Anchorage Mayoral Candidates Debate Religious Freedom, Sexual-Identity Legislation

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Mayor-debates-1160x480The two Anchorage mayoral candidates squared off in a debate this week in which they disagreed over religious freedom protections and whether the city should legally enshrine sexual-identity legislation.

In a debate before the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, candidates Ethan Berkowitz and Amy Demboski were sharply divided on the question of whether Anchorage should adapt legislation to establish sexual orientation and transgender identity as protected classes under the city’s nondiscrimination laws.

An attempt to enshrine special legal rights for sexual orientation and transgender identity was rejected by Anchorage voters in 2012. The failed measure would have required government agencies, private employers, schools and nonprofit groups to legally recognize and accommodate the preferred sexual orientation and transgender identity of employees, customers, teachers, students and others regardless of their actual physical biology.

The law was reflective of gender theories claiming that the realities of male and female are social constructs and not part of any natural law or given reality. Thus, according to gender theorists, varied types of sexual behaviors are perfectly acceptable.

According to a report from the Alaska Dispatch News, Ethan Berkowitz expressed his support for the failed 2012 law, which affirmed that there should be legal recognition and accommodation based on a person’s sexual practices and desires, including “heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality.”

According to the Alaska Dispatch News, Demboski strongly disagreed with Berkowitz and said such legislation would “effectively discriminate against people of faith.”

Demboski noted that similar legislation in other cities has threatened religious freedoms for business owners and non-profits.

Several high profile cases have emerged in recent years including a recent situation in which a Christian family in Oregon was fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake explicitly for the homosexual “wedding,” which they said ran contrary to their religious beliefs.

In the 2012 Anchorage case, religious liberty advocates expressed concern that the Anchorage ballot measure would have force local churches, faith-based groups and business owners to violate deeply held beliefs and force them to promote and facilitate homosexual activities and causes. There were particular concerns that service-oriented businesses such as caterers, florists, bakers, print shop owners and others would no longer have been able to decline their services for homosexual and transgender functions and events which advocated for sexual activities that ran contrary to their deeply held beliefs.

According to the Alaska Dispatch News report Berkowitz was active in promoting the 2012 law and worked on the campaign through his job as a senior vice president of the marketing and consulting group Strategies 360.

During the recent debate Berkowitz said he supported the law for “moral reasons” and “because it makes business sense.”

Demboski, however, called it a “war on Christianity.”

In 2012, opponents of the initiative said the government oversteps its rightful limits when it requires people to violate their conscience and religious beliefs over a highly controversial moral issue in order to operate in the public square.

Both supporters and opponents of the initiative noted that the 2012 law would likely have impacted church-owned facilities in Anchorage which are often rented to various groups for public concerts, community gatherings, retreats and other events not specifically related to the religious mission of the church.

According to city code, refusal to abide by the proposed law would have resulted in a $500 fine, 30 days in jail, or both.

At the April 27 mayoral debate, the Alaska Dispatch News noted that Berkowitz spoke to the question of how a homosexual rights law would impact religious groups. While claiming to support religious freedoms Berkowitz said, “once people enter the public arena, we have to treat everybody equally.”

But opponents of such laws maintain that there is a considerable difference between denying someone basic human rights and refusing to condone or facilitate homosexual and transgender activities and causes. (See “Anchorage Mayoral Candidates Debate Religious Freedom, Sexual-Identity Legislation”, originally posted HERE)

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Governor’s Medicaid Expansion will “Destroy the Budget, Wipe Out the PFD & Bring Taxation”

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Lance Roberts_1998The legislature has just been called back by the Governor for a special session, with two of the topics being Medicaid Expansion and the Budget. The legislature is being bombarded by requests for more money and to expand the Medicaid system. The State is currently looking at an approximately four billion dollar deficit, a number that is understandably hard to get your head around. In essence, we’ll be completely out of money before 2020, excepting the Permanent Fund. Yes, it’s that bad, but yet there are many voices out there crying for the legislature to spend what little we have now and not make the hard decisions. A good example of a bad program that needs drastic reform is Medicaid.

