Call or Visit Sen. Begich's Office This Coming Week and Demand Action on Health Care Reform!

These three courageous Mat-Su Valley Democratic Party women all raised their hands at the monthly Egan Dinner in Wasilla yesterday evening. The woman in the middle, grinning widely, is Katie Hurley, the secretary of Alaska's constitutional Convention.

They, and dozens of others agreed to call, write or visit Alaska Sen. Mark Begich's office this coming week. They'll be demanding that Mark understand that the majority of people who voted for him want substantive health care reform.

Sen. Begich has not been at all forthcoming on how he is handling the battle. Meanwhile, he is taking in war chest money from companies and organizations standing against any change whatsoever, unless it materially benefits them, to the detriment of the American public.

Here's information on Sen. Begich's three Alaska offices:

Anchorage:

Peterson Tower, Suite 750
510 L St
Anchorage, AK, 99501
phone. (907) 271 - 5915
toll free. (877) 501 - 6275 - good only for area code 907 callers, but good everywhere in Alaska
fax. (907) 258 - 9305


Fairbanks:

101 12th Ave, Room 206
Fairbanks, AK 99701
phone. (907) 456-0261
fax. (907) 451-7290


Juneau:

One Sealaska Plaza, Suite 308

Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 21850
Juneau, AK 99802

phone. (907) 586 - 7700
fax. (907) 586 - 7702

To email Sen. Begich, go to his Senate web page ,and click on the icon that reads EMAIL THE SENATOR.

Here are two YouTubes on this past week's issues in the health care debate, from the perspective of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party:

Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup - August 22, 2009

I. Health care reform efforts and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's health care reform town hall meeting at Dimond High School were the subjects of articles this past week. Linda Kellen at Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis, posted a number of articles by Jeanette, about both the ongoing debate itself (most recently, comparing comparing House Resolution 3200 to HR 676), two essays (perhaps the best yet by Jeanette) about the Murkowski town hall event, and about how health insurance company stocks have gone up and down recently, based on perceptions and manipulations.

Although AK Muckraker from The Mudflats has been traveling, several Mudpups attended the town hall, and commented at a thread at the blog.

PA was there, and left the forum impressed with how smoothly the Murkowski ground team had both handled the event, and with how smoothly they appeared to have insinuated Murkowski supporters and donors into the public testimony.

At least Murkowski has articulated her stand on this issue. She is firmly against the public option. Her web site includes detailed, updated information on her views, including slides from the town hall at Dimond.

Sen. Begich's office hasn't issued any statements on this issue since his Anchorage Chamber of Commerce appearance on August 10th. His health care issues niche at his official web page has not been updated in months. He has not committed to supporting any option under consideration, let alone the public option supported by the vast majority of Democrats nationwide and in Alaska.

I chaired the Mat-Su Democrats' monthly Egan Dinner yesterday in Wasilla. Jonathan Teeters, from Organizing for America gave us a thorough update and analysis of the health care debate. The consensus among the many people attending - we had a FULL house - was that we should all call Sen. Begich's office this week, and let them know our preference. Almost everybody at the Egan Dinner favors the public option alternative to any solution that falls short of that.

II. The passing Tuesday of Segundo Strongheart touched Alaska's progressive blogging community like no other personal tragedy experienced by one of our team. The most eloquent, heart-rending post was by Segundo's wife, Ann, at Anonymous Bloggers. Among the other tributes:

The Mudflats
Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis
Progressive Alaska

I dedicated my public testimony at Friday's Oceans Task Force hearing to Segundo.

III. Yesterday, readers from Bent Alaska and Henkimaa helped with a sort of impromptu protest outside of McGinley's Pub, where homophobic Anchorage Mayor, Dan Sullivan is a 10% owner. And some of Alaska's progressive blogs covered Sullivan's veto at the beginning of the week, of Anchorage Ordinance 64, which would have banned discrimination against that city's LBGTQ community.

image - Suzanne McCausland, Katie Hurley and Sally Hitchcock, from Friday's Egan Dinner, with a message for Sen. Begich

At the Anchorage Oceans Policies Task Force Hearing

You can watch the public meeting here. The clickable link is at the top, under Regional News.

You can testify by going here.

Here's a picture of the attendees at the Dena'ina Center:
Here's a picture of the panelists:

After introductory remarks, the task force will be taking testimony randomly, based on cards that could be submitted. You had to identify which group you represented. I checked off "environmental" and "general public." There was no space for educator.

