I went shopping on Sunday March 27th, 2022 at AC in Bethel. When leaving I was caught up by a white SUV, they said that I hit another car while backing up. I did not feel anything. I went back to AC and looked for a light gray, 4 door truck. It was around 3pm. I waited 10-15 minutes then I called the Bethel Police Department. I gave them my information. I checked my front right fender and saw a small scrape line, I have touched the other truck – lekugluku – there are no dents. I went home and I’m worried about it. If you know anything about this or if you are the owner of the vehicle that I may have hit or scraped, call me at 907-589-2715. Thank you.
Daniel Nelson
Napakiak, AK
Time is now to resolve Alaska’s great contradictions
Our great state is also a land of great contradictions.
Some of those are quirky, like having the farthest points both east and west in the United States.
More than twice as big as Texas, we are the largest state by far, but only Vermont and Wyoming have smaller populations. We have more caribou than we do people.
Some of our contradictions are more serious.
We have the largest reserves of natural gas and renewable energy potential in the United States, yet we have the second-highest energy costs in the nation.
We have the largest amount of undiscovered conventional oil resources among any state in the U.S., but we rank just fourth in production.
The Tongass National Forest is the largest in the nation, yet our timber industry is smaller than Rhode Island’s.
We can send rockets into outer space at Kodiak, yet we lack the ability to produce enough food to feed ourselves.
Although we have more land than any other state, less than 1 percent is in private hands and our state government policies make increasing this amount difficult to impossible.
We have the highest inflation in 40 years and are collecting a windfall surplus of more than $3 billion from skyrocketing oil prices, yet we have some in the Legislature who are in no hurry to share this windfall with the people of Alaska.
We have the worst education outcomes in the country, yet we have some in the Legislature who are reluctant to pass a bill to improve our reading proficiency.
Some of our contradictions as a state are features of geography, but the most serious ones are a result of policies at the state and federal level.
The greatest contradiction of all is that we remain at the mercy of others and forces beyond our control even though we have everything we need to feed ourselves, to power our economy with cheap energy, and to be a reliable source of resources for our fellow Americans and our allies around the world.
Now more than ever, we must take control of our destiny that is envisioned in our state motto of “North to the Future.”
As I said in my State of the State address on Jan. 25, “make no mistake, at some future date, there will be another disruption to our supply chain.”
That date arrived when Russia invaded Ukraine a month later on Feb. 24.
Oil prices that had already been climbing at a historic rate spiked to $130 per barrel.
Spot markets for natural gas in Asia soared from $6 per unit in March 2021 to $51 a year later.
The London Metal Exchange halted nickel trading for the first time since 1985.
The global food supply is in jeopardy as Russia and Ukraine collectively produce a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports, along with corn and sunflower oil that is used in food processing and cooking oil.
Fertilizer prices are also rising as Russia produces 13 percent of the world supply.
In short, the basic needs of civilization – food and energy – are at risk.
We can do little in Alaska to stop this war, but we are well-positioned to enact policies to protect ourselves, our nation, and our allies from these global supply disruptions.
Legislators have the bills before them to provide relief to Alaskans who are being hurt by crippling inflation, to lower and stabilize our cost of energy, to secure our food supply, to improve our reading outcomes, and to build up critical infrastructure.
We have no time to waste. The need to act is now.
Recognizing the urgency of becoming self-sufficient while doing nothing about it is a contradiction we can no longer afford.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, 12th Governor of Alaska
Juneau, AK
No U.S. House representation for Alaska until mid-August
When 49-year Congressman Don Young passed away on March 18, he left a hole the size of the Yukon in the fabric of Alaska. With his unvarnished way of expressing himself and the legacy he left in the halls of Congress, he was one of a kind and Alaskan through and through.
Alaska has depended on Don Young’s leadership in the House of Representatives since 1973, but now thanks to Lisa Murkowski, we will be without any representation at all until mid-August.
For the next five months, there will be no member of the House from Alaska because of “Ballot Measure 2,” which was a complete restructuring of our elections systems passed narrowly by voter referendum in 2020. The scheme mandates an open, all-party primary in which voters choose one candidate, with the top four vote-getters advancing to a general election. In that general election, voters have the option of ranking the four remaining candidates, and a winner will be declared following a complicated process that reallocates votes from candidates who are eliminated during the tabulation.
Because of statutory timelines and the time needed for printing and distributing ballots, it’s clear that Alaska will have no member of the House until mid-August. Ballot Measure 2 replaced the existing process that called for a single all-party election. Under that method, if a candidate received 50 percent plus one vote, Alaska would have had a new representative in mid-June – fully two months earlier than we will have one now.
Ballot Measure 2 is widely accepted to have been put in place as an incumbent-protection plan for Lisa Murkowski, who would certainly have been unable to survive in a straight Republican primary election this year. Her supporters point out that she lost a Republican primary once before, in 2010, and then won re-election in an improbable write-in campaign in the general election anyway. But that was then, and this is now.
The 2010 election was before President Trump enacted many policies which benefited Alaska tremendously, and also before Murkowski opposed Trump’s election in 2016, his re-election in 2020, and many of his efforts, like the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
It also was before Murkowski enabled all the horribly damaging policies of the Biden administration by rubber-stamping over 90 percent of his cabinet appointments, including casting the tie breaking vote to advance the confirmation of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who has led the charge on Biden’s assault on Alaska’s energy and resource workers and businesses. And it was before the Alaska Republican Party censured Murkowski and instructed her not to refer to herself as a Republican in Alaska any longer.
Murkowski’s team knew she would not survive her re-election bid in 2022 if the rules were not changed for her benefit.
So along came Ballot Measure 2, which was drafted and championed by political operative Scott Kendall, who previously served as counsel to Murkowski’s 2010 write-in campaign and subsequently was campaign coordinator in her most recent re-election in 2016.
So, there can be no doubt that the massive restructuring of our election process was done by Murkowski’s team for Murkowski’s benefit, and not for the best interest of the people of Alaska.
Once again, we see Murkowski’s concern for herself prevailing over the interests of the people. She was gifted the Senate seat by her father, Frank Murkowski, to fill out his own unexpired term when he was elected governor. In 2010, she ignored the clearly stated will of the Alaskan people by navigating around her primary election loss through a write-in campaign, despite promising to honor the outcome of the primary. And now she has countenanced a new election system that will leave all of Alaska undefended in the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly half a year.
It seems that above all, what drives Lisa Murkowski is her desperation to hold onto the Senate seat she inherited from her father, at any cost.
And as a result, at a time when President Biden is running roughshod over Alaska, continuously dismantling our resource industries and destroying thousands of jobs, we are left with no one in the lower chamber of Congress to try to safeguard our interests and fight for us.
We Alaskans are used to the lower 48 forgetting us, passing us over, and leaving us without a voice. It’s particularly devastating that this time, we don’t have a voice because of the self-serving choices of our own U.S. senator, Lisa Murkowski.
Kelly Tshibaka is a born-and-raised Alaskan, and a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Alaska who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump and the Alaska Republican Party.
Kelly Tshibaka
Anchorage, AK
