Police Chief of Seldovia is telling people who own homes in the tiny Kachemak Bay community they are not welcome — to turn their boats around and leave.
Scott Ogan, former legislator, considers Seldovia his legal address, as it’s where he is registered to vote and where he spends much of the year.
But according to the mandate from Police Chief Paul Cushman, if you have a home elsewhere, you should not come to your bug-out cabin in Seldovia.
“People that have a secondary home here and a primary home residence somewhere else, should not be returning to their secondary Seldovia homes right now. It is pretty simple and clearly defined who is allowed to travel,” Cushman wrote.
“I am sure you may have heard that I am contacting people that arrive in Seldovia to make sure they have legitimate reasons to be here that follow the state mandates. This will continue and those found in violation may face consequences for their actions as allowable per the mandates,” Cushman wrote. In other word, fines and arrests.
Ogan said he confronted Chief Cushman and said that he intends to spend the summer there, as he has for years, and as other Alaskans do.
The City of Seldovia collects over $280,000 in property taxes each year from property owners, but for those who are not living there year round, the current message is: You can own a home and pay the property taxes on it to the City of Seldovia. You just can’t actually use it if you are not a year-round resident.
Will Mr. Cushman be expecting to be arrested when he shows up to Soldotna or Anchorage on a grocery run?
I don’t see why he should. Such travel is allowed by the Mandates.
If a person arrives and self-quarantines at their home for 14 days, I don’t see why they couldn’t go to their home and hunker down. They would need to bring enough supplies and goods for the minimum of 14 days so they have no community contact.
Supposed to be hunkering where they are, not moving about. Dumb sheeple.
The only sheeple here is you. Do exactly what the government tells you what to do without question. Cower down and wait for them to tell you what you need and when you need it. Bow down to your masters the petty little dictators that have popped up in every State, bourough, city, and town.
Wow. Kind of anti-government aren’t you? I think there is a pill for that.
You aren’t one of those people who only think of themselves are you Duane? We may be on the same side politically since you fly, but it is hard to tell. I don’t exceed the speed limit either when driving. I’m a good little sheep.
Not anti government, pro constitution.
Just because we both fly doesn’t mean we are on the same political field.
I don’t consider my attitude as only thinking of myself. Maintaining social distancing, increasing cleanliness, even wearing a mask in public, self quarantining for a couple of weeks, are all good ideas. The government has gone far beyond those things and into the realm of unconstitutional mandates. We are, theoretically at least, a free people and should be allowed to make up our own minds based on advise given not by being forced to by threats of fines or jail. I’m an at risk person, if I catch the virus I die. I’ll take my chances just as I do every time I climb in an airplane, drive a car, go out in a boat, visit a different State or country, or a myriad of other things can can get me killed. Everyone dies, I prefer to go on living until that happens.
Come on Duane, it is an order of Dunleavy himself that you cannot travel interstate, if it is not for essential (medical and food). I’ve seen you so many time praising Dunleavy, maybe you should follow him one more time.
I’ll acknowledge Dunleavy when he’s right and disregard him when he’s wrong. Unlike those that blindly follow like sheep to the slaughter.
The last person that that supposedly was never wrong died over two thousand years ago.
If you maintain a safe distance, say like you go from your boat slip to your car to your house, you are not putting anyone at risk.
Get over your fear.
Only if they flew in from outside Alaska. Otherwise, stay where you are.
ie. Local’s right to sound health outweighs property rights of non-residents. That’s basically the issue.
Please define a “ nonresident” with a legal description?
What about the rights of the locals to the revenue those simmering in Seldovia bring to the community?
Get over your fear.
Not only can you not go into grocery stores any more, now you can’t even get into towns. one hell of a sneaky way to support communism. Let’s introduce a virus and then the government can tell the people where they can and can’t go. I understand the safety and containment issue but the similarity is astonishing.
Those that would give up essential rights for the illusion of safety deserve neither.
Where do you live that you can’t go to the grocery store?
All Rights Matter!
Yes they do. Like the right for a government to protect its people.
Get over your fear.
Papers, please.
These articles about Seldovia and Homer aren’t helping. I am a volunteer EMS responder. I am fearful for my community. In all communities, especially small ones, there are finite resources in terms of materials and people who may be able to respond to EMS calls. Seldovia is small and isolated. The course of this virus can make for rapid decompensation and need for critical care in a matter of hours. If it gets to these small towns, people will die needlessly. In this time of social upheaval and increased risks, it seems rather selfish to place yourself and the community at increased risk. This is going to take a couple of years to get through and then we will be changed as a world. We can choose to work together or we will tear ourselves apart.
While informative and entertaining, these article do serve a purpose. They get us talking, so that we don’t kill each other.
Get over it. If you’re fearful, don’t respond; panicked responders aren’t useful.
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What’d you do when SARS, MERS, swine flu, AIDS, Ebola, and regular old flu hit?
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We’ve no factual clue China flu is any worse than these.
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Apparently you’ve no clue what herd immunity is, how people acquire it, how a “community” can’t survive without it.
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Only government, post-Constitutional government, can totally prevent “rapid decompensation”, right?
