My poll watching this week has been somewhat obscured by a boat and bait, so I was a bit surprised that Dan Sullivan doesn’t want to wait for my vote to be counted. I’m sure it’s not because he knows there’s no way on God’s green earth I’d blacken an oval next to his name, so it must be something else.

See, Alaska is a little different, Mr Sullivan. If you’d spent much time here, you’d know we’ve raised cliff-hanger elections to an art form. I once attended a coin toss that decided a state House seat. Right now we have one House seat with a 15-vote margin, and another with a 35. So, Dan, just cool your jets until all the votes are counted.

Progress arrives in Alaska more slowly than our glaciers melt, but it’s happening. Gay and lesbian couples now have the right to marry. just like everyone else. So far no reports of hetereosexual marriages imploding as a result. I’m hoping that someone will explain to the morality police that gay marriage — or what I like to call “marriage” — isn’t mandatory, and the only one you need to worry about is your own.

The good folks of Anchorage voted to reject Mayor Dan Sullivan’s hit on public unions. I guess the idea of firemen, police officers and other public employees being able to bargain collectively didn’t strike fear into the hearts of the voting public. Not even close.

Alaskans had the good sense to stop making criminals of those who use marijuana. The anti- campaign included quite a list of horribles but, no, pot cookies won’t be added to school lunches anytime soon. But a substance people will keep using — whether or not you and I approve — can now be regulated and taxed. You know, commerce. You saw that pot got more votes than anyone running for office, didn’t you?

In another landslide, Alaskans voted to raise the minimum wage. Why? Because the current wage is way, way out of date, and our lowest wage earners shouldn’t have to work two and three jobs just to starve more slowly. People understand: if you give someone at the bottom of our economy another dollar or two an hour, THEY WILL SPEND IT, maybe with you.

How did people who care about Alaska’s environment do? Well, Alaskans told those who would sell our Bristol Bay heritage for pocket change to forget about it. Of course that should have been a no-brainer for everyone — with the exception of the guy I hope will soon be our former governor and a few folks still digging paychecks out of the Pebble Partnership. More Alaskans voted to protect Bristol Bay than for anything else on the ballot.

If Bill Walker becomes governor — and he’s ahead right now — we can look forward to health insurance for 40,000 lower-income Alaskans, reversing the myopically inhumane and petty partisan action of his predecessor.

The vote tally by the Division of Elections isn’t complete yet, and won’t be for a few weeks, but there are hopeful trends. With almost 50,000 votes still to count, I see more Alaskans voting Democratic than there are registered Democrats, by 30,000. Fewer Alaskans voted Republican than there are registered Republicans, by 26,000. I find that encouraging.

When Alaskans are asked to vote their values, and they’re given a clean, non-partisan choice, they seem to prefer the more progressive path: higher minimum wage, environmental protection, fair treatment of public employees, a rational position on drugs.

It’s when they’re asked to choose between politicians, some with an R by their names, some with a D, that they fall back on cartoonish stereotypes to fill out their ballots. (Congratulations on your 22nd term, Rep. Young.) Maybe one of these days we’ll be able to ask Joe and Jane Alaskan if billionaires should be taxed at lower rates than their secretaries. How do you think that would turn out?

So Alaskans supported higher wages for our poorest workers, de-criminalization of pot, environmental standards to protect salmon and collective bargaining . . . AND at the same time for a legislature that would do away with every single one of those things if given half a chance. What a disconnect.

I think the lesson in this election is that most Alaskans want a less partisan, less ideological approach to our politics. One that solves real problems. We’re taking baby steps. You gotta start somewhere.

I read an op-ed in this paper by a gentleman named Jack Gerard with the American Petroleum Institute. He’s here from Washington, D.C., making speeches and honking his hooter. His message? Alaska needs to stand up to the federal government by endorsing tax cuts for oil companies in Alaska. We need to vote against our own interests in the August referendum.

It’s the economic equivalent of the Vietnam War strategy of destroying the village to save it.

Dear Mr. Gerard, if I wanted the opinion of an outsider from Washington, I’d call U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan, thank you very much.

Jack’s job seems to be going from state to state telling folks if they don’t buy the flowers, wine and dinner then the oil companies won’t date them anymore. (It’s actually more than dating.)

Right. They’re going to break up with Alaska, pay to dismantle the pipeline and move to North Dakota. Well, my friends, here’s the reality: If they lose their massive tax cut, the oil companies aren’t even going to unfriend us on Facebook.

There’s money to be made here and they’ll stay as long as that’s the case. (And they’ll be gone five minutes after it’s not.) And as long as they’re here, they’re going to whine about taxes and threaten to leave. Their job is to make every nickel they can. And they make a lot of nickels by punching holes in the tundra, but they make a bunch more by duping or buying legislators and governors. They can’t help it. That’s just their mandate.

As Alaskans, citizens of the Owner State, we have greater obligations than just getting some money for our oil. We have the duty to protect, educate, build infrastructure and ensure that future generations aren’t crippled by our choices, and that means standing up for ourselves now.

Kind of a daunting task when you think about it.

