet culture, must be understood in the context of its history, literature, arts, music and peoples’ psychological behavior. In almost every class I recited Russian poetry in order to cultivate students’ interest in Russian literary creations. Indeed, Russian poetry is a soul of Russian culture and a key for understanding Russian psychological behavior.
Considering the significant decline of interest in poetry in the West, including the United States, the growing interest for books of verse in East European countries, including Russia, is still an unusual phenomenon. For the Russians, poetry means hope. In poetry, the reader may find support for his/her faith in such human values as dedication, dignity, honor, fortitude, heroism and loyalty.
Modern Russian poetry has absorbed the finest traditions of the 19th century (e.g., Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov) and the early 20th century (e.g., Block, Fet, Mayakovsky, Yesenin) schools.
In modern Russian poetry, the accent on ideology and morality remains as strong as ever. The historical reason for the ideological poetry is the emergence of a new socialist society and, therefore, interest in psychological poetry had grown tremendously during the Soviet period of Russian history (1917-1991). In fact, Russian literature and art have always been well-known for probing the innermost recesses of the individual’s behavior.
The idea of the revolutionary transformation of life runs through the whole of Soviet poetry (1917-1991). Soviet poetry carries a message of friendship, loyalty and brotherhood. It stands up for the world’s essential values such as motherhood, creativity, honesty, love, the joy of communion with nature and peace between all peoples.
Three prominent Russian/Soviet poets have had a tremendous influence in Russian culture. They are Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak and Yevgeniy Yevtushenko.
Anna Akhmatova, 1889–1966, is associated in the reader’s mind with the tragedy of a lonely soul seeking understanding and sympathy. Akhmatova’s WWII time and postwar poetry, however, speaks of patriotism and human dignity. Her writing is simple and her dreams are perfectly presented so they become tangible. Shortly before she died, Anna Akhmatova received an honorary degree of Oxford University.
The Russian Soil
In all the world no people are so tearless,
So proud, so simple as are we.
In lockets for a charm we do not wear it,
In verse about its arrows do not weep,
With Eden’s blissful vales do not compare it,
Untroubled does it leave our bitter sleep.
To traffic in it is a thought that never,
Not even in our hearts, remote, takes root.
Before our eyes its image does not hover,
Though we be beggared, sick, despairing, mute.
It’s the mud of our shoes, it is rubble,
It’s the sand on our teeth, it is slush,
It’s the pure, taintless dust that we crumble,
That we pound, that we mix, that we crush.
But we call it our own for ‘twill open one day
To receive and embrace us and turn us to clay.
Boris Pasternak, 1890–1960, was a son of a well-known painter in Russia. He was educated in Germany and later became a poet of world stature. His early poetry was quite complicated, but his later style was simple and clear. By using his own original syntax, he revealed the essence of phenomena and brought out their philosophical content with great skill. Pasternak is the author of the classic novel “Doctor Zhivago” and one of the best Russian translators of Shakespeare and Goethe. He lived a very modest and dedicated life and only in the 1970s did Soviet officials recognize his works.
It’s unbecoming to be famous
It’s unbecoming to be famous.
It isn’t that lifts aloft.
Maintaining archives tends to maim us.
Hoard manuscripts and you are lost.
The aim of art is self-discharge
And not the clap-trap of success.
It’s shameless to be looming large
For merits which are but a guess.
Live on through life without imposture,
Live so as in the final end
To hear the love-call of the future,
Expanse and distance to befriend.
Hiatus—leave them in your fortune
But not by any means in papers.
Although the process be a torture,
Let whole chapters of life escape us.
And ducking down into obscurity,
Conceal your steps beneath its cloak.
So landscapes sometimes hide their purity
Beneath a veil of fog or smoke.
Though others will retrace in hot
Pursuit the imprints of your feet,
Remember: you yourself must not
Distinguish triumph from defeat.
Not even by the slightest fraction
Must you your proper self transcend.
Just be alive, in thought and action,Alive and always to the end.
Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, 1933–2017, was a leader of the contemporary Soviet and Russian poets. He was especially popular among the students and young people. Yevtushenko poetry is patriotic, dramatic, and imbued with a sense of civic responsibility. Yevtushenko traveled a great deal around the world, representing the former Soviet Union in a highly patriotic and heroic fashion. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, he lived and taught poetry in the United States.
Say, do the Russians want a war?
Say, do the Russians want a war?
Go ask our land, then ask once more
That silence lingering in the air
Above the birch and poplar there.
Beneath those trees lie soldier lads
Whose sons will answer for their dads.
To add to what you learned before,
Say—Do the Russians want a war?
Those soldiers died on every hand
Not only for their own dear land,
But so the world at night could sleep
And never have to wake and weep.
New York and Paris spend their nights
Asleep beneath the leaves and lights.
The answer’s in their dreams, be sure.
Say—Do the Russians want a war?
Sure, we know how to fight a war,
But we don’t want to see once more
The soldiers falling all around,
Their countryside a battleground.
Ask those who give the soldiers life,
Go ask my mother, ask my wife,
Then you will have to ask no more,
Say—Do the Russians want a war?
Indeed, current U.S. administration in Washington D.C. must take cultural, historic, and psychological behavior factors into consideration in order to achieve an effective and peaceful outcome in dealing with today’s Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
In the recent debate with former Alaska State Sen. John Coghill, a true gentleman if ever there was one, I could not broach all of the flaws that exist in our current state constitution. One of them is Article 1, Section 5:
“Every person may freely speak, write, and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right.”
When one looks at the federal “Bill of Rights” and in most of our own in the Alaska constitution, they are worded with restrictions placed upon government, rather than granting permission to citizens. The rights then are seen as pre-existing, given to us by Natural Law from the Almighty.
“No law shall be made …” and “No person shall be denied …” is how all of them should properly and justly read. It is easily understood that were it not this way, we would suffer under the rule, “The Government giveth, and the Government taketh away.”
But read Section 5 of Alaska’s Constitution again. That is precisely what it does — it grants us permission, with a finger-wagging warning that should we abuse it, we would pay a penalty. It goes without saying that abuse of the freedom of speech was already thoroughly ensconced in American statutes and Anglo-Saxon common law, and was not necessary to be included.
Even during the debates held in 1955, this was seen as a danger. None other than the last living convention survivor, and the Dean of Alaskan liberals Vic Fisher, understood that the wording was fraught with potential mischief. He was assured that Idaho’s state constitution had similar wording and had therefore been “tested” — as if it could never be abused in the future.
The liberal Mr. Fisher was on to something important in 1955. I wonder what his thoughts are today regarding the abuse that is now ongoing in the state legislature with the heroic Rep. David Eastman.
But the template of our vaunted state Constitution of 1955 came out of a liberal think-tank associated with the Rockefeller created-and-funded University of Chicago, called the Public Administration Service, or PAS. Their various officers, who were Socialist New Deal retreads, were even invited to advise, observe, and speak at the 1955 confab in Fairbanks.
A word on the term “holocaust,” which Eastman used in reference to something other than the Jewish Holocaust. I hate to say it, but the term seems to have been patented by the liberals, and I am here to inform them that it is not.
The prolife movement has used it for nearly 50 years, and will never stop using the term. If it doesn’t actually parallel the Jewish holocaust, it is because the body count of aborted babies in the US alone now exceeds 10 times the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis.
But they don’t count, you see. And why?
Because the liberals told us so.
The politically conservative Jews, such as Andrew Barr, the secretary of the UK’s Jews for Justice, are also warning us that we are going down a terrible path with cancel culture. If the witches’ brew that is the Democratic Party succeeds in ousting Rep. Eastman, the rest of us will be next in our workplace, schools and churches.
House Speaker Louise Stutes and House Majority Leader Chris Tuck are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Legislative bodies must extend courtesy to their confreres. If you want to pass bills, today’s opponent is tomorrow’s ally. Throwing bean-balls at the head of conservative mavericks by inviting childish and bed-wetting witnesses, eager to throw mud through “guilt by association” is a threat to the other members, and is deliberately meant to be. It will result in an end to legislative comity. It might eventually lead to a modern version of Sen. Preston Brooks and the caning of Sen. Charles Sumner.