I doubt my testimony will be heard. I did submit it in writing, too. Here's what I wrote, and hope to say:

This testimony is offered in memory of Segundo Strongheart of Nunam Iqua, who passed away early this past Tuesday, as he struggled to support his family and heritage.

My name is Philip Munger. I live in Wasilla, and teach cultural history at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I’m best known as a composer of “classically-based” music. In 36 years in Alaska, I have also worked in many other fields, including a 26-year relationship with commercial fishing or other blue water maritime activities. I have a strong love of science, and have raised my two kids to be scientists: One is now a graduate of the Huxley School of Environmental Science. The other is pursuing studies at Humboldt State University in green fisheries restoration.

I’ve observed the degradation of the overall habitat upon and around the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, as the ongoing catastrophe has accelerated. It is increasingly clear that unless something radical is done soon to assure far higher returns of salmon to these and other areas, the runs will be ruined forever.

Of particular concern is the decimation of the Yukon River Chinook and Chum salmon stocks. I am one who strongly believes the bycatch paradigm of the Bering Sea trawlers has crossed the area from very poor policy to cultural genocide.

Salmon are the basis of some of the most beautiful, long-lasting and resilient of the world’s existing cultures. The Yupik are emblematic.

• When the Phoenicians and others were cutting down the vast cedar forests in Lebanon, the Yupik were beginning to fish the lower Yukon.

• When the Roman Empire and vernacular Latin were dying, people had been speaking a language today’s Yupik would recognize as their own for over a thousand years.

• When the Norse navigated the North Atlantic, the Volga and the Black Sea, the Yupik were expanding up the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers.

• When a language we can now recognize as English began to exist, Yupik culture was thousands of years old.

Yet, within the mere past 25 years, the foundation of this vibrant culture has been ripped apart.

I have never seen a better example of how cross-governmental jurisdictional problems can be used by an industry to destroy one of America’s first peoples.

Nancy Sutley - Dr. Jane Lubchenco - David Hayes - Admiral Thad Allen - Heather Zichal -- and, YES - Sen. Mark Begich and President Barack Obama:

Unless you act very soon, and very, very sternly to end the depredation of the Bering Sea and other Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries, the miserable survivors of this once-proud, vibrant culture, will soon sing imprecatory, damning songs to your eternal memories, blaming you for their Holocaust.

+++++++++++++

Live blogging:

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner, Larry Hartig only spoke of development, and dimly, at that.

Public testimony is supposed to begin in 14 minutes, but Fran Ulmer, Bill Sheffield, John Binkley, and others haven't yet spoken. Most panelists are talking twice as long as they are supposed to.

We're now into public testimony time, with three more panelists, including
John Binkley from the cruise ship industry, and Bill Sheffield, one of the worst governors in Alaska history. He usually talks way over his alloted time.

Only Dorothy Childers from the Alaska Marine Conservation Council has expressed anything remotely resembling urgency, regarding climate issues.

Public testimony has begun, about 22 minutes late, allowing for 98, instead of 120 minutes. Included in the "public," as opposed to "industry" testimony, right now, is a woman from Shell Oil.

So far, four of the people testifying have strongly urged more substantive involvement of Alaska Native representatives at all levels of policymaking in the Arctic, including - possibly - a subsistence seat on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

The chair just announced that I will conclude the next group of six commenters.

Update - Saturday morning: I did get to give my testimony at around 4:00. As soon as I read Segundo's name, I got a bit choked up. I had to pause a couple of times to get my breath. When I said the names of the four panelists - Sutley, Lubchenco, Hayes and Allen - I paused after each name until the panelist looked right at me. When I was done, though, all four were looking down at their sheaves of paper at the table. I had to leave within minutes, to attend another meeting in the Valley.

Two Important Friday Events - Mat-Su Dems Egan Dinner and Ocean Policy Task force Hearing

I. August Mat-Su Democrats Egan Dinner

This coming Friday at 6:00 p.m. we will be meeting once again at the Glacier Canyon Grill in the Grandview Inn, 2900 E. Parks Highway in Wasilla.

There will be open discussion on the ongoing public meetings throughout Alaska and in the Mat-Su Valley on efforts for medical care reform. Our featured speaker will be Jonathan Teeters, Alaska Coordinator for Organizing for America.

Mat-Su School Board candidates Adam Boyd, Erick Cordero, Jamey Duhamel and Sarah Welton will be describing their campaigns for the October election, and taking questions from the audience.