Maybe that’s why Bob Bartlett titled his keynote address at the Constitutional Convention on Nov. 8, 1955, “Meeting the Challenge.” He said, “Many states have included in their constitutions statements that the natural resources of the state should be ‘developed for the benefit of the people’ of the state. Such pious generalities, without further concrete policy statements, have proved wholly inadequate as effective barriers against dissipation of resources, fraud and corruption. Alaskans will not want, and above all else do not need, a resources policy which will prevent orderly development of the great treasures which will be theirs. But they will want, and demand, effective safeguards against the exploitation of the heritage by persons and corporations whose only aim is to skim the gravy and get out, leaving nothing that is permanent to the new state except, perhaps, a few scars in the earth which can never be healed.”

Barlett’s speech reminds me of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell warning, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

Sadly the warnings against the military industrial complex went unheeded. And we’re about to do the same for the resource extraction complex.

Alaskans, under Article 8 of the constitution, are charged with using our natural resources for the “maximum benefit” of our people. This makes the state similar to a corporation, beholden to its shareholders, which would be you and me. The recent decision of the Legislature and governor to give away billions in revenue in exchange for an unenforceable promise of oil industry good intentions is a dereliction of their fiduciary duties. Remember, the standard is “maximum benefit” not “some benefit.”

I’m still waiting to hear from someone how giving away roughly $1 billion a year — according to the Parnell Administration’s own fiscal analysis — for nothing in return is securing the “maximum benefit” for Alaskans. In fact, according to the administration’s own projections, oil production is going to plunge 45 percent under Senate Bill 21, the governor’s oil tax giveaway law. That’s a greater decline than was projected under the previous law, called ACES.

By not collecting necessary taxes, the Legislature is not only making it harder to fund operating budgets, but it is institutionalizing deficit spending. This is exactly what the U.S. Congress did to institutionalize huge federal budget deficits.

Do we really want to guarantee that the state will have to search for other sources of revenue to fund itself in the future? That puts a bulls-eye on the back of the Alaska Permanent Fund, but then what? Why would we shortchange our children tomorrow so Exxon, Conoco and BP stockholders can have bigger dividends today? Really?

Shannyn Moore is a radio broadcaster. You can hear her show, “The Last Word,” Monday through Friday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on KOAN 95.5 FM and 1080 AM and 1480 We Act Radio in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

Oct. 27, 2013, was a very important date to several people.

One of them was Melissa Jones. Her name had been in the newspaper that morning. She had been identified as a victim of sexual assault while serving in the Alaska National Guard. Melissa thought surely someone in authority would call her to talk about what had happened to her.

The story was written by Sean Cockerham for the Daily News. In it, members of the Guard had publicly complained about sexual abuse in the Alaska National Guard and the lack of action by Guard leaders.

Melissa is still waiting for that phone call.

Rosa Ralls had also stepped forward.

“It isn’t easy to say you’ve been raped,” Rosa said. To have your name attached to that in a newspaper story feels “pretty specific.”

In Rosa’s case, she had already tried twice to get the governor’s office interested in her case. One time, in 2011, she had taken another rape victim with her to let Gov. Sean Parnell’s office know what was happening in the Guard. No one from the governor’s office ever followed up with either of them.

Ralls was raped in 2009. Her police report says the case is awaiting DNA evidence. The man she accused of raping her was former military but not in the Guard. He had a previous sexual assault charge, and there was video footage of him catching the door of her secured building. She picked him out of a lineup. Five years later, no charges have been filed.

Melissa is 34 years old. She reported that she was drugged, raped and then ridiculed by several Guardsmen. She went to the Guard’s Sexual Assault Response Coordinator, but there was never an investigation. Soon after that, she was deployed to Iraq for nine months. On her return, in 2008, she sought help from the mental health clinic on Fort Richardson. She was given a workbook. Her summary: “No one helped me.”

Melissa now has an approved “line of duty determination” of severe depression and post-traumatic stress — both the result of her rape — from the National Guard Bureau. A medical discharge from the military is pending.

I asked her why she had agreed last year to go public.

“I wanted light shed on the situation. No one contacted me.” She went on, “Hard to believe the governor wouldn’t know. Lack of interest, part of the good ol’ boy club. How do you not care for your own troops?”

The governor claims three Guard chaplains who told him about sexual assault in the Guard in 2010 didn’t give him enough information to prompt an investigation. That’s nonsense. He didn’t need details to call for an investigation, he just needed suspicion.

Here’s how that works, according to his own Guard commander, Adjutant Gen. Thomas Katkus: “The Governor, anytime he has a desire to have an independent assessment or look into an organization he’s responsible with, which would be the Air Guard or the Army Guard, he can contact the National Guard Bureau, advise them of the problem and they would propose the best solutions to step forward to look into it.”

Even with the names of two rape victims in the newspaper, the governor waited from October to February — almost five months — to ask for the federal investigation. Parnell’s recent defense of his actions is based on his “quick response” after Sen. Fred Dyson’s third plea for him to do something, anything about the chaplains’ request for help.

A governor worthy of the title could have done much more than Parnell did.

When Attorney General Gregg Renkes was accused of a financial conflict of interest, Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Bundy to investigate — within three days.

I asked former Gov. Tony Knowles what he would have done in Parnell’s place. He said: “I wouldn’t have let those chaplains off the phone until my attorney general had heard their story.”

Former Egan administration Attorney General John Havelock said that if such serious charges, even with few details, had come to his attention, he would have launched an immediate investigation. “It’s a report of violation of state law, against someone working for the state — the National Guard — you would have to investigate.”