Aside from having to modify Article 1, Section 5 of the Alaska Constitution, it appears that the hellbent, dangerous, and evil witch hunters in the state legislature will have to be voted out — if we can restore election integrity.
Should Eastman suffer some sort of legislative discipline, or expulsion, a bone-chilling nightmare will descend on us here in the Last Frontier.
To quote Donald Trump’s speech: “They weren’t really after me, they were after you. I was just in their way.”
Bob Bird is chair of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show, the Talk of the Kenai on KSRM radio, Kenai.
Reversing a pro-mining ruling from the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration’s Department of Interior says it will not allow work on the road to the Ambler Mining District to proceed. Instead, it wants to review what it says was a faulty environmental impact statement process.
Work on the permitting for that state road started before 2010, with Gov. Sean Parnell advancing it as a “Roads to Resources” initiative. Tribes and environmentalists have opposed the road.
The announcement by the Department of Justice and Department of Interior was delayed until after Sen. Lisa Murkowski had left the Alaska Capitol today, where she had given remarks to the Alaska Legislature in a joint session. She didn’t mention the Ambler Road in her remarks, but referred to a mining task force at the Department of Interior. Many in Washington, D.C. knew in advance that the decision would be against Alaska’s interest in mining development at Ambler.
“Today the Department of Justice filed a response brief in the U.S. District Court for Alaska related to the development of a 211-mile road that would provide access to the Ambler Mining District in northwest Alaska. As authorized, the Ambler Road would cross the traditional homeland of many Alaska Native communities, including Koyukon, Tanana Athabascans and lfiupiat peoples. The road would cross 25 discontinuous miles of BLM-managed land and 26 miles of NPS-managed land within the Gates of the Arctic National Preserve,” Justice wrote.
”The Interior Department is asking the court to remand the right-of-way decision to the agency to correct the significant deficiencies we have identified in the underlying analyses. During the review, the Department will reconsider the analyses related to National Environmental Protection Act, National Historic Preservation Act, and Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act,” the statement said.
“Additionally, the Interior Department will suspend the right-of-way for the road during the review period to ensure that no ground-disturbing activity takes place that could potentially impact the resources in question,” DOI said.
The decision is a blow to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state agency that is the leader in trying to get the road built from the Dalton Highway to the mining district.
Late in the evening, the Alaska delegation issued a lengthy statement, in which all three members criticized the Biden Administration:
“America’s lack of mineral security should be one of the Biden administration’s highest priorities, but its incoherent policies are making the problem worse. It’s stunning: on the very same day the President attempted to tout ‘progress’ on mineral development, his administration backtracked and set back this crucial project, which will enable Alaska to responsibly produce a range of needed minerals,” Sen. Murkowski said in her statement. “This decision will harm Alaska, including the Alaska Natives who support and will benefit from this project. Nor could it come at a worse time: how can the Biden administration possibly watch Russia leverage Europe on natural gas, and then decide to put the United States in the exact same position on minerals? We will hold the administration to an aggressive timeline for the completion of this analysis and expect them to allow as much work on the project as possible to continue, even as that occurs.”
“This filing is a continuation of the Biden administration’s self-destructive policies that target Alaska families and American workers while seriously undermining our national security,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said in his statement. “As has been the case with many of this administration’s executive actions, the only winners are the far-left radical environmental groups that want to shut down all Alaska economic opportunities, and aggressive dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, both of whom can hardly believe their luck that the leader of the free world—their biggest adversary—continues to unilaterally disarm America in some of our nation’s most important areas of strength: energy, natural resources and critical minerals.”
