Lo siento mucho.From reports I got early this evening, ex-Anchorage Assemblyman Paul Bauer and his family couldn't handle the enormous numbers of Gutierrez supporters that had showed up at the corner of Boniface and Northern Lights today. As the dozens of Mike's supporters tried to find room along the sides of thawing sidewalks, Bauer minions yelled at them. Bauer himself shoved people around, and his son was photographed shoving a camera into the face of a petite school teacher, as he forced her to back toward the curb at a busy intersection.
Starr survived, but he may soon be wishing he hadn't. The further to the left a candidate ran, the better she or he did.
Watching the TV news at 10:00 tonight, I didn't see or hear anyone declaring this to be a victory for or validation of Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Things went so far to the left, Begich may consider resigning sooner than many expect, to concentrate on his U.S. Senate aspirations.
Congratulations, Anchorage progressives and moderates! You've just shown your town, the state of Alaska and the country that we are moving toward sanity here in the far north far quicker than any other red state.
The string of victories progressives and moderates have been winning for the past two years in the Mat-Su Valley didn't raise a lot of attention to the possibility of a major change in Alaska's political dynamics. From former State Senator Scott Ogan's demise, to coal bed methane's repulse, to the elections of many rational people to borough, city and school board seats, to the humiliation of the Matanuska Electrical Association's Soviet-style regime, few people paid much attention.
But now that some sanity is surfacing in Anchorage, maybe folks will begin to notice that Alaskans, not merely "Valley trash," are sick and tired of a corrupt status quo.
Even more, they're tired of being force fed right wing KFQD and KENI AM radio talking points, enabled by the so-called "liberal" Anchorage Daily News.
They're tired of people who claim that the only thing that matters is life between conception and birth, preferring people who are concerned about that, but also think life after birth is at least as important for most living people.
They're tired of politicians who secretly brag to each other about the sweet deals their public service has bought - literally - until they get caught in their hypocrisy, on tape.
They're sick of being framed into categories subdivided by niches of negative stereotypes and barely disguised hatred for people of color.
They're sick of seeing schools gradually erode in the biggest city of the only state in the country to be in a financial situation that might easily remedy infrastructure deficits that have so dangerously accumulated during a time of greed and waste today's defeated relished and promoted.
The vanquished will go home tonight to blame the Daily News, KSKA and KAKM, KUDO, me and al-Qaeda for their demise.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the National Review, the once-illustrious flagship publication of conservative thought in the USA, wrote an editorial on April 1 that recommended the GOP DROP DON because he's "too liberal."
I thought it was an April Fools Day joke when I got to that part of the editorial. But it isn't.
8 comments:
Those election results are so friggin' sweet, dude!
I'm very happy that I live in East Anchorage, and got to vote Paul Bauer out of office. Good riddance!
The municipal election was a good result. It is good to see the makeup of the Assembly more representative of our community. This Assembly will likely be the group that deals with the coming of the gas pipeline. Gray-Jackson, Drummond, and Gutierrez arrive on the Assembly with substantial knowledge of how the community and its government work. A hopeful result.
Begich was beating his chest pretty hard on Rick Rydell's show this morning.
I guess if you call oppresive taxes and even tighter government regulations a move toward sanity, I would hate to see what insanity is.
I take care of my family just fine, run a small business that provides benefits and very good pay for 15 employees, and I guess that isn't enough, I have to take care of even more people than that, wow! great! thanks!
anon @ #7,
Sorry, I'm not much of a Mark Begich fan. But I'm certainly glad to see Bauer and Traini gone. I wasn't much of a Tesche fan either.
I have no idea what kind of business you own and operate, but many businesses in Anchorage do quite well. Thousands of them. I'm sure there were many small business owners who voted for this change. Is it the type of business you could relocate to Cantwell or Dutch Harbor?
anonymous - The sense of a proper tax load depends on the business. I own a small technology business. The tax load here in Anchorage allows me to bid competitively on contracts across Alaska and the lower 48. Building a successful technology sector depends on reasonable taxes, and good services, especially education and recreation. I have no complaints. This is not to disagree with your assessment of taxes and your own business, anonymous, only to state that not all businesses are alike.
I am more concerned about fiscal planning and what might happen to municipal revenues if the residential property market declined, resulting in declining assessments and tax revenues. We need diversity in our tax base.
Good comments on the tax burden - you are right you shouldn't burden one part of the populus with all of it. A sales tax, would be a start to helping reduce the burden on the homeowner. And seriously what happens when the city has to reduce the assessed value of all residential home, that would be catastrophic to the City's bottom line.
By saying that Don is too liberal, they are sounding like Mike Miller when he ran against Lisa Murkowski.
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