That’s what the people of Alaska — and especially the men and women for whom he is the commander in chief — should expect. It’s Parnell’s job and his responsibility.

When chaplains are summoned by a governor’s political appointee and asked to personally sign a directive that is simply emailed to other soldiers, that’s an attempt to intimidate whistleblowers into silence.

Maybe it’s not corrupt, maybe it’s just incompetence. When he read in the newspaper that his chief of staff, Mike Nizich, was using his personal email for state business, Parnell told columnist Amanda Coyne, “If those emails were about state business, they should be forwarded to Nizich’s state account and I will direct him to do so.”

Some of us remember that Parnell gave that same instruction to his staff years ago, after the hiding of state emails by the Palin administration was revealed. We had a Supreme Court ruling on it.

Am I the only one asking how we ended up with a governor who doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, even after it appears on the front page of the newspaper?

Shannyn More is a radio broadcaster. You can hear her show, The Last Word, Monday to Friday, from 4 to 6 p.m. on KOAN 95.5 FM, 1080 AM and 1480 We Act Radio in Washington, D.C., and Netroots Radio

He explained that he was compelled to request the investigation by “information I recently learned.”

That was not true. In fact, it was very far from the truth.

Military officers had risked their careers to tell the governor personally that female soldiers had been sexually assaulted by other Guard members and that those assaults were not only not investigated, they were covered up by senior officers.

And when did the governor really learn about this misconduct?

In 2010, four years before he finally decided somebody needed to do something about the pirate ship that was his National Guard.

Here’s some of what happened, taken from the accounts of people directly involved:

In 2010, several of the victims of sexual assault and misconduct were distraught and frustrated by the Guard leadership’s unwillingness to investigate their complaints and protect them from retribution by victimizers. Eventually, in desperation, they took their stories to their military chaplains. Three chaplains, convinced that they could not trust senior officers of the Guard to respond appropriately, selflessly decided to take their concerns over the heads of those officers directly to the governor.

The chaplains were able to connect with the governor because, in addition to his military duties, one of them had also worked in administration for the Grace Christian Church school, which Parnell’s daughters had attended. Using that connection, he was able to arrange a phone appointment with Parnell.

On Nov. 18, 2010, the chaplains — a major and two lieutenant colonels — gathered in a church office for their telephone conference with the governor. The chaplains, all feeling personally uncomfortable and professionally at risk for going outside the chain of command, told Parnell, their commander in chief, what they thought he needed to know about the widespread lack of trust in senior Guard leadership, the mishandling of sexual assault complaints and the misuse of Guard funds and resources. The call lasted 20 minutes.

Parnell thanked them for their courage.

Less than two weeks later, on Nov. 30, 2010, several Air National Guardsmen sent a complaint to the governor asking him to “accept the resignation of Major Gen. Thomas Katkus because of ‘multiple acts of moral turpitude’ he had allowed to run rampant, including drug trafficking, sexual assaults/rape, illegal use of aircraft.”

Katkus, who has since been promoted by Parnell to adjutant general of the Alaska Guard, is a member of the governor’s Cabinet.

Col. Robert Doehl, a former vice commander of the Alaska Air National Guard’s 176th wing, now works for Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, as a special assistant for military and veterans’ affairs.

On Dec. 3, 2010, Doehl wrote a seven-page letter to the governor. He thanked Parnell for a meeting they’d had that same day.

Doehl went on to repeat and document allegations about the Guard that he had shared with Parnell in their meeting. The allegations included abuse of authority, safety shortcuts that had resulted in loss of life and aircraft, cover-ups, cronyism and retaliation against whistleblowers. He named names, specifically accusing Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell (he became lieutenant governor in August 2009) and then-Maj. Gen. Katkus of failing to stop the misconduct.

That meeting also included the chaplains, the major and the lieutenant colonels, along with several other officers. By that time, several female soldier rape victims had submitted written statements to the Governor’s Sexual Assault Response Coordinator, Katie Tepas, according to one of the chaplains. Your office already has those statements, the officers told Parnell. Tepas had also met with some of the victims, who told her their stories in person, according to two officers who heard it from the victims directly.

Karl Hansen, a former special agent with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division and a former member of security details for Defense Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, is now the medical ombudsman at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. In that role, he has dealt extensively with the Guard sexual assault victims. Hansen said one of the victims told him that Tepas had asked why she, the victim, didn’t like Katkus and what she thought of the governor. The meeting led nowhere. There was no investigation.

During my conversation with him, I asked Hansen what he thought of Parnell’s “Choose Respect” campaign against sexual and domestic violence. He said, “The victims I’ve talked to feel it’s just lip service. I’m dealing with women who are suicidal because of what has happened to them — some attempting multiple times.”

On Dec. 29, 2011, the lieutenant colonels spoke by phone with Parnell’s chief of staff, Mike Nizich. Nizich had been present for other discussions and was the designated contact person for the chaplains. Nizich said he would convey their concerns to the governor. The chaplains stayed in touch with Nizich — through Nizich’s personal email, not his state email — over the following months.

By early fall of 2013, state Sen. Fred Dyson, R-Eagle River, had been briefed on the allegations about the Guard. He knew one of the chaplains through their service together on a community board. Dyson said he went to the governor with information about the pervasive climate of “boys will be boys” and the “circling of the wagons” around alleged perpetrators in the Guard.