“Today’s move by the Department of the Interior could not have come at a worse time. We are in the midst of a continued global supply chain crisis that has seriously constrained the availability of critical minerals. Frankly, we can and should be responsibly developing critical minerals here in Alaska instead of continuing to be reliant on adversarial nations and the whims of geopolitical faceoffs,” Congressman Don Young said in his statement. “At this very moment, Vladimir Putin and his cronies appear to have their sights set on invading Ukraine. Why, then, would President Biden reward Putin by hamstringing our economy and Alaskan mining operations by burying the proposed Ambler Road project under mountains of paperwork and bureaucracy? This is not just bad policy but also an affront to our national security. The Ambler project represents a tremendous opportunity for our state, and it has successfully undergone legally required environmental reviews, including an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). To require another EIS is a significant waste of both taxpayer dollars and employee resources.”
Senate challenger Kelly Tshibaka, who is trying to unseat Sen. Murkowski, also commented, saying that when Murkowski voted to confirm Deb Haaland as Secretary of Interior, that had consequences for Alaska.
“Once again, from over 4,000 miles away, Deb Haaland has decided that she knows more about how Alaska should manage its natural resources than we do. By undertaking further study of the Ambler mining road, she is simply employing the environmental extremist tactic to kill a project they oppose. Even though Haaland has never set foot in Alaska, despite promises to visit to hear our concerns and learn about our priorities, she has repeatedly enacted the Biden Administration policies that directly attack our industries, our working families, and our entire state economy. No other state has been specifically and systematically targeted as Alaska has been under Biden and Haaland,” Tshibaka said.
“I support development, infrastructure, mining, and job creation occurring in a process that includes the perspective of all affected Alaskans, because we know better how to responsibly use our own resources than some cabal of unelected Washington, D.C. bureaucrats. We can address the concerns of Alaska Native communities without shutting down the road completely.
“To be clear: Deb Haaland would not be the Secretary of the Interior without Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who cast the tie-breaking committee vote to advance Haaland’s nomination for final confirmation. Murkowski even expressed reservations about Haaland’s radical environmental positions and the harm she could cause Alaska, but she voted for her anyway to please her D.C. pals. Murkowski continues to talk a big game about infrastructure, but all we see here in Alaska are projects getting killed by federal bureaucrats she put in charge. When I am the next senator from Alaska, I will always do what is in the best interests of our state, and look for nominees who know how to get to ‘yes’ on issues that are important to us, instead of beginning and ending at ‘no,’” Tshibaka said.
The Washington State Legislature may enact an extraordinary tax on refined fuel shipped north to Alaska. The proposed tax on diesel and gasoline shipped north would add an additional 6 cents per gallon on fuel coming the Anacortes refinery in north Puget Sound. The tax would also apply to Idaho- and Oregon-bound fuel.
It would affect everything from the cost of running Toyo stoves, home furnaces, and personal and commercial vehicles in a state that produces oil, but doesn’t have the ability to refine all its own products.
About 80 percent of the barrels of oil produced in Alaska are transported by tanker to refineries in Washington and California. Alaska has three operational refineries in Nikiski, Valdez, and North Pole, with a combined processing capacity of about 164,000 barrels of crude oil per day, according to the Energy Information Administration. They produce gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel for Alaska markets. But the current output from the Trans Alaska Pipeline System is about 500,000 barrels per day.
Big Lake Rep. Kevin McCabe has a plan for that. He has proposed a tax on Washington — “a $15 surcharge on oil to any state where the state taxes us on the finished product,” he said.
HB 361is the same bill proposed by then-Rep. Mike Chenault in 2009. McCabe just dusted it off and refiled it with new dates.
The second bill, HB 393, is a proposed tax that would hit the Washington-based fishing industry working in Alaska. It’s a 6-cent-per-pound fish tax that would be broadly applied, but then be credited back to boat owners who live and operate in Alaska.
“I’m tired of being thought of as a Washington colony,” McCabe said last week. “I’m tired of them taxing us and depending on us for their needs.”
McCabe said he would be willing to pull his bill if Washington lawmakers pull theirs.
McCabe said, “I have talked some Washington Republican legislators who have said ‘thank you.'”
The proposed gas tax from Washington comes at a time when fuel prices in Alaska are soaring. Today, President Joe Biden acknowledged the prices at the pump could go higher due to his sanctions on Russia.
