SOL in SOLdotna, Alaska

Junkets and Taxes: The Politics of Juneau

2012-02-12T18:20:00.004-09:00

By law, the legislative session is just 90 days long and once again, Mike Chenault has scheduled another golf trip, oh, I mean lobbying trip to DC during a week of that already short session. You might remember that last time, just before the crucial vote on oil taxes, Mike skipped out to play golf in Atlanta, saying he was attending some country-wide state leadership conference. Um, there's no evidence that he attended any meetings that weren't held on the links.

The leadership group really doesn't schedule any meetings, well meetings that the various state legislatures from around the country actually attend. It's a vacation club on the government dime. Golf last year, fishing and sight-seeing ANWR this year.

The DC junket that Chenault is going on this time is officially to lobby to open ANWR, but of course, Alaska pays lobbyists to do just that. Mike and the other legislatures that are going are not talking to the press about what they did or will actually do. When's T-time Mike?

SOL has not been kind to another of our local politicos, Tom Wagoner. But maybe that attitude will change a little. Tom is working on the senate re-write of the ACES tax scheme. Much to his credit, he didn't roll over like the industry lapdogs, Chenault and Kurt Olson during last year's session. It will be curious to see the bill that does come out of the senate. I'm sure you've all aware of the record profits the big 3 oil companies made last year, despite being taxed to death like the governor insists.

The ADN has a good piece about the debate here. Stay informed. The oil in the ground belongs to us, not the oil companies. I don't understand why we need to charge less than the going rate to companies that are so, so profitable. That is not a good business decision and don't we want government run like a business?

The Hospital/Kahtnu Problem: Either Way We're SOL

2012-01-28T12:57:00.008-09:00

I was having a hard time trying to make up my mind about the Kahtnu/CPGH situation. I can easily see the merits of both sides. Competition does help the consumer’s bottom line. But there is the truth that the hospital is able to offer a full service, including those procedures that will never be profitable, because other services might be more profitable and can cover those other costs. Lose those profitable services and the price of everything else either goes up, or the service goes away.

Maybe it’s easy to be callous. If you don’t need the service, why pay? But it is often luck that calls those shots. Every time someone has to hold a bake sale, spaghetti feed or something to help out someone with medical needs (and often that person in need is a child), I am embarrassed that we live in a society that accepts that practice as being just fine.

Oh, and then there's insistence that tax rates are lower for the rich than what we working people pay. The result..?

More bake sales. We all know that the proceeds of these fund-raisers don't make a dent in the staggering debt people incur.

We are forced to seek out bargains and places like Kahtnu make sense. But it is shortsighted to then make it harder for those, who through no fault of their own, can’t afford treatment, so the hospital point of view is also valid.

There is only one solution. Medicine should not be a for-profit business; just like police, firefighters and paramedics are not for-profit. The cost of medical care is never going to be manageable as long as everyone at the top in the trade, from doctors to pharmaceuticals to insurers, can make huge profits.

And it comes at our expense. We pay for it with exorbitant health insurance costs, high deductibles, huge medical bills and taxes. One way or another we pay for it all.

I can chose not to buy a stereo if I think prices are too high. We have no choice with medicine. What’s the option when you are in pain or sick… to die or to be in pain? Of course we’ll pay. Or we’ll be in pain or we’ll die and that does happen here.

Pulling numbers from the thin air just for example, say CPGH total expenses are $20 million a year, that includes all salaries and benefits, supply and maintenance costs and whatever, they have to charge at least that much in fees. If they lose one component that makes more money than another, they would have to raise the fees charged for those procedures. The price of services keeps spiraling up and we are forced to pay even more insurance premiums, higher fees and higher deductibles. Each and everyone of us has had this happen to us already.

Until there is universal, single-payer health coverage in the US and until medicine is run like the service it morally should be - -equally for all - - those who stand to profit from our vulnerability will screw the consumer.

It already happens.

Board of Gaming the System: Managing Wildlife for the 1%

2012-01-22T12:52:00.014-09:00

Before you dismiss this post as the opinion of a Bambi-loving extremest greenie, just for the record I'm a multiple gun owner who has hunted caribou, moose, deer and various winged critters. I think that if you eat meat or wear any sort of animal product (including leather), it is nothing sort of hypocritical to be opposed to hunting. Fine if you choose not to do so, but don't expect me to do the same. I believe in the freedom of and from any sort of religion and that includes most any rigid political or social dogma.

There is a certain tragic beauty in the natural balance of nature. No matter if the predator is human or beast, hunting is essential to that balance.

On the Kenai right now there's an overpopulation of arctic hares and feral bunnies. Besides making it darn near impossible to take your dog for a walk off-leash, there's plenty of snacks for predators - - especially lynx. As this year's lynx have a feast, these well-fed cats will lose few of their own kind to starvation. Since more lynx will survive, there will be more offspring. This trend will continue for a couple of years until enough fluffy bunnies have been consumed that there aren't enough of them to sustain the lynx. Some of these predators will begin to starve and the downward spiral begins again until there aren't enough lynx to keep the little hoppers from breeding, well, like rabbits. And the cycle goes on and on.

That same pattern is part of the balance of predators and moose. Because moose breed, well, like moose, the cycle of feast and famine takes longer to phase through.

Humans are part of that natural cycle; we have been since we evolved.

If there is something beyond nourishment, warmth and art that comes from harvesting wild game, it is the challenge of matching ones skills to the terrain, the weather, and the deadly smarts of our wolf and bear competitors. Some years are lean for all involved. We humans have the luxury of stopping off at a store on the way home, so unsuccessful hunts don't thin our ranks. If you haven't noticed, there's an overpopulation thing happening on the planet. With more people, there are more hunters and more of a demand for prey. Not everyone will be successful. Get over it. Those who aren’t successful have a few options. They can keep at it and hone their skills and patience. They can find another hobby and in that way thin the ranks of human predators, or they can get appointed to the Board of Game and game the system, so that their big-game hunting guide cronies can bring in rich outside trophy hunters and guarantee them a kill.

That is the agenda of the Board of Game with their recent decisions to expedite aerial predator control on the Kenai and many other places around the state.

In making their decision about the Kenai, the BoG chose to ignore the 300+ moose killed in traffic collisions here. Meat harvested from these accidents is eaten by Alaskans. Although not hunted with a gun or bow, a dead and harvested moose is a dead and harvested moose. When these moose are added to the numbers that hunters get, the yield for the Kenai is very plentiful.

The Rossi scandal is exposing the depths of how political cronyism coupled with blatant personal unethical practices have made Alaska wildlife management decisions become based on what is best for big game guides of rich outsiders.

Let’s begin with Ted Spraker, a central peninsula resident, former Fish and Game biologist and Safari Club member. Ted admits that habitat is the most important factor when it comes to moose populations; in the log run, a habitat can only support so many moose. In area 15A the moose population is slightly lower than the habitat can support, and in Area 15C there are slightly more than average as the habitat is much better there. Both well within what is normal for their different stages of habitat flux. 15A hasn’t had a major wildfire for decades and there just isn’t enough browse to support significantly more moose.

Despite Spraker’s awareness of this, he is looking for a short-term boost to the moose populations. Why? Well, the spin is that they want more moose meat on the table of Alaskans. Ted knows that that the aerial hunting of predators will not significantly increase the success of Alaskan hunters.

If there was a concern about the number of moose for ordinary Alaskans, how come the Board of Game has never considered reducing the number of rich Outside game and trophy hunters that guides bring in? Professional hunting guides do have skills and their clients are more successful than the average Alaskan. And make no mistake, non-subsistence urban and Outside hunters take most of the game in any given management area.

There’s certainly a legitimate debate if subsistence users should have priority with hunting rights. In my mind, they absolutely should. In bush Alaska, the grocery store is nature. In Kenai and Anchorage, we have Fred Meyers and Safeway.

Preserving ones way of life is a legitimate consideration however, but ethical decisions must be made. I don’t understand the arrogance of thinking that someone who does not depend on hunting to survive should have as much access to the resource as someone whose life does. Once subsistence needs are met and then if there is enough game left to satisfy recreational Alaskan hunters, only then you should you allow rich Outside sport and trophy hunters to get their trigger locks off.

Each and every current Board of Game member is tied in some way or another to big game hunting guides. There is no balance on the board – each and every one was appointed by governors as a favor to the big game guide lobbyists.

The recent Corey Rossi scandal is exposing some of the arrogance that these political appointees practice. While Rossi is not on the BoG, he was the director of the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation and just got busted for violating hunting rules and lying about it. In addition, Rossi and current BoG Chairman Cliff Judkins and then-Game Board member Bob Bell of Anchorage went on a subsistence musk ox hunt. Yeah, that’s right, none of these nimrods depend on musk ox to live, but they had a subsistence permit. The permit rules state that you must destroy the horns. That rule is there to keep those just interested in a trophy from killing the animal under the guise of subsistence. Well Judkins and crew tried to bully a lowly F&G biologist to make an exception for them. They wanted trophies. The biologist refused to play along. They tried to use their power to break the rules.

Rossi and his kind have abused their special perks of obtaining trophy permits by giving them to Outside hunting lobby groups such as the Sarfari Club to auction off for fund raisers for those organization. More meat for rich outsiders, less for Alaskans.

The BoG is about special privileges for guides, the connected and the rich.

The BoG took public input about introducing aerial predator control on the Kenai and a whopping 92% of the testimony was against the practice. Yet the Board’s decision to expedite the slaughter was unanimous.

The BoG has an agenda that isn’t tied to facts, ethics, public opinion or sound wildlife management practices. Why does that seem acceptable to the Governor? Why is this OK?

Reason 738 why we’re SOL.

The Alaska Dispatch has had an excellent series of reports about these scandals. I hope you are reading them:

Smart Alaska Game Board decisions drowned out by bad calls

New allegations surface against disgraced former Alaska wildlife chief

Alaska Board of Game shows affection for any predator control program

State is playing an unscientific game

And some related links:

Aerial control

Political science at Alaska Fish and Game

Rossi investigators examine signature of Kenai hunting guide

This is old, but still applies:

End Aerial Wolf Hunting

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/19/2273061/rossi-investigators-question-signature.html#storylink=

The Dems: Let's Save some $; The Reps: Let's be Somewhat Frugal

2012-01-17T21:05:00.005-09:00

Oh, the crazy world of Alaskan politics. We elect republicans because they are fiscal conservatives and scorn democrats because they love to spend.

There are a series of bills before the new legislative session and included are several, all sponsored by democrats, that would force the state to save a sizable chunk of the state's growing wealth. Included in the bills is SB142 sponsored by Johnny Ellis of ANC which would transfer $2 billion additional dollars into the Permanent Fund and another $2 Billion to a fund whose investment gains would then pay down the state's pension debt. While there is some bipartisan support in the senate, there seems to be no traction among Republicans in the state house, including Mike Chenault and Curt Olson, the central peninsula's representatives in the state house. Mike's comment was simply that he didn't think that lawmakers should be mandated to put money aside.

WTF? The last time the politicians added anything to the PFD that they weren't already mandated to do, it was 1985. If they are not required to save, and Mike's a great example of why this happens, money goes to boondoggles. I've written about the tremendous wastes at the Goose Creek Prison and the Port of Anchorage that came while Mike was in the leadership role in the state house. Better grab your Xtratufs because the slime will continue when the money gets released for the Susitna Dam and the Knik Arm Bridge. Mike feels entitled to go play golf and go on international junkets on the government dime. And what do we get? We're just SOL.

So, do you want the politicians to spend the money, or do you think it might be better if the citizens spent it? More $ in the Permanent Fund = more $ for us. If you think it might be better for us to have money to spend, start voting for some Democrats.

Hey, the Dems HAVE to prove that they are really fiscally conservative in this state, or else they couldn't get elected in a union hall. The republicans, especially the ones we elect from the peninsula are all about talking the R talk, but playing good-ole-boys (or corrupt bastards) and enriching their friends at our expense.

Mike Doogan, another D, has a bill that would put a one-time $10 Billion deposit in the PF. Another bill sponsored by Bill Wielechowski, a D from Anchorage, would cap the spending from oil-generated funds each year and mandate that 2/3 of the excess would have to be saved. If Wielechowski's bill passes, the proposal to save would go before the voters.

Remember Steve Cowper - he was governor quite a few years back and he proposed an educational permanent fund. The state would set that up like the PFD, but the profits from that would have been used for education. Forever. What happened to that? The Rs that controlled both the Alaskan senate and house shot that down.

Because they are fiscal conservatives?

Yeah, right...

Trophy Hunt!

2012-01-12T21:11:00.005-09:00

Back in November, I wrote about Bob Ermold's opinion piece in the PC about predator control. Bob got all slobbery about the wisdom of Corey Rossi, the unqualified director of the State of Alaska's Division of Wildlife Conservation. Corey was originally selected by then Gov Sarah Palin to run the AK Dep't of Fish and Game, but he was not appointed after a near-revolution in the department based on his lack of a degree or appropriate experience. So, the special job he has now was created for just him. Since then, he's been sort of promoting his own big-game guide services. Apparently conflicts of interests mean nothing to those who approve of his desire to kill every wolf and bear in AK.

Well, ole Corey is in a heap of trouble. Apparently, an independent investigation by the state troopers has shown that this guy, who is suppose to conserve wildlife, has violated state hunting laws and lying to the cops and has just been slapped with 12 counts of illegal guiding.

Read more about the charges at the Alaska Dispatch and Craig Medred's follow-up piece here. Seems that one of the things Rossi lied about in the investigation was that he was working for Kenai guide, Joe Dilley.

I wonder if there are bag limits on unqualified head of state departments? Well, since the Murkowski/Palin/Parnell governorships, that would be the head of nearly every department.

Updated:Things That Don't Suck in Soldotna

2012-01-01T15:02:00.001-09:00

New Year's Day, 2012: a time to appreciate the place where I live. Please add your comments about the good things Soldotna has going for it..Here's my start:

1) Tsalteshi Trails - this winter cross-country ski/summer running and biking trail system is a gem not only for Soldotna, but for Alaska. Get out there and get fit!
2) Maybe it's just me, but I love the bridge and the lights - the color-changing side lights in the winter just make me happy every time I cross. I think the DOT should have a volunteer light-controller who can creatively program the lights...
3) Kaladi Brothers Coffee Shops- both are great places to sip and chat.
4) The Kenai River Brewery - stop and have a pint with Inebriata!
5) St Elias Brewpub - Soldotna became so much more livable when St Elias opened! I usually boycott businesses which overtly push ultra-conservative politics, but the food and beer are good.
6) River City Books - they have a good collection of books and it's a great spot for lunch.
7) Soldotna Creek Park - the annual Kenai RiverFest is held here, there's a weekly farmers and craft market in the summer new kiddie park and now the Kenai Watershed Forum has its office there too. Once the Birch St light and crossing is improved, this will be even a better place to visit.
8) The Moose Refuge - trail system and Headquarters Lake. If you haven't snow shoed or skied out here, you are missing out on one of Soldotna's prettiest places!

C'mon now...what makes Soldotna special for you?

No Time for Modesty

2011-12-29T15:39:00.004-09:00

If you picked up the PC today, the lead story is a fluff piece praising the glories of Mike Chenault, the speaker of the AK House of Reps. "I was the best fit for the job" explained the not-too-humble north-roader. Jumping in with the alleluias was Kurt Olson, SOLdotna's representative to the state house.

Mike is proud to have brought home the bacon to the Kenai as the peninsula received a record amount of funding from the 2011 governor's budget.

Well, I guess that's what politicians are supposed to do - acquire the most money for their constituents. Of course, if it was a democrat running up the government tab, everyone would be crying about those tax-and-spend liberals. Of course, if record amounts of money went to bush Alaska, most Kenai Peninsula folks would whine about the government handouts Natives were getting. But it's a good thing when we benefit from republican legislators who spend state money like drunken sailors.

Not that money shouldn't be spent. Roads, schools, solid waste facilities, prisons and ports are needed, aren't they?

It's kinda funny, when Mike and Kurt obtained money for peninsula roads, there were strings attached. The money could only be used on central and north peninsula roads - not for roads in Homer or Seward. Well, Gary Stevens, the senate rep from Kodiak, Homer and Seward, had the audacity to challenge Gov Parnell's proposal to roll back taxes on the oil company record-breaking profits. Chenault and Olson are all about giving back a $billion a year to the oil companies and without requiring the companies to explore or drill or hire more than they already are. It's easy to see that some of the bacon that Mike brings home is a reward for being Parnell's cheerleader.

And then there's the Goose Creek Prison in the MatSu Borough that was approved and built while Mike was in the House and the speaker. The prison cost over $240 to build (and it is not quite finished yet). It was built where there are no utilities, so another $20 million was spent getting power lines and septic. Oh, and it will cost $25 million a year more than it would cost to just leave the 1000 prisoners it would house in Colorado where they are currently serving their sentence. This waste of state money happened under Mike's watch.

Then there's the port fiasco. Estimates now are exceeding a cool billion dollars as to the final cost of the expansion. It's been one cost over run after another. All under Mike's watch. Just why wasn't this built here on the Kenai in Seward - with roads and rail in place and a true ice-free harbor, it was really the best location for the port.

Let's not get started on the Knik Arm Bridge or the Susitna Dam.

But some connected people are making a ton of money, so how do you say thanks to Mike for not being a good steward of the states money? Money for Mike's constituents.

The state desperately needs to come up with a process that independently evaluates true need, cost-effectiveness and does so not as a reward to good old boys or corrupt bastards, but on what is really needed.

A Republican I Would Vote For

2011-12-15T11:37:00.004-09:00

OK, if you are a regular reader of SOL, you know that my take on things is a bit left of center. As such there's not too many Rs that my conscience will let me support. But there are a few. I've become a big fan of the Alaskan Senate President, Gary Stevens, who represents Kodiak, Homer and Seward. He's not in anyone's pocket, he's practical, and his reasons for supporting something or not seem to come from what is in the best interests of people, not necessarily corporations. He just doesn't recite party-line dogma and that is refreshing. Since the last political session, he has been a very outspoken critic of Parnell's proposal to give about a billion dollars a year back to the oil companies - despite the fact that we Alaskans own the oil that comes out of the ground, despite the fact that the companies are making record profits, and despite that fact that exploration, drilling and oil field employment are up since ACEs because the law. Oh, and Parnell's plan doesn't actually require the oil companies to invest/drill/hire more.

Anyway, earlier this week, Gary was invited to speak to Commonwealth North, the pro-development lobbying group that gave grades of D or F to any Alaskan politician that was more concerned with people than corporations. Gary blasted them. You can read the contents of his speech here. OK, I live in Soldotna, so can't vote for Gary - but I would if I could!

And in surprising news, I heard Mike Chenault on NPR this morning saying that before the state invests any more money in any natural gas pipelines, there needs to be buyers in place. With so many natural gas wells coming online in the lower 48, Canada, Russia and around the world, North Slope gas just is not going to be competitive.

Atwater Out?

2011-12-15T11:13:00.001-09:00

This just in - KPBSD Superintendent Steve Atwater is one of the two finalists for Carol Comeau's position in Anchorage. Read the ADN story here.

By most all accounts, Steve has done a good job here on the Kenai, and after years of the previous superintendent's divisive school leadership, one can only hope that if he does get the Anchorage job, his replacement will be as competent and professional as Steve has been. It's a tough job, for sure, and with the declining enrollments here on the Kenai, there will be some difficult decisions that the school district will have to deal with.

Stop Not Making Sense

2011-12-09T10:33:00.007-09:00

I didn’t go to the last Borough Assembly meeting, but I listened to the KDLL news report about Debbie Brown’s and George Pierce’s testimonies against funding non-profits. Neither of them has any of their facts straight, but what do you expect? For what it is worth, Debbie was able to speak a few clearly understood sentences and that’s different, although what she said was…crazy, so nothing really has changed I suppose.

George confused the Kenai Watershed Forum, the non-profit that the Borough Assembly is considering partially funding, with state and federal regulatory agencies that were “taking land away from people”. Debbie talked to the assembly as if they were kindergarten kids, explaining in the most basic terms what a non-profit does. “They benefit their members"was her conclusion.

Robert Ruffner, the director of the KWF, noted that they did a lot of work for the borough particularly spearheading replacing substandard culverts that were impeding salmon migration and such, and that they hired local contractors at market rates to do this. The KWF has been able to obtain several matching grants to replace the culverts. Because of their familiarity with the process of coordinating with inter-government agencies, they have expedited these projects, and have already replaced some dozen of these culverts and at a fraction of the cost that the borough would have incurred on its own.

So, people like Debbie, George, the ACT people and Fred Sturman, try to come across as folksy, homespun, common sense citizens, but in fact, they are not anything more than self-serving, stingy grinches.

There are a few homespun sayings that come in mind about them:

Penny wise and pound-foolish. So, this crowd would rather avoid paying for a few things now that would then take so much more money in the future to correct. And we’re talking about preserving one of the few healthy remaining salmon runs on the planet. What they are really saying is that they’d rather save a few dollars on property taxes, which are already some of the lowest in the nation, and to hell with worrying about having our grandkids have fish in the Kenai River.

They would cut off their nose to spite their face. These folks are so caught up in their no-tax dogma, that they would oppose things that would, without a doubt, benefit the economy, recreation and culture of the Kenai. I think they are just basically cheap bastards. Oh, and the kicker here is that the $100,000 that the KWF is asking for would come from what the state gets from the haul of commercial fishermen and passed back to the borough. So, not a penny of property tax would actually be used and the money the state receives from the fishing industry would then be used to enhance and perpetuate the fishery – and benefit all of us. A win, win, win situation.

They fiddle while Rome burns: So, there are clear and undisputed problems and there are clear and undisputed solutions, but Debbie and company would rather engage in political theater rather than actually solve the problems. Notice that neither of them offered alternatives that might actually solve anything.

The KPB barely dodged letting the crazies run the asylum this last election. Just check out the comments to any PC story and see that we have some very, very scary neighbors. Check out the PC story on this here.

Intensive Mismangement: It's All About Misinformation

2011-11-12T10:55:00.006-09:00

Bob Ermold has an OpEd in a recent PC about predator control and the Peninsula moose population. It's kinda funny in a way, one thing he complains about is when facts or figures are applied incorrectly or out of context, yet his whole piece, which supports aerial shooting of wolves, is nothing but facts and figures being applied incorrectly and out of context.

First, I hope that no one believes that Bob actually wrote this without considerable help. If you have ever seen anything that he has written in his context as an education administrator, you might not have to wonder why schools are in trouble.

But let's focus on the facts that he presented.

The first is accurate - the moose population is in decline. Well, maybe just bull moose are in decline. Everything after that is propaganda, however.

Bob goes on to claim that nothing has been done to alter the decline - that's not true of course. Every hunting regulation and every decision about habitat (road and subdivision development, forest fire control, etc) has had some degree of influence on the moose population. It might be more accurate to say that nothing has been done that has increased the moose population.