We'll also be sharing news about our organizing efforts for the Alaska Democratic Party booth at the Alaska State Fair.

Jonathan Teeters has attended all the health care forums held in Alaska so far. I spoke to him briefly at Sen. Murkowski's Dimond High School event yesterday. Please come hear him give what might be the best up-to-date analysis of the health care battle you'd be likely to obtain in Alaska, and support our Mat-Su Democrats!

II. Also today, from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the downtown Anchorage Dena'ina Center, the White House Ocean Policy Task Force will be holding a public hearing with testimony from participants. Testimony may be given between 2:30 and 4:30 by those who sign up ahead of time.

If you can't make it to the hearing, it will be webcast on the NOAA web page. I'll be there, hopefully giving my three minutes worth of testimony. If you would like to submit testimony, but cannot make it there, you can click this link to testify in writing on-line.

The panel hearing testimony will be:

• White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco
• Deputy Secretary of the Department of Interior David Hayes
• Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen
• Deputy Assistant to the President on Energy and Climate Change Heather Zichal

image - Jonathan Teeters

Sen. Murkowski's Anchorage Health Care Town Hall - Observations - Updated

I attended the first half of Sen. Lisa Murkowski's "Town Hall" Forum on health care, held this afternoon in the Dimond High School auditorium. The crowd filled the hall to capacity, and at times there may have been almost 200 more gathered in the atrium outside, so almost 1,000 people attended. Murkowski's staff, aided by school district employees I recognized in the support team (who usually work at other schools), helped engineer an ambience that looked for possible contention at the event, but sought to defuse it quietly, in the background.

Murkowski herself, through the way she conducted the forum, sought to ease troubled people as she sometimes did well, trying to answer questions from the audience. The professionalism of her staff almost immediately showed when questions from people who couldn't be seated in the auditorium because of the overflow were brought to her, without fanfare, within the first half hour of the event.

Some of the overall questions and selections of people to be heard appeared a bit too pat, though. Someone might look into that.

I'm a single payer system advocate, if you haven't figured that out already, so I am at odds with a lot of the material her staff presented as handouts to attendees, and what Murkowski then detailed in her introductory remarks.

And I'm at huge odds with Murkowski on a host of other issues having to do with her enabling of President Bush's robbery of so many of our constitutional freedoms.

Here are some enumerated observations from the forum:

1) It's easy to see why she is the most popular politician in Alaska right now. Unlike the crazy lady, she failed to make a snarky, 8th grade, divisive, self-serving statement all night. Well, scratch the "self-serving." But Murkowski seems to realize that she is currently Alaska's most prominent representative in political life, and that an adult is needed to do that.

2) I'm getting better at spotting different groups from within the teabagger community. It is diverse, and some of the people involved in this amorphous mirage of a faux new revolution are good people. Being from the Valley, I know a lot of them. None of the nuttier ones were there tonight, and I only spotted two paid astroturfers, but they didn't say anything.

3) Although I'm more skeptical every day the health care dialogue continues, that we'll get what the country needs, I was impressed at how many questions were worth asking. The crowd was more conservative than I had expected, but the medical profession field was well represented from among those who asked Sen. Murkowski questions or who had valuable comments.

4) As already noted, the staff work was excellent. And Murkowski seems to have successfully convinced the Alaska media and some national figures that she is reaching out more to Alaskans on this than is her colleague, Sen. Mark Begich. .

5) The meeting was webcast and carried live on Anchorage's KBYR-AM. Afterward, KBYR ran Glenn Biegel, their most doctrinaire conservative local commentator for the rest of the 8:00 hour, fielding comments. The most widely read Alaska progressive blog, The Mudflats, live-blogged the forum. Murkowski's staff seems to have had a major hand in the video and audio coverage. The Alaska Public Radio Network, the Anchorage TV news crews, and my colleague Dennis Zaki from The Alaska Report were there too.

Even though I had to leave early, I was able to hear much of the rest of the debate and KBYR's coverage.

6) Don Young is in mourning, but he has a responsibility to make some pubic appearances, and answer questions publicly on health care before he returns to work.

Update I: Sean Cockerham's Anchorage Daily News article on the forum.

