Democrat for Education Reform Coming to Alaska

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The Alaska Policy Forum is hosting school choice events in Anchorage and Soldotna. The speaker will be Kevin Chavous, Board Chair of Democrats for Education Reform, Board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and Board member of the American Federation for Children. Mr. Chavous led the charge in Washington, D.C. for charter schools and the D. C school voucher program.

Most recently, he worked with Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal, to get school voucher legislation enacted this past year. Yes, school choice is non-partisan because it’s about the kids, not the adults. Chavous will speak on how choice benefits everyone, regardless of socioeconomic standing. Even the public school system benefits from competition.

Come hear Mr. Chavous in Soldotna on February 12th at the Soldotna Sports Center beginning at 7 pm. He will be speaking in Anchorage on February 14th at the Anchorage Museum at 7 pm. both events are free. Come cut through the chaff and noise the NEA is broadcasting across Alaska. Chavous will also appear at a joint House/Senate Judiciary, Finance, Education meeting on February 13th at 1:30. Go to akl.tv to listen on-line.

Visit Alaska Policy Forum HERE.

Wanted: Good Home for ‘Free’ Alaska Icebreaking Ferry

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(Reuters) – Free to a good home: One high-powered, state-of-the-art icebreaking commuter ferry.

Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the local government for the region north of Anchorage, is seeking takers for a sophisticated vessel bestowed on it three years ago but which has never been put to its intended use.

The M/V Sustina, an $80-million, Navy-funded prototype, is docked 800 miles (1,285 km) southeast of the borough in Ketchikan, the city where it was built and christened.

The ship, obtained with the help of the late Senator Ted Stevens, was intended to be a precursor to the Knik Arm Bridge, a controversial project that would link Port Mackenzie, near Wasilla, to downtown Anchorage.

But dreams of shuttling Matanuska-Susitna commuters to Anchorage via ferry – a scheme that sought to cut a 75-mile (120-km) road trip down to a 2.5-mile (4-km) water crossing – were never realized. Landing facilities for the specialized craft were not built, and local officials said they don’t want to provide money for such a project.

Read more from this story HERE.

An Inconvenient Truth: More Polar Bears Alive Today Than 40 Years Ago

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Photo Credit: AP/Dan JolingAuthor Zac Unger was originally drawn to the arctic circle to write a “mournful elegy” about how Global Warming was decimating the polar bear populations. He was surprised to find that the polar bears were not in such dire straits after all.

“There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago,” Unger told NPR in an interview about his new book, “Never Look a Polar Bear in The Eye.” “There are about 25,000 polar bears alive today worldwide. In 1973, there was a global hunting ban. So once hunting was dramatically reduced, the population exploded.”

“This is not to say that global warming is not real or is not a problem for the polar bears,” Unger added. “But polar bear populations are large, and the truth is that we can’t look at it as a monolithic population that is all going one way or another.”

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, living in Canada, Greenland, the northern Russian coast, islands of the Norwegian coast, and the northwest Alaskan coast.

Polar bears became a focal point for environmentalists after former Vice President Al Gore featured them in his 2006 global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The bears were classified as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act to in May 2008 because their habitat was being threatened by global warming.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska Republican Party On Shaky Ground in Disregarding Democratic Elections

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The Alaska Republican Party entered untrodden ground Jan. 31 when the outgoing state party leadership chose not to accept the legitimately elected state chair, but instead staged a coup against him just hours before his term was set to begin. In doing so, these party leaders have unwittingly laid siege to the very sacred fabric that our Republic was founded on —respect for the succession of political power by popular vote.

Before we are so quick to give up this foundational right that was purchased on bloodstained battlefields by our ancestors, consider the oath you took the last time you pledged allegiance to the flag: “… and to the Republic, for which it stands.” What does it stand for? It stands for the freedom to choose your own leaders by popular vote and have that vote respected by both the winner and the loser. The state party just violated that sacred principle for internal political or personality differences.

You see, our soldiers didn’t purchase this right with their own blood just for individual politicians or political party bosses who come and go like the change in seasons. They gave their lives for an ideal, a principle, a dream. They died for our Constitution, our law, our right to choose. Don’t dishonor their memories by casting aside this sacred principle of freely choosing the succession of our elected leadership by popular vote — right here, right now, right under our noses.

We chose a new leadership team at the 2012 state convention by means of a free and fair election. Just because the past administration didn’t like who was elected, it is no excuse to circumvent the election results. Doing so places cracks in the foundation of the very institution that placed them in power in the first place.

It does not matter whether or not you personally like Russ Millette. His qualities for leadership were determined and voted on by a majority of our state delegates at the 2012 Republican State Convention and therefore are not subject for debate. The issue here for debate is our adherence to our own party rules and the sacred tradition of honoring the succession of political power by majority vote. If we are too morally weak to challenge this evil, our party will be hopelessly corrupted. You may argue that the old administration was just too powerful, too connected and too indispensable to be replaced by a free election. Charles de Gaulle once said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska Brewery Plans To Use Beer As A Source Of Green Energy

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Photo Credit: Associated PressJUNEAU, Alaska – The Alaskan Brewing Co. is going green, but instead of looking to solar and wind energy, it has turned to a very familiar source: beer.

The Juneau-based beer maker has installed a unique boiler system in order to cut its fuel costs. It purchased a $1.8 million furnace that burns the company’s spent grain — the waste accumulated from the brewing process — into steam which powers the majority of the brewery’s operations. Company officials now joke they are now serving “beer-powered beer.”

