Don Juan Young?

One of our biggest problems in the state — and the nation — is that no one has the statesmanship to have a vision. Where is the courage and the ability to have a vision … and try to implement it?

I do that.

- Don Young, from an interview by Robert Dillon in Washington D.C. early yesterday, for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

Last month, traveling through Alaska, he sounded more like Don Corleone Young, with threats, bluster, and claims that the million dollars or more in contributions his campaign is spending on criminal defense lawyers is "MY MONEY!"

Don is also doing a Rodney King impression, with - We need to knock the partisan bickering off, put aside our theatrical aspirations, and start getting things done.

I'm tempted to do the multi-colored word thingie to that precious gem too. That is from a press release Young sent out as he headed back to Alaska for the Easter congressional recess and the Alaska Republican Convention, being held in Anchorage this weekend.

• Raise your hand if you think Don has had a great awakening, and is going to be sincerely nice, and begin listening to his constituents. I thought not.

• Now, raise your hands if you think Don is just plain scared shitless. I thought so.

picture of peyote cactus on Don's office desk, as he contemplates becoming a visionary shaman

The ADN's AK Root Cellar Blog and Recycling & Renewables Rap Blogs

The Anchorage Daily News, as one of the features of their widening on-line presence, has two blogs under the Community Blogs heading, that should be considered Progressive Alaska Blogs.

I've tried to keep the blogs listed here under that category limited to blogs which address issues important to progressives in more than one geographical area of the state. Two of these appear to qualify.

Kevin Harun and Nick Moe, both employees of the Municipality of Anchorage, have put together the Recycling & Renewables Rap Blog. Kevin is a full-blown innovator wherever he goes. While running the Alaska Center for the Environment, he turned that organization into a very credible, multi-faceted agency for empowerment, education and progress. I listened to Kevin talk about how he's directing the "greening" of the MOA, when he spoke at the Step It UP! Conference late last year.

Recycling & Renewables Rap Blog has a lot of entries by Kevin and Nick, and the comments contain information on dealing with recycling issues that can prove useful to people all over the state.


AK Root Cellar Blog is being run by Kim Sollien, a whiz kid out of Alaska Pacific University's sustainable Development program, who helped bring the Bioneers Conference to Anchorage for the first time, back in 2004.

Kim describes the premise of the blog thusly:

This blog is for those of you who would like to add more local foods to your diet, meet local farmers, learn new recipes based on seasonal eating and preserving the summer harvest. Food is political too, so here you can learn about and influence local and national agriculture issues, and participate in helping to rebuild the Alaska food system. May each of you chew happily and wisely.

There aren't nearly as many entries at the Root Cellar as there are at the recycling blog. That's bound to change soon. And the discussion topics are informative. The most recent is about how to possibly get Full Circle Farms in Carnation, Washington, to develop partnerships with local organic food producers. I'm all for that.

Judy and I grow a lot of our own vegetables, can a lot of fruit. New crops of arugula and meusclin came up yesterday. So Kim's subject stuff is dear to us both.

carrots from our garden yesterday. We keep them in very slightly damp sand over the winter, out in a cool corner of my shop. They taste better in mid-March than anything you can buy in a store in August.

Alaska Salmon Need Protection From the Mixing Zone Loophole

The mixing zone issue is very important. The revision of standards, a severe degradation, really, was begun during the last year of the second Knowles term, and completed by Frank Murkowski. It is a potential disaster for Alaska's anadromous fish stocks.

Bob Shavelson is executive director of Cook Inlet Keeper, a community-based nonprofit organization formed in 1995 to protect the Cook Inlet watershed and the life it sustains. Here's a guest post for Progressive Alaska by Bob:

Gov. Sarah Palin should be applauded for moving Alaska's habitat biologists from the Department of Natural Resources to their rightful place in the Department of Fish and Game.
Regardless where the biologists are located, however, there needs to be enough of them to review the many projects coming down the pike, and they need to have the independent authority to play a meaningful role in project oversight.

But Governor Palin did the right thing in response to strong public support for fisheries and habitat protection.

The damage wrought by former Gov. Frank Murkowski's single term in office, however, remains sweeping. For example, the Alaska Coastal Management Program remains in tatters, with coastal communities and local citizens effectively cut out of decisions on large projects affecting their homes, families and fisheries.

DNR recently announced a desire to revisit many of the worst ACMP rollbacks, and that's a positive step, though many warned of these shortcomings as they were rushed into law. Now, Alaska has one of the weakest coastal management programs in the nation, and it will take a strong and committed effort by the Palin administration to return trust and legitimacy to this once-proud program.

But the most glaring rollback from the Murkowski administration remains the loophole that allows polluting "mixing zones" in Alaska's prized salmon spawning areas.

