We Alaskans love ourselves some natural resource development, relying on the oil, logging, fishing and mining industries to fill our state’s coffers. It is because of our abundance in natural resources that we have no state income tax and such a generous tax climate for businesses wishing to dive into the extraction fray that we rank second in the nation for business friendly tax climates.

One would think that Gov. Sean Parnell, being the education governor that he is, would recognize another greater and more powerful resource we have in this state—our youth. Who better to understand the complex nature of balancing our resource extraction, infrastructure development and subsistence needs than our future generations of Alaskans? With such a critical need for highly trained scientific minds, development of this local resource should be a priority.

The Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics has released a state by state ranking of how well schools across the United States are preparing grade-school students for future careers in science and engineering. Alaska ranks 39th out of 50, with a score of 2.2 on a scale of 5.

It’s true, Alaska is unique in its vast rural network of communities that are only accessible by plane or boat. Life is different when you have to hop on an airplane to fill your pantry or grab a fishing pole or gun to fill your freezer. But that child from Dutch Harbor will have a more unique and realistic, innate perspective of the balance required to sustain the regional needs of the people alongside the needed development. So will the child from Bethel, or Valdez, Barrow, Pedro Bay, Anchorage or Fairbanks.

So, what can we do to develop this outstanding natural resource? Governor Parnell knows: get out the veto stamp.
• Roof replacement and structural repairs for Anchorage schools – VETO
• School renovation in Nulato, AK – VETO
• Buckland school heating system improvements – VETO
• Coffman Cove Community Clinic – VETO
• Connecting Communities to Alaska’s Highway System – VETO
• Connecting Remote Communities Program – VETO
• Fairbanks Noel Wien Library upgrades – VETO
• Friends of the Children: Fairbanks Mentoring Program Pilot Project – VETO
• Goodnews Bay – Building, Landfill and Community Projects – VETO
• Herman Hutchens Elementary Fire Alarm, Clock and Intercom Replacement – VETO
• Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska: Alaska’s Traditional Knowledge Science Development Project – VETO
• Sleetmute School roof replacement – VETO
• Kaltag School Mechanical and Electrical Upgrades – VETO
• Kivalina School Renovation/Upgrades – VETO
• Mentasta Lake Health Care Clinic Match – VETO
• Metlakatla School Underground Fuel Tank Replacement – VETO
• Nenana School ADA Upgrades and Erosion Control – VETO
• Nenana School Major Maintenance – VETO
• Rural CAP Child Development Center – VETO
• Sitka School Disctrict Vocational Education Facility – VETO
• Southeast Regional Resource Center Heating System Replacement – VETO
• Tenakee School roof replacement – VETO
• Tununak School Major Maintenance – VETO
• Valdez High School Fire Alarm and Sprinkler replacement – VETO

The university system fared somewhat better, sustaining “only” partial cuts to some proposed budgets. Overall, Gov. Parnell shows he has a certain amount of respect for higher learning in Alaska. Grade-school children? Not so much. Who is going to attend our Alaskan universities, if not our Alaskan children? How will they be prepared for their (hopefully) four years at the university, if we do not fund quality, safe and structurally sound grade schools? And heat them. For a state that places such a high value on sovereignty, we need to ensure that our future generations of Alaskans—all of them—have access to the education that enables such sovereignty to continue.

When the wealthiest companies on the planet call upon their concierge in the governor’s mansion to demand ever higher profit margins, at the expense of Alaska’s common good and fiscal solvency, Parnell is willing to go to any length to please his paymasters. But when school kids in  Sleetmute need a decent roof over their heads, he tells them to go to hell.

Our state’s greatest resource, and brightest hope for a sustainable future for future generations, sits locked up by the red veto pen of our duly elected governor. And it’s a shame.

Ripple in still water, when there is no pebble tossed…let it be known there is a fountain, that was not made by the hands of men.
(The Grateful Dead)

The Reincarnation of Benedict Arnold

We know well by now the story of a foreign power, attempting to exploit far flung colonies for commercial gain while denying them local control and democratic political representation. Alaskans in particular prize our independence and autonomy. No three letters get the locals more fired up than “E,” “P” and “A.” We don’t need no stinkin’ feds to telling us to protect the polar bear, what kind of heating fuel we can burn, and whether we can drill-baby-drill in ANWR.

Since even our duly elected U.S. officials encounter hostility when presuming to adjudicate what happens in Alaska, what of an unelected power that’s not only not Alaskan, nor even American, but… [*gulp*] British exerting itself over our local autonomy and cultural heritage? Isn’t that the stuff of revolutions?