But we really don't know if aerial shooting of wolves does much to increase the population either. It might appear to be a logical assumption, but there have been no significant studies done in areas that have had this to see if it has actually had the results that the AK Board of Game claim will happen.

Don't you find that curious that the BoG, a panel of political appointees and comprised of mostly big game guides, doesn't want AK F&G to actually study the results?

The consensus, and this comes from the data that Bob claims is not necessarily inter-connected, is that loss of habitat is the primary reason that the moose population is on the decline.

And just how many road kills are there on the Kenai year in and year out - over 300 per year! Maybe we are hunting the wrong predator.

Here is what is known and supported by years of data collecting.

1) Yes, by controlling predators (wolves and bears) there is usually an increase in moose population. But long-term data suggest that the increase becomes limited by habitat. An area can only support so many moose and other factors (weather, road kills here on the Kenai, hunting, disease) are significant.

2)Accurate studies of the effects of predator control are rare. Despite Bob's claim that other factors are not connected, they most certainly are. Heck, Bob, rump fat indices measure how much browse the animals have access to. You don't think the availability of food is an indication of moose survival rates? Let's spell this one out. Let's say predator control was done in an area and 50% of the predators were eliminated. But lets say it was also a low-snow year and there was plenty of browse. The next season there are more moose. How much is attributed to predator control, how much to having plenty of food? Long-term studies that examine all aspects of moose populations are absolutely necessary. But since non-biologists are in charge of the BoG and AK DoF&G, funding to actually study the results have been cut and biologists must clear any and all reports and studies through the appointed political apparatchiks.

Bob quotes Corey Rossi, the former head of AK DoF&G. Remember him? He was the guy Palin hired to head that department, yet he would not qualify for an entry-level biologist position. His background was promoting big game guiding. That's it. Check out Craig Medred's piece about how politicized the AK Dep't of F&G has become.

Of course, Cora Campbell, the current commissioner of that office is another political appointee without any real qualifications.

Bob goes on to mention the clause in the state constitution that states wildlife should be managed for maximum sustained yield, and for maximum benefit of the people.

But just what does that mean? The only absolute is that increasing habitat will increase moose populations, yet Bob doesn't like the solutions to that (less development and more wildfires). The BoG is comprised entirely of big-game guides, maybe some one might argue that wildlife viewing (including wolves and bears) is a benefit to the people (tourism and such).

Make no mistake, Bob, whose background is as a special ed teacher (he's no scientist), is a tool of big game guide lobbyists whose only motivation is bringing wealthy big game hunters to Alaska.

Defining the Kenai: The Runoff Election

2011-10-15T21:55:00.002-08:00

Just what is happening here?

The Peninsula Clarion poll has Fred and Mike running neck-to-neck. Considering the Clarion doesn't have much readership outside of the Central Peninsula, and that Fred probably has his strongest support in Sterling, Nikiski, Kasilof and Ninilchik areas, I'm not too sure how accurate the poll is. Again and again, I have to come back to the fact that Joe Miller, one of the most slimy politicians (aside from Jerry Ward) to run for office got, by far, the most votes of anyone for the US Senate than any other candidate last year.

How do you explain it, the support for Joe Miller and the support for Fred Sturman?

Fred has run one of those old-timey campaigns and his Burma-shave style placards along the highway are folksy. But what the heck is Freddy saying? Basically that government is bad, that we are paying too much for what we are getting, and that government employees are paid too much and don't work hard enough.

Maybe it's just me, but the borough seems to have very competent people running the day-to-day stuff. We do get some whacked politicians, the current mayor would be one example and one or two council members might qualify for that description too. People who don't have a firm grasp on how organizations work.

And in case you haven't really done any research, the taxes we pay here on the Kenai are among the lowest in the entire country and in most all of the incorporated areas of Alaska. I wonder where the folks like Fred say they are going to move to when they say they are going to move because taxes here are too high?

We do have an apathetic voter base and Fred's base isn't apathetic. Fred's base are the people who voted for Joe Miller. Unlike Miller, I'd have to say that Sturman is at least sincere. But just what has done to make the Kenai a better place? Um, aside from bitchin' and moanin' on soundoff, pretty much nothing. Hey Fred, wanna complain? - start a blog for goodness sake! Has he been involved in any public service? No. Nada, nothing.

I'm trying hard not to make a cheap shot here, but Fred is barely illiterate. Please don't think he's going to actually read up on any issue. Fred is also fairly computer illiterate. Really, does anyone think he's going to be effective at doing anything but offering inane folksy advice on anything? If he even attempts to cut any service, you folks who didn't vote will come out in droves and whine about how your road needs plowed/repaired, how your local fire service needs improvement, how your kid's school needs some basic maintenance or some books.

Let's head off the problem and get out there and vote - if the typical 20-30% of folks vote, Fred's base will constitute about 1/2 of those voters. It will be close. If you are a teacher, in law enforcement, work for emergency services, if your child goes to a public school, if you work to make the Kenai a better place, if you want sanity to prevail, get out and vote.

It might be that we can only hope that we won't be SOL is that folks in Seward and Homer, where sanity holds a slight majority, vote in significant numbers.

You would think that after Carey's disaster of running the borough, folks would be fed up with incompetence.

Oh, well. If Fred wins, it will be way easy to continue writing this blog. I'll have plenty of material!

It's Fred vs Mike

2011-10-05T16:37:00.004-08:00

All along, the borough mayor's race pit Mike Navarre vs the other candidates, but who would have guessed that Fred Sturman would have been the top of those five?

I guess I'm not really surprised by voters on the Kenai - just how many were snookered by Joe Miller after all?

The run-off will tell a lot about who we are here on the Kenai Peninsula as the two surviving candidates offer completely different visions for how government will work - or won't.

Fred is dedicated to cutting everything and that will fly until the consequences of doing so becomes a reality. Just what will be cut? What services will we do without? As soon as it is something that impacts someone, and every cut will do so, the political carnage will begin. Fred complains about high taxes, yet there is no place in the US where you will pay less taxes, especially when the PFD check gets factored in. So, now that the focus is down to two candidates, maybe Fred should explicitly let us all know what he will cut. What borough services will be eliminated? Who will get pay cuts? What roads won't be serviced?

It's only fair for Mike Navarre to present a clearer picture of what he will do as mayor as well. He took money from lobbyists for both projects, so what is his stance on the Pebble and Chuitna mines?

The prime question for voters is simply do we want the Kenai to progress in a way that promotes a better quality life or do we want to do without those things that serve and protect us and make living here not such a bad thing.

With just 20% of the eligible voters casting ballots this last time, the direction the borough takes may very well be made by the minority. Look at the fiasco of the Carey administration, I suspect that those errors will seem minor if Fred gets elected.

SOL in Seward and Homer

2011-09-26T22:12:00.000-08:00

KDLL/KBBI had a story Monday morning about the Borough receiving about $4.5 million for roads from the state. At the borough assembly meetng in Homer, Milli Martin asked why none of the funds were going to the eastern/southern peninsula. Mayor Carey stated that the legislature stipulated that the money only go to Districts 33 & 34 - and then he said that actually, the representative from one of those districts - he wouldn't say which - told him they money was to be limited to those two districts or there would be no money at all. Carey said he didn't like the deal but that since some money beat no money, he took it. 33, of course, is Olson's district and 34 is Chenault's. 35 - Homer and Seward - is Paul Seaton's. Gee, you think maybe there's some vindictiveness going on there because Seaton challenged Parnell on oil tax rollbacks? It appears as though the knee-jerk conservatives are taking extra steps to push Seaton out by making him look ineffective to his constituents. It really looks like another example of elected officials putting petty partisan politics way ahead of the good of the people. C'mon, folks - you remember the People??? Anyway - so much for "neighborliness".

Let's see - no natural gas for Homer or Seward, no extra money for roads, and a borough mayor willing to sell out a good portion of his constituents. Gotta love republicans!

Union for the Rich

2011-09-16T12:42:00.005-08:00

I hope that you have all been following Jenny Neyman's most excellent reporting in the Redoubt Reporter on the international students who have come to the central peninsula on a cultural work visa, only to be left stranded with little work and no place to stay. If you haven't read the articles do so here and here.

If you've been following the Republican presidential debates, each candidate is tripping over themselves saying that we need to get out of the way of business and cut regulations.

But the reality is that when there is little oversight, abuses will happen and this visa fiasco is just one example. Businesses, including local ones, have exploited lax student visa regulations by hiring these foreign youngsters at below the going rate, providing crowded living arrangements (if any arrangements are even made) and deducting incidental fees from wages. Students in the Hershey chocolate plant in Hershey PA, have been hired at the minimum wage so that the company doesn't have to pay local workers a decent (but still low) hourly rate. Then Hershey and other companies dock the students' paychecks for minor expenses. Kids end up making $1/hour. Things are not much better here. These are students that have already paid $3000-$6000 to a company to come here. Thank goodness for decent people like Connie Goltz (an Australian also here on a visa) and Danette Howland to take these students in and show them that some folks US also have a conscience.

So, the real reason Republicans are for cutting oversight regulations is so the special interests they pander to can make more money. In this instant, these companies make more money because they can hire these students for less money than they can hire Americans. That then increases the US unemployment rate. Why do Republicans hate average Americans?

It's curious too that in the banking business, those countries that have strict regulations like Canada have weathered the economic downturn of the last few years. The ones like the US, Iceland and Ireland where there was little oversight, got hammered. Remember the Saving and Loan debacle under the Reagan administration? The US cut back the regulations and almost immediately that industry collapsed and that instigated a financial crisis.

But here we go again, the republicans are all for cutting regulations.

But lets call the Republican Party for what it is - the union for the rich. They are ready to sink the economy even more than it already is just to preserve the tax breaks the rich get for private jets and hummers.

Somehow they've manage to manipulate the teabaggers and religious fundamentalists and have convinced these groups that policies that protect the health, welfare and safety of ordinary Americans are not possible. But making the rich even richer is what it is all about.

Ear to the Ground

2011-08-29T12:19:00.001-08:00

The Kenai Borough's mayoral race had two mentions in this Sunday's ADN's Ear . First up was a bit about how a fund-raiser for Mike Navarre had across-the-aisle supporters including some influential Rs such as Lisa Murkowski, Gail Phillips and Arliss Sturgulewski.

Considering that Dale Bagely, the leading R in the race, was a strong backer of the scoundrel, Joe Miller, it's no surprise that Lisa might back someone like Mike.

The other mention the Kenai received was Fred Sturman's malapropism (I hope) when he stated on the KDLL political forum, that the Kenai was a monogamous stream. He's not the only candidate that has trouble pronouncing anadromous. Didn't another candidate say that the river was androgynous? I guess it's all about sex, so they are at least on-topic.

Candidate Deadlines and Class Warfare in Soldotna

2011-08-12T11:11:00.001-08:00

Monday is the last day to file for the various elected borough and city positions that will be open this fall. Predictably, many announced candidates are holding off making it official. For borough mayor, only Dale Bagley and Gary Superman have put in the paperwork although there's no reason to think that the remaining four will change their minds. I hope that they are all in as it promises to be entertaining.

Here in Soldotna, Peter Micciche is seeking a second term as city mayor, there's an article in today's PC with the announcement. You have to give Peter his props, he's done more than a fair job as mayor, but to read article, you would think he's done so without any missteps. Micciche reinvents history with his account of the cemetery issue. He was one of the driving forces to keep the cemetery from being established at the Redoubt site. As Peter laments in the article, if folks don't like the direction government is going, they should get involved and that's just what happened. Four folks not happy with Peter ran for the city council and when elected, forced Peter to change his position. To his credit, the mayor has played nicely since.

Maybe it's a small issue, but the sweetheart deal that Larry Semmens, the Soldotna city manager got is a bit slimy. Semmens was allowed to retire, but then was hired back as the manager - double dipping. Now, an ordinary state, borough, city or school employee is NOT allowed to do the same thing (although temporary contracts for retired personnel to fill in for a regular employee who is sick or on emergency leave are allowed). ONLY the bosses are given this sort of exception and allowed to be retired and work full time at the job they retired from. Why? Well, who the heck knows?

Why is this slimy? Well, when one is employed in a public-sector job, both the employee and the employer pay into the retirement and health care programs. Those contributions keep some money coming into the retirement and health care systems and help keep it solvent. Now, Larry gets to collect his retirement and get health care for himself and his family and pays nothing into the system. Oh yeah, and the deal increases the unemployment by one as some qualified candidate that would help pay into the system does not get hired.

It's the Chilkoot Charlie philosophy: "We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you." I think it is also the Republican/Tea Party way. They want ALL of the benefits, but damn if they are going to contribute.

Now Larry has done a fine job as manager, but how can his special deal be the right thing to do?

There are two city council seats B and F are open. Rumor has it that Pete Sprague will file for Shea Hutchings seat F. No word if Brenda or someone else will file for B.

6 Pack

2011-07-29T11:45:00.000-08:00

The salmon are in the freezer, most of the big summer chores are almost done and maybe, just maybe, there will be some time to devote to this blog once again.

The PC reported that there are now six candidates for borough mayor. New to the field is Tim O'Brien, a retired oil patch worker from Nikiski. Of course, that follows last week's announcement that former borough mayor, Mike Navarre, entered the contest after he was able to convince Ron Long to drop out of the race.

Ron and Mike had enough common sense to realize that they would be competing for the same voters. Ron, from Seward, and despite being on the borough assembly and its president for one term, really didn't have the name recognition on the peninsula and wasn't interested in schilling for votes, so it probably wasn't too hard for Mike to talk him into withdrawing from the race.

O'Brien doesn't seem to have any clear reason why he is running, well, except that his friends convinced him to giving it a try.

Right now, despite six candidates, I see a three-way race between Dale Bagley, Gary Superman and Mike Navarre. Debbie Brown and Fred Strurman won't get anyone other than ACT folks to vote for them.

Here are the links to each candidiate's web site:
Mike Navarre: Nothing but press releases right now
Dale Bagley: Some info regarding his past accomplishments, light on what he might do.
Debbie Brown: Big on ideas, little substance on her site.
Fred Sturman: Fred's got one idea - cut spending. Not one idea of exactly how or what he would cut.
Gary Superman: Nothing here right now other than his announcement that he is running.
Tim O'Brien: No web site yet, but there is a Tim O'Brien runnig for mayor of New Britian that has one!

Get Well Soon

2011-07-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

The CPGH is in the news again and there are two interesting developments. The first story to break is that Mayor Carey has been given the green light to enter private negotiations to rewrite the lease and operating agreements the borough and the hospital currently have.

In typical Carey Speak, the mayor is quoted in the CP as saying “One of the things we agreed to … was that while we are involved in discussions, we won’t give details of what we are talking about...Basically we want to get some changes made and then once we get them made, we are going to let people know what they are and why."

So, AFTER the changes are made, he'll let the public know what they were and why we need them.

Isn't that backwards? If the changes are good and needed, shouldn't we be on board with the process from the get-go? And please let me know of ANY decision Dave has made in his tenure that made sense. Do we really want HIM to be making these decisions?

The follow-up story is that Ryan Smith is resigning from his post as CEO of the hospital to take a similar position at a smaller hospital in Wyoming. Maybe there is a connection, maybe not.

What I find curious is that here we are in the land where Joe Miller gets more votes than anyone, yet most every resident wants the borough government to retain ownership and control over the hospital. Maybe there is the sense that despite how high medical costs already are, if the hospital was to entirely become a private enterprise, the costs of medical care would skyrocket and maybe the level of care with plummet.

(Not) Waiting For Superman

2011-06-18T19:10:00.002-08:00

I think I should tie each of my blog titles to some song. The last posting about Dave Carey not seeking re-election could have featured Paranoid by Black Sabbath. I'd have to go with the Flaming Lips Waiting for Superman, something a bit more innocuous, for the news that Gary Superman has decided to make it a menage a cinq for the borough mayor job.

I don't think anyone is surprised by Gary's announcement and each candidate offers the voters something quite different.

First to announce was Dale Bagley. Dale is sane, which is a not a claim all of the candidates can make. One of the most worrisome things about Dale was that he ran Joe Miller's Kenai Peninsula campaign. Joe has been one of the sleaziest, dishonest, self-serving, full-of-crap office-seekers since Jerry Ward. That someone would back Miller despite all the BS, is beyond belief. Oh, wait a minute, most all of the voters from the peninsula voted for Miller.

Then you have Debie Brown. Anyone who has heard her testify at a meeting knows three things: she can't ever get to the point or be clear; she has a whacked sense of what is important; and she cannot make the claim that she is sane.

Ron Long is the sole progressive of the lot, a guy that makes decisions by learning as much as he can about an issue and then applying some logical thought to the process. But so far, he is running a lack-luster race and doesn't really seem to have direction. He's not that well-known in the central or south peninsula and that could be problematic.

Fred Sturman, along with Ms Brown, a fixture at borough assembly meetings, has one thing to say- times are tough and we have to cut everything. Fred wants us to live without schools, roads, police, firefighters, EMTs, garbage dumps, hospitals, and any sort of regulation. Good luck with that.

And now Gary Superman is in the mix. Gary transformed a bit when he was on the assembly and actually seem to come around and understand the purpose of the borough government. One thing I want to know is what he did to get the ACT people to dislike him so much? As far as I'm concerned, being on the ACT hit list is a good thing!

Carey's Notion - Blame it on the Aristocrats

2011-06-16T10:55:00.003-08:00

It's old news by a day, but I am sure most of you are aware that Carey has decided not to seek a second term as borough mayor. It's been a rough first term for Dave: hiring inexperienced and unqualified people and giving them huge pay raises; having his chief of staff getting caught in a questionable business deal with the borough; getting blasted by the out-going emergency manager for the Mayor's inept running the borough; flip-flopping on most major decisions; palling around with terrorists (Schaeffer Cox and the North Road Militia) and the open-carry crowd; and having students tell him that cutting funding to KPC wasn't a good idea.

So, Dave has bowed out of the race. It's a tough job and certainly one where it is impossible please everyone. But rather than bow out with grace, honor and self-respect, Carey, in his official statement that you can read here, chose to take a paranoid approach and assign blame to various bogeymen for his failings.

First, and in typical Carey fashion, he wraps himself in the American flag as if he has sole ownership and understanding of what it means. The implication is, of course, that if you disagree with Dave, you are not patriotic. When he had the fire hydrants painted red, white and blue as Mayor of SOLdotna, I wondered if it was still OK for dogs to pee on them? I guess this will be the last Progress Day parade where Dave carries a 49-star flag and lectures us all about it.

Dave is also proud of getting 64% of the vote when he was elected borough mayor, but of course there are lies, damn lies and statistics. The voter turnout was dismally low when he ran, so another way of looking at it is that about 66% of the eligible voters didn't vote for him.

Using some Carey-logic, he concludes that it would be unethical and would give him an unfair advantage to seek re-election while currently serving as mayor because he was elected to serve everyone. As mayor, he might make a decision these next few months that could make people happy, so that would go against his vow to God.

Huh?!?

It is my understanding that as a politician, if you can make good decisions most of the time, that becomes a reason to seek re-election. Then you can stand on your record of accomplishments and an opponent would have to have a darn good reason to run against you.

Right now, four people are in the race because they think they could do a better job.

Then Dave blasts the 'aristocrats' on the previous borough assembly. Aristocrats? Like Gary Superman, a North Road bar owner? Pete Sprague, a retired mailman?, Ron Long, a small-business owner from Seward?, Paul Fisher, a half-asleep assembly member? Or maybe Millie Martin, the grandmother from the south peninsula? None of these folks meet any definition of aristocrat, but they do all have one thing in common, they (maybe with one exception, sorry PF), are a heck of a lot smarter than Dave. And they, with one exception (sorry again, PF) had the audacity to challenge Dave when Carey would make a bone-head move. In other words, most of them (yep, let's leave PF out of this one too) did their job. Most all would try hard to follow Robert's Rules of Order when conducting assembly meetings, something Gary K, the current assembly president, should experiment with.

Carey goes on to tout the mantra that defines a simplistic political solution to problems that we have here in Alaska and the US - the government spends too much. All right, already. But what to cut? If you don't think some service is necessary, someone else does. So, when Dave proposed cutting funding to KPC, despite a voter mandate to provide that funding, students, faculty and other concerned citizens protested, just like that Paul Revere guy shooting off bells and warning the redcoats.

How did Dave respond? He hired a lawyer to intimidate those young punks that were intimidating him. And then Dave gives the lawyer a plug in his statement. Isn't THAT unethical?

Dave directs his final paranoid delusion towards Gary Turner, the head of KPC. The assembly has an ordinance to consider that would prohibit politicians from being on the payroll of an organization that receives borough funding. That sort of makes sense - you don't want conflict-of-interest issues to come up. It's all about ethics, of course. It could appear that some quid pro quo was in effect by steering money to some entity while that entity paid you. What's funny here is that Dave was trying to cut funding for KPC and at the same time, wanting to stay on that gravy train. It just came back to bite him in the ass.

But don't expect Dave to really understand ethics or ethical behavior. Maybe a few years in the seminary is just what the dude needs.

Tee Off with Chenault

2011-05-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

So there is this special session because the house, the senate and the governor can't play nice. It's costing the state tens of thousands of dollars each day and the bill is way over $500,000 already as the legislatures get their per diems and expenses covered. So what is the Speaker of the House, Mike Chenault's, plan to end the gridlock? He's gone to Atlanta to play golf for a week. And get paid for it. And get his expenses paid for the trip. Seems he conveniently scheduled a meeting in Atlanta for a day so Alaska could pay for the trip. Since he'll be there, why not play a few rounds?

WTF? Chenault needs to be doing all that he can to end the stalemate, but he knows he can be as arrogant and self-serving as he can be because he'll get re-elected. He's a republican, the conservative party. The party that's against waste in government. The party that's for efficiency. Riiiggghhht. It's reason 2358 why we're SOL - the voters here don't care if a politician is in it for their own good as long as if the politician is republican and a tool of the oil industry.

Chenault Puts On His Big Boy Britches

2011-04-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Who knew Mike could be so funny, especially in such a smarmy way?

Mimicking Senate Leader Gary Steven's speech rebutting Sean Parnell's call for ending ACES, Chenault turned over the gavel at the State House to make his speech and let the Senate know that he wouldn't be bullied by passing the other house's capital projects budget on such a short notice. That budget was just passed on to the House for approval this past Monday.

Of course, what Mike left out was this is SOP for how the state government works, and according to Bert Stedman, the Republican co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Chenault's claim about not having input was 'nonsense'.

What Chenault was basically complaining about was that by the time he and the other House members add their particular pet-projects to that budget, the current $2.9 Billion will balloon a bit and maybe some voters might think it was a tad too big.

Mike ended his speech saying that he would be A-OK with no capital budget being passed by the time the 90-day session ends next week.

It's all political theater, of course and Mike was just being pissy that the Senate didn't go along with his plan to give $10 Billion of state money to the oil companies. But gee, even with the Senate spending like a drunken pipeline worker let loose on payday, we still come out billions ahead of what we would if Mikey got his way.

Preposterous Alaska

2011-04-13T18:29:00.003-08:00

Sometimes you just have to smile.

