Don Young 06

It is, perhaps, a sign of the Republican Party's national weakness that 17-term incumbent Don Young is actually campaigning to retain his seat.

Sure, his campaign is a bit slow off the mark - just launching its web site today, for instance - and I don't imagine he'll be doing too much beyond issuing a few press releases addressing Diane Benson's key themes and showing up at a few feel-good events.

Still, the fact that Young felt forced to run an ad in which he even mentions his "opponent," is a sign, I think, that Young at least takes this threat with a degree of serious that 17-term incumbents generally don't.

Generally, though, I think some left-leaning and disaffected Alaskans are just looking for something to hold onto in a hopeful national atmosphere.

Anna Godduhn, a coordinator for the Fairbanks Coalition for Peace and Justice, said she was supporting Benson as a candidate and not as a member of one party or another.

“I’ve never seen a viable alternative to Don Young,” she said, “and I’m just very, very excited.”

"Viable" is relative.

"Patriots"

Some good thoughts on the Citgo fuel program:

Where does that leave villages and Alaska households that choose to heat with Citgo's charity? Unpatriotic? No way. The Chavez test is a false one, chaff for talk radio.

Bush and Native Alaskans already have passed the real test of patriotism by dint of sweat and drill at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. That's where 600 troops of the 3rd Battalion, 297th Infantry of the Alaska Army National Guard have been training for a year's deployment to Iraq and Kuwait. Six hundred troops from about 80 Alaska communities -- Chevak, Kodiak, Bethel, Barrow, Togiak and Kongiganak, to name a few, along with Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Hugo's oil? Alaskans can take it or leave it. Patriotism? Six hundred troops comprising a cross-section of Alaska's cultures and homes, urban and remote, Native and non-Native, have answered the call. End of debate.

Some less good thoughts:

Dear Editor,

Support Chavez—Support Terrorist

It's good to see some of our villages know what honor is by refusing the corrupt Argentina's Prez. bribery offer of oil for support. I'm glad to see someone stand for what's right, what we learned from our (Alaska's) past and what our elders teaches us about honor, not to leave out what makes the USA the greatest country in the world, bar none.

Semper FI
Russell Atwood
P.O. Box 85318
Fairbanks, AK 99708

Some in between comments:

It’s hard to watch villagers pay $7 a gallon for oil in a state that produces so much of the stuff and collects so much tax money from it, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

“The state is benefiting because of the high price, but there are many individually who don’t benefit,” she told Alaska reporters last week.

Sen. Murkowski said Chavez’s motivation is clearly not sympathy for the poor, since the discounted oil for the United States comes “at the expense of his own people.”

She said Chavez’s offer presents Alaskans with an odd situation.

“It hits me so wrong that, in a state like Alaska, where we are so blessed with our own natural resources … in a state where we have a $34 billion Permanent Fund, that our people in 151 villages would feel the need to take an offer from just an evil person,” she said. “I believe he is an evil person.”

Three additional notes.

First, Hugo Chavez is president of Venezuela. Nestor Kirchner is president of Argentina. But that's alright. All those South American countries are so hard to tell apart anyway and they're clearing all terrorist havens.

Second, the ADN says the Aleutian villages will be "shivering" this winter for rejecting the fuel. I don't think "shivering" does justice to rural Alaskan winters. Is it going too far to say that not enough heating fuel is literally a matter of life or death to folks living in the villages?

Third, I don't think anyone doubts Chavez's intentions here - personal aggrandizement and self-promotion. But I don't think he's an evil person. He's just a canny politician pursuing different ends than the good senator from Alaska would prefer.

David Chambers

As I indicated, the CitizenAlliance brought David Chambers of the Center for Science and Public Participation to Nome and he held a public forum last night.

I reported on the event but wanted to make two notes here, of a more editorial nature.

The first is that I was pleased with how the event turned out. I had anticipated that it could easily turn into a complaining session in an echo chamber but Chambers was a very good question-answerer. He told people what he thought, pointed out where they might have misperceptions, and clearly defined the debate in terms people could understand. The importance of that can not be underestimated.