“It appeared to me that the governor was not giving enough credibility to the information the chaplains were giving him,” Dyson told me.

In October 2013, reporter Sean Cockerham wrote a story about the sexual assault allegations for the Daily News. Cockerham reported that Lt. Col. Jane Wawersik, a member of the Guard and a former Anchorage police officer, had been appointed to investigate the charges of sexual misconduct. (I’m told she was appointed by Brig. Gen. Catherine Jorgensen.)

The chaplains were asking why it had taken so long. It had been three years since they first told the governor what had happened to some women in the Guard.

After the Cockerham story appeared, Dyson went to the governor a second time, encouraging him to take an active role in addressing the chaplains’ concerns. “The question of the propriety of the chaplains in speaking to the media came up,” Dyson said. He meant the governor didn’t like the fact they had talked to a reporter.

On Dec. 6, 2013, Parnell’s deputy commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, McHugh Pierre, summoned Lt. Col. Wawersik, the sexual assault investigator, to his office on JBER. He wanted to know if she had been giving information to Dyson. Wawersik told him she had not.

On Dec. 9, Pierre called two of the chaplains to his office. After asking which lawmakers they had talked to, Pierre asked them to sign a letter stating that they would not talk to legislators. Both declined, saying they would first have to consult an attorney. They were not allowed to take a copy of Pierre’s letter with them.

The next day, their attorney, Wayne Anthony Ross of Anchorage, wrote to Pierre asking for a copy of the document. He also asked Pierre to explain the “established guidelines” he had referenced in his discussion with the two chaplains.

As of Friday, almost five months after he wrote Pierre, Ross had not received a reply, he told me.

In February 2014, Dyson contacted the governor a third time and again strongly encouraged him to act. Two weeks later the governor requested a federal investigation.

When I asked Dyson why he thought it had taken so long for the governor to do something, he said, “He was too loyal to his people” and he “lacked a healthy skepticism.”

I think that’s a charitable analysis. I’ll just say it doesn’t suggest the governor had an excess of concern for sexual assault victims, or the need for a functional National Guard.

Sen. Hollis French, D-Anchorage, has been asking some of the same questions I have about these events. This past Friday, when I emailed the governor’s office asking to talk to Parnell about the Guard, his spokeswoman sent me a copy of a letter the governor had just sent to French.

In the letter, Parnell suggested it wasn’t possible for him to have followed up on the chaplains’ sexual assault information. He posed this question to French:

“Did the chaplains also tell you they were unable to state case-specific detail with our office to substantiate their concerns because of their duty of confidentiality to the individuals they counseled?”

The governor conveniently overlooks the fact that the sexual assaults had been reported earlier within the chain of command. Presumably all Parnell would have had to do was ask the nearest general to get him the names and allegations of all the Guard soldiers who had reported being raped in the last few years. And if that didn’t work, his office already had the victims’ statements, and someone there had talked to victims.

Parnell’s letter continued: “Even without detail specific enough to pinpoint a victim willing to report, nor a perpetrator, we made sure through the Adjutant General that Guard members had a safe route to report sexual misconduct, and that their allegations would be taken seriously and investigated to conclusion, including any appropriate penalties. Where criminal conduct was alleged, we directed referral to the appropriate law enforcement agency.”

And who was the Adjutant General who would ensure the safety and proper treatment of victims and the prosecution of perpetrators?

Thomas Katkus, of course.

Both of Alaska’s U.S. senators, Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski, responded relatively quickly to the public allegations. Sean Parnell, the commander in chief of the Alaska Guard, waited nearly four years.

In the meantime, the victims suffered and the pirate ship sailed on.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

I could write about last week’s Juneau dysfunction but at this point it would be like publishing a headline saying, “BREAKING NEWS! Gravity is sucking us onto the surface of the Earth and there’s no sign of it stopping.”

This is a holy week to many. Recent events have made places sacred and reminded me that friends are the family we choose.

Happy Easter.

I grew up with Easters. The full-meal deals. Flowered hats and new dresses; I remember a particular gray gingham with lace. It was a bit “Little House on the Prairie” but I kind of liked that. The Little House on the Muskeg was where I lived. Easter basket grass is useless in any other capacity than as fluff around chocolate eggs and the marshmallow chicks covered in colored sugar. (BTW, those make for interesting s’mores.)

I don’t remember the first time I heard the story of Easter. Truly. I just seemed to always know the violent details too well after having the story explained in such great detail. I wasn’t raised with a television and the graphic nature of the crucifixion was always shocking. To be fair to myself, I think it is a good thing I was horrified to the bone by the story. Apparently, it is genetic.

My daughter was 3, almost 4, when we were visiting my folks in Homer. I didn’t think much about going to Easter Sunday service with Mom and Pop. I’d grown up with sunrise service and breakfast in the church basement with the congregation. There were pots of lilies in the sanctuary and people with allergies noticed them first.

During the service I sat with my folks and sang the hymns and knew the steps of the service. Years of ritual are so easy to call back. It felt like home.

Javin was in Sunday school downstairs. We’d bought the appropriate sherbet-colored dress and hat; she’d had an Easter basket when she woke up — brought by the Easter Santa, a giant bunny.

As the pastor spoke, my thoughts wandered. I wondered why what was so regimented and habituated from my childhood seemed less important now. The meaning had changed for me. You know that sort of stream of thought where it would take crashing cymbals or your own child screaming to break in? It was like that.