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Wonder how many people die needlessly from car wrecks, drug overdoses, regular ole flu, but we don’t worry about them because those numbers are socially acceptable, right?
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Who are you to say this is going to take a couple of years to get through and then we’ll be changed as a world? You know this for a fact about America and Americans?
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Well, anyone who remembers the fable about the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf might agree with the “change” part.
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C’mon, you’re better than that. Don’t buy the lies, however compelling, from those whose purpose for the last three years is rapidly decompensating your very way of
life, your economy, and your country.
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And if it takes some tearing apart to fix that problem, let’s get it done, chop chop!
We have a shot for the ole flu. Not this one yet. Huge difference.
We don’t have a shot that’s guaranteed to work every time, for everyone, for every version of the ole flu.
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We even accept that thousands of people will die from complications caused by the ole flu.
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Government officials don’t even bother falsifying ole-flu death statistics, like they do with the China flu.
We don’t get so panic-stricken over the ole flu that we roll over, play dead, give up our Constitutional rights to governments who are oh so eager to take them, and decide when they -might- return them.
Between 18,000 and 50,000 people die of the flu in the United States every single year.
That’s nothing. According to Consumer Reports, there are 440,000 medical error deaths a year in the US. You are much more likely to die at the hands of a medical professional than you are from the flu, or even COVID-19.
When smallpox, and various other things over the last few European dominated centuries hit Native American villages, they had between an 80% to 100% mortality rate. The common cold killed off whole villages in S. America’s Amazon river area.
Ask them about “herd immunity”.
Alaska’s villages are still isolated enough to have a somewhat limited herd immunity. What may kill .4% of the rest of the world, could kill 10% or more of villagers.
Excellent point, Comrade.
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Such pristine, virgin places must be walled off 24/7/365, protected by armed guards, watch towers, razor wire, mines, internal and external surveillance, and dogs… don’t forget dogs.
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People trying to enter or leave without properly issued government permits must be peremptorily imprisoned indefinitely.
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We know such methods effectively protect Americans from contaminants crossing the Mexican border or arriving from China.
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Of course, these methods must be enforced immediately on Alaska’s pristine, virgin villages such as Seldovia who’ve never had contact with the outside world, who’ve never even seen people outside their closely-knit village.
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Problem solved, Comrade.
You can choose to live free and take life as it comes or you can choose to cower in you homes and let the government tell you what to do. If you are that fearful please stay in your homes and then you will have zero chance of encountering me.
You are old though Duane. You are ground zero. As a marine, you were taught to follow orders. I guess once a marine not always a marine in your case. Semper Fidelis.
Scared of you at 73 years old. Ex marine forgot how to take orders.
I wasn’t just taught to take orders I was also taught to think for myself.
Nazi concentration camp guards were just taught to take orders.
……..but you were taught to take orders.
Are you still going to the city on shopping/medical trips? How about your neighbors?
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If they’re going to the city they’re getting exposed like a city dweller.
Isn’t that the point…to change our world? But this change will not be for the better.
Get over your fear.
I’ve got a place in Seldovia and don’t mind helping the locals a bit by not visiting.
Beautiful place and most of the 300 year round residents aren’t living high on the hog. Let them be and realize that for you a trip to the doc is a trot down the street but for them it’s something completely different and significantly more inconvenient and expensive.
The trick here is to remember not to be selfish. All it takes is one self important DB to ruin it for an entire town.
OK, I’ll bite……..so if a homeowner can’t go to Seldovia why not also make it such that a homeowner in west Anchorage cannot visit east Anchorage. Or maybe you should not be allowed to leave your block……or your street. Alaskans used to be freedom loving independent minded folks. Seems like now they are just Seattleites moved north.
No, we are people that want to slow or stop the spread of this sickness. Just stay home till it’s over or you get a shot in the arm which ever comes first.
Good ol’Greg – what if “just stay home” exceeds a year? Is that acceptable to you? I bet you’re the rich guy who’s all cushy in his ivory tower looking down at us lowly plebs as the economy goes up in flames.
Ya know, I can’t stand people like you. I had a neighbor across the street from me who had a holier than thou attitude like you and I gotta say, it was a marvelous day when he moved away. We actually had a block party when he did. It was the best day ever.
Wow, you don’t know me. It may go over a year. They say up to 1 1/2 years before the shot is ready. I can wait. No, I’m not rich. I am drawing a fixed income now. I’m not holier than thou. Just trying to keep people safe. If you don’t have tolerance for folks who have a difference of opinion, you might as well live in a cult. Maybe you do already.
So I expect you to stay home for 1 1/2 years with no human contact. We don’t want you to get anybody sick from your values and stupidity. The world is not that simple and the virus will never go away and people need to provide for their well being. If you dont like it then move.
Why this one? Why not all sickness. Just keep these laws in place and no one will ever get sick again, right?
Regarding C-19
Never mind that over 90% of people have zero to moderate symptoms. Never mind that there are treatments now available that can mitigate more significant symptoms.
Nope, lock it down. That’ll work.
It saves lives. The magic pills don’t work on everyone.
There are no drugs or vaccines that work on everyone. If you are waiting for that to happen then you are going to be in your house for a very long time.