Update II: Linda Kellen, in her overnight post on the forum, notes:

I did not make it tonight, but I've gotten some email feedback from folks who were there that the majority of the speakers were clearly prearranged and reading from prepared material. These are a couple of the people quoted for Sean Cockerham's ADN article:

Dr. Ilona Farr

-- Donated $700.00 to Ted Stevens last year and $300.00 to Sen. Murkowski.
--Wrote letter to the editor in support of Stevens

Tom McGrath

--Owner of Frigid North and well-known Conservative
--Appointed by Sarah Palin to the State Officers Compensation Commission
--Donor to SarahPAC
--Ran for Anchorage Assembly

And here is a comment posted at The Mudflats late yesterday evening, by Writing from Alaska:

I just got home and sat through the whole thing. My impressions are somewhat different than others here, I think. She started out by using her handouts to show on a graph why health care reform is absolutely necessary based on the increasing and unsustainable costs. She advocated for making sure that people in places like Alaska could actually get health care – saying that having a card that said you are entitled to care and having a health care provider are not the same thing. The card will do you no good if you live in rural Alaska and have no one to provide you with health care.

She talked about the great complexity of the problem, about different proposals that had been made, about the legislative process and never talked down to her audience or pandered to the negativity, though I agree that she could have corrected a couple of folks on some ridiculous comments, but she did keep to the topic of health care.

She advocated for incentives for more people to go into health care fields including nurse practitioners, nurses and others who fill the gaps in places like Alaska rural villages where no doctor is willing to work and live.

Bottom line for Murkowski seemed to be – we can’t ignore this issue or wait for it to go away – it has to be dealt with. Health care reform has to happen but is it just health insurance or is it also health providers, tort reform, increased reimbursements for medicare and other issues? And she says wants to take the time to do it thoroughly and so that it will benefit Alaskans and other rural states.

That was my take – and I have said before and will say again – I may not agree with her, but thank God for Republicans like Lisa Murkowski who has a brain and is willing to use it. I felt she was reassuring the more ‘conservative’ folks by listening to them while clearly conveying the message that health care reform is something that needs to happen for the good of the everyone – - one of the things she said was that it can’t be solved by the Democrats alone, because it isn’t a problem that only applies to Democrats – neither is it a Republican problem that needs a Republican solution. – I rather like that -

images - Sen. Murkowski coming onstage; the overflow at 6:05

Perspective on Gun-toting Nuts Outside of Obama and Healthcare Events

This gentleman, "exercising his 2nd amendment rights," outside of an appearance by President Obama, was not arrested. His weapon was loaded.

Others have gone packing to health care policy rallies, even being beseeched to do so by the right-wing media.

As Logan Murphy noted today, at Crooks & Liars:

There have been a number of right wing protesters showing up at Democratic town hall meetings with guns over the past couple of weeks, even at events held by President Obama. Many have made note that countless people were shoved into cages called "free speech zones," or arrested at events held by former president George Bush for merely wearing anti-Bush t-shirts, yet people have been allowed to openly carry loaded weapons while protesting against Obama, for the most part without incident. How many of you have either posted or said aloud something along the lines of the following statement:

Can you imagine what would would have happened if a protester had brought a loaded gun to a Bush event?

Of course, that protester would have been tased, beaten, arrested and labeled a terrorist -- but times have changed:

Armed men seen mixing with protesters outside recent events held by President Obama acted within the law, the White House said Tuesday, attempting to allay fears of a security threat.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said people are entitled to carry weapons outside such events if local laws allow it. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," he said. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Not everyone agrees:

"What Gibbs said is wrong," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Individuals carrying loaded weapons at these events require constant attention from police and Secret Service officers. It's crazy to bring a gun to these events. It endangers everybody." Read on...

Personally, I believe it's just a matter of time before one of these gun-toting, Fox News-inspired whackjobs take a shot at the president or a Democratic member of Congress.

Here's a YouTube of a woman being arrested at a McCain-Palin event, merely for carrying a McCain=Bush sign:


Anyone who goes to Dimond High School this afternoon to hear Sen. Murkowski talk about and answer our questions about health care, should keep all this in perspective.

Typically, though, the teabaggers and Larouche nuts are only disrupting appearances by Democrats, as their behind-the-scenes controllers demand.

The Baucus Caucus: PhRMA, Insurance, Hospitals and Rahm

--- by Jane Hamsher

[As longtime readers of PA know, I am no fan of President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Neither is Jane Hamsher. This article from firedoglake's Campaign Silo, (where I have occasionally written), is the best overall chronologically-based essay on the current state of the battle for health care reform.]