Enter UK mining giant Anglo American, seeking to site the world’s largest open pit mine at the headwaters of the world’s largest wild salmon run. What today is Alaska has existed for eons without a toxic copper mine but—ever since its first inhabitants crossed the land bridge—not for a single day without being utterly dependent upon the bounty of the sea.

The mining industry's vision for improving the Bristol Bay Watershed

How important are fisheries in general, and wild salmon in particular, to Alaska?

Alaska produces half of the entire nation’s seafood harvest, and remains the only state in the nation with a constitutional mandate stipulating all fish “be utilized, developed and maintained on the sustained yield principle.” If it were a nation, Alaska would place 9th among seafood producing countries. 42% of the entire world’s wild salmon harvest hails from the state, and nearly one-third of all of Alaska’s salmon harvest earnings come from Bristol Bay. Salmon is the most valuable commercial fish managed by the state of Alaska, and Bristol Bay is Alaska’s most productive commercial fishery with 40% of the nation’s catch.

The scope of Pebble Mine’s adverse impacts, therefore, ranges from the cultural, historic and ecological to the economic, aesthetic and culinary. Which is why 70% of local residents oppose the mine, local native communities and organizations are against it, Alaskan fisheries and even our late Sen. Ted Stevens—hardly a treehugger opposed to resource extraction—recognized Pebble Mine to be a boneheaded idea and pronounced himself “very disturbed by the prospect.”

You’d think, then, that this issue is a nobrainer. But you’d be wrong, and you probably haven’t sat through a legislative committee hearing in Juneau packed with lobbyists. Ultimately foreign, pro-Pebble money has commenced an assault on Alaska’s political landscape and self-determination. We’re inundated with television ads in which a young Native woman sells her soul to assure us everything’s cool because it takes a long time to walk from the site of the proposed mine to Bristol Bay. Pay no attention to the concepts of groundwater or tributaries.

As is so often the case, the bad guys have more money and there are always those willing to sell their souls. Those willing to oppose them, on the other hand, tend to be average Alaskans—fishermen, teachers, cooks, activists and the like—who aren’t rich and don’t wield corporate influence over the political process. So in the spirit of today’s holiday, since it really wouldn’t do to ask that “God save the Queen,” maybe we can ask Him to save Bristol Bay.

(Fairbanks, AK) — Fairbanks North Star Borough Assemblywoman Natalie Howard is a rising star in a state full of pasty GOP dullards and empty suits. A newcomer who blew the doors off a well-known incumbent by a cool 25 points last fall, the 36-year old holds a master’s degree in natural resource management from UAF and previously worked an environmental program specialist for the State of Alaska.

A doctrinaire small-government sort, Howard appeals to the Tea Party with her Jeffersonian quotes and boilerplate calls to starve the bureaucratic beast. (Somewhere, Grover Norquist is smiling.) Dim view of unions and public employees—check. Hostility to environmental regulations—check.

Which of these is not like the others?

She’s not, however, a nutcase prone to lobbing the kind of regrettable quotes that get candidates unwanted attention from Jon Stewart. Howard presents herself as a poised, level-headed professional, and is unlikely to walk into a boardroom to horrify the Chamber of Commerce with incoherent babble about the pressing need to invade Belgium.

She works hard, does her homework, and by all indications isn’t burdened by the kind of ethical lapses which have sunk Republican careers in these parts.

Whether you’re ideologically aligned with the Tea Party or Ché Guevara, it’s hard to take grave offense at Howard calling for fiscal transparency in the budgeting process. When asked what she considers the single largest problem in the borough, Howard cites the importance of public engagement and government seeking input from residents. Scary stuff, huh?

For a comparison sure to nauseate her fans and detractors alike, a trait Howard shares with the greatest living politician of our time—one William Jefferson Clinton—is her ability to comfortably swim in very different seas. Bill could hang with equal ease at an Iowa pig roast or a policy forum in Geneva. Howard has traipsed around the North Slope as a piping inspector, and worked on doctoral research at the hotbed of liberal academia that is UW-Madison. She owns a horse farm with her husband Tim and isn’t afraid to get her boots dirty, in a way Sarah Palin hasn’t credibly pulled off since discovering Neiman Marcus and Hollywood after-parties.

She’s clever enough to smack us with an LBJ quote on her website: You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered.

Take that, Civil Rights and War on Poverty!

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” -Desiderius Erasmus

For Republicans, the downside to their dominance in state politics is that their candidates don’t have to be very good. Their party affiliation advantage means having an automatic head start when you run statewide with an (R) next to your name, and voters grade you on the kind of curve without which Sean Parnell couldn’t get elected to the solid waste removal committee of a condo association, let alone governor.

But unlike the state GOP’s more familiar faces, Natalie Howard isn’t burdened with Parnell’s self-dealing fiscal hypocrisy, Joe Miller’s ethical baggage, or Dan Sullivan’s personal foibles.