I hope you all read the most excellent OpEd piece in today's PC by Les Gara about the Governor's plan to give away a couple of billion dollars each year to the oil companies. A plan endorsed by Kurt Olson and Mike Chenault. Mr. Gara makes a convincing argument that the Governor is full of it, but if you've been following his attempt to overturn ACES, you already know that.

What's funny is the ad campaign the PC is running sponsored by Prosperous Alaska, some shadowy front for the oil companies, is on the banner where Gara's article appears. It cries the same Chicken Little Story as the Governor and so soundly refuted by Les. The Truth below and the Lies on top.

I hope you all read Gary Steven's speech on the Alaska Senate floor where he most politely, but most thoroughly, also takes the Governor to task for his rush-job with no questions answered approach to repealing ACES. It's nice to see a Republican with some integrity.

On a related note, Mike Doogan has tried to find out just who wrote the Governor's bill, since the governor's staff didn't know answers to some basic questions the lawmakers had. Of course the Governor, a former lobbyist for Conoco Phillips, is stonewalling. Gee, what a surprise. The money bet is that the oil companies wrote Parnell's bill.

And a surprise, while Mike Chenault and Kurt Olson are obvious lapdogs for the industry (remember their town hall meeting a few weeks ago that was was mostly by word-of-mouth invitation so they could stack the audience with their shills?), voted in favor of the give-away, Senator Tom Wagoner has stuck his finger in the air and saw that the wind was not in Parnell's favor and seems to be part of the Senate majority that opposes deforming ACES. Well, at least until if and when it comes down to an actual vote.

Nobody Loves Whales

2011-04-10T20:46:00.008-08:00

Captain Dave Carey has it out for white whales, but unlike Ahab, Dave doesn't have issues with a big sperm, but rather he has a thing for the baby belugas. Darn it, they might mess up Carey's vision of an industrial and polluted Kenai Peninsula and surroundings. Dave has been a big time promoter of the Chuitna and Pebble Mine proposals and it could be that it's not a good idea that poisonous mine tailings and coal dust get released in the Chuit drainage and into the Inlet. That might just be unhealthy for whales and other living things.

Now that Cook Inlet has NOAA's National Marine Service critical habitat designation, it is likely that the water quality in the inlet gets back to its normal silty self and not laced with toxins and human waste. Anchorage might have to actually begin fully treating the almost-raw sewage it pumps into Cook Inlet. Maybe Kenai and Nikiski are more SOL than those of us in SOLdotna as they get to see all of the floaters come down from Anchor town.

Dave and Pat Porter are already wringing their hands and making like the sky is falling. Mike Chenault has jumped to conclusions and has declared that it's the end of the world as we know it. Here's the story in the ADN and the PC.

It's curious that Sean Parnell and the State of Alaska is suing the feds about this designation and the polar bear one up north. But they have nothing but arbitrary and uncertain figures about how many new jobs might be lost to controlling future gas and oil development. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is run by a political apparatchik, just like in the days of the USSR. The state's own biologists are not allowed to release their own studies, well, because they are contrary to the political agenda of the Alaskan Republican Party, AKA the union for the oil companies. DoF&G is not the only department operating under a gag order, but so is the AK Dep't of Health. Political appointees won't let officials and scientists talk to the media. Period. Nada. Can't let facts get in the way of decisions.

BTW, what ever did happen to the couple hundred thousand the KPB received to study the white whales. Did anyone learn anything? Any report ever filed? Was the $ actually spent on the whales?

Call me Ishmael,
Whenever the hypocrites get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to blog as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the internet. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards SOL in Soldotna with me.

apologies to Herman Melville

Dumbing-Down Politics

2011-04-01T17:01:00.009-08:00

Did you happen to see the informal assessment earlier this week that pegged Alaska as the fifth dumbest state in the US?

We here on the Kenai are doing our part to show the world that our stupidity rank should match our 49th state stature. Want some evidence?

Kurt Olson and Mike Chenault held a town hall meeting to make the case that the oil companies need bigger profits and that the state should subsidize Alaska's big oil industry despite the record profits that these companies have enjoyed the last few years and the fact that new start-ups are investing and drilling in Alaska despite the doom and gloom portrayed by Parnell (a former oil company lobbyist) and crew. The sad part is that most of the crowd bought that bit of propaganda that says the oil companies are being taxed too much. Well, we did overwhelming vote for Joe Miller here, so that explains the lack of any thinking skills the general populace has here.

And then yesterday Mike and Kurt joined the other Republican house members and voted to pass the bill. Paul Seaton, the Republican rep from Homer at least had enough sense and honesty to vote against it. One can only hope that the senate has a bit more integrity.

Of course, nothing in the bill actually requires big oil to invest in the state, they just want to give them $2 billion a year. Voters on the Kenai don't get that Alaskans own the oil, so what Kurt and Mike are doing is giving away our property. Do read Hollis French's piece on ACES as well as view Senator Bill Wielechowski’s presentation on Shannyn Moore's show.

It's too bad we just don't charge the oil companies the market rate for the oil coming out of the ground. That way it is not a tax, but a simple charge for a product - one with a price that fluctuates as the market does. Capitalism at its best. But at the end of the day, no matter what you call it, we Alaskans get what the resource is worth. The money then gets spent in the state as we fund schools, municipalities, the Permanent Fund, roads, law enforcement, and all the other benefits of civilization. What will the oil companies do with the money that Mike and Kurt will give them? Invest it in third-world countries and give their executives fat bonuses.

And then a sign that the apocalypse is surely imminent, Debi Holle Brown announced that she is running for borough mayor. Ms. Brown, you might remember, was so inanely uninformed and ineptly outspoken when she was a school board member, it was embarrassing to hear her speak about anything. Of course, if you've ever attended a borough assembly meeting where she has taken to the mic, it is almost like comedy. Few people on the planet can make a certain former (or current) governor of Alaska seem astute. That, and not one thing else, Debi can do.

Allowances Must Be Made

2011-03-18T12:47:00.001-08:00

Breaking news is that the AK legislature just voted to double the office allowance of the elected officials. House members now can get $16,000 and Senators $20,000. The kicker is that if they don't spend this money on office expenses, they get to pocket all of it.

OK, I'm not automatically against cost-of-living increases. But if it was based on the real cost-of-living data, the increases would have been under $2000 instead of the $8000 and $10,000 they voted for themselves.

Certainly there are office expenses that our legislative representatives will have and certainly these expenses, to a point, should be reimbursed. But shouldn't office expense reimbursements actually be used on office expenses? I mean like show your receipts and write up a little justification: basic bookkeeping demands.

Those are the rules that most all of us probably have to follow. But apparently these rules don't apply to our elected officials

This is nothing but a back-door pay raise and it seems quite shameless to boot. Our representatives don't have to account for a penny of the money, and get to put it in their pockets rather than actually buy staples, tape and sticky notes.

Mike Chenault did vote against this. Bravo Mike. But guess what? Chenault and the other central peninsula legislative representatives, Tom Wagoner and Curt Olsen took the entire office expense check and put it in their pockets. Not one penny went to paper, pencils or pens. I guess leaving a paper trail is not a good idea for these guys anyway.

Mike, the best way to vote against the raise is not to take the money. Who do you think you're foolin'?

Of yeah, the knuckleheads that keep electing these three.

Tell me again about how we elect Republicans here on the Kenai because they are fiscal conservatives?

Suckers for Cox

2011-03-11T13:30:00.011-09:00

photo by D Petri from the PC

It was just two years ago when Schaeffer Cox (the dapper gent in the hat pictured between Bob Bird and Tom Wagoner) came to the Kenai to promote his philosophies of unrestricted gun-ownership and sovereign citizen political action. He was welcomed with open arms by Bob and Tom and given an email endorsement by Dave Carey. Since then, Cox has been arrested a few times. Once for beating his wife and then once for not informing a cop that he was packing heat as Cox responded to a Liberty Bell (the Sovereign Citizen phone tree) call when a fellow member was arrested. Then yesterday, Cox was one of five arrested for plotting to kill five AK state troopers and a judge. You can read about that incident here.

Those in the Sovereign Citizen movement claim that they are above the law and don't need to follow any rules. There's been an uptick of SC related incidents since Obama became president including the shooting deaths of two policemen in Arkansas and the shooting of Gabby Giffords and others in Arizona a couple of months ago.

But this blog post isn't about Cox, it's about peninsula politicians. Obviously, Wagoner and Bird are suckers for Cox's, um, ideas, but so is Mayor Dave Carey. Norm Olson and Mike McBride of ACT were among Cox's handlers and Gary Superman was recognized.

While Congressman Don Young isn't from the Kenai, he does represent us down in DC and Don has been a big supporter of the 2nd Amendment Task Force, of which Cox is the president of the Alaska chapter.

And why all of the political support? Do they all really believe that we all need to be locked and loaded at all times? Do they really believe that we should disobey the law? Do they think that we should kill the representatives of the law?

Maybe they were just pandering for votes among from the right wing-nuts here on the peninsula. Remember, we voted overwhelmingly for Joe Miller this last election.

If peninsula politicians don't really buy that gov't conspiracy black-helicopter stuff, maybe they shouldn't pal around with those who do.

Mike Chenault: One Definition of Insanity...

2011-03-09T14:04:00.006-09:00

...is, of course, repeating the same mistake and hoping for different results. We keep electing Mike Chenault to the State House and the results don't get any better. Let's take a look at some of the inane things that have happened under Mike's watch as Speaker of the house.

The Goose Creek Prison construction project up in the Matsu Valley tops this list. Already $50 million over budget and not completed, Mike admitted that the fault was probably the Alaska Legislature (which he is in charge of the State House ) for not watching the project more closely. The prison, originally approved to be built closer to Palmer, was moved to near Pt McKenzie and had to have all utilities and a road brought in at great expense. Yep, contractor buddies are getting rich, but tax dollars are being poured down the hole. Even if and when the prison is built, it would still cheaper to house prisoners in Arizona and Colorado.

Yesterday, the legislature did not approve Governor Parnell's proposal (and endorsed by Chenault) to give the oil industries over $2 billion annually for...well, for no reason since there was never anything attached to the give-away. And then completely contrary to Parnell and Chenault's contention that exploration is being stifled by the ACES tax structure, two new players announce multi-billion dollar plans for the development of gas and oil WITHOUT the give-away these two wanted.

And then there was the closure of the Nikiski LNG plant that caught Mike by surprise. That's hard to believe that he didn't get a head's up about that coming, but Mike's only idea? Let's give away more state money to help out the filthy-rich oil companies.

So, as long as it is a so-called conservative offering government bail-outs to successful business, it is OK? What about the free-market? The gas/oil in the the ground here in Alaska isn't going to go away if it's not drilled for right now. Already the price of oil is jumping because of the new turmoil in the middle east. We don't have to cut the oil companies any deals. As soon as the price is right, things like the gas pipeline will be more economically feasible. But that time is not now. Regarding natural gas, the market price is low because of the development of lower 48 reserves that are cheaper to get to buyers. For oil, well, Great Bear's and Repsol's ( a Spanish oil investment firm) decision to invest nearly a billion dollars, and again, without the give-away of state money, shows that the free market has the answers and that government isn't needed to subsidize business.

Do check out Shannyn Moore's Moore Up North Show for an interview with Senator Wielechowski and the straight scoop about ACES and the Parnell/Chenault scheme.

KPBSD - Unprincipled Principals

2011-03-07T23:53:00.001-09:00

OK, here's your challenge: name more than 5 principals in the entire KPBSD that are genuine educational leaders (and not just former coaches), are honest and fair with both students and teachers and are occasionally willing to buck the whims of the Central Oriface and actually let some building decisions be hashed out by parents and faculty. For years, both the CO and the building leadership positions have been prime examples (with a few notable exceptions) of the Peter Principle - the incompetent rise to the top.

The latest crop of new principal hires might have a few promising candidates, but OMG, Norma Holmgaard (shudder), currently the federal programs director for the district and now the newly appointed replacement for the failed principal at Kenai's Mt. View Elementary, hasn't a clue about education, has poor people skills and a way of being pompously self-righteous. Once, at a public meeting, without ever being able to back up her statements (despite being asked to provide such evidence), proclaimed that bright kids don't need extra challenges in school, and that such challenges were actually harmful to them.

Now, there's some educational leadership for you - if you want to be led down the path to mediocrity.

Political Junkies on Political Junkets

2011-03-02T11:36:00.001-09:00

You know the conservatives are in charge when the state and borough credit cards come out and the politicians fly off to DC to meet with lobbyists. The big story is that 28 state legislatures are off to Washington DC to attend the three 1/2 day Energy Council sessions. Really - 28?!? Included in that list is the central peninsula's Tom Wagoner, asleep at the wheel ever since elected, who has forever sat in the sidelines of the state senate and just got caught unawares about the Conoco LNG shutdown. Is there a golf course nearby?!?

Couldn't a small committee be sent and reports then filed? And three 1/2 sessions are all that is on the agenda?

Our local borough assembly members, all nine of them, are off to DC next week to attend sessions for some national counties organization. The borough had to appropriate some $16K for this junket. Again, do all assembly members really need to go? And when budget cuts to essential services are in the works, how does this make any sense?

Someone please tell me about the connection between republicans/teabaggers and fiscal responsibility.

Do Tell...Don't Ask?!?

2011-02-28T10:28:00.004-09:00

Oh, the ultimate power that being the Borough Assembly President brings.

Gary Knopp has met with Borough Mayor, Davey Carey, to begin reviewing and setting the upcoming budget and they decided that the other assembly members were not to be allowed to talk to the various borough department heads to ask them questions about their current budget needs. Carey already decided to make up his budget without input from the department heads and now ignorance will also be the borough assembly policy.

Now why would you do something so...stupid?!?

Well, why apply logic, sanity and need to political decisions? Why not just make budgets (and cuts) according to your political agendas rather than by what might be needed to make the Kenai a great place to live? Brings to mind Tricky Dick's famous quote: Don't confuse me with the facts.

Speaking of logic and sanity, the rumor is that Ron Long, the former borough assembly person from Seward will run for Borough Mayor this fall. Ron, a successful businessman established a reputation as a fair, honest and knowledgeable man who was able to work with folks of various political persuasions to come up with sensible ideas and solutions to the various issues we face here on the Kenai.

Is there hope for the future? Don't count on it. The Kenai is the place where Joe Miller was the top vote-getter in the last US Senate race. We live in a place where logic and sanity are about as important as fuel efficient vehicles.

Maybe Dale Bagely will also decide to run and he and Carey would split the, um, insanity vote. Maybe, just maybe there is a chance not to be so SOL here.

OK, joke time. A version of this made the rounds on FaceBook this morning:

The Koch brothers, a teabagger and a government-workers union employee were invited to a meeting to discuss wages. At the meeting there was a table with a plate of 100 cookies.

The K Bros., because of their VIP status, were able to enter early and before the other two had any idea that there were so many cookies, took 99 of them. When the teabagger and the unionized worker showed up, one of the Kochs pulled the teabagger aside, offered him a bite off of one of their 99 cookies, pointed to the one remaining cookie and the union guy and said "That union person wants most of your cookie"

Dis-Union

2011-02-24T16:45:00.000-09:00

As noted in my previous post, since the super-rich were granted another extension of their tax breaks, the EPA and government workers' unions are being targeted by Republicans, Tea Baggers and conservative talk radio. The previous post here noted the Peninsula Clarion's lame opinion piece that slammed the EPA, and while there doesn't seem to be much of witch hunt for unionized borough and school district personnel right now, both of those entities are looking at budget shortfalls and it will be curious how it all plays out.

Nation-wide, there is little doubt that the war on the middle class is being financed by the likes of the Koch Brothers. Posing behind grassroots sounding names like Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party Express these super-wealthy corporate masters manipulate those who are suckers for simplistic solutions that don't solve a thing. But the PR is good and supported by the Rush Limbaughs and Glen Becks of talk radio. A classic divide and conquer technique pitting average Americans against each other while the filthy rich get filthier.

There was an interesting piece in the NYTimes comparing the tax rates of the security guards and janitors in the Hemsley Building in NYC, where the average resident had an adjusted income that exceeded $1million. The bottom line, the poor paid a higher % of their income to taxes than the super rich. And yet those same wealthy folks just got themselves a nice big tax break. The rest of us? Cuts to services, loss of jobs, and taking away the few things that help the middle class stay middle class.

Time To Apply a Strong Hand With the Clarion

2011-02-16T14:55:00.003-09:00

Now that the super-rich have been given the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts and as the costs of two unfunded wars and the interest on that borrowed money mount, the US has plunged further into deficit spending. To divert attention to their own culpability, the right-wingers have have been quick to point fingers. Obama's recovery plan was an easy initial target and so has been the health reform passed last year. We'll not go into the merits of either here and now. But recently there have been two new whipping boys of talk radio and winger-blogs: unions and the EPA.

The Clarion chose to rip the EPA in its recent opinion piece, Time to apply a strong hand with the EPA. What rot, but surprisingly so, what unabashed rot. The writer doesn't even pretend to see a need for any sort of environmental protection, but rather simply whores for the jobs that unchecked development might bring, no matter the destruction it would cause.

Without the EPA (which was created with a Republican in the White House) there's no doubt that development would be done without a care about the health of either the people or the planet. If you think otherwise, think back to the time some 40 years ago when rivers in the US were so polluted that they caught fire. Do just a little bit of investigation on the drilling/production practices of the major players in developing countries. In Ecuador, where the oil companies have rigged the game in their favor by bribing politicians and writing their own laws (sound familiar?), the courts have just awarded $9 billion to be paid by Chevron/Texaco to the indigenous jungle people for that company's wanton and reckless dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic wastes and the spilling of 17 million gallons of crude oil in the upper Amazon basin. Look at the destruction and corruption done by big oil in Nigeria.

But everyone is blaming the EPA for stifling development. Whatever. Damn, we are lucky that we have that agency.

There was an interesting post in The Economist, a leading world-wide business magazine published in Britain and usually spot-on concerning economic/political issues. One of the wikileaks revelations was that the Saudis have exaggerated their oil reserves. The Economist predicts a steep increase in natural gas and oil prices and suggests that development now is not a good business idea. After all, why be in such a rush to get your product to the market when prices are low? And low natural gas prices are certainly the reason Conoco and Marathon are shutting down the Nikiski LNG plant - Alaska gas is priced out of the market right now. Forget all talk of bullet lines and other such natural gas pipelines. It's cheaper to import the resource than to produce it here right now. It's a simple business matter controlled by an oversupply caused by new technologies, new discoveries and gas/oil fields located in places that are just easier to get to market.

But it won't be like that forever. Eventually that gas and oil we have in the ground is really going to worth developing. If we were to do so today, it means giving billions of dollars away to the most profitable businesses in the world - corporate welfare at its worse. And a bad business decision.

It's like a savings account protected safe underground for now. We, along with the politicians in Juneau, have shown little sense in how we spend and give away the state's money. Why should we be in such a rush to throw more money away?

Let the free market decide. There's no reason to give away these reserves at bargain prices and subsidize the oil companies to boot. After all, these reserves are our children's inheritance.

It will mean some belt-tightening for we Alaskans, but aren't we calling for that on a national level? And in the long-run, it will be best for the future of Alaska.

Wake Up and Smell the Giveaway

2011-02-13T19:47:00.002-09:00

Oh, Boy. $1,000,000,000 + and that is just a start of the serious money that the State of Alaska is proposing that we give away to the oil industry, those very same companies that posted record profits. And what for? To protect oil companies from the vagaries of the free market system. The governor and all of our locally elected officials that represent the Kenai in Juneau would give this amount of money and more to the oil companies without actually requiring them to guarantee that they would do more exploration or drilling. BTW, the state has already given these companies about $3,000,000,000 in breaks in the last four years with no guarantees. Guess what? In this case, you don't get what you pay for. If you haven't read Mike Doogan's take on this, you should click here.

So, the oil companies are stinking rich, the state is flush. Why the rush to promote development by giving away subsidies to the filthy rich? What happened to free market system dictating development? Why are those who decry government bailouts for the bankrupt auto industry the first to want to bailout extremely profitable oil companies?

And then Mike Chenault has this piece in the Clarion about how we need to act or opportunities will pass us by. Wow, that sounds we should do something and do it now, but just what are you proposing Mr Chenault?

Some other competitor beat the price that Conoco and Marathon was selling LNG to the Japanese. Business happens. And it wasn't because of regulations or taxes - with new technologies, new fields in the world and a glut of natural gas on the market, Alaskan natural gas is just priced out of the market right now. Is Mike proposing that the state subsidize an in-state pipeline when there is not much of a market for the product? That smacks of something that is not free-market capitalism to me. Well, Mike really doesn't offer much of a plan as there are no facts, no figures, no projections, just some sort of sense of impending doom and gloom.

Please, someone help me understand this. Yes, we have oil in the ground and offshore. Yes, we have tremendous reserves of natural gas. Does anyone really have any doubt that sooner or later, these fields will be developed? Our state fiscal reserves are brimming, and while production is certainly down, revenues for the oil owned by the state are the envy of every other state in the nation.

And when the price is right, and it sure isn't now, the state will make a bunch of money, the oil companies will make a lot of money, but maybe you and I won't make a lot. But maybe our kids and grandkids will. We've already proven that we'll piss away what we get. Let's hope that our kids aren't quite as dumb .

And if you are of the tea-bag persuasion, here's your golden moment. If you really believe in the free market and no government bailouts, don those tri-corner hats and just tell those republican politicians in Juneau that garsh-darn it no, no more subsidies for the most profitable businesses on the planet. Yeah right. I won't hold my breath.

Of course there is a fallout to it all. By giving away our natural gas at subsidized prices to Agrium and their fertilizer plant and to Conoco and Marathon to sell to the Japanese, enough natural gas was produced to offer the citizens of the Kenai the gas at relatively affordable prices. Now that the free market is about to reclaim its place, we are all going to give more to Enstar. The free market sucks when you have to pay market prices, but that is the way supply and demand works, isn't it?

Now imagine that we got smart. Instead of paying $500,000,000 to Transcanada for looking into building a natural gas pipeline across Canada (surely that will create a lot of AK jobs), instead of giving the oil companies over $4,000,000,000 in subsidies, instead of thinking about giving $150,000,000 to the Knik Arm Bridge developers, instead of the $11,000,000+ to study The road to Nome which could cost a few billion by the time it is completed, instead of funding the $5,000,000,000 Susitna Dam, let's take that all of that money and begin moving AK to sustainable clean energy (and maybe on a local rather than grand scale), fully fund our universities to attract and keep the best and brightest minds, help more homeowners make their homes energy efficient (and reducing the demand for more fossil fuels), develop viable mass transit and promote and develop businesses and industries that match the needs of the changing world?

Then our kids and grandkids might have a fighting chance.