------+++------

We started this whip count effort on June 23 because it became clear that in the course of making their deals with stakeholders, the Baucus Caucus (who were negotiating on behalf of the White House, with the participation of the White House) had very likely already dealt the public plan away.

On May 11, "stakeholders" including the AMA, PhRMA, the hospitals and the device manufacturers delivered proposals to the White House promising to "voluntarily" reduce cost increases over the next 10 years. In an effort to keep them "at the table," Baucus's Chief of Staff Jon Selib and Finance Committee staffer Russell Sullivan told stakeholders at a May 20 meeting that their participation in the process of crafting a health care bill was contingent on them "holding their fire":

Sources familiar with the lobbyist meeting described it as collegial, but they said Baucus’ aides made clear that any public opposition to the proposed financing of a reform package would be at their clients’ peril. The staffers’ message to K Street was clear: Tell your clients to let the process work and don’t torpedo it with advertisements, press releases and Web sites.

The goal of keeping stakeholders at the table was threefold:

1. Keep them from advertising against the White House plan
2. Keep them from torpedoing vulnerable Democrats in 2010 so there isn't a repeat of 1994
3. Keep their money out of GOP coffers

You can see the fingerprints in the deals that they made: the $150 million PhRMA was spending on ads for health care reform, the $2.5 million they spent helping vulnerable freshmen, and the total fury that Boehner has unleashed on PhRMA and other stakeholders for making deals with the White House.

People make a mistake when they think the battle for health care reform is about ideology, because it's not. It's about who controls K Street and the cash that flows from it, which could fund a 2010 GOP resurgenece -- or not.

On June 9, a lobbyist who worked for the insurance companies, hospitals, and other stakeholders said that these groups were "considering joining their Republican allies and mounting a public relations offensive to put the brakes on President Barack Obama’s overhaul plans."

In response, on June 11 Sullivan and Selib fired a warning shot:

“They said, ‘Republicans are having this meeting and you need to let all of your clients know if they have someone there, that will be viewed as a hostile act,’” said a Democratic lobbyist who attended the meeting.

“Going to the Republican meeting will say, ‘I’m interested in working with Republicans to stop health care reform,’” the lobbyist added.

Republican leaders have been meeting with health care stakeholders for months, with those sessions occurring “more frequently than once a month,” according to a senior Senate GOP aide.

On June 17, Roll Call ran an editorial crying foul, called "intimidation":

Now, as the health care debate heats up, lobbyists representing stakeholders in the debate are being frozen out of meetings and — even worse — intimidated from speaking out in their clients’ interest.

[]

Democratic leaders have health care on a fast track to passage in the House and the Senate by August. And, intimidation or no, objections are beginning to be heard to various proposals, notably a Medicare-like “public plan” and taxes on sugar to help pay for health reform.

And that's right at the time that Kent Conrad unveiled his faux "public plan," the "co-op" plan (June 15). It was the time I started getting really nervous. There could only be one purpose served by such a plan: pull a bait-and-switch on a public plan. Which was why when we started the whip count effort on June 23, our goal was to define a public plan as not a co-op.

In short order, a series of deals were announced by Baucus and the White House. On Monday, July 6, the deal with the hospitals, whereby they'd commit to reduce projected cost increases by $150 billion over the next decade. On Tuesday, July 7, PhRMA's Billy Tauzin and 5 CEO's went to the White House to seal their deal with Rahm Emanuel, Jim Messina and Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. On July 8, Rahm tried to float the idea of triggers -- and it went over like a lead balloon. On June 10 Obama spoke to the AMA. There was a huge push to keep these groups happy during this period, and more importantly -- keep them from aligning with the Republicans.

Who would think that way? Whose primary objective would be to keep anyone from funding a GOP ascendancy, to sell out health care reform worth billions for a hundred fifty million in pro-reform advertising? Who would think to ask PhRMA to run ads in the districts of vulnerable freshmen, as well as Blue Dog Mike Ross, who is anything BUT vulnerable? Certainly not some policy wonk.

But ask yourself -- would consider it a victory to use the "public plan" as little more than a political pawn with which to threaten stakeholders and force them to stay at the table, with no thought as to the emotional and moral consequences suffered by the people who had pinned their hope on having one?

Someone who had worked as the head of the DCCC. Who remembered the 54 seat swing to the GOP in 1994 after the failure to pass health care reform. Someone whose sole goal was a "political victory," so the White House could be 14-0 not "13-1."