Imagine, say, a senate primary debate between Howard and Sullivan:
I’ve been making our local government live within its means and become more transparent, while my opponent has stymied public input and hung out with the cast of Girls Gone Wild.

The asswhipping would be so severe McGinley’s would close within a week.

Yes, imagine Sarah Palin plus intellectual curiosity, eagerly devouring policy papers and budget minutiae. Then subtract the thin skinned vindictiveness, dishonesty and martyr complex.

“Oh shit” is right.

Mark Begich, you’ve been warned.

Taking a Stand Against Groupthink

(Anchorage, AK) – It’s becoming clear why the mayor seeks to “streamline” municipal processes by eliminating various city commissions. When decisions are made with the input of numerous and varied local citizens, things get really inefficient in the way only democracy can.

An administrative alpha male like Sullivan, for instance, does not cry about it when things don’t go his way. When His Honor doesn’t like the city’s zoning code, he does what any true leader would: disregard constituent input and hire a political ally to rewrite the damn thing unilaterally.

Dan Coffey: In the Zone

That, gentle reader, is leadership.

Of course, the only thing worse than collaborative civic work is an entire coalition of groups getting involved. But fret not, for every problem has a solution. So when the Free Title 21 busybodies storm the Assembly chambers tonight, bleating about quaint notions like community buy-in, they’ll find themselves relieved of arduous tasks like walking up to the microphone to share views and concerns with their own elected officials.

As things stand, there will be now public comment allowed on the zoning issue when it actually comes up during the meeting. Anchorage residents who go to the trouble of showing up will still be able to share their concerns. At the meeting’s end, when attendees are filtering into the parking lot.

Welcome to your new and improved, efficient and streamlined local government. One of us will be at Loussac Library tonight and will let you know how it goes.



(Juneau, AK) – Here in Alaska, our poor state legislators begin a special session (after the already extended regular session they just escaped) to extend the state’s Coastal Management Program. It’s due to expire within days, and according to the ADN among the questions to be resolved is “how much weight should be given to local knowledge versus scientific evidence.”

Really? When an issue involves aspects of marine biology, geology, geography and other related disciplines, how about we go with science instead of with the predictive powers of Jessup’s trick knee over at the Shell station?

For a primer on the issue, Shannyn Moore has an excellent piece over at Mudflats.

Nationally, this day marks the gravitas of Michele Bachmann (T-Minnesota) and her Presidential campaign launch. Ever the gentleman, President Obama welcomed the Congresswoman into the race with a squirt in her eye.

Yes she’s nuts, but Rolling Stone‘s wonderfully acerbic Matt Taibbi warns us away from getting too smug about her campaign’s prospects:

You will want to laugh, but don’t, because the secret of Bachmann’s success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger…
In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you’ve always got a puncher’s chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy.

Fun for the whole family: you can even vote in a contest of the psycho-barbies!

The gang's all here: (L-R) Murkowski, Palin, Begich & Michels at the Iditarod.

Sarah Palin has become the joke witless people tell each other in order to feel smart.

Every hapless statement, her choice of pumps, her kids, the paint job on her bus—there is nothing too petty or trivial to launch a new eruption of snickers from the predictable quarters. The saddest part of Palin’s professional critics reaching an equilibrium of idiocy with their target is that it comes at an opportunity cost. Every hour of air time, editorial, and blog post flogging their cash cow is an occasion on which the relevant and deserving are ignored.

We’ve therefore come to the decision that whenever an explosion of stupid from Palin’s camp is met with the requisite, Pavlovian eruption from her detractors , we’re going to run a profile of an impressive female elected official from around our state. There is no shortage of such persons in Alaska, and they deserve the attention more than Youknowwho.

Will a post about a strong, smart, impressive Alaskan woman get as many hits as anything with the word Palin in it? Of course not.

But we’ll be able to sleep at night.

Nome Mayor Denise Michels

Allow us, then, to introduce Denise Michels (D), mayor of the City of Nome. The first Native Alaskan and the first woman to serve in this capacity, Michels has also served as President for the Alaska Municipal League and President for the Alaska Conference of Mayors. With fans on both sides of the aisle, the Nome Eskimo Tribal member advises Alaska Airlines on our state’s Northwest communities and serves on too many boards and commissions to list here.

Though Michels eventually passed on a run for Lt. Governor last year, the common wisdom among the state’s political observers holds that she has a bright future ahead of her. Well known Democrats from Scott McAdams to Ethan Berkowitz count themselves among her fans. It bears noting that the next State Democratic Convention is held on her home turf of Nome, and is likely to showcase the mayor’s considerable political skills before a statewide audience.