What to do with spent grain was seemingly solved decades ago by breweries operating in the Lower 48. Most send the used grain, a good source of protein, to nearby farms and ranches to be used as animal feed.

But there are only 37 farms in southeast Alaska and 680 in the entire state as of 2011, and the problem of what to do with the excess spent grain — made up of the residual malt and barley — became more problematic after the brewery expanded in 1995

The Alaskan Brewing Co. had to resort to shipping its spent grain to buyers in the Lower 48. Shipping costs for Juneau businesses are especially high because there are no roads leading in or out of the city; everything has to be flown or shipped in. However, the grain is a relatively wet byproduct of the brewing process, so it needs to be dried before it is shipped — another heat intensive and expensive process.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska Airlines Captain Passes Out During Flight

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The Alaska Airlines pilot who lost consciousness during a Seattle-bound flight Thursday night, prompting an emergency landing, was suffering from food poisoning or a stomach virus, an airline spokesman said Friday.

The co-pilot of Flight 473 safely landed the jetliner in Portland, Ore., after declaring an emergency to get priority care for the pilot, spokesman Paul McElroy said. All of the airline’s pilots are trained to fly single-handedly.

McElroy said the pilot was in good condition Friday at a hospital where doctors examined him. The airline declined to release the pilot’s name or age.

The Boeing 737-700 with 116 passengers and five crew members left Los Angeles at about 6:30 p.m. and had been scheduled to arrive in Seattle at 9:30 p.m. It touched down in Portland at about 9 p.m.

The pilot lost consciousness near Eugene, Ore., and hit his head, McElroy said. He then later regained consciousness and left the cockpit. A doctor aboard the flight tended to the pilot in the cabin until the plane landed and was met by medical personnel on the runway.

Read more from this story HERE.

Outrage: Alaska’s Senators Support Transfer of F-16’s and M1 Tanks to Muslim Brotherhood Government in Egypt

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While Egypt burned, Alaska’s United States Senators voted yesterday to table an amendment that would have blocked the sale of advanced military weaponry to the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egyptian Government whose leader has recently made headlines for calling the Jews “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs.”

Apparently our delegation is impervious to the fact that the very organization that spawned Osama Bin Laden, and the terrorist organization Hamas, will be the recipients of US arms. The goal of these dangerous extremists is a global caliphate.

One has to wonder how putting such dangerous weapons in the hands of an anti-Semite whose credo calls for jihad and martyrdom will help to stabilize a region that is already in turmoil.

In case you’re wondering, the Muslim Brotherhood’s creed reads as follows: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

The amendment in question was put forward by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

See video below:

Old Guard CBC Stages Coup in Alaska GOP

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WASHINGTON, DC, February 1, 2013 – In a hastily convened meeting Thursday night the outgoing leadership of the Republican Party of Alaska staged what amounts to a coup to oust the incoming Chairman and seize control of the party.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the controversy over the election of reformer candidate Russ Millette to the Chairmanship of the Alaska GOP. Millette is a Republican Liberty Caucus member who represents the more libertarian/conservative wing of the party and party insiders did not want him to take control of their party and institute reforms.

During the lame duck tenure of the outgoing State Executive Committee, party insiders raised various charges against Millette and his Vice Chair Debbie Brown, which observers categorized as “trivial” and “irrelevant,” amounting to little more than vague financial questions and accusations of not being enough of a party loyalist. No actual rule violations of any substance were raised.

A plan was put forward to hold a hearing on the charges at the installation meeting of the Executive Committee on February 1st. Then, to the surprise of party members who described the action as “a sham” and “a witch hunt,” the hearing was moved forward a day so that the new committee members would not yet be seated or have a vote on the accusations.

Even more troubling to many party members was the notification right before the meeting that outgoing Chairman Randy Ruederich had cleaned out the party treasury of $35,000 and transferred the money to a bank in Juneau out of control of the Executive Committee, a classic “rule or ruin” tactic designed to make sure that if the new leadership takes over they will have no money to fund party operations.

Read more on this story HERE.

School Choice and NEA Opposition

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Word on the street is that the NEA is desperately stalking the halls of the capitol in Juneau trying to keep a lid on the movement to bring school choice to Alaska. And they have quite a lobbyist on the payroll.

According to State of Alaska public disclosures, Alaska NEA lobbyist John Alcantra makes $57.83 per hour. Assuming a 40 hour work week, that’s more than $120,000 annually. If his listed wage does not include health benefits and retirement, it would not be unreasonable to assume that the total cost for Alcantra tops $150,000 a year. Solidarity, indeed.

But Alcantra and his posse have a reason to be rattled. School choice is an issue that has commanded bipartisan support in other states as well. Study after study shows the benefits of school choice for all the kids, including those from lower income families and ethnic minority groups.

Two separate polls conducted (Braun Research and Dittman Research) show a healthy majority of support for school choice among Alaskans. While Alaska’s education performance continues to lag behind other states, the Senate majority coalition being used by Progressives in the legislature to obstruct good legislation was defeated in the last election cycle.

If you haven’t called your State Representative or Senator to voice your opinion on school choice, be sure to do it. According to reports from Juneau, the Republican caucus will be discussing education in the near future.

There are a number of obstructionists inside of the Majority caucus who will make it their goal to characterize this issue as divisive and toxic. Some are genuinely more concerned with losing a reelection bid than obstructing public policy that is good for Alaska. Others are simply ideologues.

Given the nature of the caucus, and with Mr. Alcantra roaming the halls of Juneau, your help is needed to get this legislation moving. If you would like to see school choice become a reality in Alaska, call or email your representative and senator.