Mayor Carey: We've Got To Keep Moving (down the road to hell): Part 2

2011-01-14T13:12:00.001-09:00

Last week, I posted about Carey's call for the development of the Chuitna Coal mine. Please, some one out there try to explain to me how destroying a productive salmon stream and shipping dirty coal to China to help power their factories and put more Americans out of work is a good idea? If you think developing this mine is just totally whacked, please do attend DNR public hearing this Wednesday night, January 19, from 6-9 PM at the Challenger Learning Center. This will be the one and only opportunity you will have to let the powers know that this is just a lousy idea.

And Mayor Davey is also all about developing the Pebble Mine too. Once again, salmon be damned. Once again, let's destroy one of the last great ecosystems left on the planet so some multi-national mining company can make billions. Sometimes, it is not just all about the money.

Alaska Oil Companies Need Your Money

2011-01-07T16:00:00.003-09:00

Despite record profits, neither State Senator Tom Wagoner nor House Speaker Mike Chenault think that the oil companies make enough money and are both proposing to enable those businesses to give their executives even larger bonuses. Of course, like back in the days of the blatant CBC (corrupt bastard club) Mike and Tom are reciting the oil company talking points, but have no real corroborating evidence that ACES has really stifled production or exploration. The number of Slope workers is greater than what it was before ACES was passed, and the decline of production in the existing fields is what happens when you pump them for 25+ years. Just like last year when there was some movement to eliminate ACES, the proposals did not have a clause that guaranteed the companies would ramp up exploration/production if they were given a break. Nope - just give them the money.

Is ACES perfect? Of course not, but the only one with a better proposal was Ethan Berkowitz, who did not get elected governor. Read about his plan here.

What about the guy we did elect to be the Guv'? The legislature is planning to give him a 40% pay raise - that's right $50,000. And the guy has not one bright idea about anything.

Let's see, Alaskans elect Frank Murkowski over Fran Ulmer. Fran is honest, capabale and has some great ideas. Frank buys a jet and crowns his daughter. Then we elect Sarah Palin. Let's not even go there (ACES was her baby by the way). And then we elect Parnell and the first thing that gets taken care of might be his pay raise.

Please tell me exactly why anyone thinks the Republicans are the fiscally conservative party? They are the union of the ridiculously rich with an army of those incapable of doing anything but reciting talk radio propaganda.

Mayor Carey: We've Got To Keep Moving (down the road to hell): Part 1

2011-01-06T10:24:00.003-09:00

Oh, Davey, just whom do you get advice from and who writes your speeches? Is thinking about the consequences of your proposals ever allowed?

SOL to the rescue.

Let's start with your out-of-total context quip from the AK constitution that we're a resource development state. You imply that we then have no other choice but develop each and every resource no matter what. You can't just use the parts of the constitution that support your point of view. The AK Constitution also says that we are conservation state too. And more importantly, that development must be based on sustainable yield.

So let's start with the Chuitna Coal project. OK - just to be clear, this mine would cut right through and destroy a world-class salmon stream by removing 11 miles of the river with an open-pit mine. The coal will be not be used here, but shipped off to China and will fuel their cheap-labor merchandise that will put more Americans out of work. Then they will burn this very dirty stuff and cause even more environmental damage to the planet. Oh, the tailings? Mercury, arsenic and other poisons that not only would destroy the water table there, but would flow into Cook Inlet.

And what about the salmon? We have ours with the Kenai River, so screw the rest? The salmon can be maintained as sustained yield guaranteeing Alaskans jobs and recreation for generations to come.

The open pit will sustain a few rich developers for a few years, create short-term jobs at the pit, but send many other Americans jobs to China.

You should put away that 49 star flag Dave and get out that Red one with the five stars. Anyone who supports this has obviously sold their soul to the god of greed.

There is a hearing about the mine at the Challenger Learning Center in Kenai on Wednesday the 19th at 6 pm.

7651 Local Idiots; 10,231 Peninsula Idiots

2010-12-31T09:07:00.005-09:00

Yeah, name calling is a juvenile and mostly Republican occupation, but here I am calling the 10,000+ Kenai Peninsula people and 7000+ central peninsula folks who voted for Joe Miller, idiots.

I just can't think of a more appropriate word to describe the insanity of that fact.

Every day prior to the election, new stories came out about that slime ball's hypocrisy and lies. He applied for an in-state hunting and fishing license before he lived in-state for a year AND applied for the license for poor people - despite building a $400,000 house that year. He's against things like gov't services for the unfortunate, but had no trouble enrolling most of his 8 kids in Denali Day Care. He is against federal largess, but received federal subsidies for farmland. He was reprimanded for hacking the computers of his fellow workers and then using those computers to send illegal political messages while employed by the Fairbanks borough. He then had the gall to say it was the fault of his co-workers for not securing their computers better. His hired thugs roughed up a reporter who had the audacity to ask him some questions. He refused to answer questions about his unethical behavior. He lied about each of his opponents positions on almost all of the issues. He was heavily subsidized by Outside corporate sponsors that definitely don't have Alaskan interests at stake. He continues to try to disenfranchise Alaskan voters and will announce sometime today if he will appeal to a Federal Court. So much for the state's rights that he and his followers profess to espouse. Jeez -what more proof does one need that this man is in it for his own ambition and that truth, integrity and sincerity be damned.

But more 10,000 of our neighbors on the peninsula with over 7500 of them from right here in the central peninsula still voted for him. What is up with that?

It can't mean anything else but that we are surrounded by folks that have no critical thinking skills, are easily manipulated by phony ideological rhetoric, and that have absolutely no common sense.

In a word, idiots. We are SOL in SOLdotna for sure.

The final vote tabulations:
4783 - McAdams

10, 231(7651 from the CP) - Miller -

6702 - Mercowskee

I'm Baaaaaaack!

2010-12-31T07:50:00.002-09:00

Let me begin by dispelling the rumor that my long absence was the consequence of being placed in protective custody at Wildwood. Let's just say I had to leave the country for a while. The federal government was only slightly involved.

I did pay attention while I was in places where English wasn't spoken and did come away with some consistent observations:

1) I didn't see any obese people (other than some tourists from the US). Most towns/cities had vibrant central business areas where most folks shopped/did business on foot. Not much pre-processed food available. I saw one Hummer (driven by...you guessed it, someone from the US).

2) China. I was no where near that country, but they are everywhere. They are providing developing countries with what they need: cheap consumer goods ranging from home appliances to little motorcycles. Guess what? They have also cornered the alternate energy market. Even in some very remote and impoverished places that have no (or unreliable) power sources, most every home has solar panels from China that provide enough energy to run a few lights, a TV and a satellite dish. Small-scale is good.

3) There's a powerful and growing middle class in developing countries. The growth of the bourgeoisie is bringing (relative) political stability, prosperity and safety to these countries. And many of the economies have experienced more growth than what we've had here.

4) Environmental protection laws are a good thing. I know SOLdotna, anyone who recycles here is a considered an extreme whacko greenie, but if you think that protecting the environment is a bad thing, go check out countries where those laws don't exist or where no one even thinks of enforcing them. It's horrific. But it was encouraging that it is the local, ordinary folks, the ones who live with the consequences of putting profits ahead of safety and poisoning the land (and humans), that are insisting that rules are put in place and enforced. So far, greed and corruption still have the upper hand.

SOLdotna Rules

2010-09-28T11:52:00.002-08:00

Good Time Charlie's and Bristol Palin made the the show Real Time with Bill Maher last night. In his New Rules piece, Maher noted: "There's got to be an easier way of teaching the rhythm method. Oh, I'm just kidding. Lay off Bristol Palin. You know, her mother's a dingbat, but she's just a young girl having fun and the skills she learns on the dance show will serve her well in her future career at Southern Alaska's finest strip club, Good Time Charlie's".

It's about time a Palin dealt with the naked truth.

Election Selections

2010-09-26T13:25:00.002-08:00

The editorial staff here at SOLinSoldotna realizes that by coming out in favor of something/someone just might be that icy kiss-of-death for the issue/candidate. With that in mind, the reader will just have to wonder if the endorsement is meant to promote or distract.

First up and despite having picked on the poor guy, SOL gives the nod to Kyle Fisher for Soldotna City Council. Rather than point out hypocritical political beliefs, there is no doubt that Kyle cares about SOLdotna. He's on the Kenai Watershed Forum Board and has been behind some local quality of life issues. His opponent seems like one-issue guy with a grudge against the police department.

SOLdotnans should also consider backing the bond issue for the library expansion. Its a fine facility that could be even nicer. I hope they increase the bandwidth for wireless internet access.

For the SOLdotna seat on the Kenai Borough Assembly, Linda Murphy gets the nod. She's smart, approachable and even if you can't agree on all the issues, Linda would have an open-mind about them. Her opponent is a militia 5th columnist who has taken a middle-of-the-road approach, but belies these stances with his membership/leadership in the AIP.

Maybe it's about time to have a borough manager making the big decisions and relegate the mayor's job to ribbon-cutting and other such innocuous duties. It might provide stability and consistency to the management of the borough and keep politics out of practical matters.

Taking Back Conservative (and Joe Miller is not one)

2010-09-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

The world is so neat and tidy when people can put others in categories that fit their own agendas. I hope that I'm less concerned about labels and more about having integrity: that one can defend one's own actions because of rational thought, good conscious and even change one's mind when presented with reasonable and sound alternatives. You can't have integrity if you don't have an open mind.

So, it's been a delightful political season here in Alaska and things are becoming more and more interesting every day.

I'm especially curious about Joe Miller, with his populist Tea Party support and his chest-thumping conservative label. But what a scam that all is.

The latest news this week exposed that Mr Miller, who has railed against sucking on the teat of big government, has been caught in a big white lie. Yes, he too has sucked hard. While he blows on about the deficits, he has admitted taking farm subsidies for his fallow land in Kansas.

Nothing illegal of course, but just plain slimy. And dishonest. And hypocritical. And self-serving. Just the sort of political qualifications we want in DC, I suppose.

So, Mr and Mrs Soldotna T. Bag, help me out here - just what is a real conservative?

Is it one who conserves? That would be what I'd think. And I think I am one of the most conservative people in SOLdotna. Really. If cutting back on spending is one of the solutions for over-spending, cutting back on consumption is one of the solutions for the energy crisis.

I think a conservative doesn't believe in being wasteful - yet Joe Miller parades around Alaska accompanied by Hummers - the very symbol of wastefulness. Shouldn't we have leaders who are willing to lead by example? We are never going to break our addiction to foreign oil if we think it is our god-given right to buy and use the biggest gas-guzzlers on the planet. When Al Gore preaches about conserving resources and cutting down on our carbon footprint (all fine conservative principals), but lives in a huge and energy-guzzling home, that too is hypocritical.

I was at Fred Meyers the other day and saw a big Ford Excursion (Excruciation?) with a Don't Tread On Me decal on it. And just what is the message? That you'd rather put American soldiers in harm's way risking their lives in the middle east so we can guarantee the right to be wasteful? And of course, don't even think of making anyone pay taxes to cover the trillion dollar costs of the wars.

And then Joe Miller wants to do away with Social Security and Unemployment, both insurance-type programs that we all pay into, but then he has no problem cashing in on farm subsidies that is nothing but a giveaway program.

Joe also wants to do away with the National Park program that was brought about mostly under Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican that knew that conserve was the root word of conservative. How do we preserve our natural wonders if we don't conserve?

Lisa Murkowski is going to run as a write-in and both are tripping over themselves as being true conservatives, but the only thing either really wants to conserve are the tax breaks for the super-rich and the sweetheart deals given to the most powerful in the country.

I hope that readers will seriously consider voting for Scott McAdams for senator. He's a working guy without an ivy league law degree. He doesn't come from a connected background - he has earned everything he has from actual work. He doesn't say things to pander for votes and has an open-mind for practical and needed legislation. And he is not funded by the Koch Bros.

Big Time

2010-09-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

We got an off-hand mention in the Alaska Ear section of this past Sunday's ADN. Nice. Well, it was about a post more than two years old, but news out of SOLdotna does travel slowly I suppose.

Agreeing to Disagree With Kyle Fisher

2010-09-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

I received an email from Kyle this past week and he took exception to the things I posted about him last week. To be fair, no matter how unbalanced either of us may be, the following is a point-counter-point exchange.

Kyle:You base your entire blog on the fact that I am a member of the Tea Party. The clip that you reference I added the caption "Check out this trailer.. you will love it." I posted it strictly for its entertainment value, and similar to your blog, to insight discussion. Nowhere did I say I agree, endorse, or encourage the message in the trailer. The subject matter of the clip has to do with national spending policy, and has very little to do with a local election.

SOL: (This is in reference to a post on his FB page) Well, you don't really have any post from a sane point-of-view. What you don't say in your response to me is if you sort of agree with the caricatures that are presented in the clip. If you didn't, why would you post it? If you are so easily hoodwinked by the message of that clip that you posted, why should you get the vote of people who are looking beyond partisan politics to find solutions to very real problems here on the local level? So, is you is or is you ain't a TP sympathizer?

Kyle: You reference Beck and Rush. I agree with you that just because Beck or Rush say something enough, it doesn't make it true. The fact that you elude any of these entertainers would persuade my deductive reasoning or civic logic is offensive. It would be the same as equating George Clooney and John Travolta as source of your political views and opinions. I seriously doubt that you are that shallow.
SOL: Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt. I jumped to that conclusion because of that clip on your FB page. By posting it, you seemed to have swallowed the propaganda of those who would rather make stuff up rather than engage in serious debate and offer real solutions to problems. Once again I ask - what the heck do you really believe?

Kyle:You question my motivation for running and infer I will cut quality of life expenditures. First, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I would do that. Second, as you probably already know, as a member of the Soldotna City Council, you are required to live within the city limits. Would it be logical to cut the quality of life that me and my family enjoy? That doesn't make sense.

SOL: Well, none of the tea bag philosophy makes any sense to me. If that is your real political point of view, they are all about cutting back government services and cutting back quality of life expenditures. Except when it benefits them. And only if someone else will pay for it. So, once again, the question that must be asked, is have you really swallowed the TP/Beck/Rush/Palin kool aid, and if so, just how will that affect how you vote on the things that make SOLdotna a livable place?

Kyle:You question the sincerity of my pledge to protect the Kenai River for all of the users groups. I don't know why you question this, but I will address it. This year I was approached by the Kenai Watershed Forum to join their board of directors. I believe that speaks for itself. If we do not protect the river, not only will we lose a great treasure, but will lose the biggest economic engine in our region. To be frank, I doubt Soldotna would survive a major permanent catastrophe in the Kenai River. We must all do our part to protect the Kenai, but I would be naive to think it could be done without governmental regulation.

SOL: Yes, I am aware that you are on the BOD for the KWF. And I am glad that you are sincere that the river must be protected and the only way that will be done is with government regulations. Without those, we would quickly over-fish, use the river as a toilet bowl, fill-in feeder streams, and cut down all the riverside brush. Maybe you are a closet progressive liberal?

One last question, are you going to vote for Joe Miller? You do know that he would say to screw the river, and make it easy for pig farms on the peninsula and vote against all fed $ and money to help protect the Kenai River and all other salmon streams in AK.

The Tea Party and the Militia Want To Represent SOLdotna

2010-09-06T07:48:00.004-08:00

There are two candidates wanting to represent SOLdotna that perhaps are being somewhat less than honest about their views on politics and about what their agenda is.

Take JR Meyers, the candidate for the borough assembly. JR and Linda Murphy answered some questions about their views in a recent forum and, according to the PC, their views were the same for the big issues. But sometimes people sometimes say more by what they don't say. Myers is the vice-chair of the Alaska Independence party and that party's most notable other candidate, is his buddy, Ray Southwell, the anti-government militia-man from Michigan that now wants to represent us in Juneau. Hmm...does Myers pal around with terrorists? The AIP, aside from wanting to secede from the states, is against regulations, especially environmental regs and wants to end property taxes (sounds good? OK, then, just how do we pay for stuff?). Do check out the AIP's platform before you vote.

And then there's Kyle Fisher who is running for SOLdotna City Council. If you are on FaceBook, check out his page - it's got this Tea Party animated clip comparing Obama's and St Ronald's economic policies. Ah, history is just so easy to reconstruct. Just because Rush and Glen say things a million times, it doesn't make so. Just for the record Kyle, when Reagan took office in 1981, taxes were $517 billion and outlays were $591 billion, for a deficit of $73 billion. When he left office in 1989, taxes were $999 billion and spending was $1.14 trillion, for a deficit of $153 billion. The deficit went as high as an 5 percent of GDP during Reagan's term. As a result, the national debt soared by almost two-thirds.In contrast (despite the cameo by BC in the animation), Clinton cut spending 3 times as much as Reagan (and left us with a surplus). W, by not funding his two wars and by cutting taxes for the richest 2%, turned that surplus into a deficit of 9% of the GDP. Obama now has increased that by another 2% - a smaller increase than either RR or GWB. We still have not paid for the wars and then this little problem with the economy erupted at the end of the W years. And what brought the country out of the Great Depression? The massive amount spent on WWII - that was paid for by a modest tax increase. But why let facts confuse us?

So, as a tea-bagger, just what is Kyle Fisher's real agenda? And how will he go about it? Of course, a seat of the city council is far removed from the problems we have as a country, but if Fisher's viewpoint is what it appears to be, will he cut all quality-of-life expenditures? Does he really care about protecting the river (that means regulations, Kyle)? His FB page has his slogan displayed: It's time for Soldotna to be more concerned with the living residents. I dunno, is he suggesting that we ignore what the people want?

Politics in Action

2010-08-30T22:24:00.001-08:00

My fellow Soldotnans,

Do you need help deciding for whom to vote for in the upcoming Borough Assembly seat that Pete Sprague is vacating due to term limits? The two candidates, Linda Murphy and JR Myers will present their political views this coming Wednesday, Sept 1 at 5:30 at the Reel Cafe, on the corner of Funny River and the Seward Hwy (right in front of SBS). Be informed. Be there.

If you're concerned about the direction that CPGH will take in regards to governance and ownership, you might want to consider attending the Sept 7 Borough Assembly meeting where this will be one of the hot topics on the agenda.

Become informed, get the facts, vote responsibly.

Primaries, Politicians and the Press: Part 4

2010-08-25T07:08:00.001-08:00

I can't make up my mind about it...should I be happy that only 329 folks voted for Militia-man Ray Southwell, or should I be scared that there are at least that many motivated, paranoid, gun-toting, irrational people in the central peninsula?

Joe Miller still has the lead this AM. The teabag vote is a reality in Alaska. Of course, I hope that y'all read the story about the Koch brothers (see the link in the previous post), if you think Miller will call the shots. He is in their pocket. Where do you think he got the funding for his campaign? The Tea Party movement was conceived and is hugely funded and totally manipulated by the Kochs.

Was there any encouraging news? Ballot measure 1 did fail by a wide margin.

Primaries, Politicians and the Press: Part 3

2010-08-24T22:22:00.005-08:00

Alaska and Alaskan issues have had some coverage the national press lately. The most direct piece was the NY Times article about how we get the most federal dollars per capita than any other state. The reporter skewered those Alaskan politicians and citizens (particularly Republicans and tea baggers) that have no trouble cashing in on largess of the Feds, and yet at the same time bitch and moan about how the US is Alaska's enemy.

If you know (or are) a Tea Party member, a Cato Institute fan, or don't think the recent Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited and hidden cooperate sponsorships of political causes is such a bad thing, you should read the article in the New Yorker, Covert Operations, about the billionaire Koch Brothers who have provided not only seed money for the teabag movement and the Cato Institute, but continual funding and operational control of both organizations and for many of the "Citizens for..." organizations that run political attack ads. The Koch Brothers are the the third richest Americans and operate oil refineries in Alaska and control thousands of miles of oil pipelines in the lower 48. They also helped finance Joe Miller's run for US Senate and have been friends and supporters of Sarah P. Apparently they supplied much her information (also debunked) about polar bears.

The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank (is that an oxymoron?) are one of the primary global warming/climate change deniers, yet all of their claims against warming have been debunked (remember that university in England that the deniers have claimed cooked the books? Well, that wasn't true after all). Yes, the Cato Institute is almost completely funded by the Kochs.

Another read about the North is Disaster At The Top of The World, a look at just how dramatic climate change is in the Arctic.

Hey, you live in Alaska. You should know something beyond the political slogans and the opinions of the Corrupt Bastards of the state.

As I write this, Joe Miller has a 2 point lead over Murkowski in the Republican primary. If he is us, we're SOL for sure.

Primaries, Politicians and the Press: Part 2

2010-08-23T07:54:00.002-08:00

Both the Kenai Borough Assembly and the Soldotna City Council will have new representation this next term.

Term limits have prevented Pete Sprague, Paul Fisher and Gary Superman from seeking re-election. The only seat that has more than one candidate is Sprague's. Linda Murphy and J.R. Myers are both running to represent SOLdotna. Linda is along-time Alaskan and has been involved in various public service roles for quite some time, most notably as borough clerk. Mr Meyers, recently from Montana, is the vice-chair of the Alaskan Independence Party. Just what is agenda? If he get elected to office, will he move to have the borough secede from Alaska?

Residents of K-Beach will select Brent Johnson, a commercial fisherman from Clam Gultch and Nikiski will have Raymond Tauriainen, an oil-patch electrician as their assembly person.

It could be an interesting political season.

Primaries, Politicians and the Press: Part 1

2010-08-22T19:12:00.004-08:00

Oooh, boy. The political season is well underway, and it is such great entertainment to see the issues get spun and the candidates spar.

I was so disappointed that my work schedule had me out of town for the Murkowski/Miller debate in Kenai this past Friday with Merrill Sikorski acting as moderator. I hope that Merrill made some of his infamous quips. According to the PC, most of the issues brought up were about health care. Both candidates tripped all over themselves trying to show who was most opposed to the new legislation. But in true Republican fashion, no sensible solutions were offered. Miller proposed health savings accounts and free-market solutions. But where have those free-market solutions been these last 50 years? And what about kids who have parents who don't save? And what about those of us who do save, but saw the markets collapse after the unregulated free-market crash and subsequent recession since? At least Miller wasn't as silly as their last debate when he suggested not to fund anything that wasn't mentioned in the Constitution. Lisa then pointed out that the Air Force isn't mentioned in that document and wondered if Miller would cut funding for it? Gotcha!

And that's the thing about those who say they are Constitutionalists. Raise your hand out there, Soldotna. OK, how many of you then are opposed to giving those born here, even if their parents aren't residents, citizenship? Yep, that is one of the Republican platforms these days, but isn't that right granted in the Constitution? Keep your hands raised now. How many think the Muslim cultural center (the so-called ground-zero mosque) shouldn't be built a couple of blocks away from the WTC? What about the 1st Amendment - making no law respecting the establishment of religion? If we are the land of the free, does it mean freedom and justice for just us white Christian folk? Do you pick and choose only those rights that your agenda agrees with - or do protect and defend the whole document?

When she was first appointed to the US Senate, Lisa seemed a bit sensible - not a party-line hack. But that is what she has evolved into since she ascended to Republican Party leadership roles. The health bill that passed is quite close to what she said she wanted when she was at the Sports Center for the town hall meeting last year. If you remember that, Lisa had absolutely no answers for those who asked her what she would do for them - hard working folks that had no health care and who had kids who required extensive help. Lisa still has no answers.