Second, I am simultaneously deeply impressed and moderately disappointed with the CitizenAlliance. On the one hand, they have taken an issue that was a fait accompli a few months ago and succeeded in raising some very real obstacles to it. (Yes, it can easily be argued these obstacles could - and would more effectively - have been raised some months ago.) Many of them are well-spoken, come across as deeply genuine, and are passionate advocates for their cause. That is hard not to respect.

My disappointment is that the CitizenAlliance has missed at least one obvious step to trumpet their cause. The recent municipal elections in Nome were a comparatively weak affair compared to what I had expected they would be in early September. I was convinced that we would have what I called a "cyanide election." I was excited to cover races for common council that would turn on the great issue of the day in Nome. And yet not a single candidate could be found from the CitizenAlliance (despite their passion, genuineness, and well-spokenness) to stand for office, though these same people had - rightly - pointed out a few weeks earlier at a common council meeting that the current crop of council members had failed to stay informed on the issue and really didn't know what was going on. And even though a candidate did express an anti-cyanide position, no one rallied around him and he finished a woeful third place.

From a news angle, I am looking forward to continuing to cover this issue because it is interesting and generates a lot of news. But from a personal angle, my respect and concern is tempered by a tinge of disappointment at what might have been.

No Vote, No Cash

I found myself taken with the ADN's editorial this morning:

Have we lost some of our sense of the commonwealth? In announcing the 1999 dividend, then-Revenue Commissioner Wilson Condon reminded Alaskans of Section 1 of the Alaska Constitution:

"This constitution is dedicated to the principles that all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the enjoyment of the rewards of their own industry; that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the law; and that all persons have corresponding obligations to the people and to the State."

It's a wonderful concept, obligation, and one we do not talk about nearly enough. We have a bill of rights, but not a bill of obligations. Why not? A just society demands work and attention. People need to take an interest in what goes on, stay educated about the issues, ask questions, and so on and so forth. It's not a simple task to be a democratic citizen.

A citizen's easiest obligation is to cast a ballot on election day. But voter turnout is depressingly low. Despite public debates over the school budget and the city budget, squabbles over the sales tax, and a controversial mine north of town, only 1 in 3 Nomeites could be bothered to take five minutes to vote in Tuesday's municipal election.

So here's a simple idea, riffing off the ADN's theme of obligation and the PFD. How about tying every Alaskan's right to (one of) every Alaskan's duty. You only get a PFD if you vote.

We'd have to tweak the idea for folks not eligible to vote or folks eligible to vote but not for the PFD and determine which election counts (primary, municipal, general?) but might it not be a start towards making the PFD less of an entitlement?

Perhaps.

Ballot Box Legislation

When I was in Fairbanks in August, I commented to one check-out clerk that one of the great things about the Golden Heart city is that it doesn't have a sales tax. No more, I suppose:

Fairbanks voters slashed the city’s rate of property tax and simultaneously grabbed the ability to approve a sales tax, leaving the city facing an estimated $13 million budget gap just weeks before the review of next year’s budget is set to begin.

By passing propsotions 3 and 4, voters have also sent the city scrambling to find a new source of revenue big enough to cover almost half its annual budget, said city Mayor Steve Thompson.

I noted this issue earlier but the reason I raise it again to point out that one of the reasons we live in a representative - and not, say, Athenian - democracy is so that our representatives can look at the big picture, weigh a policy proposal in the context of its effect on other policies, and then come to a conclusion. The citizens of Fairbanks clearly did not do that last night.

(One question, though - doesn't state law mandate the the city levy at least a 4 mil property tax to pay for education? How can they get away with capping it at 0.5 mil? Or does the borough pay for education?)

I think there's some legitimacy to the arugment that the tax burden shouldn't be wholly on the property owners. But sales taxes are regressive and hit poorer people harder. Shifting some of the burden away from property owners (and landowners) to the whole citizenry makes some sense but this is clearly a case of going to extremes.