L-R: Coast Guard Rear Admiral Christopher Colvin, Iditarod musher Ken Anderson, Coast Guard Commander Darryl Verfaillie, Mayor Michels

Let it be noted that Mayor Michels is so badass that she has even battled the supernatural. Sort of. The Fourth Kind, a Hollywood thriller suggesting that disappearances of Nome residents resulted from alien abduction was met with unwanted attention from the national media. Unable to contain her derision, Her Honor told CNN that

some of the calls I’m just ignoring, because the issue we had to deal with in real life was very sensitive. The movie is portraying something like the ‘Blair Witch Project,’ and we’re just hoping the message gets out that this is supposed to be for entertainment. People need to realize that this is a science fiction thriller.

Mayor Michels declared herself “a bit tired of talking about it.”

As with that other, ridiculous Alaskan freakshow, we know exactly what you mean, Mayor.

Fairbanks: You know what we do?! We send each legislator one of the t-shirts we’re getting. The postage and a stack of manila envelopes won’t cost that much.

Juneau: You mean send it anonymously…?

Fairbanks: Well yeah. Isn’t that how we roll?

_______________________________________________________

[The motion was tabled by a 2-1 vote and you, gentle reader, may continue visiting this blog in good conscience.]

It’s Pride Week around the nation, and Anchorage does its part tomorrow (Sat/25) as Pridefest kicks off at noon on the Delaney Park Strip memorial block. [The following info comes courtesy of the nice folks at Alaska Pride.]

FESTIVAL STAGE SCHEDULE:
12:15 – Invocation/Anthems
National Anthem – Shelly Wozniak
Alaska State Song – Next in Line Productions
12:30 – Bryson Andres
12:45 – Senator Mark Begich
12:50 – “Stepping Up” Recognition Award Winners, Michael Brenner
1:05 – Split the Pot, Funk Love, Cali Delgado, Alexis Kellie
1:15 – Underground Dance
1:30 – Ever Ready “Light”
2:00 – Split the Pot, Parade Winners, Deanna Price
2:10 – Kim Miller
2:15 – Kris and Irenerose, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
2:30 – She Listens to Whispers
3:00 – Split the Pot, Vaudevillians Theater Company
3:10 – Studio 49
3:15 – Maureen Suttman
3:30 – Kris, Colleen, Babii O
3:45 – Pandamonica
4:00 – Split the Pot, Raffle Drawing
4:15 to 5:00 — Pandamonica

THE KIDDIE CARNIVAL is coming back for PrideFest 2011: Step Up, Step Out. Last year the kids enjoyed many carnival type games such as balloon darts, duck pond and ring toss as well as hula hoop contests and an arts and crafts center where the kids made sand art, did beading for necklaces, bracelets, key chain etc. We had a booth providing face painting, temporary tattoos and crazy hair, which generated some unique and memorable photo opportunities.

As always, the Festival is FREE. However, donations to Identity, Inc. are always appreciated if you wish to help us meet the ever-rising costs of producing a quality Pride Festival, or to help this GLBT non-profit service organization which serves our community.

Joe-on-Joe violence?

Fairbanks, AK— The Democrats’ two Fairbanks senators, Joes Paskvan and Thomas, appear to be headed for an electoral collision as the State Redistricting Board has been naughty and shoehorned them into the same senate district.

Both senators were born and raised in Fairbanks and, in addition to their names, also share similar legislative seniority. (Thomas was first elected in 2006, with Paskvan entering the senate in 2008).

There appear to be two possibilities for heading off the intramural bloodshed.

Here in Fairbanks, FNSB Assembly member Tim Beck has offered a resolution to sue over the redistricting map.  Whether his colleagues agree to throw money after what may be a fool’s errand, however, remains to be seen as Beck’s resolution moved to the full Assembly yesterday.

The other workaround is for Paskvan to abdicate his Senate seat and run for Governor, as he is widely rumored to be considering.

Guess who his first and most enthusiastic endorsement would be?

This from the Anchorage Police Dept, today.

The pointedly "not slim" Ms. Philip & the devastatingly handsome Mr. Mullen

“Be aware that these two have been doing random purse snatchings at Fred Meyer Abbott, Fred Meyer mid-town, some of the Walmarts, etc. Just keep a closer eye out when you are leaving your purses in the carts, having them on your shoulders and if you must leave your purse or anything that appears valuable in your car, put it in the trunk. Thought you should see the pics of these two.

There are now felony warrants for ROTHAPHUS “JR” MULLEN and SANDRA PHILIP. They are the purse snatchers. They are also driving a stolen vehicle a 1992 light blue Ford Escort CMX697. The warrants are for $10,000.00 each and TPC. He is about 6’4 and slim. She is 5’5 and not slim.” [ZING! - Ed.]