Godzilla in Japan

2010-08-11T11:20:00.009-08:00

While reports about the hi-jinks of Borough Mayor Dave Carey and his visit to Japan are just now trickling in, the consensus has been that there has been some boorish behavior by the mayor and some borough employees. SOL has no intention of embarrassing most people and will hold off on some of the stories that I've heard, but if you were there officially and might want to explain a thing or two before something gets posted, do send me an email.

One thing to relate - at an official reception Mayor Dave couldn't find his gift for the local mayor. Carey then said in front of everyone that he had given the box with the present in it to a young Japanese woman there to help him. She then carried the box up to the banquet. But the gift wasn't there and the young lady was very embarrassed as people thought she had lost some of the contents. Turns out that Carey left the gift in his hotel room. Nothing like sloughing off blame to an underling, especially in a society that values dignity.

Maybe the funniest thing was a public FB post (now thankfully removed) of buck-nekkid borough muckety-mucks with only a small towel covering their naughty bits, but not their ample personages. I can see Jr High kids doing something like that but...?

I did save that photo, but no worries, that won't be (ur-rumph) exposed here.

Lack of Progress Days Parade

2010-07-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

Somehow the organizers of Soldotna's Progress Day Parade managed to keep MC, Merrill Sikorski, on a tight leash during this past Saturday's event. Although he slightly strayed off-script once or twice, I was very disappointed that he did not say one inappropriate comment. I mean, that's the whole point of enduring that parade.

There was a marching band for the first time I can remember, and that was good, but the rest of the parade consisted of fire trucks, race cars, hummers, evangelical church groups, Shriners without zany antics, conservative politicians and such. Oh, yes, and borough Mayor Dave with his 49 star flag stopping every few feet to remind us that we are a nation under God.

Why not just smile and wave to the crowd like mayors Peter and Pat?

Setting a Fine Example

2010-07-23T11:19:00.006-08:00

What's wrong with this picture?
Addendum: after reading the comments, I suspect that the PC was
mistaken in identifying the people in the boat at CES personnel. Most likely, all were Kenai Fire Dep't. Apologies to CES for originally running with the Clarion's version of the facts.

This photo was in the PC the other day and shows the rescue crew going out to look for the man who fell in the river and is presumed to have drowned. There's been at least 3 drowning deaths in the central peninsula the last week or so and none of the victims were wearing their pfds.

And here are the pros, the ones that tell us all to wear our life jackets. That's right, not one of them is wearing their own. Hopefully the boss on the dock is giving them the what-for on that!

Murkowski EPA Resolution: More Wars, More Spills, More Deaths

2010-06-10T09:53:00.002-08:00

The US Senate will probably vote today on Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski's resolution that would limit the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The bill, written by the oil industry, would also gut the Clean Air Act and increase our dependence on foreign oil.

Murkowski's resolution would strip the EPA's ability to promote fuel consumption standards, especially for larger vehicles. Why would oil companies be against increased mpg efficiencies? The more oil we consume, the more money they make. Of course, we would then have to import more oil from such friendly places like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Just how many soldiers and civilians have been killed in the oil wars?

Of course, the more oil we consume, the more pollutants are put into the air. Oh, I know it is far-fetched, but maybe there also might be an oil spill or two associated with drilling for the stuff.

But Lisa would spin it a different way. She would have us believe that Congress should be the ones that regulate. But doesn't that route promote partisan politics, the power of industry lobbyists and propaganda rather than facts in determining energy policy? Senator Murkowski worries about the costs to the oil and gas industries and major power-producing companies.

We Americans are mostly blind to all of the costs. How many hundreds of millions of dollars will it cost to clean up the Gulf spill? How much will it cost the fishing, tourism and other industries shut down because of it? How much does it cost to fund our military and pay for the oil wars? How much does it cost to pay for the medical problems associated with dirty air? What about medical issues like diabetes, obesety and heart disease that would be dramatically reduced if we would get out of our car and walk or bike whenever we could?

Now imagine if we could take the money we wouldn't be spending on pollution/lifestyle-caused health care problems; the money not spent on the military's involvement in the oil wars; or the money spent to clean up toxic spills and instead promoted non-polluting renewable energy, mass transit, and etc.

How in the world can Lisa be anything but a tool of the industry and an enemy of freedom, self-sufficiency and the future of Alaska and the US.

It's been a beautiful week here in SOLdotna. There's no excuse for not walking or riding your bike to work or to the store. Try it for one or two days a week and you cut your fuel consumption by nearly 20% this summer.

Or you can keep on keeping on and blame everyone else for the spill, the wars and etc. Pogo was right: We have met the enemy and he is us.

Addendum: Murkowski's resolution was defeated 53-47 with Mark Begich voting no.

Spending it Down

2010-06-07T22:38:00.001-08:00

What is a poor school district to do?

Flush with stimulus money and an increase of per/student funding from the state, the KPBSD has managed to accumulate a healthy surplus. As we all know, the school district initially received $4 million less than it requested from the borough assembly. The assembly later added $2 million of funding, but the district knows that as long as their bank account is awash in black ink, the odds are good that the borough will fund under the cap.

The solution?

Spend, Baby, Spend.

Quite a bit of the surplus money is designated for the district's several charter schools, so these schools have been ordered to make the money go away. This summer, these school have hired teachers and administrators at per diem (from $250-$500 a day) to come work an additional 20 days.

That's 20 days without kids. Doing what you might wonder? Work that teachers in traditional school are expected to do on their own time: planning lessons, cleaning up the classrooms, placing orders for next year and etc.

Teachers in these charter schools are already given extra contact days without students (and thus more money) than teachers at traditional schools and this latest boon seems like ploy that has just one purpose - to get more money from the borough.

Much To Do About A Lot Of Nothing

2010-04-25T22:19:00.007-08:00

One has to be careful about taking small-town politics too seriously and, in the process, making big problems out of not much at all.

Here are a few recent examples that belong in the molehill hole.

The silliest is Soldotna Mayor Peter Micciche's radio spots where he wanted the public to identify Soldotna city workers who were doing a good job and, as a reward, Peter would take them out to lunch on his own dime. Yeah, the mayor paid for 1/2 of the plugs and the city covered the other half and the spots sounded a bit like he was campaigning, but I think his intentions were good, despite a bit of self-promotion. It was curious that the PC interviewed folks at the PO to get their opinion and one of those was Carla Anderson, wife of recently elected councilman, Nels. What a coincidence. She wasn't happy, and her response sort of came across as bitchy. Considering the not-so-clean campaign the anti-Redoubt cemetery folks ran, maybe Carla's comments were revenge.

In other city news, the Mayor M is trying to duck a little responsibility by removing himself as the decider when it comes to conflict-of-interest cases. Shea Hutchings's particular case comes to mind as his parents own property needed by the Soldotna Creek Park expansion. Yes, it is a conflict-of-interest.

Not to be outdone in self-promotion, borough mayor Dave Carey took out an ad in the PC last week because it was radio dispatcher appreciation week. Fine, but the mayor had his handsomeness's picture taking up about 2/3 of the ad. Just who do you want us to appreciate?

Carey is also trying to give out some more pay raises, but at least this time he is up-front about his largess.

A couple of weeks ago, I chastised Dave about recommending that the borough not fund the schools to the cap. He had proposed giving the KPBSD about $200K less than what they had requested. But then the assembly outdid the mayor and underfunded the school district by a whopping $4.2 million. I can't get too worked up about that because the school district simply didn't offer a compelling reason for receiving the money. They have a huge savings account, are flush with federal stimulus money and didn't point to a single thing they would have done with the extra cash. In today's political climate, if the school district didn't see the need for a more exact accounting of what they were doing with their money, show why they have a such a big surplus and explain why they wanted so much from the borough, that shows some insular and out-of-touch thinking.

Sue McLure, the assembly person from Seward demonstrated that she has no backbone and changed her mind about the dual-service conflict-of-interest ordinance. The voters know if a person is has more than one political office - shouldn't they decide? Carey has threatened a veto and it might be one of the few times I would agree with hizzoner.

Despite all of this light-weight political news, there was one thing I did find particularly disturbing. A Soldotna police officer is under investigation for misusing his authority. The PC picked up the story and within minutes, the comments began - including one that named the officer and what he may have done. The comment section for ALL articles was then pulled. A couple of days later the comments section for other stories was back, but the original story about the cop vanished.

I don't know if Soldotna police officers have that much pull, but this is the second time in recent memory that stories about them or their families have been kept under wraps by the PC. Certainly everyone deserves a right to privacy and folks are innocent unless proven otherwise, but who else, especially public employees, gets stories pulled?

Tee'd Off at the Tea Baggers

2010-04-18T15:45:00.006-08:00

Darn if I can figure out the anti-tax protesters out demonstrating on the Y last week. Claiming that they are taxed enough already, they are also worried about the direction that the country is going.

But their protests don't quite jibe with reality.

I'm sure that most of you have come across the recent Tax Policy Center's factoid that 47% of American households didn't pay a dime in income taxes. If you were married and had two kids and your adjusted income was under $50K, your income tax was $0.

Although it wasn't much, for the rest of us who made less than $200K, we were the recipients of Obama's tax cuts. Yes, tax cuts. For me I made 25% more in 2009 than in 2008, yet I paid $300 less in taxes. Thanks, Mr Obama.

According to a Gallup Poll survey, 45% of people claiming to be teabaggers made less than $50K - so likely they paid little to no federal income tax. I would bet that the number that make less than $200K pushes close to 90-95% of the protesters, so the rest received tax cuts under Obama.

Shouldn't they have been out there THANKING the President?

And the many seniors that were out there receive a $300K property tax exemption from the Kenai Borough. Since there are no state taxes and we all get a PFD check, it is likely that quite a few of the demonstrators are in a tax-gain situation.

So, they are protesting the taxes they don't pay.

And that is not even counting those folks at the Y who are on medicare/medicaid or receive SSI benefits, or have a city/state/school district/borough/veteran/federal pensions, which, of course, are taxpayer supported and a form of the very socialism that they are complaining about.

Not one of them offers a realistic solution of course - well aside from cut spending and taxes. But don't cut those programs that benefit them. And not a mention of the nearly trillion dollars spent on the Iraqi War (I didn't see ANY of this crowd protesting at the Y when we were invading Iraq). How about the billion dollars spent for the fence along the Mexican border that is nowhere near completed nor is it at all effective. How about the 'star wars' missile defense program that has sucked billions and billions, but doesn't work? Just how much have we spent over the years on the war on drugs, yet there has been no prolonged reduction of drug use?

If anyone is really fed-up with the feds, please walk the talk. Give up all of your government benefits and start paying for your share of the federal money that comes to Alaska and subsidizes your lifestyle. Stop using parks, highways, airports, ambulances, fire and police departments and all of the government run and subsidized programs.

Does the US have a spending problem? Undoubtedly yes. But I've yet to hear some serious, non-politicized discussion about what to do about the deficit. I do see the easily hoodwinked being lead around by the Limbaughs and Becks of the airwaves.

If you repeat lies, it doesn't make them true.

Prankster Wanted: Apply at ksrm.com

2010-04-15T21:39:00.001-08:00

We slammed John Davis and his radio stations on this blog a few weeks ago, but if there is anyone out there that REALLY wants to annoy Mr Davis, I suggest that you log on to KSRM.com

It isn't there.

Apparently John forgot to renew his domain name and now it is up for auction. For $79, you can begin bidding on his URL. And what fun one could have with the call letters:

Kenai's Shameless Republican Machinations
or
Kenai's Self-Righteous Moron

Just click through Backorder Domain and let the hijinks begin!

Putting a Cap in Education

2010-04-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

What's a borough mayor to do? You've already come out against funding the school district to the cap, but aside from the vocal hysteria from the ACT folks, there's absolutely no traction with that idea anywhere on the Kenai. As a former teacher, Dave might have some insider-information about waste in the school district, but the change of administration over there has been a bit more above-board and Carey really can't point out anything that is obviously egregious spending. The move to offer distinct programs at the three central peninsula high schools and letting students enroll in what meets their needs has been a positive change and big potential cost-saver as programs wouldn’t be duplicated in these schools.

So, Carey announces that three assembly members support cutting back what the KPB gives the KPBSD. Only Carey won’t say which three. In today’s PC, the Clarion reported that they called all of the assembly members, and only one could remember having that conversation with the mayor. Assembly President, Pete Sprague is in favor of funding to the cap though. Gary Superman did not respond to the reporter’s phone message, but even if he agreed with the mayor, that would just be one person.

Perhaps Dave is stalling for time, appeasing the ACT folks and trying to build up support. If an assembly person is in favor of cutting back the borough contribution, they should just come out and say so. Without that, Carey’s words are empty and an example of political doublespeak.

Does Carey have a point though – should the KPB no longer fund the KPBSD to the cap? Unless Dave can point out specific things he thinks are unnecessary, all he is doing with his stance is thumping his chest and pandering to the tea-baggers.

Bad To The Bone: Borough Animal Control The Carey Adminisration Way

2010-03-26T17:17:00.005-08:00

When Duane Bannock took over as Acting Chief of Staff, he promised that he was going to eliminate a position from the borough payroll. Well, in what can only be a bone thrown to the ACT folks, the Carey administration, through Sue Wilcox, fired Ares, the search and rescue dog that CES has already spent over $10K on for training. Technically, Ares works for the borough for free, but his handler, Dale Lawyer, a CES paramedic, is required by FSLA (Fair Labor Standards Act) to receive 3.5 hours a week ($7400/year) for maintenance of rescue dogs.

Part of Ares' duties has been to go to schools and instruct kids what to do if they ever get lost. The program has been very well-received.

The Kenai has quite a bit of wilderness and it is reasonable to expect that eventually, some tourist, hunter, hiker, snowmachiner, skier or kid is going to get lost. $7400/year is small insurance that might help someone have a happy ending to a bad day. Ares is also trained in avalanche rescue and we've been hammered with avalanches this year.

Just one of the pay raises that Carey gave his staff would have more than covered the annual cost for Ares.

Who knows, maybe the dog pee'd on one of Dave's red, white and blue fire hydrants?

Snippets

2010-03-23T21:14:00.012-08:00

There is SO much to write about, I just don't know where to start. I think I'll just post some questions that are a foggin-up my mind these days.

1) Why are some of those most vehemently opposed to the health care reform bill also the recipients of public-funded socialized medical insurance? If you work or have retired for the city, borough, state, feds, or if you're a veteran, a teacher or a senior on Medicare and are bitchin' about the bill, why is all right to subsidize you, but it is not OK to make sure all also have insurance?

2)Did Mike Chenault really work every day of the past year? He claimed per diem for them all. When he went on the all-expense-paid trip to China, did he also claim his per diem? Mike collected more money than any other legislator - nearly $90,000. Really, he never went fishing, never went on a vacation, never took a day off...what dedication. Considering what laws DO get passed, maybe he should think about taking a day or two off.

3)Sean Parnell recently went on a cruise ship convention junket to Florida and now wants to reduce the $50 tax that the cruise ship passengers pay to help mitigate the problems the hordes create in those port towns and to monitor the sewage and garbage the ships dump at sea...so, all one has to do is wine and dine the guv and he becomes a lapdog?

4)A couple of rich Texans want to put a coal mine right through the Chuitna River drainage across the inlet, and then sell the coal to China. And Mayor Dave thinks that this might be a good idea? So, we should destroy a healthy salmon stream for...?

5)Alaska Department of Fish and Game shoots collared wolves just outside of Denali National Park and kills off a pack that habituated the park. In a recent OpEd piece in the PC, Corey Rossi, writing as the assistant commissioner for AK Fish and Game, defends aerial hunting stating that it was designed to put more food on Alaskan tables. Why did he fail to mention that Board of Game also refused to prohibit Outside big game hunters from shooting moose in those same areas? If there so few moose for subsistence hunters that we have to shoot animal predators, why is there enough for rich dude predators from the lower 48 to come and take some too?

6)The same Corey Rossi was just appointed as the Alaska Director of State Wildlife Conservation. Turns out the man has no wildlife qualifications. He's not a college graduate and has had no training in that field. Well, he did take a biology course at a JuCo and he was once paid $11/hour to trap rats. Apparently the man is a personal friend of the Palins and had the assistant commissioner job created just for him (note to Tea Baggers, SP increased the size of gov't). A few people who have some real knowledge have raised a fuss (and read the ADN OpEd piece here). So, we are worried about our kids falling behind in math and science, so we put a political appointee with no credentials in a job where some education and understanding might be an asset? Those darn real scientists ruin everything.

I'm not out of questions, just out of time right now...

Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammo...and the Haldol

2010-03-14T12:08:00.011-08:00

Here I am thinking I'm SOL in SOLdotna because of the suburban sprawl, strip malls, and the over-crowded chaos on the Kenai River.

But every time I pick up the PC, Norm Olson and Ray Southwell are putting on their Paul Revere tri-corners and spreading warnings about black helicopters, the feds, space aliens and the coming Armageddon. Along with Bob Bird, Schaeffer Cox and the 2nd Amendment Task Force, these two have been promoting the Alaska Citizens' Militia, their club of angry, gun-toting, mostly fat old white guys who don't want to pay taxes, but want their roads plowed.

Well, Bob is not fat and Schaeffer isn't old or fat, but angry he is. He was arrested last week for domestic violence. With their kid in the back seat of his rig, Mr. Cox tried to strangle his wife as they were driving to a show.

At least he wasn't texting.

Where did the militia last meet? In the taxpayer-funded auditorium at KCHS. I wonder why they don't support a capitalist local business? Well, I don't know of too many businesses who would want a crew of over-aged, locked-and-loaded paranoids hanging out on the premises. And besides, that crowd doesn't like to tip. Or pay for anything besides the latest armor-piercing ordinance.

But maybe these guys are on to something. Maybe we should be very afraid. And maybe these are the guys who will save us from the conspiracies that lurk behind every delusional thought they have.

So I did a quick search. The first click brought me to the New World Order's official web site. Yep, they recognize that Norm is their nemesis and Olson has repeatedly thwarted their plans for taking over the planet.

I'd like to direct Olson and Southwell to three more very imminent threats to Alaska and freedom: Canadian World Domination, The Evil League of Evil, and Terrorist Squirrels!

I know I'll feel a lot better knowing that the militia might focus on threats just as whacked as they are.

One reason the Kenai attracts the angry old white guys with guns who don't want to pay taxes is that we encourage them to move here. Yep, once you are 65, you get a $300,000 property tax exemption. Norm has 2 years to go before he gets to really whine about the taxes he is (not) paying, although he currently qualifies for a Nikiski senior tax break. I'm all for cutting slack to seniors who are in need - especially those who put their time in locally to build this community, but the break goes to anyone that qualifies for the PFD and it doesn't matter if one's annual income is $0 or a million bucks. So Norm, Ray and their ilk move up here and we all will subsidize their craziness.

In related breaking news, bigots from around the US are worried that the development of new racial slurs aren't keeping pace with the rise in mixed-race births. Read about it here.

Think About It: John Davis Doesn't Think

2010-03-01T22:43:00.004-09:00

Radio Kenai's five stations dominate the local commercial airwaves. John Davis, the radio media magnate, has infused right-wing propaganda through most of the syndicated shows that he broadcasts. John, and his partner in opine, Joe Nicks, offer their own profundities in the Think About It series. At best, their ideas are insipid, but more often they are, in the satirical way Rush uses the word, retarded.

Let's look at a sampler of what they want you to think about.

Joe wants to keep anyone over 60 from running for political office. They're too out of touch with the youngsters. So no Bush I, Reagan, Ford, Eisenhower or Truman. I think we all would have preferred the old George over the youngster W.

He also wants to give one-time tax credits for those who quit smoking or enroll in weight-loss programs. Simple...or maybe just simple minded. Ok, so you quit smoking, take your tax write-off, and celebrate by lighting up? Is the gub'mint going to put their spies out to make sure you really quit? The same for weight loss credits. Does he want the Feds to come and weigh you to make sure? And if you gain the weight back, do you pay the credit back? If not, what's the point? This is how you propose we solve the health care issue? How about we give those ideas at least a couple minutes more thought Joe?

But it is Mr. Davis who really demonstrates what little thought he is capable of. John gussies his platitudes with faux-folksy tales of his past and equates old-time parental discipline as a sure way of getting the Feds back in line. Well, he's a little short on specifics, but those might confuse him. The government has chipped away at gun rights over the last 100 years. Well, we can't own atomic bombs, so I guess he's right. John, what specific laws are you talking about?

He also rails against the Patriot Act, just one of the many doublespeak laws passed in W's watch, but there are no specifics, just his cutesy musing wondering what type of soap the government will use on those who speak out. I don't think the government should do warrant-less phone taps on citizens, force librarians to turn over the titles of books that citizens check out and etc., but why does he complain now and why did he remain silent when some of those laws were passed and why the silence when W's justice department violated the existing rules on wiretapping and torture?

I did get a big laugh over his delineation of liberals and conservatives. A liberal vegetarian wants to outlaw meat. A liberal wants to surrender gracefully to Osama Bin Ladin. An atheistic liberal only wants to promote 'foreign' religions. A liberal person of color only sees himself as a victim.

John, if you need to believe all of this to feel good about your ignorance, that is your right. But if you call that thinking,maybe you should think again.

Acting Chief of Stuff: Duane Bannock

2010-02-12T17:19:00.004-09:00

There they were just a couple of days ago, Charlie Pierce and Duane Bannock, parked in one of the handicapped spaces at the OEM Building and deep in conversation.

And the Press Release today maybe reveals what that conversation might have been about: Duane is the new acting Chief of Staff, replacing Scooter Chumley who resigned a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. Bannock is a former car salesman, who served on the Kenai City council, was fired as Director of Alaska's DMV, and most recently, the political appointee in charge of the Spruce Bark Beetle Mitigation Program. In the shuffle, Michael Fastabend will act as head of the SBBMP, and Susan Wilcox will be the Admistrative Officer for the KPB.

Some of Mr. Bannock's political views have included his support of industrial pig farms for the Kenai, state issued ID cards, private prisons, Moms, Apple Pie, and Dodge trucks.

Included in his business views was selling cars "to not very smart people". But this practice came to a legal halt, when a developmentally impaired man, under the legal guardianship of his parents, bought a car from Kenai Chrysler when Duane was the general manger. When the parents tried to return the undamaged car the next day, Mr. Bannock refused to recognize the validity of the guardianship and would neither cancel the sale nor return the man's trade-in. The parents took Mr. Bannock to court where Duane lost the verdict and the appeal.
But maybe it explains why he was parked in a handicapped parking space.

No Walk To The Park: The Soldotna Community Playground

2010-02-11T10:06:00.005-09:00

What’s not to like about the Soldotna Community Playground? A group of moms saw a need in the area, so they got together and are making something good happen. Inspired by the custom playground in Seward, some local parents contacted the private enterprise that sold that playground equipment in Seward and several other locations around the state (and nation) and began to raise the needed funding to begin construction. The community has generously responded and ground breaking is scheduled to begin this May.