Media Coverage

A word on media coverage, the industry in which I currently find employment, prompted both by a conversation with one of the folks opposed to some aspects of the Rock Creek mine this morning and the ADN's first in-house article on the opposition.

The media can be a powerful springboard for causes, issues, and events. At KNOM, we are glad to lend that springboard to most anyone who wants it (provided you have some threshold degree of legitimacy). But we have lots of issues to cover and lots of work to do and we are most likely to lend you our platform if you make our job as easy as possible for us.

Let us know what you are doing and schedule time with us. We would love to make time for you but we don't always have time to go chasing every person who comes to town. The phone call this morning was to make sure we got some time with Dave Chambers of the Center for Science and Public Participation. We got the time with him but wouldn't have had we not been called. The people who find themselves (or their issues) on air on a recurring basis are folks who are really good at keeping us in their loop and convincing us their issue is newsworthy. (With Rock Creek, we are plenty convinced this is newsworthy.)

Plan events. Events are the easiest way to cover an issue because we can do so without showing partiality or compromising our objectivity. On the cyanide issue, our best coverage of the opposition has been their protest at Governor Murkowski's appearance in Nome and their comments to the common council. The ADN didn't get into this issue until the CitizenAlliance scheduled a fairly high-profile event, namely this evening's presentation by Dave Chambers. If we've been giving NovaGold air time, it's been because they've been holding public meetings and events that are easy for us to cover.

Yes, there is some burden on the news media to report what is important even if it's not easy. But a local radio station doesn't have the resources to support a Woodward and Bernstein and the easier our job is, the more likely you're going to get access to our springboard.

So go ahead. Schedule press conferences (even small ones work), address the Common Council, start a letter writing campaign, do whatever. But do something. We'd love to cover it.

A Continuing Backlash

Those patriotic Aleuts are going to get some free fuel after all:

Businesses and people around the country are digging into their pockets to help four Alaska villages whose tribal leaders rejected a heating-fuel gift from the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, a critic of President George Bush.

Donations, including a huge one from several fishing companies, have been so numerous there might be enough to replace the gift -- and then some.

Let's be clear here. What no one has explicitly begun to discuss is that the cost of living is spirally quickly upwards in rural Alaska. The fact that many rural Alaskans are eagerly accepting the gift and some people dissented from the decision to reject the Venezuelan fuel shows that this is a major issue of concern for a lot of people.

Let's look at the energy policies of three actors:

• The state legislature cut state funding for fuel subsidy programs and failed to pass any measures this past session dealing with the promotion of alternative energy research (despite a couple of decent proposals from lawmakers of both parties). It spent all its time on a natural gas pipeline and oil tax, whose benefits are questionable and certainly won't be seen this winter.
  
• The federal government is completely ignoring energy as an issue altogether, with the exception of an additional 1.5 million for LIHEAP.
• Venezuela is giving 100 gallons of heating fuel to each home.

Given that context, it's hard to see how the Venezuelan gift should be rejected. Survival trumps patriotism every time.

This would be an ideal opportunity to be begin/continue a discussion on energy in rural Alaska and the viability of alternative sources of energy. Wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc. all have significant practical obstacles but that doesn't mean any of them should not be considered at all. And yet everyone - Venezuelan and American alike - prefers to demagogue on the issue instead. Maybe we could talk about solving a problem here, rather than using it as another opportunity to confirm the validity of our position.

UPDATE: But two leaders in the Bering Strait region aren't so concerned.

Q-Tip

As you may have heard, we've been having a bit of a (delayed) kerfluffle in Nome over the mines at Rock Creek (just north of town) and Big Hurrah (east of town). One of the strands of argument concerns the proposed use of cyanide at the mine and one of the strands of that argument concerned the transport and storage of several hundred thousand pounds of the stuff in Nome.

Well last week - just a few days into NovaGold's transport of material from the port to their staging area - a container van of cement slid off a truck and off the road. Nothing spilled, no one was hurt, the seatainer was picked up within a couple of hours, and life went on... but it's raised some concerns about what might have happened had it been, say, cyanide or ammonium nitrate and the Connex hadn't held together.

