Anchorage Daily News

“Deadliest Catch” a model of safety? A federal safety official says the sea captains who battle seas, winds and cold in the Discovery Channel’s “The Deadliest Catch” series, about crab fishing in the Bering Sea, are a model for safety, despite the business’s deadly reputation, according to an ABC News story. Deaths among Alaska commercial fishermen have dropped by half since 1990, thanks to efforts by the Coast Guard, the fishing industry and government regulators, Jennifer Lincoln, an occupational safety and health specialist, told the network.

Fishing off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California has, in fact, replaced the Alaska industry as the deadliest (click here to read an Associated Press story that ran in ADN today). “Safety improvement in Alaska did not occur through one intervention,” said Lincoln, who added that tailoring the multi-tiered approach of inspection and safety measures used in Alaska would likely help the Pacific Coast fisheries.

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Young speaks — a little. Alaska Rep. Don Young, whenever he’s asked, hasn’t had much to say about earmarks or investigations or lobbyists or legal fees. But he opened up a wee bit to a reporter for Congressional Quarterly this week.

“What the Senate did was unconstitutional,” Young told the reporter of the Senate’s unprecedented vote last week (read the ADN story on that action here) to ask the Justice Department to look at what happened to a $10 million earmark involving a Florida highway interchange. “No other body can request an investigation of another body.”

Further words from the congressman: “They can investigate if they want to. It doesn’t bother me a bit.”

And TPMmuckraker, the D.C. blog that doesn’t miss a move by Alaska’s congressional delegation, ponders what it sees as the “circularity” of the issue. “(T)he Justice Department is already investigating Young’s Coconut Road earmark, along with his ties to Veco and who knows what else. So if the Senate’s possibly unconstitutional measure to force the DoJ to investigate Young’s unconstitutional earmark fails, the DoJ will investigate it anyway. Somehow I think the Constitution will survive all this. As for Don Young …”

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$4-a-gallon gas? A KIMO Channel 13 story says average gas prices, in the view of “economic forecasters,” could reach $4 a gallon in Alaska before the summer’s over, which could in turn have “a negative impact on the tourism industry.” The story notes that AAA currently puts the average price per gallon of gas in Alaska at $3.72, compared to $2.41 16 months ago.

“I could see it maybe going up to $3.89-$3.99,” Nelson Garrett of Garrett’s Tesoro told the station, “and people are only going to go fishing once a month instead of once a week. People are cutting way back for unnecessary driving.”

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City weighs loan to power company. Struggling with a power crisis, Juneau is considering a $3 million interest-free loan to Alaska Electric Light & Power if the privately owned utility will spread a five-fold rate increase over a 12-month period, according to a Juneau Empire story. The city is anticipating the massive rate hikes in the wake of an avalanche that took out the Snettisham hydroelectric project’s transmission lines and forced the city to rely on generators powered by diesel fuel.

Mayor Bruce Botelho said the loan proposal is not intended to be a financial boost to the power company but is intended to help people pay the rate increase over a one-year period. The city Assembly will take up the loan plan next week.

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A ranking you can sink your teeth into. A Men’s Health ranking of selected cities across the United States lists Anchorage in 11th spot when it comes to who’s got the best teeth. The rating used criteria such as flossing, dentist visits, availability of fluoride in water supplies and teeth extractions in coming up with its list.

Just so you know, Anchorage's best scores were in flossing, where it ranked third, and in the list of cities with the lowest rate of permanent teeth extractions, where it came in second behind Madison, Wis.

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100,000 specimens and counting. The University of Alaska’s Museum of the North in Fairbanks passed a milestone recently, cataloging its 100,000th specimen, an APRN story reports. For the record, the Alaska marmot was the 100,000th specimen, followed by the pygmy sperm whale at 100,001.

Museum officials say it holds more Alaska mammal specimens than all other U.S. museums combined, according to the story. Link Olson, museum curator of mammals, told the station the latest additions not only give the facility “some arbitrary bragging rights” but also “strengthens our prominence in the museum community, both for the mammal collection but also for all our collections here.”

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For the clotheshorse. Ketchikan is home to “many talented fashion artists,” according to a Ketchikan Daily News story. And a good number of them will be showing their clothes, shoes, scarves and other items this weekend at Ketchikan’s first art-to-wear show.

The show, dubbed “From Tip to Toe,” started as an idea to show art to wear that is functional, said organizer Jean Bartos. “It’s really given a place for folks who you don’t always see their work.”

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Taxes review ordered. With Kenai Peninsula property owners demanding relief from property taxes, the borough Assembly has created a task force to look at alternative methods of assessing property, according to a Peninsula Clarion story. The new panel will make recommendations to the state Legislature, the story says.

“It is our conviction that some type of alleviation from the current statutory requirement to assess property at full and true market value is past due,” Assembly members Milli Martin, of Diamond Ridge, and Gary Superman, of Nikiski, wrote in a memo to their colleagues.

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Favorable ruling. One of the bloggers at Stop the Drug War, a web site committed to ending the prohibition against drugs, looks at an Alaska Court of Appeals ruling this month overturning the drug conviction of a North Pole motorist and likes what he sees. The blogger, Scott Morgan, calls it “one of the smartest Fourth Amendment decisions” to come along in a while.

The case (an Associated Press story on its circumstances and the court’s decision that ran in ADN is here) involved a motorist stopped for a minor traffic violation and who was searched and then arrested when drug paraphernalia were found. “We'll have to wait and see whether Alaska's Supreme Court picks up the case, but if allowed to stand, this decision should significantly undermine the type of ‘fishing expedition’ drug war policing that forces citizens to prove their innocence by the roadside,” Morgan says.

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Doctor discipline. A Los Angeles Times story reports that Alaska, Kentucky, Ohio, Arizona and Nebraska were the states with the highest rates of disciplinary action taken against doctors in 2007. Citing material from the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, the story says disciplinary action against doctors nationwide fell 6 percent last year, the third year in row the number has fallen.

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Two wings and a prayer. The Washington Post’s “Finding Faith” columnist, who has been traveling in Alaska chronicling faith stories, got a frightening, firsthand understanding of what it can be like landing on a village air strip when wind and snow are in an uproar.

Her aircraft landed in a sideways skid, “somewhat like a hockey stop,” on the Kivalina strip, writes Christy McKerney. “Sometimes, as now, there is no alternative to trust. The only option is to stare down a disappearing runway and give oneself up to the inevitable, to trust in God or trust in a universal order or simply resign yourself to the fact that some things — like death — are simply beyond your control.”

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Student-aid legislation mourned. A story in The Northern Light, the University of Alaska Anchorage’s student newspaper, takes note of “student-written” financial aid legislation that went under during the recently completed legislative session. The Alaska Achievers Incentive Program had versions introduced in both the House and the Senate, according to the story, but it died in committee both places.

The legislation will be back next year, the story says. “We fully plan to have (the bills) re-entered,” said Ryan Buchholdt, USUAA club council representative and president of Alaska Young Democrats. “We plan to rally support over the summer.”

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