Mixing zones embrace the long-discounted notion that dilution is the solution to pollution, and they had been rightly banned in areas where Alaska salmon and other fish spawn. Thousands of Alaskans spoke out against the Murkowski mixing zone rollback, to no avail.

Now, there's a legislative compromise (House Bill 74/Senate Bill 238) that balances the needs of local communities, including mom-and-pop placer mining operations, but it's been held up by Rep. Craig Johnson, Sen. Charlie Huggins and other lawmakers who refuse to hold hearings.

To understand why we need to ban mixing zones in sensitive freshwater spawning areas, we need look no further than Cook Inlet, where mixing zones in marine habitat areas have been allowed for decades.

Last year, the state signed off on a Clean Water Act permit that allows oil and gas corporations to triple the amount of toxic pollution they dump into Cook Inlet fisheries each year. The technology exists to re-inject the billions of gallons of toxic wastes dumped annually, and Cook Inlets' major producer, Chevron, just announced net profits of $18.7 billion for 2007.

But it's cheaper for Chevron to avoid the cost of proper pollution treatment by passing those costs to Alaskans in the form of toxic pollution dumped into our public fisheries. And that's no surprise. We expect the corporate lawyers and accountants in California to maximize their profits any way they can.

But we also expect the state to protect the public interest by enforcing the water quality standards designed to protect our fisheries. And that's the problem; when regulators have too much discretion, they get squeezed by wealthy corporations to bend the rules.

How can Alaskans continue to successfully market our wild, fresh salmon amid the glut of farmed fish on world markets if our agencies allow corporations to dump billions of gallons of toxic waste into our fisheries each year?

That's why the Palin administration should urge the Legislature to pass HB 74, so there's a bright line standard that makes business decisions more predictable, and ensures that Alaska's sport, commercial and subsistence fisheries remain healthy and resilient. And if our lawmakers continue to oppose common-sense fish habitat protections, there is a ballot initiative - already certified by the lieutenant governor - that will give Alaskans a chance to decide whether pollution mixing zones in fish spawning areas should be state policy.

While it's always unfortunate when Alaskans have to do the work we pay our politicians to do, a ballot measure would be a small price to pay to ensure we can enjoy healthy, wild salmon for generations to come. And if the Palin administration is listening, there's a golden opportunity to ride a tidal wave of public opinion that supports clean, healthy salmon over polluted spawning habitat.

March Visitation

It was evening when they arrived,

the first dark form emerged

from the lip of one of many pools

collected on the ice in this too-

warm weather. I looked out and down

from our cabin window, caught

the movement and the tall shape,

thought What strange animal

is this? before it registered: human.

Unaccustomed to company this time

of year, I was trying to construe

what coyote, wolf, or bear could have transformed

into a biped. Later, the months of sweat

in their clothes and boots mingling

with the scent of soggy leather,

after they’d showered, fed,

and spoken of their long and strenuous trek

—by raft, by skis, Seattle

northward: B.C., Southeast, over

rivers, Icy Bay, past glaciers,

the Copper Delta, into the Chugach;

Manker Creek, then Anchorage,

around the arm, down

the west side of Cook Inlet,

through Lake Clark Pass, to us—

What, I asked, had been

the least appealing?

The Glenn Highway, they said.

They told me they could smell the road—

asphalt, rubber—long before it could be heard.

They were ancient animals arisen,

speaking a troubling, modern tongue.

--- Anne Coray


This might be the first fine work of art by a truly great Alaska artist about erin and hig's trek. I've told them I hope to write some music about their journey. I do hope Anne doesn't mind my posting this wonderful creation of hers here before I could ask. Maybe she'll sic her brother on me.

The Upcoming Alaska GOP Convention

The 2008 Convention of the Republican Party of Alaska begins this Thursday, at Anchorage's Captain Cook Hotel. At the convention, the GOP will attempt to tackle issues that have dogged them since a few months after their 2006 Convention.

They'll also have to sort out some of the details of dealing with the Super Tuesday voter preference polling results:


Mitt Romney - 5,988 Votes, 44% and 12 Delegates
Mike Huckabee - 2,996 Votes, 22% and 6 Delegates
Ron Paul - 2,363 Votes, 17% and 5 Delegates
John McCain - 2,132 Votes, 15% and 3 Delegates

At the helm of the Alaska GOP is their party's Chairman, the man honored with the biggest fine in the history of the all-but-toothless Alaska Public Offices Commission. Reudrich's record 2004 $12,000 punishment for abuse of his office while a member of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, would have ended the man's role in party politics in most states. But not this one. Not in an environment where some of the sitting GOP State legislators in the audience and serving on party committees, have their own five-figure badges of distinction to flout - the contributions they received from the criminal enterprise cutout and money laundering operation for big oil, Veco, during Veco's last days:

Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak $14,275
Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Haines $8,650
Sen. Con Bunde, R-Anchorage $18,650
Sen. John Cowdery, R-Anchorage $45,200
Rep. Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski $ 32,000
Rep. Kevin Myer, R-Anchorage $ 23,350
Sen. Leslie McGuire, R-Anchorage $17,500
Rep. Ralph Samuels, R-Anchorage $10,250
Rep. Mike Hawker, R-Anchorage $21,350
Sen. Lyda Green, R-Matanuska-Susitna $18,000
Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole $8,500

Anyone who is unfamiliar with how slippery and slimy Randy Ruedrich is, can be brought up to speed by one of the best pieces of investigative journalism in Alaska in recent years, Richard Mauer's September 19, 2004 Anchorage Daily News feature, Palin Explains Her Actions in Ruedrich Case. I read it when it came out, and re-read it for the first time in almost four years, just this morning. I'd suggest that even people up to speed on Ruedrich's borderline criminality and almost total ineffectiveness, can learn a lot from a re-read.

Besides the background on Ruedrich's chronic abuse of office then, it clearly shows that Sarah Palin, from the start of her role in the Murkowski administration, was intentionally put on the Commission to give her an opportunity to get just as dirty, just as sleazy, just as indebted to big oil as were the boys in the administration. Going through Mauer's carefully laid out narrative, I'm impressed with how Palin handled the trap, using it instead, as the launching point of a reform movement.

Ruedrich claimed in an interview last week with the ADN's Sean Cockerham, that he's determined to fill out the remaining two years of the four-year term he was elected to in early 2006, vowing, “I have a commitment to Alaska Republicans to lead the party to victory in 2008 as I did in 2006.”

Joe Miller, the Fairbanks area GOP Party Chair has been very busy organizing the 268 votes he'll need to suspend the rules at the upcoming convention, allowing for a reconsideration of Ruedrich's ongoing term of office.

Palmer's Jim Turner, who is the ex-chair for District 13, is a longtime Mat-Su Valley Republican activist. Speaking to Jim this morning, he expressed doubts about whether or not he will even be attending the convention. I asked him what his take is on Ruedrich and his continued presence as party chair. Turner says that it will be hard to find somebody to take the job who "would work as hard as Randy. He's worked tirelessly in the job. I can't think of anyone who could fill in, who would work that damn hard."

Supposedly, some of Ron Paul's supporters are trying to organize a big push for their candidate when the issue of how the Alaska delegation will proceed toward the national convention comes to the floor.

And who knows what new corruption developments this week might dog the local narrative over the next four days?

Update - just before midnight, Monday: Spoke with many off-the-record Republicans today. Joe Miller and I have been playing phone tag since late morning.

The prevailing opinion among the folks with whom I spoke is that Joe doesn't have 200 votes to suspend the rules, let alone 270. All agree that Ruedrich is well organized for a coup he's been expecting, and is skilled in using the party rules to his advantage.

Mike O'Leary

Michael O'Leary, Cordova City Council member, Cordova Parks and Recreation Board member, community activist, Area E and Bristol Bay fisher, died in an avalanche in Cordova Saturday.

He was skiing with friends, checking on conditions he had warned the community about the day before. I guess that, after a small avalanche, he went back looking for a dog, and was trapped by a larger one.

As my wife Judy said, when I told her this afternoon, Mike was one of the friendliest, most clear-headed people we knew, when we lived in Cordova long ago. Our hearts are out to Mike's family.

New Poll - Randy's Ideal Replacement

I was seriously hoping the Alaska GOP would keep Randy. Maybe they still will. But I doubt it.

There's probably some national push coming down because of the continuing demise of so many Republican luminaries here, and the effect that has on the growing national perception that the GOP, as it now is constituted, has become one of the worst managed machines in our country's history.

I'm partly curious about the extent that national push for the Alaska GOP to deal with its problems here also extends to lower-48 GOP perceptions about the viability of Ted Stevens and Don Young, come November.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, Progressive Alaska has a new poll up. Who might be best to replace Randy?

erin and hig at Lake Clark

Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman have made it to Port Alsworth. They survived another couple of a hundred winter miles of trekking through tough territory. They even survived being bombed with pizza by a plane in Lake Clark Pass.

They've finally gotten in a lot of skiing, sometimes in crazy conditions. erin:

" How do you travel down a sheet of glare ice with several inches of standing water on top in a strong tailwind? Easy. Just stand on your skis. How do you stop? Another matter altogether."