I heard something.

“Mommmm!” Was it her? I turned my head toward the double doors closed at the back to the auditorium.

Seconds later the doors were parted like the Red Sea when my daughter threw herself through them. She was sobbing — that kind of shaking crying, deep gasps between words.

Wild-eyed, she was looking for me in the Easter Sunday crowded church.

I stood up.

She came up the aisle as the pastor went silent.

Arms in the air, the wettest tears falling, she said, “Mom, they killed Jesus!”

I’d taught her the song “Jesus Loves Me” and I’d just never got around to the horrific story of sacrifice. You know, because she was a child. It was a surprise to her.

“They killed him! Mom, they killed him!” As far as she knew, I didn’t know.

I made my way down the pew row and to the aisle.

She ran to me and I picked her sobbing body up in my arms.

As I walked out of the church I heard the pastor say,

“Isn’t that how we all should feel?”

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Show me a political flyer in Alaska and I’ll show you a candidate whose only reason for living is supporting the Permanent Fund and education, and fighting “government waste.”

There’s an old saying, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” This week we got to see what the Republican majority in the Alaska Senate values. Rest assured, their budget, written by Sen. Pete Kelly, does not value birth control for irresponsible women.

In fact, amendments to accept millions in federal funds for family planning — to actually reduce abortions — were voted down by our “pro-family” Republicans. As far as they’re concerned, as soon as you have that kid, you’re on your own.

Amendments to invest in our children’s futures through pre-kindergarten education? No way. Kids, schmids. (Note to Republicans: those fetuses for which you can’t do enough eventually turn into actual children, for whom you can’t do too little. Remember that whole sanctity-of-life thingy? It should include education.)

Money to stem the tide of teacher layoffs? Try us next year.

Additional money for substance abuse for the state with the worst substance-abuse problems in America? Bor-ing.

Millions for new tennis courts in West Anchorage? We’re all over that, preserving the people’s right to wield rackets.

The budget is huge. In spite of all the for-the-cameras hand-wringing about “fiscal responsibility,” the Republican-controlled Legislature is about to pass one of the biggest budgets in state history, accompanied by a $2 billion deficit. But that’s not a problem for our legislators because they made sure the CEOs of Exxon, BP and ConocoPhillips get their full MBOs this year.

But I digress.

The Republicans rejected attempts to put $1 billion into the Permanent Fund to offset some of the revenues kissed off by Gov. Giveaway. Get used to budget deficits, my fellow Alaskans. Watch as legislators slowly drain the Permanent Fund: this year they took $1.3 million from it — instead of collecting oil taxes — to pay for more government services.

With the state headed toward bankruptcy, driven by multibillion-dollar annual deficits, retirees are calling for a cash infusion to protect their retirement accounts. The Legislature’s answer: Let ’em eat cat food.

Legislators need that money for the “Taj MaHawker,” the better-than-new Legislative Office Building, with its glass elevators, maple walls and heated parking ramp.

You know, the deal Diamond Mike Hawker shrewdly negotiated with a well-connected GOP campaign contributor. Diamond Mike was able to arm-twist the owners into settling for not a penny more than quintuple the Legislature’s current rent. It will cost all of us an extra $50 million over the next 10 years.

Imagine this: The deal is so glaringly stupid that even the Senate majority was too embarrassed to defend it in public. That didn’t, however, stop the majority from blocking attempts to scuttle the deal.

And then there was the little matter of a $100,000 contract to another big GOP campaign contributor to pick out furniture for the Taj MaHawker. A sensible proposal to let staff choose the legislative love seats at no additional cost was rejected without debate.

Tell you what, I’ll equip the lounge lizards myself. Shopping for old white men will be my public service.

This legislative session has been so ugly — and the worst is yet to come — it makes me want to go into the wild to contemplate the idea of an Alaska without legislators. But I better hurry. Rep. Mia Costello has had the brilliant idea that we increase state park fees. How about $1 million a day per vehicle, Mia? We could use the money to cut oil taxes, to put more oil in the pipeline — yeah, that’s the ticket!

So, money for kids and retirees — bad. More money in the Permanent Fund — really bad. Raiding the Permanent Fund instead of collecting oil taxes to pay for more government — good. Public money for legislators’ campaign contributors — really good.

Will Alaskans remember all the Mike Hawkers come November and give them their walking papers? Not bloody likely.

And why is that? I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

Please support Shannyn’s work, by donating here.

This week I listened to one of the right-wing sock puppets yammer on about what a victory for freedom the most recent campaign finance court decision was. Honestly. The guy was more about “free and dumb” than freedom.

The court, in yet another 5-4 decision, basically created eBay for elections. What we didn’t need was more stinking money in our election process but the five say otherwise. Freedom of speech is now equated with how much money you have and are willing to spend. Of course, the reverse doesn’t work. You can’t walk into a store and purchase items with your words. It’s insane. If money is speech, most of us are mute.

Justice Stephen Breyer, in his dissent said, “If the court in Citizens United opened a door, today’s decision may well open a floodgate.”

Oh, great.

My dear Alaskans, it’s going to get much worse. There’s a lot up for grabs in Alaska, and not a lot of voters to persuade. There are cities with more votes for mayor than Alaska has for top slots in Washington, D.C.