Throughout the planning process Nova has reiterated their commitment to local hire and contracting and it was a well-established local trucking company (Q Trucking, hence the pun in the title of this post) that was doing the transport. There was some disagreement at the accident site on Thursday as to whether Q had the container vans properly secured on their flatbeds and what regulations governed such transport.

I don't have any answers to those questions but I can report - after talking with Nova's vice president for Alaska this afternoon - that Q will continue to be the contractor of choice for the transport of Nova's material. Doug Nicholson says they talked with Q, addressed "the situation," and intend to retain Q. He didn't say what the situation may have been or what problems - if any - there may have been with Q's performance.

Just for the record. It'll be on KNOM Update News tomorrow.

Robert's Rules

The argument has been made before that the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act insidiously harmed and changed Alaska natives by making them act like white people. That is, making them shareholders in corporations, making their goal profit, and making them owners of private property. There are a number of ways in which I absolutely agree with this argument.

But I think the effect of ANCSA goes deeper than that. In my job as a news reporter, I cover a lot of board meetings. These meetings are governed generally by Robert’s Rules of Order and like any other setting, people who know the rules are generally the people who have the power. The problem is that Robert’s Rules are antithetical, in my experience, to the Inupiaq way of life.

Inupiaq, as I understand, make decisions by looking at the situation, listening to elders and others, and reaching a consensus. Robert’s Rules, by contrast, can seem like an intimidating system. You have to know that in order to get anything done, you need to make a motion. In order for that motion to be discussed, you need a second. When a motion is on the table, it can be discussed before a vote takes place. When “question” is called, that doesn’t mean discussion ends – it just means someone wants discussion to end but anyone can object to that. When the vote happens, anyone can assent, dissent, or abstain from the motion (the number of meetings I’ve been to where some people only say “aye” and nothing else for the entire meeting is literally innumerable).

(Of course, people of any race say only "aye" at meetings. Perhaps the problem isn't racial but with Robert's Rules and its difficulty to all people everywhere.)

Over the years, Alaska natives have been drawn into the process that makes decisions about their lives through various boards and committees. But if the presence on those boards is merely to assent to what is recommended to them, then how important and effective are those boards for giving Alaska natives a say in the important decisions that affect their traditional way of life?

Gas Tax Redux

As I indicated earlier, I'm still unsure as to how I'll be voting on the gas reserves tax ballot measure on November 7th. The gubernatorial candidates don't share my uncertainty, however:

The three main candidates for governor are aligned on opposing a natural gas reserves tax, saying the policy would be bad business for the state.

"It's a short-sighted public policy, and it's a bad business decision," said Halcro.

Instead of prompting the producers to build a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline to avoid the tax, the producers would challenge it in court, delaying a pipeline, Halcro said.

"It's taxing income before it's earned. Fundamentally, I have a problem with that," said Palin, explaining why she'd vote against the tax.

"We should be negotiating for development, not litigating," she said.

Knowles agreed that the reserves tax would likely lock the state into a legal battle with the producers.

"There is no reason for us to put an additional barrier to the market incentives for people who are willing to invest in Alaska or to tie it up in litigation," Knowles said.

It's Palin's argument that makes the most sense to me, actually. Sure, let's tax the income after the producers make it but until then, let the market do it's work.

On the market note, ADN's Compass is on the gas reserves tax, as well. This is the point that stuck with me from that:

Unfortunately, right now the gas market is in a dive. When voters signed the initiative, natural gas prices were upward of $14 per million Btus. But prices have fallen dramatically and natural gas futures for delivery this month hit $4.78 -- the lowest closing price in more than two years. If we want to develop our gas, there is no time to delay. Natural gas prices have been extremely volatile, and from a banker's perspective, volatility equals risk.

I don't think adding a billion dollars a year to the cost of the pipeline makes the pipeline any easier to construct. Maybe the way to make the pipeline would be to have the producers sign on to a contract that includes work commitments and a targeted timeline of when this thing might be complete.

Still, my vote is still up in the air, though it's leaning towards no after this weekend.