Currently in Alaska we spend $1.6 billion per year on Medicaid. It has grown 149% in the last 10 years, and will eventually overwhelm the entire budget including education. Expansion will add around 40,000 people to those rolls and by 2022 is estimated to cost the state around $36 million, with a total cost up to then of around $109 million. Medicaid is admitted even by its proponents, like the Governor, to be a broken system; in fact, its level of brokenness is like a helicopter crashing in some new action movie where the blade goes off spinning and destroying all in its path. No exaggeration, it is on course to destroy the Alaskan State budget, wiping out the PFD and bringing in unnecessary taxation.

From a philosophical viewpoint, expansion’s design dis-incentivizes the young adults under thirty that would be the main recipients of it from pushing themselves to find better jobs or build businesses that would allow them a higher level of healthcare. Actually, it’s not just philosophical, based on last year’s election results. In 2014, Alaskans voted to not just raise minimum wage, but to unsustainably raise it every single year. Currently those on minimum wage will be eligible for Medicaid, but in 2017 those working full-time for minimum wage will exceed the eligible income for Medicaid. The choice then will be keep Medicaid or keep a full-time job. This is a huge problem that exists for these types of entitlement programs, that anyone who tries to better themselves financially loses the benefits, thereby offsetting the benefits of working. Why in the world would we want to expand a system to young single adults that encourages them not to work or improve their situation?

Another aspect that has been overlooked by many is that Medicaid pays more than Medicare, for senior citizens, and Tricare, for military families and veterans, so those few doctors who are left that see patients on that program will make more by serving Medicaid patients than those on Medicare or Tricare. This will only make it harder for senior citizens, veterans and our military families to be able to get the health care they need.

There are way more broken aspects of Medicaid, fraud and abuse, than can be addressed in this short article, but it’s consistently shown that reform is mandatory to be able to even keep the Medicaid system we have in place, let alone add more people to that system. The State needs to work out the large amount of billing problems it has, and implement some cost controls. Be wary, some are proposing reforms, which are really just taxes, like up to a 6% tax on providers, even if they don’t have Medicaid patients.

There are also problems with how Medicaid pays out much less than the costs of doing business; for example, the Fairbanks North Star Borough only gets approximately half of what it costs us to do an ambulance run. These underpayments add up considerably and contribute substantially to the high cost of medical care.

Remember when they talk about all the free Federal money that we’ll get: There’s Free Cheese in a Mouse Trap. Please let the legislature know that we need to reform Medicaid before we even think of expanding it. You can email them all at [email protected].

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Lance Roberts is an engineer, born and raised in Fairbanks. He is a member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent the assembly or borough administration.

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Alaska Legislature Being Held Over by Governor in an Attempt to Address ‘Pet Projects’

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download (5)When is too much too much?

Today, the Alaska Legislature is being held over by the governor in an attempt to force our representatives to address two of his “pet projects.”

These are (1) Medicaid expansion, and (2) increased educational funding.

Regarding Medicaid funding:

At this point, Alaska has approximately 160,000 citizens who are receiving Medicaid services. The current system is inculcated with fraud and abuse throughout. One example of this abuse is at ANMC where travel expenses are covered by Medicaid reimbursement. Last year alone there were 5900+ “no shows” for medical appointments even when travel was validated and expenses were paid. This is just one example of the fraud and abuse. The system is filled with these examples.

Medicaid reimbursement is paid at a higher rate than Medicare for the elderly and Tricare for veterans. Elderly citizens have been paying into Medicare their entire employed life, and veterans have paid with their service. Medicaid recipients have paid nothing for their coverage. Why should the elderly and veterans get in line behind single, young individuals fit for work who have paid nothing?

Additionally, within 2 years, the State of Alaska will be on the hook for 10% of the cost of Medicaid expansion. Where are we going to get the additional funds for the expansion of this program when the current budget is approximately $4 billion in the red? Within 2 years, we will have depleted our entire budget reserve and will be looking at various revenue enhancement sources to maintain the largess of government. It is extremely unwise to expand a program which will force us to incorporate additional taxes and fees to maintain this expansion.