The election process is already a few sump pumps short of a democracy — and sinking. The last hundred years or so the U.S. Supreme Court has systematically transferred to corporations the rights of actual citizens.

You hear about how immigrants are coming to our shores and taking services and how we need to build a fence but you don’t hear remotely comparable bitching and moaning about foreign corporations coming here, getting subsidized, using resources and dodging taxes. Heck, they can kill American workers in industrial accidents without being considered foreign terrorists. Since the court seems nothing if not predictably misguided, I expect next they’ll decide corporations are entitled to impose their “religious beliefs” on their workers. The Hobby Lobby case will determine if a corporation can deny its employees health care benefits its owners don’t like — like birth control.

The whole concept is wrong-headed. More rights for corporations and fewer rights for individual Americans, with no end in sight.

Get ready to pledge allegiance to the United Corporations of America. Picture a flag with 50 corporate logos instead of stars. No more voting hassles, just an endless public auction of politicians. As they say, the one with the gold rules.

The part that really chaps me is we fought a revolutionary war as much to throw off the power of the East India Trading Company as to dump England’s royal parasites. You know, the original tea party.

Once our nation was founded, our leaders were specific in their desire to control corporations. A charter had to be granted by a state. Corporations could deal in one commodity and were only permitted to exist for several decades. They were only allowed to own their own stocks. What property they owned had to be for the purposes of business goals, not for investment. Oh, here’s a kicker: Our founders, who knew a thing or two about bad government, had laws on the books making “any political contribution by corporations a criminal offense.”

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson said, “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Sorry, T.J., we didn’t crush them. We feed and water them at the expense of the neediest among us, and our highest court scurries to hand them the inalienable rights that were supposed to belong to the people.

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln suspected corporations were profiting from both sides of the Civil War:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

Sorry, Abe, you had it right. Or maybe it’s worse than you feared.

If only our leaders and the court could channel President Theodore Roosevelt:

“We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to serve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.”

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Potholes and school repairs aren’t nearly as sexy as presidential elections. I mean, really, there are no catchy campaign tunes (except for that Mike Gutierrez song that stuck in my head for two years). Too many of us ignore the elections that affect our day-to-day lives the most.

People fought, went to prison, starved themselves and died so you can ignore your right to vote. That seems a bit ungrateful, to put it mildly. Democracy freeloaders. I’m betting more folks in Anchorage filled out a Sweet 16 bracket than will vote in the April 1 election. (One, sorry if you picked Duke; secondly, yes, our election is on April Fools’ Day; this is not a joke.)

I’d stop with that and call this the shortest column ever, but I know what some of you are saying over your good morning paper: “Sounds great. More coffee.” Admit it, at least one of you just said that. More of you probably thought, “I’d vote if there were someone worth voting for.”

From your lips to God’s ears.

I wonder what would happen if an oath to truth was sworn by candidates — like they had to tell the truth.

Case in point, the East Anchorage Assembly race. Incumbent Adam Trombley is being challenged by former state Rep. Pete Petersen.

This race has a lot of money being bet on both sides. Trombley, a consistent rubber stamp for the mayor until five minutes ago, has worked remarkably hard for a few builders in the city. Revised rules allow “independent engineers” — instead of municipal employees — to approve new construction. What could go wrong? It’ll take weeks off the process. Nothing like a cut corner to make a few more bucks. And the only risk is to the health and safety of our friends and neighbors.

It was funny when Chuck Spinelli, head of a building company, told the paper, “We didn’t go to Adam Trombley and ask him to do anything for home builders, but he started doing things that home builders really appreciated.”

Really? You never asked him? He just figured out what you’d been wanting for years and made it his mission on the Assembly? In an invitation to Chuck Spinelli’s fundraiser for Trombley, there was no mention of the assemblyman’s psychic ability to help builders. Nope, instead it said Adam had “done more for the local home builders in the last two years than any elected official in the last two decades, maybe EVER.”

It went on to explain how Trombley revolutionized the process: “For the first time in 40 years builders can bypass city plan review!” Now you have a choice of “your own engineer for plan review.” It may as well have said, “Your own brother-in-law can check your work! Wahoo! Free at last!”

So even if Trombley doesn’t know who he’s working hardest for, the check-wielding home builders do.

So I complain about the lack of “truthiness” in campaigns, and then one day there it is …

A candidate starts telling the truth. He tosses the “socially acceptable” filter between his thoughts and his mouth and says what he thinks out loud. Oh, I’m not talking about “gotcha” phone-video recordings, I’m talking about public television, where the candidate knows the cameras are on and capturing every word.

Don Smith, I appreciate your honesty this week in regard to your bid for school board. It’s good that you explained and re-explained your racist views in a clear and concise manner. Not voting for you is my choice because I don’t believe the good old days were when Anchorage schools were “98 percent white” and teachers didn’t have to deal with “immigrants” or “special needs students.”

I couldn’t make this guy up. “Today we’re 48 percent white and 52 percent other and that clearly is causing problems,” he said. The presence of nonwhites is causing our school funding problems? This us-vs.-them racist crap should be, if not extinct, at least closeted by now.

So here we are, batters up to the ballots. Sometimes you have to vote against crazy. A few times I’ve been able to vote for someone I believed would represent us fairly. (A rare and beautiful thing.) But I never miss a chance to vote. Do it while you still can.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Prince William Sound, 2010

Time has a strange affect on events in our lives. I feel I’m looking through a glass of water when I look back 25 years to this day, March 24, 1989.