The location seems ideal. Soldotna Creek Park has become a showcase for our town, especially after the DOT exchanged the land adjacent to the old park for their present location adjacent to ARC Lake. The expanded park now offers boardwalk fishing, hosts the Kenai River Festival, weekly farmers’ markets, and will be the site of the Kenai Watershed Forum’s headquarters. A new park plan is in the works and it will feature a gazebo, a veterans’ memorial, a (not nearly as big as the first revision) parking lot and some needed landscaping.

But what is not included is access across the highway for the kids who might want to go play in the soon-to-be very cool playground. There is no crosswalk and no traffic light, nor is there a ramp over or tunnel under the Sterling. The closest protected crossing is either by the Y or on Binkley St.

Just about all of the kids in town live on the other side of the highway, don't they?

Do you think that the new kiddie park might attract the attention of those 7-12 year-olds, some who are just learning to ride their bikes, who probably have not yet developed sane unprotected-highway crossing skills. While Soldotna Creek Park already gets unsupervised youngsters, the number of those free-range kids will undoubtedly increase.

Soldotna has been lucky that no child (to my knowledge) has been hit by a car or truck while crossing the Sterling or Spur Highways, but the odds of that happening will increase as we offer an attraction that makes them dodge our crazy summer traffic. To not have a safe highway crossing plan in place the day the new playground opens up is simply flirting with disaster.

The residential area of our town is very friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians. One of the goals of the city-sponsored Envision Soldotna 2030 is to promote walking and bike riding – it’s a good idea for everyone’s health, for relieving traffic congestion, and for making the city more livable. For kids, having parks where they can safely walk or bike to gives them some fun, freedom and exercise. It gets them out of the house and out from underfoot.

The only way to get to the proposed playground safely will require that someone drive the kids there – completely contrary to SOLdotna’s grand development plan.

Not every parent has the time or means to get their kids there when the youngster might have some time to play. And isn’t it a better idea that when the parents do have the time to take the kids to the park, that the family walks or bikes there together?

It’s hard to believe that the planning department, parks and rec, and the playground group asked themselves the basic question: Where is the best place for this new playground? While Soldotna Creek Park might be the most aesthetic, it isn’t the most practical and without a controlled crossing, it isn’t the safest.

Wouldn’t a central Soldotna location be a better choice? Why not close Park Ave between Binkley and Fireweed to traffic, remove the blacktop, and put the playground there? It would be less than a mile from most every home in the residential area, there would be no unprotected major roads to cross, kids from both Soldotna ad Redoubt Elementary could take mini-field trips with their classes and the residents of the nearby senior housing could watch the great-grand kids romp around.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that a car, no matter where the playground is located, won’t clip some boy or girl, but I don’t like the odds of that happening if the playground is installed at SCP without some sort of traffic control at Birch Ave.

Comments

2010-02-06T08:18:00.004-09:00

SOL has been getting a lot of comment posting lately, and that's great. But there are so many anonymous postings, it's tough to keep everyone straight. So, I've just changed the settings requiring you to create an online name to make a comment. You can still be anonymous, but now you have to at least have a fictitious name.

Lisa’s Murky-Air Proposal: Let’s Create Some Jobs By Killing Thousands Each Year

2010-02-04T17:03:00.003-09:00

I know, I know…SOL rarely takes on state or national figures, but Lisa Murkowski has written a few opinion pieces in the local rags lately that offer poorly thought through ideas. Since Lisa has invaded my turf, I think a SOL response is order.

I wish I could say that I was using a bit of hyperbole with my headline, but unfortunately that’s what will happen if the US goes along with Lisa Murkowski’s proposal that’s before the Senate. Lisa wants to relax the EPA’s toxic emissions standards regarding greenhouse gasses and then give politicians, you know, those folks that you love and trust so much, the ability to decide how many American lives we can eliminate so that big business can become even bigger. That’s right, Lisa wants to create a real-life Senate death panel that will determine what the proper balance is between preserving fossil-fuel related jobs with the number of people who will die or become sick due to the increasing amount of hazardous gasses emitted into the atmosphere.

Lisa, what ratio do you propose? Create two jobs per death? Ten new asthma cases for each new job?

While greenhouse gasses alone don’t immediately kill people, according to the World Health Organization, they are directly responsible for the nearly 140,000 annual worldwide deaths.

Let’s connect some dots.

The more fossil fuels we burn – especially coal, the more toxins like mercury we put in the air. By reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, we also reduce those amounts of dangerous particulates that are also produced in the process. There’s no dispute that the increased incidents of asthma, bronchitis, and other lung diseases go along with releasing poisonous toxins into the atmosphere. And then consider the brain damage to kids that is caused by the increased mercury levels in the air that we breathe.

Worldwide, illnesses that cause death such as dysentery, malaria, and dengue are on the rise as the pathogens that trigger these diseases and the carriers that transmit them and are all increasing their range due to global warming. One Alaskan example is the number of deaths and hospitalizations due to allergic reaction to yellow jacket stings. These incidents have increased as dramatically as the yellow jacket population has.

And then there are the increased world-wide deaths from malnutrition as the number of areas experiencing severe droughts expands. The resulting crop failures and the loss of arable land is causing tremendous suffering in Africa right now.

The limits that the EPA wants to set would cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 13 % and annually stave off 64,000 premature deaths according to a study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The regulations would also prevent over 60,000 cases of chronic bronchitis and 37 million days of work loss by 2020.

Lisa says that the proposed EPA emission limits, currently based on indisputable scientific evidence, will eliminate jobs and destroy the economy. The coal and petro-chemical industries would certainly have to adjust, but won’t those jobs be absorbed by the increased demand for truly clean energy and those industries such as solar, wind, tidal, and etc?

But Lisa says that permitting even more greenhouse gasses emissions will create jobs.

What jobs?

More undertakers? More coffin and tombstone makers? More health workers to take care of the increasing numbers of people suffering from the effects of these gasses? More pharmaceutical and health-insurance executives?

And the costs? She speaks of the added costs of cleaning up the fossil-fuel industries, but is silent about skyrocketing medical costs that those industries cause.

It’s also curious that in Gov. Parnell’s State of the State address (you know the speech where he announced that Alaska is at War with the Feds) he says that the TransCanadian Pipeline needs to be built because Alaska gas burns cleaner (and would be better able to meet the EPA Guidelines than natural gas produced from oil shale fields). If Lisa gets her way, there will be less of a need for that clean, Alaskan gas. Lisa, Sean…do you guys talk?

Save me from the denials of those that loudly shout that global warming is a hoax. Despite the noise, there is scant evidence to the contrary. But even if it turns out that the consequences of climate change aren’t as dire as they probably will be, let’s say we create a country and a planet that provides for energy independence through the development of clean renewables, creates sustainability with green jobs, provides for more clean water and air for all, and reduces the costs of medical care due to toxins in our environment.

In other words, what if we create a better world – even if the consequences of global warming are exaggerated (and they are not).

Would that be such a bad thing?

Little Davey Lost His Scooter

2010-01-22T21:09:00.001-09:00

It is official. Scooter Chumley has submitted his letter of resignation citing a need to spend more time with his family.

My Baby Wrote Me A Letter

2010-01-20T16:08:00.006-09:00

A translation of Scott Walden's resignation letter:

Yo - Mayor Dave,

I am submitting this letter of resignation because of my health. Since I have nothing to lose, there's a few things I have to say about the lousy way you run the borough.

1) Stop worrying about making ACT happy and do what is right for the borough. Having integrity means not breaking the rules then blaming it on others. You don't have to have a re-enactment of the gunfight at the OK Corral every time the Assembly disagrees with you.

2) Why are you giving big pay raises to Chumley and Wilcox who may not have the capacity to understand the complexities of borough issues? Oh, and more and more, those issues seem to be beyond what you are able to comprehend.

3)Just because you go to a meeting doesn't mean you are listening, understanding, or have any curiosity as to how or why things are done. You also need to appoint people who are qualified to do the job they are supposed to do. Duh!

4) To get good advice from the department heads, you need to create an atmosphere where they can disagree with you and your staff without fear of repercussion. If everyone agrees with you all of the time, keep in mind that they shouldn't. You are not God.

5)When the Assembly questions what you do, they are doing their job - they were elected to do that and then to try to make decisions for the good of all. Hiring qualified people is best for the borough. Being completely transparent when you give pay raises is essential.

6)Everyone knows that Charlie Pierce is your bee-atch. Paul Fisher tries to be, but he usually can't figure out what is actually going on during the Assembly meetings.

7) Don't make things up when asked questions during Assembly meetings. Come to meetings prepared. If you don't have an answer, make sure you get back with all of the facts ASAP. Don't have underlings take the heat for you or your staff.

8)Service boards make suggestions. While the borough's decisions can take their recommendations under consideration, the decisions that are made need to account for how the changes will affect all involved and probably should involve the folks that run the departments.

9) Ms. Miller is not qualified to run Human Resources (you had to change that job description to make it appear as if she did). She doesn't have the needed people skills, the backbone, nor the self-control to be a real professional.

10)Ms. Miller is a loose-cannon and because she doesn't play nice with employees and other department heads has created problems so big, that I've to consult with the borough lawyers in an attempt to make things right.

11)Ms Miller defers to too much to the borough employee union; what are we, a worker's paradise?

12)We are giving up too much to the union. Back to the salt mines you peons!

So, to sum it up: take this job and shove it.

Have a nice day,

Scott Walden

Well, OK, it is a loose translation. But Scott didn't tell Hizzoner Dave anything that we all already didn't know.

What's up with Walden's attacks on the union though?

Carey's response has had the typical arrogant and dismissive tones as whenever he has been challenged by the public or the assembly. What else can he do now though without seeming like a clueless loser?

Here's an idea. A meeting with a handful of selected current/former assembly members (Assembly President Pete Sprague, Gary Knopp, Bill Smith and Ron Long - none are Carey cheerleaders - but at least one is supportive, and all are reasonable and have been around a while) and maybe two non-appointed and completely respected department heads and come up with sensible plan of action for Carey to follow that ensures cooperation, transparency, and integrity.

And some appointed heads should probably roll.

Or Carey can throw a hissy fit.

Local Football Star Makes $700

2010-01-10T16:20:00.005-09:00

A few days ago, an anonymous SOL reader posted a comment wondering why an armed robbery in the FM parking lot happened to miss the Police Reports. The post implied that the incident was a bit too close to the Soldotna Police Dep't.

A few rumors began circulating, and then Saturday, on page 4 of the ADN, the story about the arrest of SoHi's former football star, Anthony Griglione, for faking a robbery in an attempt to steal drugs, was published. Michelle Quelland, Jesse Chumley-Lawson, Jesse Honrud, and a minor were involved in the incident. Griglione is now on the lam.

It's always a sad thing when kids go bad; sometimes the kids are from good families and sometimes from a dysfunctional ones. It's embarrassing to all who are related to the perps.

But it seems that if you are from a connected family, that somehow the story might be omitted from the local news or perhaps left out of the police reports submitted to the media. Michelle's father is a Soldotna policeman and Jesse is a relative of Scooter Chumley, Mayor Carey's Chief of Staff. The incident took place on December 29 - nearly two weeks ago. If some normal low-life was involved in the incident, it probably would have been front-page news the next day.

All this does is fed the rumor mill - and the faked drug deal/robbery has been the buzz of the town today. The most damning thing I've heard is that all were detained at the scene - but then, because of being connected, were later released.

But who knows?

The surest way to spread rumors is to suppress the facts about what happened

It's easy to pretend that this sort of thing doesn't happen in SOLdotna, but that is obviously not the case. While most of the student-athletes at SoHi are outstanding young men and women, this isn't the first case of the children of the powerful, including school-district administrators, being exempted from drug-related or other criminal investigations after being caught in delicate situations.

Given the hero-worship that is given to the stars of the Stars' football team, it is not all surprising that some youngsters get the impression that they can do no wrong.

Unfortunately, this is the way the world works.

Dave Carey: Many Wrongs Make It Right

2010-01-07T17:51:00.004-09:00

Mayor Carey’s previous full-time job was as a high school social studies/government teacher at Skyview. I wonder what his reaction would have been if he had a student who forgot to turn in an assignment and the kid used the excuse that he didn’t know about it. Then, imagine if the student alleged (without any real evidence) that another student during a previous term also didn’t turn in an assignment, so that made it OK for him not to do it too.

And then, to make the matter go away, the proposed solution was to say OK, you don’t have to do the work. But this exception applies ONLY to you and no one else.

The other kids in the class might not think that was fair. And if ignorance was a legitimate reason to excuse an assignment, soon the whole class might make this plea. And because someone else may or may not have done the same thing, is that really an excuse for you?

This is what Mayor Carey and four assembly members tried to with Scooter Chumley’s failure to turn an Intent To Do Business With the Borough form and his no-bid deal with CES. For the sake of the appearance of clean politics, their proposal was voted down by the other assembly members. Gary Knopp, one of those trying to make an exception for Chumley, does business with the borough and somehow he managed to get the right paperwork in. Mr Knopp was able to find out what was required, so why has this been so hard for Chumley? Instead, the mayor and his chief-of-staff said the fault was with borough underlings. To blame un-named borough employees for Scooter's oversight is a cheap shot.

This isn't rocket science - it's basic political science. And didn't Carey teach Government classes?

Let’s just assume that Scooter honestly didn’t know that the form had to be turned in. It happens. What might have been the most up-front way to deal with the oversight? Why not admit the mistake, begin over and follow the law? And then rather than slough off any personal responsibility, be willing to accept any slap-on-the-wrist that might be meted out. Would the assembly seek criminal or civil repercussions? I highly doubt it.

Isn’t this what Mr. Carey, the teacher, would have said to the errant student? Do the work, and don’t let it happen again.

But rather than man-up, Carey and others are offering some lame excuses for the second-in-command. Scooter’s defenders are going on and on about his good name, but what is happening here is that Carey and Chumley are coming across as little baby whiners. If it was an honest mistake, just admit you messed up, apologize and move on. Don’t make excuses.

Carey has continued with his juvenile antics by complaining about the media. But all the newspapers have done is their job – they’ve reported that Chumley didn’t file the paperwork and was able to procure a no-bid borough contract. That’s it and that is what the news is supposed to do.

But Carey wasn’t done. At the assembly meeting, he claimed that you couldn’t really put this kind of deal out to bid because, says Dave, that maybe a company in Florida has a used tire changer. How would we be able to tell if it was any good?

There are very simple ways to check things like that out, and besides the borough is not obligated to necessarily go with the lowest bid. But Carey, the alleged fiscal conservative, has no problem by-passing the system. Maybe Scooter’s deal is good for the borough, maybe it isn’t. An open, honest bid proposal is the proven way to make sure.

Otherwise, you just leave the door open for abuse. That is why the law is there.

The New US Health Plan: Courtesy of Bob Bird

2009-12-31T08:40:00.006-09:00

I'd take a bet that not one of the 13,113 Alaskans who voted for Nikiski's Bob Bird would have voted for Mark Begich. But if Bob didn't run, most of his votes would have gone to Ted Stevens who trailed his opponent by a little over 3000 votes.

Without Mark Begich in the US Senate, the Democrats would not have had the 60th vote needed to quell Republican efforts to filibuster. The defeat would have been,as the Republicans pledged, President Obama's Waterloo.

No matter your political bent, it's way too early to evaluate what the new policy will bring, after all there has been no melding of the House and Senate bills yet. I've yet to see a (sane) critique of the either proposal that doesn't have a both a good/bad position. Well, maybe more bad than good, but that argument is for another post.

Regardless, Bob Bird will have had the most important role in passing whatever health care legislation that does become law. Has it ever happened in US History when one so insignificant on the national scale, might change the course of the nation?

And can you imagine that Bob, a history teacher at Nikiski High and one of the most conservative gentlemen that you will ever meet, might not appreciate his place in the books?

I think I will rub it in the next time I see him!

Cook(ing) the Inlet Books

2009-12-29T13:10:00.005-09:00

Does anyone lament the loss of the snow geese that used to use the flats as a feeding ground on their yearly migration? KSRM used to have a contest to spot their first arrival in the spring. And what about the caribou? I didn’t see a single one there this past summer.

It wasn’t too long ago that you could often spot beluga whales in the lower Kenai. You still might get lucky and see a few come up the mouth chasing hooligan or salmon, but it’s obvious that their numbers are way down.

NOAA may list the Cook Inlet belugas as endangered and designate Cook Inlet as critical habitat and the local pols are pounding their chests in protest.

Dave Carey and Pat Porter have called for public hearings on the Kenai. NOAA says it doesn’t have the resources to do so, but you can do so electronically here. The comment period is over on January 31, 2010. The National Marine Fisheries Service will present information on Jan 14 at KCHS about the process and the current state of the whales.

The Kenai Borough accepted a $700,000 grant from NOAA this summer to help study the whale and habitiat. No word from Mayor Carey just how that money is being spent. Of course, for anything meaningful to be learned, that amount of money would barely get ideas off of the board. Is the Kenai Borough really the proper venue needed to conduct serious research?

Mike Chenault is one of many state legislatures in a panic about the proposed listing. Not surprisingly, Don Young’s opinion is worth more than any scientific finding. Governor Parnell is threatening to sue the feds.

The Mayor of Anchorage is on the soapbox too. But I hope you all read Kenai Peninsula College's Alan Boraas’s ADN op-ed piece about the absence of sewage treatment in Anchorage. Maybe Mr. Sullivan should be a bit more concerned about what Anchorage flushes into the inlet. Or maybe that is why he is a bit worried.

What do all of the Pols have in common? Let's see...they want to discount every study that has concerns about the beluga population, they want to treat Cook Inlet as Anchorage's toilet, and they want the inlet to be the industrial waste dump of the oil and coal industry. Yes, these are the people we elect. Are these also the people that we are?

And the benefit of their reactions? Well, I'm still working on that. Best I can figure out is that they each think the critical habitat listing will be the end of development in the area. And unless we continue to pollute and destroy, that Alaska won't be a worthwhile place to live.

That is speculation and there is a difference of opinion. Do read G. Haskett's, the regional US F&W Director's piece in the ADN as well as Alaska's War On Science by Rick Steiner.

What's wrong with expecting industries and municipalities to be clean? Those of us who have been around for a few years and still have a functioning memory remember the flaming Cuyahoga River, the Bhopal incident, and closer to home, the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. I could devote the entire blog to industrial accidents and never cover them all.

Alaska is hardly the pristine place of imagination, but it is the best place we have left. Really - where else is there on the planet? Do we really need to destroy what we have?

End of Noughty Times

2009-12-29T11:35:00.003-09:00

This coming weekend is the end of the triple-noughts - not that 2010 is anything but an arbitrary designation of our transience. But as tradition warrants, the coming new year makes us think about what sort of person we want to be and what sort of world we want to live in.

Living in a small town does give us all a very real opportunity to enact change in our community. We know our politicians and most are accessible to the public; it’s easy (if sometimes painfully boring) to attend meetings and get involved; and there are many local non-profit organizations that welcome volunteers with the energy to do something other than winge about what is wrong.

Being an informed citizen is not necessarily a prerequisite for becoming involved. Just maybe, by becoming involved, a person comes to understand the complexities that sometimes make it difficult to make progress.

Why does one live in SOLdotna and the Kenai Peninsula? If it’s just for a job or because taxes are low or there aren’t too many rules and regulations, that’s unfortunate. Not that these are necessarily bad things, but they aren’t the ONLY things that matter.

It should be about the quality of life here. Parts of the Kenai are stunningly beautiful. There’s adventure to be found close-by. There are, for now, healthy wild salmon stocks in our rivers. There is still plenty of wildlife – although that may change.

There are lots of outdoor activities available all year: hiking, skiing, fishing, biking rafting, kayaking, canoeing, skating, hunting, snowmachining, star-gazing, snowshoeing, climbing, berry-picking…

I am puzzled by those who still possess the ability, but rarely venture beyond a few hundred feet beyond their car door. I am puzzled by those who like to fish or hunt, but view environmentalists as extremists. But mostly I am puzzled by those who want to transform the area into some Outside suburban scrawl.

And that’s why I’m SOL in SOLdotna!

Happy New Year to All.

Stop Making Sense

2009-12-06T10:52:00.003-09:00

It's been nearly a week since the Borough Assembly tried to figure out what to do with Mayor Carey's Chief of Staff, Scooter Chumley's conflict-of-interest mis-step and I am still a bit puzzled by how the (not-so) grown-ups are handling the incident.

The Assembly is made up a few from the good ol' boys club and they know that making money off of the government is good business. And, of course, there are perfectly legal and sometimes ethical ways of doing so. Pierce, Knopp and Fischer have always been for government contracts to help out their friends' construction businesses. And now those three want to accept that the oversight had no malice and for us all to forgive and forget.

Maybe that is the thing to do.

I am OK with Chumley's plea of ignorance - he just didn't know that a sole-source, no-bid deal with the borough might not be a good idea for someone appointed to well-paid government post. In this day and age of squeaky-clean Alaskan politicians, who could possibly think there might be a problem?

Yeah, right.

Ignorance is the key word here. How can we justify paying Scooter $90,000+? As I've mentioned several times on this blog, Carey has justified the high salary by saying that is what you have to pay for competence. So, according to Dave, ignorance is competence? What am I missing here?

The PC reports that Chumley may not be all that divested from his business that contract with the borough. Mayor Carey cries about the coverage the newspaper has given. But what did the PC do but report the facts? That is what newspapers are supposed to do - inform the public. Dave, blaming the news media for doing their job is a cheap shot.

So Chumley brought in his cheering session at the last assembly meeting: A finer fellow couldn't possibly exist. But I've heard from others that the roads he has been paid to plow don't get plowed as frequently as they should. Hearsay, of course. But Scooter does a have a few folks that he has crossed.

He and the Mayor should apologize and accept whatever wrist-slap that comes with the transgression. And I am sure all would be happy with that wrist-slap. It is about accepting responsibility.

If CES needs a tire-changing rig, they need to put out a bid request. This is just common-sense. I agree that the borough should give the equipment back to Chumley.

The good-ol' boy method of bypassing the process and having a political appointee making a few bucks on the side just invites trouble.

And it should.

Win-Lose-Win Situation

2009-11-21T08:47:00.007-09:00

Mayor Carey (is his alias magoobird on the comments section of the PC?) has defended the pay raises, especially the pay raises he has given to his political appointees, by stating that you need those salaries to have competent people working for you. But if you buy that argument, shouldn't you at least get some basic competency from those folks? I agree with Assemblyman Gary Knopp, that there probably wasn't an intent to violate any laws when Scooter Chumley sold equipment to the borough without filing the proper conflict-of-interest paperwork, but it is not too much to expect that a highly-paid appointed political official might suspect that one should at least appear to be above-board when turning a personal profit from the government he is suppose to serve. He should have checked to make sure there wasn't a problem. It's just simple common sense.