She makes some apt observations on possible coal mining in the Chuitna Basin. And the pictures, as usual, are great.

If you're new to reading Progressive Alaska and are unaware of erin and hig's great adventure, you're in for a treat!

Michael Carey's Jim Clark Essay

Anchorage Daily News editorialist emeritus Michael Carey has written the most thoughtful piece yet on last week's plea by Jim Clark, ex-Governor Frank Murkowski's chief-of-staff during Murkowski's sole term.

In Carey's essay, Mike lays out how a mindset of hubris created by long-term political dominance in Alaska by the GOP helped breed the situation where Clark got quite used to doing whatever he thought he could get away with. Carey acknowledges that Clark showed class Monday, and he credits Clark for "poise and remorse" in dealing with that day's public appearances, and in Jim's subsequent written apology to Alaskans. Carey is unsparing in characterizing Clark's soliciting Veco money for poll data on behalf of Clark's boss, as criminal. But Mike, when he writes, "[h]e wanted the money, he wanted it immediately, so he turned to Allen," starts to lose it.

He next paints an accurate picture of the dysfunctional and criminal state of GOP political shenanigans here over the past few years. Although he's a very competent historian of Alaska events, Carey then failed to give much context or depth to the two underlying realities that brought Jim to Bill's door in the first place: the dominance of big oil in our economy, and the deeply flawed campaign financing paradigm. That's unfortunate, because I'm sure Mike knows there is a whole lot of fixing to be done in that sphere. By both parties' infrastructures.

Back in December 1986, I was working for Allvest, the first major private corrections contractor in Alaska. It had been set up when a few partners, including a very recently ex assistant commissioner of corrections, Kevin Bruce, were given a large halfway house contract in Anchorage. Most of the people involved in the company's inception were influential Democrats. Bruce was close to then Governor Bill Sheffield.

The first "sensitive" job I was given there, when administrators felt they could rely on my discretion, was to supervise a crew of "residents" (inmates in a halfway house) who were processing then-Anchorage Mayor Tony Knowles' Christmas card mailing. Thousands of Christmas cards. There were about eight residents processing them most of the time.

What they did was address and stamp the envelopes by hand. Two signed the cards. They were female residents. In front of them was a card with Knowles' real signature. They copied it time and again.

From what I later found out, the cards and stamps were paid for by Allvest, or by its shell company for political contributions, St. John Investments. I was told by a coworker that Knowles wouldn't be billed.

Allvest later was bought by Cornell Corrections in Houston, which is a player in political financing here to this day. Ex corrections commissioner Frank Prewitt had held a later iteration of a position at Cornell, that I'd had much earlier at Allvest, shortly before Prewitt agreed to wear an FBI wire.

I could write for days about episodes like this. Few deal with Knowles, less than third with Democrats. I'm sure Mike Carey knows more than enough of them himself which he hasn't had a reason to write about yet.

I did a couple web searches tonight, trying to determine if Mike had ever commented on public TV, or written about Ray Metcalfe. I'm sure Mike has, but nothing came up. Among the commenters to Carey's article at the blog was former U.S. Attorney for Alaska, Wev Shea. I did the same check on Shea regarding Ray Metcalfe. Again, nothing showed up.

Shea, in his comment says, "[i]f only the Republicans in Juneau and DC would have addressed reality and listened to the concerns of Governor Sarah Palin long before she was elected as our Governor." Rather than provide context, Shea pumps Palin as initiator of the truth, rather than as initiator of a political movement. A damn decent one at that, but Shea has already hitched his wagon to Sarah's train. Forget about Ray, folks. Or, better yet - never, ever mention him.

Some of Metcalfe's supporters even replied to Shea's comment. Shea came back later to thank a commenter who had praised him, but he didn't address any of the comments that asked Shea for more information.

Shea, and certainly Carey are concerned about reform. And they are interested in justice being done once the indictments have been issued. I wish they were curious enough to not only acknowledge Ray Metcalfe for the work he's done, but to use the opportunity of thanking Ray, to ask him, "what else do you know, my friend?"

My Upcoming Spring Break Tour

Ray Metcalfe and I talked for a long time on the phone today.

I've written here a couple of times about Ray's Anchorage real estate tour, on which he explains some of the highly questionable if not outright illegal real estate sale and leasing deals that have gone down in Anchorage or are ongoing. All of Ray's gems involve prominent Alaska politicians, their families and cronies.

We're going to bring along a videographer and post the final result here, on YouTube, and at other sites, with links to the YouTube content.

This blog has been commenting about and critiquing Alaska politics for four months and four days. Ray has been trying to clean up Alaska politics for about 60 times as long. He's undoubtedly the greatest muckraker in Alaska history, and we need to help find more ways to help him get the truth out.