AO37:The Bill Remains the Same
Friday was billed as the last Working Group on Ordinance 37: “An Ordinance Amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 3.70, Employee Relations, With Comprehensive Updates Securing Long Term Viability and Financial Stability of Employee and Labor Relations.” In other words, an ordinance established to decrease union contracts and establish a process called “managed competition” — a program through which it is easier to outsource various job functions within the Municipality. (See: “ALEC” legislation across the nation). In spite of efforts by Assembly Members Gray-Jackson, Traini, Flynn and Honeman to potentially scrap this ordinance and start over with employee and community participation,…
Palin Fiddles While Alaska Burns
Former half-term governor Sarah Palin marches ever-onward toward becoming the Don Rickles of the conservative right. It’s a lofty goal with plenty of competition. Alaskans will remember that even back when Palin was governor, she was never happier than when she was mocking and deriding the Republican establishment. In her home town of Wasilla, it was then Senate President Lyda Green. Later she graduated to throwing tomatoes at Governor Frank Murkowski. Several of those tomatoes were direct hits, resulting in her ascension to the Governor’s Mansion. She was also the presence behind the scenes of an attempted but failed Republican…
Parnell Pees in the Pool
The critical vote on a controversial bill involving the dumping of cruise ship waste in Alaska waters has been put off until next week. This is good news. Your outrage, and contacts with your legislators are having an impact. The cruise ship dumping legislation favored by Governor Sean Parnell would kill key provisions of a 2006 citizen’s initiative, voted in by the people, that required cruise ships to meet clean water standards at the point of discharge by the 2016 cruise season, instead of allowing them to release sewage, heavy metals, and other waste into “mixing zones.” Mixing zones are…
Government Funding for Mat-Su Madrassa?
That’s what the Christian Conservatives are pushing for this legislative session, even if they’re too obtuse to know it. Chalk up another one to the Constitutionalists of Convenience – you know, conservatives who squawk and flap about libruls and leftists who want to “shred the Constitution,” and then turn around and fire up the shredding machine for the very document they purport to love. The fair-weather founding father fans now have their sights on one of the hallmarks of the Alaska Constitution – public education. The Alaska Constitution specifically prohibits using public money to fund religious schools. It’s quite clear….
Pebble Has Rocks in Head
Behold the latest gripe from the Pebble Partnership about the oh-so-restrictive permitting process required to put the largest open pit copper and gold mine on the planet at the headwaters of the planet’s largest wild salmon fishery. The project requires permits for lots of things. It pays to be assured someone knows what they’re doing when they have to build 700 foot tall earthen dams that will last forever in a highly active seismic zone, holding back giant lakes of poison from a thriving fishery. You know, stuff like that. Check out the latest. We know they’d like to compare…
Right Wing Political Theater
Last week, before being sworn into office, my representative to the state House, Lindsey Holmes, decided she’s really a Republican — this after running and winning multiple times as a Democrat. Why more Democratic women aren’t defecting to the party of trans-vaginal probes is beyond me. I suppose I’d be more upset if I thought the Democrats were losing a hard worker who did more than run up her Alaska Airlines mileage on legislative junkets. Lindsey “found herself” for a committee assignment – making Vic Kohring look like a bargaining savant. Her dishonesty with voters and misrepresentation to donors was…
Meanwhile, In Shell’s PR Office…
Following the loss of control and subsequent grounding of the Shell drilling rig, Kulluk, that company’s PR team goes to work. Sitting in PR headquarters, mostly silent, members of the PR team wracked their brains trying to find a way to at least mitigate some of the negative publicity being aimed at the corporation. Then it came. One member of the team jumped up and exclaimed, “I’ve got it! Let’s spend some money on Facebook and try to get some extra ‘Likes’ over this whole thing!” And everyone at Shell agreed. The end. ************************************************************************************************* Ryan Marquis lives on Alaska’s…
2012 Parting Shots
If you live in the Lower 48, you may be under the illusion that your state knows how to do “trashy” and “no way—that’s not for real!” It doesn’t. Not compared to Alaska. So sit back with some popcorn and check out the pros. Parenting Fail If you’re going to engage your own son in LSD-fueled hand-to-hand combat in the street over a woman (!), at least don’t do it in the nude. In Spenard, that makes you such a cliché. Poor Kids Get Baked Speaking of excessive nudity, House Finance Co-Chair Bill Stoltze refused to allow a vote on…
Alaska Readies for Voter Photo ID Bill
Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, reportedly plans to introduce a voter photo ID requirement in the Alaska Legislature. He says this photo ID law isn’t based on the so-called “model statute” developed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization that promotes conservative model legislation. Even though Lynn is a member of ALEC. In state where village residents, who famously vote Democratic, don’t have or need a photo ID, this law will provoke a lawsuit before the ink is dry on Captain Zero’s signature. It’s all about equal protection. If you have a photo…
Weed, Serial Killer & Berlusconi!
Egyptian President Muhamed Morsi has decided he likes democratic reform when it brings him to power, but finds dictatorship preferable once there. Speaking of “same as the old boss,” disgraced Italian Casanova Silvio Berlusconi is poised to make the most implausible political comeback since Bibi Netanyahu Richard Nixon. Don’t make us come over there, Syria. Mining companies in Canada are discovering these renewable forms of energy are pretty nifty, especially when they’re the only ones available to you. Oh, the irony. Colorado and Washington went to pot a month ago, and now Uncle Sam has to decide how firmly…