So now the borough must figure out how to deal with the mess...should charges be filed?...should a fine be imposed?

I have the perfect solution. Scooter's fine should be the exact amount of the pay raise that he received. We obviously didn't get the competency Mayor Dave said we were getting.

The Pay Raises Hackles

2009-11-12T16:12:00.006-09:00

The PC has been busy with the latest news coming from Mayor Carey's office. It seems to me that one of the stories is a bit of a yawner - Scooter Chumley didn't file the proper paperwork regarding the sale of equipment to CES. Chumley's company has done business with the borough for quite some time, and in his new (and highly paid) position, he has been divesting his connections to the borough. According to the article, Chumley's Inc. no longer has any borough contracts. The paperwork problem seems to have been resolved and there's a happy ending: the equipment was donated to CES.

The pay raise issue is still a bit weird - especially with today's revelation that the Kachemak Bay Emergency Service Fire Assistant Chief was given a $5145 pay raise - before he even started the job, and after he had agreed to work for the lower pay! That's incredible. Who can have a problem with a pay raise AFTER someone proves up to the job, but shouldn't that come after a performance review? It should at least come after the person actually does some work!

The fact that Carey continues to give pay raises after the assembly smacked his hand after he was caught giving unwarranted and undisclosed pay raises last week is stunning. Despite the slight cut that Carey made to the pay of his chief of staff (the same Mr Chumley mentioned above) and his assistant after being taken to task by the taxpayers last week, Mayor Dave still treats the borough till as his own little money dispensary.

The PC lists some of the raises - they show 11 positions that received at least a 15% pay raise, but that list is only a small sample of the Mayor's largess. Take for instance the Spruce Bark Beetle Mitigation Manager - a person with no experience in forestry and a person who the state of Alaska let go in his last government appointed post with DMV - now makes over $7000 more than his highly-qualified predecessor and gets a car allowance. There are now 25 borough managers that make over $80,000 a year - only 15 made over $80K last year. Another 22 make in the $70-80K range. That includes the newly created Community and Fiscal Projects Manager who earns $75K, compared to the old grants manager who earned $68K.

And do keep in mind that these raises don't include the increased costs to the borough to the retirement programs of each manager. That is an additional $3,000-$4,000 for each manager. And it also does not include the $3600 car allowance given to Chumley, Wilcox, the Spruce Bark Beetle Director, and the General Service Director. Yes, they all justly receive additional mileage if they use their car on borough business. But does the Spruce Bark Beetle guy really need an additional car allowance? Does the Mayor get this too? He lives across the street from his office!

The borough assembly was caught napping during the last budget cycle as they didn't question the Mayor's budget for salaries. But I guess we were all caught napping. Carey has run as a fiscal conservative and a champion that would rein in the cost of borough government. What a joke. Given the mayor's reluctance to be up-front with these raises - indeed his attempts to hide them have been incredible - I hope that there's some full accounting of Scooter's divesting his business from the borough payroll.

Dirty Money?

2009-10-30T11:07:00.005-08:00

It's not the first time the Peninsula Clarion has made this particular typo, but if you read today's paper and the article about the large pay raises some borough managers and political employees received, Mayor Carey admits to having nothing to hide because it was all 'pubic' money. C'mon you Clarion writers and editors, are you onto some scandal, have some Freudian issues or are we really getting screwed by the borough?

The pay raises are impressive - especially for the mayor's two assistants with each now bringing in some $90K. Carey says that you can't hire competent people for less. I think I know more than a handful of very qualified folks who could do the job for a measly $75K. And the mayor and his staff are competent? Morale at the borough building is low and lots of senior staff have left (or been replaced by political appointees). I thought people went into government to serve the people, not to get rich. Pay 'em a fair wage, and please, don't hide those enormous pay raises.

Sing Kum-Ba-Ya

2009-10-30T10:49:00.003-08:00

To paraphrase Mayor Micciche's opinion piece in the Clarion this past Wednesday, let's be nice if and when Soldotnans disagree in the future. I thought he might lead the city council in singing the campy anthem of harmony at that evening's meeting. And just like that the council voted unanimously to approve the Redoubt cemetery site. An unsuccessful council candidate did stand and speak against the inevitable and predicted massive fish kills if the Redoubt site was approved and if a settling pond wasn't to be put in there. But that was not really a problem was the public works director's response. I don't know if it ever occured to the Mooring on the River folks to give actual and factual reasons not to locate the cemetery at the Redoubt site there, but it just might have helped their cause to be a bit more honest about their opposition and not make up so much stuff.

By the way, the council unanimously approved every item presented. Maybe they sung Kum Ba Ya during the executive session!

The Definition of Cronyism

2009-10-21T11:41:00.003-08:00

I hope that some of you tuned in to (or showed up at) the borough assembly meeting last week. Amid the mundane, the hot items of the month were the assembly's attempt to define management job descriptions and their questioning the unpublicized and extravagant pay raises the mayor's staff received.

Each and every new borough mayor thinks that he needs to replace at least some of the managers of borough departments and, on the surface, the argument sort of makes sense. You want loyal people carrying out your priorities. But we've seen some insanity ensue as competent and qualified mangers have been replaced by those who don't have experience or competence in that particular field and are just political hires rewarded for some favor owed by the mayor. Especially this particular mayor.

So, defining the job and setting qualifications is just a reminder that the loyalty of borough managers is to the citizens of the Kenai - not to the whims of any particular mayor. To give jobs to unqualified cronies just sets up the potential for abuse.

I was somewhat puzzled by Gary Knopp's assertions that a roads manager didn't have to have roads experience, but I am glad that most of the rest of the assembly thought it might be of value. And to Gary's credit, he did vote for the overall package. The only dissenting vote was by Charlie Pierce, who offered no explanation for his opposition to creating these job descriptions.

And it was Charlie who was the sole cheerleader of Mayor Dave when it came to questioning the back-door pay raises of nearly $25,000 each, to both of the mayor's special assistants. Both Hugh Chumley and Susan Wilcox now are paid over $92,000 a year.

What is particularly puzzling, and mentioned previously on this blog, is the unabashed way Mayor Dave and Charlie Pierce have defended these huge pay raises - especially when the mayor and Charlie present themselves as fiscal conservatives.

It was awkward when Mayor Williams sort of appointed Bill Popp to be one his special assistants and set the precedent for the mayor to have 2 such beasts. There was some howling over that deed. Is there really a need for the redundancy?

The Bus Doesn't Stop Here

2009-10-13T12:19:00.005-08:00

Alrighty, enough about local government politics for a while...well at least for today.

I've more-or-less left the school district alone on this blog. There is a new guy in charge, and first reports seem to indicate that he is sensible and competent. I hope that trend continues for a while.

While Mr Atwater is still beginning to make his way, there are some hold-over central office administrators that continue to make decisions that defy common sense and just might reflect a hostile attitude toward employees. One decision prohibits the children of teachers from using a school as a bus stop. The situation occurs mostly at Middle and High Schools. Starting times in those places are a bit earlier than at elementary schools, so buses are able to make two trips - the earlier one takes the older kids to school and then the buses leave those schools and begin their next rounds which takes the little kids to elementary schools. If a teacher takes their elementary-aged kid to the high school with them in the morning (as opposed to leaving the kids home alone and responsible for getting to the neighborhood bus stop on their own), they are not allowed to put their kids on those now empty buses at the middle/high schools. The parents must drive their kids to the next stop, where those same buses that have just left the school where the parent teaches, can now can pick up the kid. This silly rule is inconvenient and just takes away from a teacher's valuable time getting prepped for a class, working individually with a student, or maybe having that last chance for a couple of hours of using the bathroom.

I mean what is the point? Is the district afraid of showing teachers any favoritism? So what would it really matter if the kid could just get on the bus? Is there anyone in the community who would actually complain about this?

By now most of you have read about the 6-year-old cub scout in Delaware that was given a 45 day suspension that was to be served in a reform school because he brought his new and nifty eating utensil that included a spork and a small knife to school. The same district suspended another little-bitty when her aunt sent a birthday cake to school that also included a knife for cutting it. The kid promptly gave the cake and knife to the teacher, who then used the knife to cut the cake, but then reported it to the principal, who said the district's policy required suspension without discretion.

It's just an illustration of how those who are more interested in being the bureaucrat-in-charge make senseless rules that, at best, lack common sense, and at worse, are just mean and vindictive.

I hope to hear from school district employees about other such policies here on the Kenai.

Scott 'McNasty' McLane

2009-10-04T10:15:00.008-08:00

SOLdotnans just received a political mailing entitled with the rather official sounding Soldotna City Council Voter Information. It offers a side-by-side comparison of the four city council seats up for selection this coming Tuesday.

But it is not an official brochure. It's from Scott McLane and it presents a bitter and warped perspective of the four candidates that are running to re-examine the Knight Drive cemetery location decision. Each and every one of the challengers are characterized as being unwilling to compromise on this issue. How would one compromise? Bury half of a corpse in Redoubt and the other half in Knight Drive? It is just as reasonable to conclude that each of the incumbents are unwilling to compromise as they refuse to consider the Redoubt site.

Three of the challengers are said to have been "coerced by Peggy Mullin to run at the last minute". If anyone thinks that Peggy could force Dale B or Nels A to do anything that they didn't want to do, there's a condo across from the police station that you should consider buying. I don't know much about Brenda H, but I hope that we are all adults here and can respect the decisions of other grown-ups.

To think that Dale or Nels will be one-issue candidates is also a joke. Nels has been involved in local politics for years and certainly has the experience, understanding and knowledge of the community that it is laughable to think that he will be only about the cemetery.

The same with Dale. He has been involved at many levels of local politics for years and years. It's actually kind of funny that he is running on a platform with Peggy Mullen as I would be willing to bet that the two of them will butt heads about almost every other issue to come before the council.

Each and every one of the incumbents has three or four community service accomplishment shout-outs listed (none of the opposition, according to McNasty, ever did one nice thing in their lives).

The small print at the bottom of the mailing mentions that no other candidate authorized the info on McLane's advertisement. That's a good thing. Participation in such a negative, slanted, and misleading campaign is reason enough not to vote for someone.

And in Scott's case, he has now lost any credibility and now has become a bit of a sleaze.

Soldotna City Council Showdown

2009-10-03T10:18:00.008-08:00

I hope you all do get out to vote this Tuesday - it's your chance to have some influence on the direction that SOLdotna takes.

The big issue is the location of the cemetery. I've written about the absurdities of the search for the cemetery site often on this blog. For the record, I began with no particular notion of where it should be. As I've said before, I want my carcass placed on a pyre, Viking and Hindu style, and set adrift on a nearby bay. It would be way cool to throw some fireworks on the pile too. As far as a burial in SOLdotna, at least one close family member and a few friends have expressed their belief that being laid to rest here would be a guarantee that they would spend eternity in hell.

So, as a neutral side-liner, I need to be convinced by sound logic and analytic reason. Those opposed to the Redoubt site have done little to win me over. All of their arguments reek of NIMBY. There will be no excess pollution from embalming fluids; there will be no connecting road through the MOR (Mooring on the River) subdivision; the MORons' property value will not go down; funeral processions can be coordinated with school schedules to avoid traffic problems; and the 500' from a school demand that Councilman McLane made was quickly abandoned when someone pointed out that the Knight Drive property was also within that distance of a school (and besides, why is that even important?). The latest argument I heard is the desire to protect the integrity of the neighborhood. I see. Let's protect the integrity of the MOR subdivision by putting the cemetery in the neighborhood of someone else. Who cares about the integrity of THAT neighborhood.

If the Redoubt site was developed, the city could sell building sites and and collect taxes on what would surely be the McMansions that would spring up. That impact on the river would be a bit more than a cemetery, that's for sure. There's a few bucks to be made. Fair enough, but I dunno...do we really need any more people here right now? Do we need more traffic? Do we need more people on the river? Maybe we should solve a few problems first.

And of course, we would have to pay over $300,000 to buy the Knight Drive site. We own the Redoubt site, so it would save some significant money to choose Redoubt.

Let's do a quickie side-by-side examination of the council candidates.

Seat A: Nels Anderson v Jim Stogsdill. I was disappointed when I heard Jim speak on KDLL's candidate segment and listened to him describe the cemetery site search. He conveniently left out how the committee could no longer bring up the Redoubt site in their discussions. In the election info booklet, Nels, while part of the Redoubt site slate, promises to be more than a single issue candidate.

Seat B: Brenda Hartman v Eugene Fowler. Eugene was recently appointed to finish out Shane Horan's term. Brenda is running on the Redoubt slate. While Fowler was on the Orwellian-named Unified Memorial Park Committee (unified meaning that to get on the committee, you couldn't bring up the Redoubt site)I wish Fowler had stated his point of view on the cemetery search as that is the main issue this election cycle.

Seat C: Dale Bagley v Jay Rohloff. As a former borough mayor, you would know what you are getting with Dale. Can't say I agreed with too many of his decisions in that role, but he is approachable. I don't know Jay, but friends say he really is a nice guy with some good ideas. But I can't understand his crusade against the Redoubt site as he has been one of the most vocal in the opposition of it - and all for reasons that have been discounted (see above). Jay did send out a nice postcard to SOLdotna voters. In one of his print ads, he pledges not to listen to just the vocal few. Does that mean he won't listen to himself?

Seat D: Peggy Mullen v Scott McLane. Scott did not submit any info for the election brochure, and that is troublesome. I can certainly understand a reluctance to do the whole baby-kissing, glad-handing election posturing, but I would like to know that a candidate cares enough to at least put the basics down. And I can't help but have tremendous respect for Peggy who has resided in the community since it became one. As a small business owner and as a concerned community member she has always had a sense of responsible and sustainable growth in mind. She has truly been one of the reasons why one is not completely SOL in Soldotna. At one point, Scott had some financial interest in the Knight Drive site and didn't vote on the issue because of it. He then said he divested that interest, but unless I missed it, he really didn't say how he did so.

Proposition 1 - Financial (Non)Disclosures

2009-10-01T10:19:00.003-08:00

The only argument that has been presented in favor of approving Proposition 1, which would change what financial information elected and appointed officials in SOLdotna need to disclose, is that the current requirements are too restrictive and prevent people from running for office.

The fact that there are challengers to every city council seat this election cycle belies that claim.

There are 11 changes that would occur and I think most of them have the potential to lead to problems.

Prop 1 would raise the minimum of reported income from $1000 to $5000. Five large isn’t a lot of money, but you don’t need to have a fully functioning long-term memory to recall how cheaply some Alaska state officials sold out these past few years. And if a particular lobbying group had 5 members each pay $4999 to an official, that’s just a Lincoln short of 25 grand –serious money.

This measure would also allow officials in certain professions not to report clients who owe them ‘confidentiality obligations’. What exactly are confidentiality obligations? I don’t think we need to know who a doctor’s patients are, but in conflict-of-interest issues, it would be prudent to know who a lawyer’s clients are. And if confidentiality obligations include knowing who owes an official some money, this could also be important information in conflict-of-interest cases. To include real estate agents and financial advisers in the exemption seems to open the door to shenanigans.

The new rules would no longer require an official to report what they did to earn a specific income. Of all the changes, I have the most problem with this. Up in Anchorage, Ben Stevens received tons of money from various commercial fishing processors for…well, no ones know for what. The word on the street is that after his dad passed some sweetheart legislation, his son was rewarded. If an official receives money, I want to know what s/he did to earn it.

Another problematic change would be no longer reporting real estate property outside of the borough. Again, this opens some very real conflict-of-interest issues. If an official bought beach-front property for a few bucks in Hawaii from a developer who wanted to put a huge pig farm in Soldotna, we would never know with the new changes.

Prop 1 would no longer require officials to report close economic associations that don’t result in a source of income. So, if an official was a dues-paying member of and a major contributor to the Ku Klux Klan and financed the campaigns of folks like David Duke, well, that would be none of public’s business.

I don’t agree. While there might be some common-sense changes to the financial information we ask our city officials to disclose, these changes are not the ones we need. I think we should send this back to the council for a bit more thought and work.

Outer Limits of Term Limits

2009-09-27T10:39:00.008-08:00

I was going to write separate pieces about the SOLdotna City Council elections and the borough-wide term-limits ballot proposition, but when I started to think about it, the fact that every council seat has a challenger running against an incumbent (or has two new candidates squaring off) completes the argument against any sort of need for term limits.

As you listen to ACT, they say we need term limits for several reasons: to oust entrenched politicians, to get fresh blood involved, and to have elected officials listen to the will of the people. Never mind that term limits are just another way to restrict your freedom by taking away your right to vote for the candidate of your choice; forget about the dedication and experience of those who have been involved in government; and please ignore that when we elect someone, that IS the will of the people in that district. Oh, and don't confuse them with the facts that in recent borough elections incumbents HAVE lost to challengers (John Williams, Betty Glick, John Davis, Mike Navarre to mention a few).

So, here in river city, there are folks who are unhappy with the way the mayor and city council have handled the cemetery issue. What is there to do? Challenge the status quo and present candidates for the city council that offer us a different perspective. Democracy at work. If people feel strongly enough about something, our system of government, especially on the local level, allows for people to get involved and be the change that they seek.

Have you noticed that ACT doesn't present candidates for office? Their excuse is that they don't present candidates. Oh, I see. They feel strongly about issues and want to unseat incumbents, but they don't want to bother actually running against an incumbent.

You may wonder why ACT has its no-candidate policy. Exhibit A would be Vicki Pate, one of ACT's loudest mouths in an organization of loud mouths. She ran for school board a few years ago and was thoroughly trounced in the election. Of course, she had to say a few words about why she was running and her reasons were simple: she wanted to do away with public schools and cut all of its funding. Those in ACT have one basic agenda - cut their taxes in order to cut government. But they do want all of the government services that someone else has to pay for: police, fire, health care, road repairs, snow plowing and etc. They just want the tooth fairy to pay for it all. Or you and me. Once they actually speak about what they want to accomplish, the only ones that are going to vote for them are those on the fringe.

ACT is all about having the minority rule. Remember the first borough initiative that they managed to pass? It required a super majority (61%) of the vote for the borough to authorize any spending over $1 million. That means that the minority (41%) controlled the will of the rest of the voters.

Rather than put a candidate against Gary Superman in Nikiski, they hope to term-limit him out so someone can run unopposed for that seat. Ron Long and Pete Sprague won their assembly seats by well over 60% of the votes in their districts, but Ron is now term-limited out and Pete will be out the next cycle. Clearly these candidates have the support of the citizens, but they don't agree with ACT's agenda. Since no candidate that espoused the ACT agenda would find much support in SOLdotna or Seward, ACT is trying to get their way by removing candidates that they don't agree with by term limits rather than by a direct challenge.

ACT is all about suppressing your vote and about taking away your freedoms as a way to accomplish their goals.

And that is exactly how tyranny works.

Kaladi's Censored Colors

2009-09-20T10:03:00.010-08:00

The old Kaladi Brothers coffee house off of Kobuk is one of SOldotna's few gathering places where you can pretend that you live in an open-minded funky sort of town. The clientele does represent the community and is most certainly a mixture of right wingnuts and artsy free-thinkers and all points between.

Every month a featured artist displays some local art. This month, Adam Green has some of his prints adorning the walls and they are expressions of color and youth. A few are provocative: two women kissing, off-shore oil derricks and submerged trees. The one in pictured above is a silhouette of a dancing woman. Yep, as you might guess, she appears to be nude. Not that it matters, but it is less explicit than imaginative. Heck, sometimes some of the baristas here wear more revealing outfits. And no, that is NOT a complaint!

But SOLdotnans complained to Kaladi Cooperative headquarters (907.344.4480) and now the print is sashed with the 'Censored' banner.

You can buy coffee at any fast food place, or at either of the grocery stores or other such sterile environments throughout town. But K-Bros is the only place in town where you might relax, BS with friends and enjoy some local art. But those who would control your mind have now decided what should and should not be allowed here.

Exhibit 1,246 why you're SOL in SOLdotna.

Addendum: Another one for the cause - K-Bros let the censorship sash come down. Once again, the power of righteous indignation prevails.

Murky Waters

2009-08-31T10:57:00.004-08:00

I used to have some respect for Senator Lisa Murkowski. Although she has had a (right of) centrist voting record she did seem to be more interested in having an honest and thorough take on issues. While there was a lot I didn’t agree with, it is the way politics should work. Things have changed since she has been elevated to a republican leadership position. I suppose she now has to engage in partisan politics to keep climbing that ladder, but it doesn’t serve the citizens of Alaska or of the US to engage in the tactics of fear, distortion, and outright lies as she did here in Soldotna on Saturday.

I do suggest that everyone visit the site Factcheck.org, an independent organization that, well, checks the facts about various claims that both political parties make. Not surprisingly, Factcheck has been a bit busy refuting the misinformation about health care reform that the conservative media and the repubs have been spreading these past few months. They occasionally have caught President Obama stretching the truth too, but nowhere near the pace and toxicity of those from across the aisle and perpetuated by Murkowski.

About 400 folks showed up at the Soldotna Sports Center for Lisa Murkowski’s town hall meeting on Saturday. The Senator began with her observation of how polite the audiences have been in similar sessions around the state. With one exception, the crowd followed the rules set out – no interruptions and no shouting. There wasn’t a gun in sight, although one speaker did imply that an armed revolution was in the works.

Despite voting against letting a version of the bill out of her committee, Lisa said that she still had an open mind about health care reform, but aside from those words, the morning was more-or-less an opportunity to swiftboat health care reform and stifle any sort of meaningful debate.

The literature that was passed out was informative, but was slanted to lead the reader to one conclusion – that any sort of health care reform will break the bank and cut the level of care we have now. The first two charts demonstrated the exponential growth that the nation will spend on health care in general and government programs like Medicare if there were no reforms. So far, so good, these stats are not new; something has to be done. The population of the US is rapidly aging and no one argues the fact that health care costs, as high as they are now, will soon explode as the baby boomers become enfeebled.

The propaganda began on third graph that listed federal spending and the national debt. The stimulus, bailouts, TARP and cash for clunkers were highlighted as the big-ticket items, along with an estimate of the cost the proposed health care bill as the major contributors to the budget deficit. Absent from the list were the staggering costs of the Iraqi war, Homeland Security, the missile defense program (that doesn’t work), and the loss of revenue from the tax breaks given to the super rich. Upfront costs for the wars will exceed a trillion dollars by the end of this fiscal year – but that doesn’t include the costs of replenishing equipment, paying for health care of wounded veterans, paying the interest on the borrowing the money to fund the war. The estimates now are that by 2017,the wars will have cost $3.5 trillion dollars.

Using Murkowski’s estimates for the cost of health reform, for the price of Bush’s wars, we could have had complete coverage for all for the next 25 years without paying another dime. No wonder she left out that little detail.

The next section cherry-picked and out-of-context statements from the Congressional Budget Office about the costs implications of the health bill – federal spending will go up, the deficit will increase, some will lose their private coverage, and employers and small businesses will face higher taxes. Absent were quotes from the same office that noted that costs to individuals would go down, and that more people would be covered.