I’d left Seattle University and the Ballard Lochs on the M/V Westward heading north through the Inside Passage of British Columbia for the sac roe herring fishery in Sitka. No time in my life is etched as clearly as that spring. There is a certain magic about following Spring to Alaska. Per my not so scientific study, I’ve determined Spring moves at about 9 nautical miles an hour, about the same as the hundred foot boat I worked on. The inside passage is glorious. The bow of the boat pushes Technicolor into black and white. Winter gives up her fight to the brilliance of the whippersnapper called Spring. The smell is of thawing earth. Porpoises danced in the white froth of the bow wake. Pods of whales travelled with us, heading North with their calves to feed on the sweet herring we competed with them for.

Dull voices are a constant on the marine radio. When I lost a cribbage game I’d sit on wheel watch at night and listen to fishermen call home to see if the baby was walking yet or if their dad’s diagnosis had come back. I followed their stories from night to night like the school secretary taped soap operas.

Clearly we were pre-cell phones or Tivo.

The smell was a mix of diesel, salt and cigarette smoke, coffee and Pilot Bread with peanut butter. The roar of Cummings engines wasn’t even heard anymore. The Deutz generator just a hum in my ears. You only heard them when they weren’t working properly. There was a stack of these new things called “CDs”. Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, The Ramones (that one was mine). I had a bootleg tape of a band I’d heard called Nirvana. No one else on the boat liked them but me.

The engineer on the boat had seven identical sets of clothing. I thought he just wore the same thing every day. He told me it was an act of “energy conservation” that he didn’t have to decide what to wear. He took “safety naps”. We sank targets with pistols off the stern of the boat when all our duties were done. He believed in four food groups — “Steak, Potatoes, Miller (beer) and Pussy.”

He shocked me a lot. Most things don’t now.

The deckhand was young and had the energy of a squirrel who’d washed down an Adderall with a double espresso and a Red Bull back. The engineer offered to kill him on a regular basis.

I was on deck as much as possible. My eyes pushed out tears when they got so full of the beauty of the waking up world. When we crossed out of Canadian waters into Alaska, I stood on deck. Yes. That was it. Home. My Alaska.

Looking back through the glass of water, I see myself through time in the way I imagine my mother in the days before President Kennedy’s assassination. Pure. Pulling in life and innocent to the blow to come.

The herring fishery in Sitka is like a derby-superbowl-landing on the moon for fishermen. It’s fast and frantic and money is made fast and lost quicker. Airplanes accompany the fleet when they flood past the safe harbor walls to spot the thick harvest. The race so fierce planes crash into each other while looking for fish.

That year we waited more than a week to fish. Fish and Game kept testing the herring to see if they were ripe yet. “Standby to standby” became the joke. There’s something about waiting for fish to get horny enough to spawn (and you have to catch them before they do that) which makes for a loaded atmosphere.

But did we catch them. Hundreds of thousands of tons. Prices high and spirits higher.

A redheaded fisherman named Rex boarded our boat in the Sitka harbor after midnight. He was undone. We thought he was drunk. When we realized he wasn’t — we wished we all were.

The Exxon Valdez had “fetched up” and was spilling oil in our next herring fishing grounds.

The grassy knoll.

At the time I didn’t know that the Raycus Radar hadn’t been repaired and that was part of the off coarse problem. I also didn’t know that the only emergency clean up crew had been laid off and the barge with all the clean up equipment was iced into dry dock in Valdez and had been sitting there for almost two years. None of us did.

We all crowded in the wheelhouse and listened to the marine radio.

They have to burn it now. They need to ignite it with a bomb – there are fighters sitting at Elmendorf. What is the hold up? Burn it already!

Then the weather forecast.

A North Eastern storm was blowing in.

“Jesus, it’s going to blow it all the way to Kodiak…that’s more than three hundred miles.”

A not so perfect storm.

The man that said that was a highliner – one of the top fishermen in the fleet for decades. He put his hands over his face and walked over to look out of the porthole.

He was right. Thirteen hundred miles of coastline was hit by the spill.

It took twenty years in court to get a settlement from Exxon. Did that feel like a win? Opening your mailbox to an Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Settlement check is like getting a royalty payment for the snuff film your kid brother was in. Hey, you’re getting paid…but he’s still dead…and you got to watch it.

Sorry, I jumped ahead of myself.

An Exxon hack showed up and told us we were lucky that it was his company that had messed up because they did business right and would make us whole.

I think he meant “hole” because we got screwed.

His name is Don Cornett. He stood in the Cordova high school and promised we’d be fine. Don sells real estate in Houston Texas and seems to be whole enough.

Bobby Van Brocklin was the mayor of Cordova. Four years later, on a Thursday, May 20th, 1993 he blew his brains out and left a note naming Exxon the reason.

“The stress from Exxon which brought about my financial stress, was too much to deal with alone. The end should be good and maybe my spirit will live. I have a lot of fear right now, but faith is all that is left. I wish I could have done more good for others but I guess my time is up.”

That is not “whole”. There’s a hole. A hole in a head. Because “whole” didn’t happen.

You see, being a fisherman isn’t what you do; it’s who you are. Having that taken away left shells of humans all over Alaska.