Regarding Educational funding:

Alaska currently spends more than any state in the country for educational services and certainly more than most anywhere in the world. Currently we rank 39th overall in the nation. One must ask why we are not getting a better result. For many years, the Alaska legislature’s response was to simply throw more money at the educational system with the idea that more money would surely encourage a better outcome. It has not. Currently the overhead, to include a top heavy administration is over 52% of the total cost. One would think the bulk of money expended should go directly into the classroom. This is not the case.

Today, considerable pressure is being applied to the legislature through the Alaska Democrat Party and their support associations like Great Alaskan Schools to simply advance more money to fix the “broken window” instead of evaluating the root cause for the broken window of education.

NEA and the monopoly of Public Education has a substantial stranglehold on the educational services of Alaska even when other states all over the country are developing a variety of educational options which will give Alaskan students an even more difficult time competing with students of other states. Unfortunately, this monopoly is not for the advancement of educational excellence, but simply for force and control.

The system is generating one idea that in order to fix the discrepancy of education competition, we must throw more money at the existing system and develop a robust pre-school program. At some point in time, advocates of this concept will be recruiting their future students in the maternity wards in all the hospitals. It is as if children should have limited contact with their parent units in order to progress in their new “educational model.”

What to do? Please take the time to write all your legislators immediately that they “stop the excessive bleeding.” At some point in time we must say enough is certainly enough. I would suggest that this time has come as we are OUT OF MONEY!

Contact your legislators by writing to them at:

[email protected]

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Michael Chambers is a political activist who is the Chair of the Alaska Libertarian Party and the Chair of United for Liberty which is the largest umbrella organization for liberty and less government citizens in Alaska.

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Alaska Commuter Air Carrier Suffered Operational, Training Flaws Before Crash

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Handout photo of a Cessna 208 that crashed in southwest AlaskaAn Alaska commuter airline routinely failed to inform pilots of shifting weather conditions and other hazards leading up to a 2013 crash in western Alaska that killed four people, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Friday.

The Cessna 208B, a single-engine turboprop, had been heading from Bethel to Mountain Village in deteriorating winter weather and crashed about a mile (1.6 km) southeast of St. Mary’s Airport in southwestern Alaska. The pilot and three passengers were killed, and six passengers survived with serious injuries.

Prior to the crash, Hageland Aviation Services Inc had failed to follow its own risk assessment plan, and on the day the plane went down the flight coordinators on duty had not been trained properly in those procedures, according to NTSB crash investigation documents released on Thursday.

“The hardest thing is to get this company to police itself,” Dale Hansen, a Federal Aviation Administration manager in Anchorage, told NTSB investigators. “If we’re not there to watch them, you know, we’re not really sure half the time if they’re doing it right.”

The airline, operated at the time as Era Alaska, which is now called Ravn Alaska, also failed to routinely inform pilots of weather conditions and other possible hazards, the preliminary report found. (Read more from “Alaska Commuter Air Carrier Suffered Operational, Training Flaws Before Crash” HERE)

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With 50 Billion Barrels Awaiting the Drill Bit, Alaska’s New Governor Wants to Slash the Time Between Lease Acquisition and Drill Rotation

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bill_walker_official_portrait_600-200x300Oil production is the economic locomotive of Alaska, funding about 90 percent of the state’s general fund revenue. The oil industry accounts for one-third of Alaska jobs and about one-half of the overall economy, according to Alaska’s Resource Development Council. When oil production expands or contracts, Alaska’s economy follows.

Oil & Gas 360® had an opportunity to speak with Alaska Governor Bill Walker about some of the state’s energy development and budget issues, particularly in light of the current oil price downturn. Walker, 64, is Alaska’s second native-born governor. He paid for college working on the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Walker was sworn in as Alaska’s 11th chief executive on Dec. 1, 2014.

OAG360: Governor, you have discussed in your ‘State of the Budget’ talk that about 90% of Alaska’s general fund comes from oil revenue, driven by oil price and production. Could you talk about the current oil price slide that we’re going through and the effect that it’s having on Alaska?