Mark R. it is already the case, with the shelter-in-place from the beloved governor (at least it seems here) Dunleavy, you cannot travel away from your house if not for essential, aka medical and food. The only grey zone is exercising, and with the shelter-in-ban, it is explicitly written exercise in your own community/neighborhood. So guess, what if you leave in West Anchorage, you should not exercise in East Anchorage. It is that simple, per the words of Governor Dunleavy.
Once upon a time we had fellow Alaskans who had enough common sense and respect for other Alaskans that they wouldn’t purposefully put their lives in danger, now…well not so much. Going into any village just because you can is an infantile action of people who would risk the lives of others so they can spend a weekend away…sickening, selfish, and pathetic.
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Sadly most of the people complaining about their constitutional rights being violated have little or no understanding of what their constitutional rights are, if they are being violated, or how they are being violated.
You hit the nail on the head. People wanting to do their own thing, which I can’t fault them for wanting to do it. But without regard for the health of their fellow Alaskans, that makes them pretty selfish and someone I have no use for. Just can’t handle a little cabin fever. Unemployment +$600 is paying their regular salary so no loss there. Just sad.
Unemployment +600 weekly is my monthly. Good thing that I have no more vices that cost money. Kicked out my most recent ladies because they wanted to keep running around with their friends, wouldn’t shelter in place.
I had to give up my business aspirations. Couldn’t carry the expense, and have just recently gotten over the losses.
Born too long ago to be comfortable with websites and other computer stuff.
Fear, encouraged by dodgy reporting, is motivating people to accept limitations that have unprovable efficacy.
China’s numbers can’t be trusted: they have largely quit reporting.
We had our first reported case in the US on January 21. Given a doubling rate of 4 days, over 2 million people should have contracted the virus over the last 84 days.
Case mortality is number of total cases (denominator) and total deaths (numerator). A 2.6% case mortality rate, 57,000 people should have already died.
Right now, we are using a flawed denominator, due to testing limitations and the fact that many people are only being tested under limited circumstances.
If the four day doubling is accurate, (yes that’s a big if), and the case mortality rate is 5.5% (another big if), as the current reporting claims, we should have 112,000 reported deaths.
You see how deep into the weeds it all gets?
It gets even more complicated when you learn that death certificates have included those who tested positive post-mortem, and such certificates have been changed to show cause of death as Covid-19.
Deb, The concept of doubling time (T2) as a constant in time has limited value in modeling a pandemic in a modern human population. In the present case humans are not behaving like balls in an enclosure bouncing off one another w/o regard for the behavior of their neighbors. In the absence of effective testing and vaccination in the USA a significant fraction of the population have practiced social distancing in several forms by choice or mandate Although other factors are certainly in play as well, the result is significant time variation of T2. From the beginning the T2 (5 day moving average) of deaths from COVID-19 declined to a minimum of 2.74 on March 24 with the number of deaths = 781. If it had remained at that value ’til now, the total # of deaths on April 11 would be 74,168 rather than the reported 20,555 (saving 54,000 lives?).
Two days ago it was 5.66 (and rising). If it had been 5.66 March 24 and remained constant, the number of deaths today would have been only 7079!
The economic toll of shutting business in the country down and cranking the printing presses into hyper-drive will likely be staggering compared to closing the borders and doing the social distancing thing early on in the epidemic.
All it took was a little fear mongering about a pandemic based on a faulty junk science model for America to become a Totalitarian S-Hole like China. Pathetic that anyone even abides by these stupid and often unconstitutional mandates. In fact I was out and about today and it seemed more and more people are waking up to the Truth. I hope the US AG carries through with his threats about defending the 1st Amendment next week and that RINO Dunleavy is one of the subjects of his actions.
Amendment V of the US Constitution makes this action patently unconstitutional:
“…..nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
And how exactly have your 5th Amendment rights been deprived of you? Was it done without due process of the law? If your 5th Amendment rights have been deprived in someway, I certainly hope you are following the due process of the law and you are challenging this unconstitutional act in court…since that is where the next step of the due process of the law would be round. Are you doing that or just ignorantly ranting about your constitutional rights being deprived without any standing?
Due process of law aka mandates.
. The chief did not tell people to stay away. Here’s what he said.
The Seldovia Police Chief’s letter to the people is here: https://storage.googleapis.com/wzukusers/user-34471240/documents/5e90a9ce3a3e2xQ6vBbP/SPD%20mandate%20letter.pdf
The Statute giving the Governor authority to restrict travel is here:
https://www.touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/Statutes/Title26/Chapter23/Section020.htm?
The State of Alaska COVID-19 information (with links to Federal CDC and HS information is here: http://dhss.alaska.gov/dph/Epi/id/Pages/COVID-19/default.aspx
Scroll about half way down the page to find the “Health mandate” including those mentioned in the Seldovia Police Cief’s notice; 011, 012 and the FAQs.
PS: Though others similarly situated do, According to the taxing authority data., neither Mr. Ogan nor his business own any taxable property in Seldovia.
“I know of no safe depositor of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion (freedom of choice) , the remedy is NOT to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
Thomas Jefferson –
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