Can't forgive Alaska senators
It was with a sense of great disappointment that one year ago I witnessed the refusal of Republican senators in Washington even to hold hearings for then-President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the post of U.S. Supreme Court justice.
It is now a year later, and Republican senators — including Alaska's Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan — have recently rushed to change a critical, long-standing and long-honored Senate rule (i.e., they have invoked the "nuclear option") in order to approve President Trump's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, even though only the barest majority of senators — all Republicans, including Murkowski and Sullivan — voted to approve Gorsuch's nomination to the court.
This act on the part of Republican senators, in changing an important, time-honored U.S. Senate procedural rule — together with Republican leaders' refusal even to discuss Garland's nomination one year ago — conveys an attitude that is so contrary and destructive to the concepts of our nation's representative government that I cannot forgive our nation's Republican senators for their ham-handed foolishness — and that includes Murkowski and Sullivan, who represent me here in Alaska.
There is not much that I, an ordinary citizen, can do about this action by the U.S. Senate, except to watch despondently while the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court is changed by congressional Republicans in a way that will guarantee that the Supreme Court will be politicized for decades to come.
However, there is one action that I, and others who feel like me, can do, and that is to join the campaign of whoever should oppose Murkowski and Sullivan when they run for re-election.
— Stephan Paliwoda
Anchorage
Identify where the cuts will be
I was dismayed to read a letter to the editor from former mayor Rick Mystrom.
He espoused Sen. von Imhof's fiscal plan for state government. This plan basically kicks the can down the road and does nothing to deal with our present precarious situation.
She advocates using the Permanent Fund's earnings reserve for the next couple of years while they decide what do about the fiscal gap. This is dereliction of duty. The time for talk is over. We need action now!
They also talk about more cuts to state government, which will eliminate more public and private jobs and worsen our recession. I would like them to identify where they would make these cuts, which the Senate has yet to do.
I think Mystrom did a credible job as mayor but he appears to not have a very good understanding of our fiscal predicament.
I urge the Senate to work with the House, which has come up with a sound fiscal solution to our deficit. We need to do this today and not stick our heads in the sand and hope oil goes up.
— Michael Henrich
Anchorage
What's with lack of roadbed, out-of-sync stoplights in town?
I was proceeding south on Lake Otis Parkway and got the green light to go through Tudor. I was in the left lane. As I proceeded through the intersection my beautiful new car literally bottomed out, and then went virtually airborne. It seems that the incredibly expensive re-do of the intersection didn't include proper roadbed. It would seem that there was some major skimping, or very poor engineering on the project.
How about all the street lights that aren't coordinated on major thoroughfares in Anchorage, causing us to have to stop and start constantly, even though we are going the speed limit. Do we really need another overpass at Lore Road, and all new frontage roads more than we need solutions to Northern Lights and Benson boulevards, and the largest highway in Alaska stopping all the way through Anchorage? Please.
— Jeffrey Todd Brown
Anchorage
China has brutal dictator
China's unelected President Xi Jinping visited Anchorage. Dissident Wei Jing-sheng, who I once hosted in Anchorage, described China as a dictatorship with term limits. Xi is one of those dictators.
China is an egregious human rights violator. China's raison d'etre for inclusion in Arctic exploitation is its self-described status as "the third pole." The third pole actually brutally occupied Tibet, whose religion and culture are being persecuted with the ultimate goal of annihilation and "Chinafication."
And Taiwan, arguably Asia's healthiest democracy, is being economically smothered and internationally isolated by its authoritarian neighbor — and threatened with forced reunification.
I have met privately twice with the Dalai Lama, as well as Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui and Vice President Annette Lu. This is all real and concerning stuff.
Gov. Walker did right to extend to Xi the Alaska hospitality and civility he did not deserve. I urge the Walker administration not to forget democratic Taiwan, our seventh-largest Asian trading partner.
— William M. Cox, MD
Anchorage
The swamp keeps growing
Our president has surrounded himself with billionaire advisers and appointees, many of whom have been less than transparent regarding possible financial conflicts of interest, causing concern at the House Committee on Ethics. President Trump's tax reform plan is in jeopardy because he stubbornly refuses to submit his tax returns, raising concerns about his own conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, he has cost taxpayers $25 million so far on trips to Mar-a-Lago, which is on track to exceed in one year the total travel expenditures of President Obama during his eight years in office. I have a question for all the Trump supporters out there: "How's that "drainy swampy" thing working out for you?"
— Thomas Crowley
Anchorage
Time for a state income tax
House Bill 115, which would reinstate an Alaska income tax, has passed the House and is currently stalled in the Senate Labor Committee. Please call your senators and urge them to hear and support House Bill 115.
I support a state income tax. Here's why:
1. It is the most fair way of collecting tax from Alaskans. Income taxes take a percentage of your earnings. Sales taxes, on the other hand, take a percentage of what you spend. This means people with less income, who spend a higher percentage of that income on basic necessities, pay higher taxes relative to their income due to the sales tax, than people with more income.
Additionally, almost every part of Alaska, with the notable exception of Anchorage, already levies sales taxes. Adding to that would create an additional burden, especially on those in rural areas where expenses already vastly outstrip the Railbelt's.
2. An income tax would generate revenue from people who are employed in Alaska but do not live here (over 20 percent of Alaska workers in 2014). A sales tax would also do this, and would capture income from tourists, but as mentioned above it would come at a greater relative cost to low-income Alaskans.
3. Since the construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline in 1974, our state funding has been almost exclusively based on oil revenue. That's not a sustainable future by any measure — oil is finite, it is a pollutant, and is rapidly being undercut as a global energy source by the decreasing cost of alternative energy generation, particularly solar power. Our population is small and Alaska is large and expensive to manage, but an income tax is one step toward creating a stable revenue system.
Perhaps most importantly, an income tax would help restore a sense of ownership in our state. As Alaskans, we've had a free ride for almost 40 years, since abolishing the income tax in 1980. It's time we stepped up and started to take responsibility for the state we love.
— Christina Talbott-Clark
Anchorage
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