GOV. WALKER: Well, it’s significant. It virtually cuts our revenues nearly in half, and it is rather sudden. We’ve certainly been through this before. There’s been a period since the start-up of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the late seventy’s where we’ve seen the downturn in the in the oil prices, so it’s not new to us. We have to adjust for it so that’s what we’re doing. (Read more from “With 50 Billion Barrels Awaiting the Drill Bit, Alaska’s New Governor Wants to Slash the Time Between Lease Acquisition and Drill Rotation” HERE)

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Alaska Airlines Bans Trapped Worker From Handling Its Flights as 911 Call Released [+video]

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PlaneA Seattle airport baggage handler who fell asleep in the cargo hold of an Alaska Airlines plane Monday has been banned from working on any of the carrier’s flights.

Alaska Airlines said in a statement late Thursday that the unidentified worker “has been permanently banned from ever working on any Alaska Airlines flights.”

The employee of Menzies Aviation, which contracts with airlines to handle baggage, told first responders he had taken a nap in the front cargo hold of the Los Angeles-bound flight. The plane was forced to return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport 14 minutes into the flight after the pilot and passengers heard banging sounds coming from the front cargo hold.

Menzies officials said he had worked for the company for 18 months and was fortunate he was trapped in a part of the plane that was pressurized and temperature-controlled. The front cargo hold is often used to carry passengers’ pets. The company added that its policies were knowingly violated by the employee.

Also Thursday, 911 calls made by the worker in the early part of the flight were released, revealing his increasing desperation to get out of the hold. (Read more from “Alaska Airlines Bans Trapped Worker From Handling Its Flights as 911 Call Released [+video]” HERE)

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Alaska 737 Returns to Seattle After Napping Worker Awakes in Cargo Hold

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PlaneA sleepy Sea-Tac Airport worker who used the cargo hold of an Alaska Airlines 737 for a nap was awakened in a panic when the flight took off for Los Angeles, Alaska Airlines officials said.

Flight 448 departed at 2:39 p.m. but immediately after takeoff the pilot reported hearing banging from someone underneath the plane, the airline said in a statement.

The captain declared an emergency and returned to the airport, where a Menzies Aviation ramp agent was found inside the front cargo hold. The ramp agent was taken to Highline Hospital to be checked out and was later released.

The employee later told officials he had fallen asleep in the plane, according to a blog post by Alaska Airlines. Menzies contracts with Alaska to provide luggage services.

The worker, who was part of a four-person baggage loading team, was scheduled to end his shift at 2:30 p.m., according to the Airline. After loading the Los Angeles-bound plane, the team leader noticed one of the four employees was missing. He said he called and texted the worker, but didn’t hear anything back so he assumed the worker finished his shift and went home. (Read more from “Alaska 737 Returns to Seattle After Napping Worker Awakes in Cargo Hold” HERE)

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Engage TODAY: Alaska’s State Legislature Accelerating Towards an Iceberg [+video]

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icebergBy Daniel Hamm. The GOP controlled Alaska State Legislature has been ideologically drifting for well over a decade in the isolated Juneau capital sea and is now in real danger of being holed and sunk by their very own constituent iceberg. Buffeted and tossed by lobby winds from every direction, their ship is on a collision course with a jagged sky-blue colossus protruding splintering shards with names like a balanced-budget, limited-government, and individual liberty.

For the last ten years the Republican Caucus has literally doubled the size of state government, and now with low oil prices, has a $3.5 Billion and growing annual state deficit on its hands largely of its own making. The Alaska GOP has forgotten the number one Republican axiom- that unrestrained growth in government is the number one threat to our American freedom and free market prosperity.

The Republican Party Platform supports limited-government and low taxes. For the past decade our GOP legislators have largely voted against it by steadily growing the size of our state bureaucracy to well over 24,000 state employees- and it keeps growing.

On April 1st, the Alaska State House passed HB 148 for Medicaid Expansion out of the Health and Social Services Committee and referred it to the House Finance Committee. Intense Democrat lobbying is now taking place to garner enough Republican turncoat votes to pass the Finance Committee and a full floor vote. This is all taking place despite the Alaska State Republican Party recently passing a resolution opposing Medicaid Expansion that was signed by Chairman Peter S. Goldberg. I guess this crop of legislators just take the party campaign contributions and then vote against it.