“Defending freedom will have costs for us as well, and here at home. We need to be honest about that,” he said.
“My Administration is using every tool at our disposal to protect Americans from rising prices at the pump. We are closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption, and we are executing a plan to secure the stability of global energy supplies,” Biden said.
In 2020, voter outreach was largely done with Zoom, but back in the now-ancient days of 2014 people knocked on doors the old-fashioned way as part of a statewide effort to defeat a new oil tax. In an upscale Juneau neighborhood, a house was rented by three men from Ukraine; they were not voters in Alaska.
The campaign volunteer that day, opposing oil tax increases, was surprised the Ukrainians had a fluency with the U.S. Constitution that easily matched that of a well-educated American. They had an adoration for the Constitution of the sort you might encounter in someone who enjoyed talking baseball statistics, a particular genre of music, or some variety of cuisine. But their reverence was far stronger.
“I believe that they also could have flawlessly recited the Declaration of Independence, each taking one line after the other. It was somewhat humbling to me. We all can too easily take for granted what is handed to us,” the campaign volunteer said this week.
Who were these Ukrainian men? They were in Juneau as fish processing laborers. It’s not unusual for people from eastern Europe, the Philippines, or Mexico to come to Alaska in groups to work in the seafood industry. They liked the work, they said, but would soon leave for home at the end of their current contract rather than begin a new contract as.
Why? “The Russians are killing our women and babies.” These were articulate, educated men, not the kind you would not expect to back down from a fight.
“I cannot help but think of them at this time,” the Alaskan campaign worker said to Must Read Alaska this week.
In Eastern Europe, the distinction U.S. media have established between strong-man dictatorships is that there is the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, (NAZIs and fascism) at one end, and Bernie Sanders/Karl Marx Socialism-Communism at the other.
People who have directly suffered and/or people who have fought to keep those regimes at bay see them as one-in-the-same. These survivors are correct: If you were to have visited Berlin and Moscow on May 1, 1939, the banners, parades, military demonstrations, and symbols would have been pretty much exactly the same as the ones we see now from the Left; only the languages, German and Russian, were different.
Russia, or the Soviet Union, and Hitler’s Third Reich invaded Poland together; they only split when each wanted the same spoils and territory.
People in Ukraine, like the men who worked in Juneau, have suffered because of Putin — and Stalin, Hitler, Khrushchev before him — and any distinctions between ideologies is no more important to them than is the difference between the .30 caliber bullets from Russian Moisins (and now AK rifles), and the Third Reich .32 caliber bullets coming out of 8X57 Mausers.
All of Eastern Europe is expecting to be scathed to one degree or another. Even Finland has boosted its military readiness as international tensions rise over Russia’s armed build-up near Ukraine; the swearing in of Finnish volunteers has traditionally always been done with the oath being sworn as the volunteer turns and faces Russia.
Ukrainian women from 18 to 60 have been called up for the draft and will comprise at least 15 percent of people being put on the front lines to confront Russia. Between 15,000 and 30,000 volunteers from foreign countries have come to Ukraine to serve in defense roles.
It’s a safe bet that some Alaskans are there already, serving in different branches of the military.
The Russians have said that if they attack, all communications and navigation in Ukraine will be stopped. This will be done by Russia, North Korea or China, or even accomplished by a non-governmental proxy.
That destruction of technologies could slop over to Alaska. Air and marine navigation that depends on satellites could be impacted or even curtailed. Communication technology that utilizes satellites could be threatened by China both as a way to warn the U.S. and to support Russia. Utilities could be interrupted by Russian hackers. Government and industrial activities could be impacted by hacker mischief, or by hostile government action that would be blamed on hackers. Potential interruptions in barge and air traffic could occur if either is threatened in any way by Russian, Chinese or N. Korean actions.
The U.S. is already plagued by supply chain interruptions that implicate China. One look at the Port of Seattle waterfront tells the story for the Northwest, with hundreds, if not thousands of containers stacked on shore and on barges in Puget Sound.