Someone like Rahm Emanuel, who works through the Blue Dogs in the House to make the House bill conform to the deals he sets up in the Senate. Rahm wanted a public plan with "triggers" and had been pushing for it since January. Lo and behold, who is insisting that any public plan in the House have triggers -- Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs.

The PhRMA deal on July 8 says that there won't be any drug price controls, and the next day, Blue Dogs Heath Shuler and Debbie Halvorson author a letter demanding -- no drug price controls:

Instead, they are asking Waxman, Rangel and Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) to support the drug industry’s offer to spend $30 billion help cover those costs – a deal that is backed by the White House and the Senate Finance Committee.

The American Hospitals Association deal was signed on July 8. The hospitals want higher medicare reimbursement rates for rural providers. On July 15, the Blue Dogs threaten to block health care reform -- if it doesn't increase reimbursement rates to rural providers.

And suddenly, the hospitals are spending $12 million running positive ads about health care reform with PhRMA and the AMA.

Mike Allen said earlier this week that "this weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip."

If you look at the cat-and-mouse game played between the Democrats and the Republicans, support expressed by the President for a "public plan" meant "don't you dare." A commitment that the bill will be "bipartisan" (since the GOP would never agree to one) was a signal that there would be no public plan.

The White House never cared about getting Republican votes -- it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA. Giving in to "Republican" demands was cover for writing shitty things into the bill that would keep the stakeholders happy. They didn't need Republican votes, they never did, and they never truly cared. As long as the money stayed out of their campaign coffers, it was all good.

If a public plan gets into a final health care bill, it's going to be because of public pressure, because people who put Obama in office demand one. Because in the grand scheme of White House priorities, it was something that could acceptably be dealt away in pursuit of a higher political objective by the guy who was calling the plays:

Rahm Emanuel.

image - Jane Hamsher

OFA Health Care Forum with President Obama Begins at 10:30 a.m.

Here's a link to the video of President Obama's Health Care Forum, which begins in about ten minutes.

Alaska's senior Senator, Lisa Murkowski, will be holding a health care forum this afternoon at Dimond High School, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Segundo Strongheart Passes in Ugashik

Yesterday morning, tragedy hit the Strongheart family, while working in Ugashik, on the Alaska Peninsula. Segundo Strongheart, of Nunam Iqua at the mouths of the Yukon River, was struck with a massive heart attack and could not be revived. He was 39.

He leaves his wife, Ann, their daughter Cecilia, and a yet-to-be born child.

The young family had come to national attention in early 2009, as Ann took the name Anonymous Bloggers (based on former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's derisive term for online community activists who disagreed with the chief executive), for a new collective blog, that has helped enormously in a revitalization of awareness of rural, largely Alaska Native, issues in the Far North.

Segundo's profound love of Ann and Cecilia, and for the community in which they live, and their constant struggle to create a vibrant life in one of the most impoverished parts of Alaska, played an important role in a deeper understanding of what people who have survived - and sometimes thrived - as a culture for 7,000 or more years face, when being overwhelmed by the neglect, selfishness and greed of the corporate dominance of our corrupt political and industrial paradigms. Combined with the adverse effects of rapid climate change, and uncertainty about future viability of the Yukon River ecosystem itself, the real faces the Stronghearts and their friends have put onto what we all must do -fight, and fight hard - will be an important part of Segundo Strongheart's legacy.

Ann, and her friends' blog, have posted a poignant, sad, and heart-rending tribute to Segundo Strongheart. If you have a condolence, a thought or prayer for the Stronghearts, that would be a good place to express it.

Progressive Alaska will update and link to other tributes as they appear.

image - Segundo Strongheart at Christmas last year

Shannyn Moore Will Be on MSNBC's Countdown Today - Live from the NYC Studio

At 4:00 p.m. Alaska time, the far north's most influential and courageous independent commentator, Shannyn Moore, will be a featured guest on Keith Olbmann's Countdown program.

Monday, Moore and AK Muckraker from The Mudflats addressed an audience at The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard University. Last Friday, Moore was honored at the 2009 Netroots Nation Conference, with this year's Steve Gilliard Journalism award. In July, Moore was the second Alaskan (Diane Benson was honored on March, 19, 2008) lauded with Buzzflash.com's Wings of Justice Award.

I strongly suspect that Brian the Moose might manage to slip into the studio to help Keith with the show.