The Alaska Republican Assembly is an organization that that represents the Republican Wing of the Republican Party. Frankly, we are fed up with these turncoat Benedict Arnold’s masquerading like Republicans but vote like tax-and-spend socialists. As an example, two Republican State Legislators- Representative Paul Seaton from Homer and Senator Click Bishop from Fairbanks, have introduced bills for a state income tax rather than substantially reduce state deficit spending. They give the Republican Party Platform a black eye worse than Harry Reid’s.

Republican legislators who vote like Democrats really should consider changing their party affiliation and be true to their principles. Those who continue to campaign like Ted Cruz but vote like Ted Kennedy we have identified for early retirement. Those who hide behind the caucus rule that forces you to vote for a budget (regardless of what’s in it) or be ejected from your committee assignments and stripped of office staff will not be excused. Legislators must vote true to their constituents and true to their party.

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Medicaid Expansion: A Pivotal Moment in Alaska History

When: Saturday, April 11, 1:00 PM Medicaid Expansion Public Testimony before the HOUSE Finance Committee. This needs to be opposed. We must stop Medicaid Expansion in House Finance today.

By Dr. Barbara Haney. This is a pivotal moment in Alaska’s history. If we vote for expansion, our state will forever be changed–not in a good way.

The Medicaid expansion bill has passed the Senate HSS committee and is now headed to Senate Finance. Thus, any emails you write to the House finance, you might want to simply include in the Senate Finance Committee. Share this with your friends.

Action:

1) We need you at your LIO to testify in opposition. (Call in for those without an LIO is 1-844-586-9085)

2) We need your letters of opposition. Email them to [email protected] Chaired by Steve Thompson and Mark Newman. You might as well include the Senate Finance Committee as well in your email, as they will be the issue shortly thereafter. The Senate Finance Committee members are [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

There is zero evidence that health is improved with Medicaid expansion. However, there is a lot of proof that states have gone deep into the hole over it.

Talking Points to Use: If you testify, you only get one or two minutes, so pick one or two topics you feel most comfortable with, and ask to revise and extend your remarks in email testimony.

1) Medicaid Expansion is the prerequisite for Obama Care. According to provisions of the PPA (better known as ObamaCare), Medicaid expansion is required to implement Obama Care. (Huffington Post story).

2) The DHSS Estimates Grossly Overstate the Benefits. After looking at the econometric estimates provided here in Juneau, it is pretty clear that there are many factors that have not been considered and that the benefits of Medicaid expansion are grossly overstated. Just for starters, they do not incorporate the impact of new taxes on the supply of providers and cost. Nor do they account for other issues pertinent to service delivery in Alaska. In the seven other states that have expanded Medicaid, costs on an average rose 88% above forecasted costs. This will likely be much higher in Alaska. The cost over-runs will do great harm to the Constitutional Budget Reserve– it will be depleted rapidly.

3) Crowd Out Of Most Vulnerable Populations: Current Medicaid recipients, such as the elderly, disabled, and those with children, will be reimbursed at 50%. The new expanded population will be reimbursed at 90%. If you are a physician, who are you going to take? Clearly the new medicaid patients will crowd out the old ones who are reimbursed at the new rate. Thus, those in most need will go to the end of the line if they are even served at all.

4) Taxes On Providers: House Bill 148 also imposes taxes on providers. For medical providers already operating at the margin (and many in Alaska are barely surviving), this could be the nail that closes their practice.

5) Medicaid is a big source of funding for Planned Parenthood. Early on, Twitchy covered how Medicaid expansion and PPA specifically rewarded Planned Parenthood. In addition, Planned Parenthood has a track record of fraudulent claims with Medicaid. American Life League has a page that details the extensive number fraud of lawsuits in Iowa, Texas, California, and Illinois. The Alliance Defense Fund’s Report to Congress in February 2012 details numerous details of fraud and abuse of Medicaid. Expansion would merely expand those opportunities in Alaska.