Alaskans can be prepared for possible changes, even if those changes seem today to have little likelihood of happening. Keeping a battery-operated short wave radio ready is not an outrageous idea. Stocking up on supplies of commodities not produced in Alaska is also timely. What we have learned from the Covid pandemic early days is big box stores in Alaska have their inventory out on shelves. There are no warehouses to resupply. Holding onto 500 rounds seems prudent. Currency and currency substitutes could come in handy by the second month of any general supply disruption.
Anyone who believes that the Russian armed forces can quickly roll over the top of Ukrainian resistance easily need only look at what the Taliban accomplished with little more than rifles, improvised mines, and motorbikes in Afghanistan. This could go on for a while — a long while. Ukrainians and Russians have been fighting for generations, and they’re good at protracted conflict.
It’s not lost on Alaskans that Putin made his one very successful move on Ukraine while President Barack Obama was in office, and now Putin seems poised to move again, just when we have a weak and possibly demented man in the White House.
The ignominious way the Biden Administration departed from Afghanistan last year may have emboldened strong-man dictators throughout the world, including in Russia, N. Korea and China.
Putin was largely contained during the Donald Trump years even though the media would have us believe all sorts of theories and conspiracies regarding Trump and Russia. The chess board between Russia, China, Ukraine, and President Biden has very real implications for all of us.
Tuckerman Babcock, a longtime influencer in Alaska conservative politics, has filed an official letter of intent to run for Senate. A resident of the Soldotna-Kenai area, he registered with the Alaska Public Offices Commission on Tuesday morning as a candidate for what is now Senate Seat D, the area of the state now served by Sen. Peter Micciche.
Babcock was born in Venezuela and moved to Alaska as a child with his parents in 1966. He graduated from high school in Anchorage and from college in 1983. He worked for three state representatives and two senators; he also worked for two governors: Gov. Walter Hickel, where he was the executive director of the Redistricting Board, special assistant for constituent services, and director of Boards and Commissions; he was chief of staff and senior policy advisor to Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
Married to Kristie Babcock, he is also former chairman of the Alaska Republican Party and served as a commissioner on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and at Matanuska Electric Association, where he was manager of government and strategic affairs, director of human resources, and assistant manager.
Senate Seat D represents Nikiski, Salamatof, Kenai, Soldotna, Sterling, Cooper Landing, K-Beach, Funny River, Hope, Moose Pass and Bear Creek areas of the Kenai Peninsula.
With ranked-choice voting now the method for choosing candidates at the general election, it’s likely Babcock will sail through the August primary due to his strong reputation for hard work, family values, and strategic thinking, and then face fellow Republican Sen. Micciche on the November ballot. Micciche is Senate president and has served in the Senate since 2013, for what was then called Seat O, prior to the 2021 redistricting process. Micciche has filed for reelection for 2022.
On the Kenai Peninsula, District 29 (now District 8), District 30 (now District 7) and the Republican Women of the Kenai have all voted unanimously to endorse Charlie Pierce for governor. These are party activists who typically raise money and volunteer to support candidates.
Pierce announced in January that he would be a candidate for governor, running as a Republican against the sitting Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The Alaska Republican Party, at its January meeting, endorsed Dunleavy, but since then Republican Chris Kurka, who announced his campaign in November, is working to get his district’s Republican endorsement.
Both Kurka and Pierce are expected to be nominated for endorsements at the Alaska Republican Party’s convention in Fairbanks, April 21-23. The party may vote to endorse them, along with Dunleavy, which would allow the party to spend money to support their candidacies; without a party endorsement, the party cannot financially support their campaigns. The effect might be slight, since the party doesn’t have a lot of cash anyway.
With ranked-choice voting, the top four vote getters in the primary proceed to the general election ballot, where voters rank them in the order they prefer. That means there may be two or more Republicans on the November ballot. Also running are fake-independent Bill Walker and Democrat Les Gara, both of which are aggressively raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and behaving as a friendly pair who understand how to work the ranked-choice ballot to their advantage.