Another Murkowski graph takes issue with the estimate that 47 million Americans are uninsured. It grants that only 12 million of that 47 million cannot afford it. It claims that 6 million are eligible for a company sponsored plan, but haven’t purchased it (could it be that they too can’t afford it?), some 9 of those 47 million make over $75K/year (and implies that they can afford it, but are choosing not to?). Nearly 10 of the 47 million are already eligible for a government sponsored plan, but haven’t enrolled. Another 9 million are not citizens and may or may not be eligible. Of course, the implication is that these are illegals, but there are millions of legal aliens in the country that are entitled to receive services – think students, guest workers, refugees, legal immigrants and family members of citizens that have legally entered the country. This became an opening for the xenophobes in the audience and sure enough a person announced that the health bill covers illegals

Despite the very plain and clear language of the bill: Nothing in this bill shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the US, Lisa agreed with the man who spoke. Lisa also completely ignored that current law already prohibits illegals from participating in government sponsored health programs. But Lisa chose to stir the crowd up and play into the fears and paranoia that so define too many of the residents of the Kenai.

As Murkowski answered questions, it removed any doubt that her mission, and the mission of republicans is to sabotage health reform. She kept saying that Obama was ramming this bill down our throats by insisting that we move forward with the bill this summer and fall. One attendee did point out that we’ve been trying to reform health care since Truman was president, so it really wasn’t like all of a sudden. Lisa owned up to the fact that unless some sort of deadline was put forth, probably nothing at all would be done –but that still didn’t change her tone or language.

Two of the random people chosen to ask questions told Lisa about their personal problems with the current system. One lady, a victim of a stroke, noted how difficult it was to see a new doctor as so many will no longer accept new medicare patients. She asked Lisa what she could do a she is not able to receive treatments for her condition. Lisa couldn’t/didn’t offer her any advice, but used the opportunity to deride Medicare and warn that this was in store for everyone if we went with the current bill. The other lady, a young mother, said that both she and her husband worked, but didn’t have health insurance. One of her children had severe allergies and that her family simply could not afford the medication. She spoke of the humiliation of being asked about payment before her child could be seen as she was holding her barely breathing kid. She asked Murkowski what she could do. Again, no actual answer from Murkowski. It took another person from the audience to stand up and tell the mother to see her after the meeting to let her know of the specific services available in the community.

We all know of how many of the local working families deal with these catastrophic medical costs – a spaghetti feed and a donation jar at the convenience store.

Let’s get this straight. Right now we have rationing of health care. If you are poor, if you are disabled, if you have a catastrophic illness, if you need long-term care, if you lost your job, or if you are elderly, there’s a good chance that you are not getting the treatment you need. Yet, Lisa, the republicans and the conservative media are telling us that the bill will ration health care. Of course, what they don’t say is that for 20 of the past 22 years, the Republicans have controlled congress and for 20 of the past 28 years, have had the presidency. It is because of their votes that Medicare and Medicaid have been underfunded. The only major health care bill passed during this time was the prescription drug provision that created a huge donut hole where retirees purchase prescription drug services and have minimal amounts and catastrophic costs covered, but leaves a huge gap in the middle that has to be paid out of pocket. The big winners have been the pharmaceutical industry. Has the public forgotten that the republican answer to health care reform has always been to cut services? But they are now pulling a tactic from the Democrats playbook and telling those who are easily frightened that these new reforms will cut services. Hmmm…only if republicans get their way.

Another person in the audience mentioned that essential services like fire and police protection are essentially a form of socialism. The public pays for it and we all receive services. The police and fire departments don’t ask you if you have insurance or how you are going to pay as they come around to help you out. The person said it just made sense to have that same sort of system for health care. Lisa responded by railing against the government bureaucracy – there’s no way that government could be more efficient than private industry. She must have forgotten about the Medicare Advantage program that Medicare contracts out to private business. Medicare Advantage offers the same care as Medicare. Oh, the cost? 14% more than Medicare.

This blog entry is way too long, but I have only given a brief overview of the meeting. What continues to be the most frightening is that the crowd – and that apparently would be the majority of the people in the central peninsula - have accepted as fact every lie and distortion the republicans and the conservative media have put out on this topic. I am not naïve and am quite aware that the Dems have done their share of propaganda too. As I said at the top of this blog, go to Factcheck.org and check to see if those claims people are making really are true.

My own opinion is that we as individuals have caused a lot of our own problems. Many preventable illnesses have been brought around by our sedentary and gluttonous lifestyle. Why should my tax dollars go into treating those who smoke and now suffer from respiratory problems, heart disease and cancer? Diabetes and other debilitating illnesses can largely be prevented by diet and exercise. We all have a responsibility to live healthy. From there, why do we pay doctors by procedure? The more tests they perform, if needed or not, the more they make and the more the health industry makes and the more it costs us all.

As JFK said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” I would be willing to pay taxes for universal coverage for those who don’t smoke, stay within 15 % of their weight range, and exercise regularly. Aside from meeting the healthy lifestyle criteria, I think everyone who wants a national health policy needs to contribute to it – albeit on a sliding scale. I think those who volunteer for the military or Americorps or Peace Corps should have further reductions in costs. Full time students shouldn’t have to pay a dime. Anyone should be able to opt out and take care of your own insurance if that’s what you want. I think certain costs should be excluded – such as most cosmetic procedures (but including reconstructive costs for those disfigured by accidents and burns of course). Families should have up to two children covered for free, but then fees would kick in when families exceed that. After all, an increasing population is exacerbating the high costs of health. With all of that and with a restructuring of how we deliver services, it won’t solve all of the problems, but it would be a huge start and would add the notion of personal responsibility into the mix. Nothing more American than that.

And personally, I don’t want to end my life as a vegetable hooked up to obscene life-support mechanisms. Aside from the huge and wasted costs associated with it, don’t let the death panel scare tactics keep us from having discussions about dieing with dignity. How come the ‘Christian’ right wingers are so afraid of dieing a natural death? Are they having doubts about going to heaven? Maybe they have a good reason for they are Christian not by deed, only by cheap words. “JC is my personal savior, now can we get back to torturing, making war, polluting, cheating and imprisoning the poor and other such conservative values?” My mother, who has voted republican in every election and who has attended church religiously her whole life, and put her faith in action by volunteering at soup kitchens, put a death with dignity clause in her living will. She did this when she was in her 50s, well before this issue became such a scare tactic (she is in her late 80s and still with us). But we see how the radical right has made this a ‘moral’ issue with the Terri Schiavo case.

Town Hall With Sen. Murkowski

2009-08-27T10:34:00.002-08:00

Lisa Murkowski will host a town-hall style meeting on health care this Saturday, Aug 29 from 10 AM-noon at the Soldotna Sports Center on K-Beach Road.

Murkowski released this statement on the meeting:

I have heard from thousands of Alaskans about the health care proposals currently being debated in Congress,” said Murkowski. “As a member of the Senate Health Committee, I voted against the Democrat bill that passed the committee last month. There were many problems with that bill, the biggest being the staggering cost – over $1 trillion dollars that would leave as many as 34 million people without coverage. Health care will be at the top of our agenda when Congress returns from recess in September and I want to meet with as many Alaskans as I can in August to hear their thoughts before returning to Washington.

What she doesn't address is the staggering costs of doing nothing - Medicare is facing a growing aging population, medicaid has been underfunded for years, and some 47 million Americans are currently without coverage. For those with insurance, we've seen copays grow and charges challenged.

A debate is needed and I just hope that this Saturday's debate is civil.

Ms. Murkowski rebuffed Sarah Palin's 'death panel' claim and called for all to stick to the facts. That's good advice, but as we all know you can spin anything by not only giving false information, but by conveniently leaving out information or by putting out misleading statements. Murkowski's opinion piece in the PC is an example.

She states that Medicare is broken - but leaves out that under the Bush Adminstration and the republican controlled congress (that she was a part of), they prohibited the government to negotiate for lower prices. In those 6 years, nothing was done to lower costs to taxpayers, but plenty was done to increase profits for private insurance companies. Murkowski notes that we don't buy a home without knowing the price. that's true, but it would sure be nice if that same sort of mentality went into questioning the need for the Iraq war which turned out to be a blank check for military industrials.

Let's hope we can avoid the socialism scares. If you are on medicare, medicaid, or a federal (including Lisa), state, borough or city employee, if you are a school district employee or a veteran or a native, you already receive some sort of 'socialized' medical coverage. If you are a taxpayer, you are already funding all of this and more. On the peninsula, taxpayers cover about $600,000 in unpaid/not covered medical bills for the 2 borough hospitals.

I encourage all those who intend to attend to do some homework beforehand. Get your news from more than one source. Learn the concern that the other side has. Paying for coverage IS a problem. Having millions without coverage is also unacceptable.

And how about walking or biking to the Sports Center? Do something healthy for yourself if you can. Just leaves your guns at home.

Politics not as Usual

2009-08-20T09:52:00.003-08:00

It's good to see that there are challengers for every seat on the Soldotna City Council. Nels Anderson is running against Jim Stogsdill for Seat A, Brenda Hartman will attempt to oust the appointed Eugene Fowler for Seat B, former borough mayor Dale Bagley is taking on Jay Rohloff for Seat C and homesteader Peggy Mullen will try her luck against M. Scott McLane for Seat D.

Could it be that some SOLdotnans are not happy with the way the cemetery issue has been handled? I really don't know for sure, but certainly Dale and Peggy have been vocal proponents of the Redoubt site and of course, Jay R has been a leader in the Mooring on the River subdivision's NIMBY campaign against that location. Dr. Nels has long been involved in local politics as a former school board member and unsuccessful candidate for the state senate. I don't know Brenda at all. It will be interesting to see what issues will be brought up.

Time to Step Up

2009-08-14T10:46:00.005-08:00

The deadline for becoming a candidate for the various borough and city offices and service area boards is this Monday, August 17. You can find out about how to file here.

It is good to see that Jane Stein is running for seat G on the Central Peninsula Hospital Board. This is the seat currently held by Norm Olson, an avowed racist and the anti-government former head of the Michigan Militia. As of today, Norm has not filed for the election.

If you have been following the SOLdotna Cemetery debacle, you might be interested that Jay Rohloff is the sole candidate for Seat C on the Soldotna City Council. Jay has been one the chief propagandists leading the fight against the Redoubt site. None of Jay's arguments have held up under any sort of rational light. If elected, Jay would represent those who promote their narrow, but well-connected and funded point of view over the wishes of the community.

So - if you are one of the 63% of the folks that voted for the Redoubt site for the cemetery, it's time to file for a seat on the council!

Stars and Bars and Right Wing Conspiracies

2009-08-08T10:09:00.006-08:00

Have you noticed the number of vehicles (mostly pickups) around town sporting confederate flags or decals? I don't quite know what to make of that - is it some sort of statement or just a bit of nostalgia for the ancestral homeland? If it's a statement, get over it. The civil war ended almost 150 years ago and it marked the beginning of the end of state supported oppression. Yes, it was about states' rights - but the one right that war was about was slavery, how can you be nostalgic for that? States' rights continues to be a rally cry for certain conservatives, but of course they only want states to have rights they agree with. If a state OKs gay marriage, tighter environmental laws and other such policies, those same conservatives are ready to pass federal legislation to take away those state rights.

I was enjoying some java at K-Bros the other day and at the next table there were some regulars (loudly) going on about the president and his attempt to reform health care. A few minutes of their conversation was devoted to their certainty that Obama was not born in the US (despite irrefutable evidence that he indeed was). Then a few minutes were consumed by hateful talk that linked the president to satanic/communist organizations. A couple (but not all) of people at this table made overtly racist comments. Some of the folks at the table regularly bring their bibles and I can't help but wonder how they then can tolerate so much hate. The thing is that none of their beliefs are at all accurate, and some are outright lies that are easily disproved by any sort of casual research. Their talk tends to feed upon itself and in the absence of another point of view to provide some checks and balances, it creates a hysteria that stymies the legitimate and needed debate of issues. Sarah Palin's recent Facebook post where she says the Obama health plan will have a death panel that decides who will receive care and who won't is an over-the-top example of the irresponsible propaganda that the radical right is using to scare those who are easily manipulated.

I am in no way suggesting that people shouldn't express their ideas - even if they are repulsive to me. Can a free country keep someone as extreme as Norm Olson (see related post) out of politics? I hope not, but I do hope that more balanced individuals then become motivated to get involved and refuse to let someone like him make decisions for the community.

New ideas need to be practical. Established practices need to be modified as new information comes to light. We all need to work together.

But with that said, I think it is important to stand in the place where you live and refuse to be intimidated and silenced by the voices of ignorance and hate.

Seward Highway Tragedy

2009-08-07T11:03:00.003-08:00

Once again, an accident on the Seward Hwy around Turnagain Arm has claimed some lives. Once again the victims were from the central Kenai peninsula - two teens from Soldotna this time. Condolences to the family and friends of these young men.

The drive to and from Anchorage has always been a game of Russian roulette. Over the years the road has been widened and straightened. Passing lanes have been put in and additional troopers occasionally patrol this stretch. Time and several tons of money will be needed to widen the road and maybe create a divided highway in that section.

But the uncontrollable factor is the individual driver and how do you prevent someone from making an idiotic decision? Maybe passing in no-passing zones along certain areas should become a felony. Maybe have troopers arrest the unsafe passer on the spot and place offenders in the pokey. That might get the message through to folks.

Until something changes, the best bet is to drive defensively. Don't tailgate as you wait for a place to pass and then let the moron who tried to pass back in the traffic lane. Expect an on-coming car to be in your lane every time you come around a bend.

And just don't be in a hurry.

Redoubt Reporter 1 Year Anniversary

2009-08-07T10:45:00.003-08:00

Congratulations to Jenny Neyman and the Redoubt Reporter for reaching the first year of publication. The Mouth of the Kenai presents some in-depth reporting - their multi-issue examination of the issues behind the SOLdotna cemetery offered a thorough examination of the history, personalities and politics behind the decisions that have been made.

If you haven't picked up a copy, they are free and available all around town (library, Kaladi Bros. etc)

ACT Won: A Peninsula Travesty

2009-08-05T09:58:00.011-08:00

At last night's borough assembly meeting, upon reconsideration, the assembly defeated the measure that would have put the mayor vs manager style of government on the ballot this fall. Homer's Bill Smith was the swing vote, as he changed his mind from last month. He noted that no one from the public came to an assembly meeting and spoke in favor of having a borough manager over a strong mayor.

ACT, however, testifies at every borough assembly meeting held in Soldotna and their message is that they are the voice of the people of Kenai.

They sure as hell don't speak for me. Here's a sampling of some of their testimony.

Viki Pate has no trouble justifying ACT's flip-flop on this issue (remember, ACT was for having a manager before they were against it). She stated that when ACT was for it, it was because they wanted competent government. But when the assembly tried to move the issue to the ballot for people to actually decide for themselves, Pate accused the assembly of being fascists. Huh?!?

Fred Sturman attempts to come across as a folksy voice of reason but is full of unsubstantiated statistics to support his idea that borough needs to cut the budget. He never offers any specific cut options and is blind to pay raises Mayor Carey gave to his staff and the deficit spending budget Carey proposes. Fred offers the occasional verbal gems like last night's declaration that the 80s were so like the.....80s.

Debbie Holle Brown only speaks to the assembly when something is very dearly important to her - but she seems to have something to say about everything even when she has noting to say. Well, maybe she has something to say, but darn if I've been able to figure out exactly what that is. She usually tries to make her point by yapping on about something else and then as her 3 minutes are winding down, rushes to tie together the loose ends that she spun. Last night she even had the audacity to ask for "A special eduction IEP for testifying"so that people like her could ramble on forever. So, she spent about 2 minutes saying that she couldn't get her point across in 3 minutes. Geez, just stick to what is pertinent and maybe you could.

The angry Kasilof woman who sometimes is in too much of a hurry to put all of her clothes on is another example of those speaking as the voice of the Kenai. When I hear her rage, I wonder if there should be a metal detector at these meetings.

These folks have become the most powerful force on the Kenai - but just what are they promoting? Viki Pate would do away with all public schools, Fred Sturman would eliminate most all borough services. It's a mystery what Debbie Brown wants as she is not capable of articulating a clear thought. Those who have followed her political career when she was a member of the school board know that she doesn't know much of anything. And those whose nuts are about to slip off of the remaining threads of their sanity are easily manipulated. The Kenai is not immune to crazed gun-wielding whackos.

In other assembly news, the ordinance that would have put the sports dome on the ballot this fall was tabled after the group that brought the measure forward withdrew their support for now. Despite being tabled (and any attempt to bring it back would have to start the process anew), Debbie Brown and others spoke against it, maybe just to hear themselves talk. I don't think the ordinance would stand a chance to pass and I wouldn't support it because there are so many winter sports to enjoy here - why create an expensive artificial indoor environment in these days of high fuel costs. We are a northern state with tremendous winter sport opportunities.

Oh no, did I just agree with ACT on something?

Pay Day at the Borough Building

2009-08-04T09:42:00.004-08:00

One thing I don't get about Mayor Carey's support by ACT is Dave's generosity with the tax-payer's money when it comes to pay for staff. Both Hugh Chumley and Susan Wilcox pull in over $90K a year - in comparison, William's Chief of Staff, Tim Navarre, drew a salary in the $70K range. In addition, his Administrative assistant, draws a salary about $10K more than anyone in the borough that does a similar job.

How can ACT champion Mayor Dave as a fiscal conservative, while ignoring this administrative excess?

Summer in SOLdotna

2009-07-19T10:59:00.008-08:00

Ahhh...the second of August and king fishing and dip netting are done for the season By the end of the day, the exodus of tourists and pukers (visitors from Anchorage) starts and we begin to slowly reclaim our town. But it's not like the old days before traffic lights and FM when SOLdotna really slowed down. I kinda miss those days.
I've been a blogging slacker these last few weeks. Too much fun to be had, fish to be caught and processed and too many chores to do on the home front. There certainly has been a few things to note on this site however.

Dip Netting
Fish allocation issues continue to divide the community. Commercial fishermen might have a legitimate point when they are closed down for escapement while the dip netters are allowed to continue to harvest fish.
21 reds swam into my dip net this season and I can easily defend this personal use fishery. But when I look around and see the waste and destruction more than a few dip-netters are a part of, I know that the process needs to be made a bit more responsible. Look for a post soon that will examine this issue in more detail.

Progress Days Parade
I am not a parade kinda person, but I make it a point to watch this one for the entertainment that the MC, Merrill Sikorski provides. Merrill thinks it is the duty of an MC to make funny and Merrill thinks he is a comedian and while he makes me laugh out loud, I am not laughing at his jokes. In the vernacular of the internet, I am LMAO at what he considers to be appropriate humor at this family function.

Classic Merrills from the past include informing Alan A of KDLL that he was dragging his pickle. As a young horsewoman from the rodeo went by, Merrill cautioned the crowd not to confuse pole racers to pole dancers. Who can forget the vulgar slang he used when he referred to classic mustang cars that drove by?

This year did not disappoint. As the wiener dogs marched by, Merril offered some double entendres. "We SOLdotnans are proud to show off our wieners" and "It just goes to show that size really doesn't matter". My favorite this year was when the race cars went by. A mini drag racer was on a trailer and there were two teen aged girls sitting on the trailer. Merrill announced that a mini drag racer and a mini drag queen were going by the reviewing stand.

Post-Palin Post

2009-07-07T12:33:00.002-08:00

I usually let the other Alaskan bloggers take on Sarah Palin, and the news of her resignation this past weekend has certainly given them a lot to write about (see the sidebar on this site for links). She has blamed the bloggers for her decision and her accusations have made national and international news.

The only thing I am going to say is that after the presidential election, I wish she had simply went back to being the governor of Alaska and put any further aspirations aside for the time being. While I didn't agree with everything she did, I sort of liked the pre-Monegan/Troopergate/VP Palin.

Her decisions to grandstand, to make political points, to be absent from the state during crucial times in this last legislative session did not serve the citizens of Alaska. Her spins in defense of some questionable behavior have been unbecoming. During the national campaign, she demonstrated that she could dish it out, but that is just an invitation for others to do the same back. And I guess the ensuing criticism she received was too much for her to handle.

So Sarah, pick some salmon from your set net site, tend to your kids and family, get your life back. Take some time off and out of the spotlight. The best thing to do might be to find someone that you trust but that doesn't necessarily agree with you on everything. Get that person's advice and then sleep on any comments that you might otherwise impulsively have to say.

Seating Chart

2009-07-07T12:20:00.002-08:00

Borough Mayor Dave Carey is making a list (and checking it a few times every week), of employees who are sitting down at their desks. Apparently this holdover from his teacher days, is his way of checking that borough employees are doing their job serving the citizens of the Kenai. So, if you are looking up a file, checking out a map, attending a meeting, of good heavens, using the restroom, your lack of dedication is noted.

No word if red licorice is given to those sitting at their desks.

The Fate of the Borough

2009-07-07T08:02:00.008-08:00

Mike Nesper, the cub reporter for the PC, opened his article about tonight's assembly meeting with a bit of hyperbole and declared that our fate rested on if voters should decide if we want a manager or mayor.

Really - like, are we gonna die if we do something?

C'mon Mike. You're supposed to be a real reporter - just the facts, man. Leave the slant for us bloggers, the news comedians like Jon Stewart, or the propagandists like Fox News or Rush Limbaugh.

What's really the motivation behind this ordinance?

It's kinda funny that groups like ACT are so opposed to letting voters decide this issue especially when ACT was all about having a borough manager a couple of years ago. ACT has also been adamant that voters should decide things. For ACT and their ilk, it depends on which way the wind blows. If it is something they don't like, they declare the borough is thwarting the will of the people. If it is something they don't want, they are all about suppressing debate.

The vote will probably come down to Gary Knopp, who introduced the ordinance, but has shown that he will wilt under pressure. During the last assembly meeting, he changed his vote which originally supported an appeals process for borough department heads who sometimes get axed for only dubious reasons, and failed to support the override of Carey's veto that would have established a way for folks who are doing a good job to challenge politically motivated termination.

And maybe that's the reason to move to a manager form of government. The last few borough mayors have brought in their political cronies to do jobs that some are unqualified for - how does that make for better government?

Duane Bannock, the appointed head of the Spruce Bark Beetle program is the most blatant example of the Mayor Carey's cronyism. Duane, a car salesman, replaced a person fully qualified to run such a program, and by all accounts, the former head was doing a fine job. Duane then had the brass to speak up at last month's assembly meeting to voice his support for the mayor.

Of course he did - he owes his job to the mayor, what else is he going to say? It did come across as more than a bit self-serving.

Apparently there are 8 disgruntled former employees that may have been darn good workers who have been let go and replaced by folks not-so-qualified. Certainly, a new mayor should be able to bring in his/her own staff, but one might hope that politics would not interfere with competence.

I dunno, I sure would like to avoid the political grandstanding that the current mayor is so very good at. And why not just let the voters decide?