6) Doesn’t fix any of the current problems: According to Leg Audit in FY 2014, there are serious problems with many of the Medicaid system. The payment system (Enterprise, formerly MMIS) is broken. There are over 451 defects in the payment system documented as of August 2014. The Aries System, used for determining eligibility is also broker. Over half of the Medicaid providers certification files are incomplete. Nearly 2/3 of the providers lacked of any kind of evidence of rate verification, and important component in addressing costs.

7) Pre-Natal Common Core: It isn’t in the bill, but the Medicaid Expansion comes with grant opportunities for what is often dubbed Pre-Natal Common Core (This is what they have in Oregon). It is dubbed “Common Core” because it rides the “Informational texts” standards in English Language Arts for classroom delivery (these are in the reading standards) in the event a district or state does not adopt the National Sexuality Standards. Commissioner Hanley is a prolific grant writer– and you can bet he will go after those funds. We will be stuck with Pre-natal Common Core like they have in Oregon. That is the more radical form of Common Core– and it could explain why there are certain data elements related to a student’s mother in the Online Alaska School Information System (OASIS).

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Bill Advances to Ban Abortion Groups from Teaching in Alaska Schools

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school'A bill aimed at giving parents greater freedom in directing the education of their children, including the right to opt out of standardized tests and controversial sex instruction classes, has been amended to prohibit Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform abortions from teaching in public schools.

Senate Bill 89 was amended on Thursday and passed out of the Senate Education Committee.

The amendment would prohibit a school district from contracting with an “abortion services provider” and prohibit schools from allowing an abortion services provider to teach sex education.

This would not be the first time Planned Parenthood was opposed in its efforts to reach children in public schools.

STOPP (Stop Planned Parenthood) is one of several national organizations that actively oppose Planned Parenthood’s efforts to reach public school students with sex instruction messages. According to the STOPP website, Planned Parenthood’s “sex instruction steals parents’ rights to decide what their children learn about sexuality,” while also “breaking down natural inhibitions and teaching them they can consent to dangerous sexual acts at a very young age.”

Planned Parenthood material “instructs children they have a right to pleasurable sex,” STOPP maintains. “It includes sexual role playing and requires proficiency in sexual foreplay.”

STOPP adds that Planned Parenthood programming “only pays lip service to abstinence; it encourages sexual activity,” while keeping parents largely in the dark regarding the specific details about its curriculum.

According to Alaska Dispatch News, SB 89 sponsor Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla, defended the effort to ban Planned Parenthood from teaching sex education in Alaska, saying that parents believe when their children go to school they are learning core subjects like math and science.

As far as allowing groups like Planned Parenthood, which is the largest provider of abortions in the nation, access to children in public schools, Dunleavy said, “We’re not outlawing abortion services providers; we’re saying, ‘Take it out of the school.’”

In email alerts to supporters, Planned Parenthood officials in Alaska have called the amendment an “extreme proposal” because it specifically targets them, “the largest nonprofit organization in the state of Alaska focused on sexual and reproductive health education.” (See “Bill Advances to Ban Abortion Groups from Teaching in Alaska Schools”, originally posted HERE)

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Alaska Lawmaker Pushes Back on Washington State over Arctic Drilling Concerns

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KUCB-Kulluk3-5-13If officials in Washington state wind up not allowing Royal Dutch Shell to base its Arctic drilling fleet in Seattle over environmental concerns, members of the Alaska Legislature suggest another business decision for its neighbor to the south.

A resolution, from Alaska House Speaker Mike Chenault, a Republican, suggests public officials in Washington consider closing the Boeing production plant if they are truly concerned with carbon dioxide emissions from commercial activity.

Environmental groups are challenging the Port of Seattle’s decision to lease one of its terminals as a home port for an Arctic oil-drilling fleet. The groups say the port broke state law in signing a lease with Foss Maritime Co. Foss’ client is Royal Dutch Shell PLC. (Read more from “Alaska Lawmaker Pushes Back on Washington State over Arctic Drilling Concerns” HERE)

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