A few friends and I made a list of all the suicides that happened as a result of the spill. It didn’t happen for about four years. If the same percentage of people in the Gulf who are affected by the BP spill kill themselves as the Exxon Valdez – you’re looking at 45,000 dead bodies. We took it hard.

The average life expectancy of an Exxon Valdez cleanup worker? Fifty One.

Guys would come back to the boat complaining their urine smelled like diesel. No respirators. C-130s spraying the beaches…with what? Corexit.

Exxon still doesn’t have marked offices in Alaska. In 25 years, the State and Exxon have not reconciled. The Federal Government and the State of Alaska were complicit in the spill and the cover-up. Precautions, provisions, and preventative measures had all been made law. It seemed that wasn’t the issue…the problem was finding a government agency to enforce those laws. Exxon’s cost cutting measures insured a disaster; laid off spill
responders; not fixing the disabled Raycas radar; the containment boom barge iced into dry-dock. All those profit enhancements were to be expected of a company that answered only to it’s shareholders. The government agencies that looked away from negligence and their responsibility have never been held accountable.

Our delegation to Washington DC could have introduced a law over the last 25 years to force Exxon to pick up their bar tab and pay for their crime. They were woefully silent. Instead, they debated things like gay marriage, vaginal rights, Bill Clinton’s impeachment over extra-presidential activities, steroids in baseball, and Terry Schiavo. Meanwhile, dozens of Alaskans, displaced from their identity, committed suicide while waiting for justice.

You know why? Oil rules. It’s bigger than governments. For all the nut-jobs hoarding Mormon food and bullets talking about the “New World Order”? It’s here. It’s called Big Oil. It’s why countries are invaded, wars are waged and media pretends it isn’t happening.

When Sarah Palin was asked by Katie Couric what Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v Wade she disagreed with, she couldn’t think of one. NOT ONE! She was a moose caught in the headlights. That didn’t work out too well for the moose or the vehicle. The Alaska fisherman lost their voice once again. Thanks, but no thanks, Sarah. Her siding with Pebble Mine was enough…the icing on the cake was the wasted chance….a chance to tell America our story…an Alaskan story…thousands sick from clean up…tens of thousands bankrupt from a dead fishery. Sarah Palin is to Alaska what Velveeta is to cheese; sadly unsatisfying and empty of nutrition. She had the national stage to plead Alaska’s case to citizens who had long forgotten the images of a once pristine Prince William Sound turned into a thick, black, rolling sea; the oiled sea otters and birds, unrecognizable seals and whales; an initially deformed and diseased herring run that became extinct-costing Cordova $100 million a year. Exxon exploited Alaska and turned our pain into their profit.

After the BP spill I was hired by the BBC to go back to Prince William Sound to report on the shape it was in. There were no birds. We skiffed for hours to an outer beach, one pounded by waves for more than two decades. I walked across the salt marsh, shovel in hand. I didn’t need a shovel. My boot prints had already filled with oil slick.

It was so close to the surface, and so was all my pain. The lies. The memories of dead birds, otters, seals, deer, bears, fish, and water. Dead Water. Dead Friends.

Oil sheen on Knight Island in Prince William Sound , 2010

Alaska isn’t a sovereign state any longer. Once we were the Last Frontier and independent. Hell, you have to drive through a foreign country for days to get here. Right?

We are oil colony. It wasn’t that long ago that 10% of our legislature was indicted for taking bribes from oil companies.

A few weeks ago our governor appointed an oil man from California to serve on a board that accesses the tax burden for the Trans Alaska Pipeline. It’s a big deal to the municipalities the pipeline runs through. When things got hot the appointee pulled his own name out of the running.

Three days before the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez running aground, Governor Parnell has appointed an executive of said company from Houston, Texas to the board that decides the value of the pipeline for tax purposes. Mr. Richard Rabinow has worked for Exxon for 24 years, doesn’t live here, but is sure to give Alaska the best bang for their buck.

Is the governor fresh out of “*#^@ YOU!” cards?

The state’s willingness to do business with Exxon was like having your parents rent the basement to the guy who date raped you on prom night. Am I clear? The fact Governor Parnell wants to give them positions of power is like having said rapist adopt you. I suppose there should be no surprise. The governor was lobbyist and lawyer for big oil…I use the term “was” lightly.

Twenty Five years after the fact, Exxon has yet to pay Alaska the $92 million owed for damages. They privatized their profits and socialized the risk.

Last time I went to Prince William Sound I met a deckhand. She was asking me about how many birds there used to be. I looked at her puzzled. She was born after the Spill. Alaska is divided generationally by epic disasters. Fifty years ago was the 1964 Earthquake – a 9.2 – the largest recorded for North America. Twenty five years ago a new defining moment for our state. For those of us who had our lives changed forever, we have to remember what we lost, and tell the next gen. We say things like “Never Again”, then see drilling in our Arctic permitted. In 1989 I had a Mac Plus computer – it weighed 15 pounds and had a screen the size of a greeting card. Now I have an iPad that works wonders. The technology for computers has changed, but not for oil spill clean up. Same diapers, booms and chemical sprays. The truth is, they don’t clean up oil spills. They pay fines that have already been calculated in as the cost of doing business.

No. Exxon doesn’t do business right. They don’t make you whole. Exxon loves and takes care of Exxon, as does our governor. Who is going to love and take care of Alaska?

I had a plan to write a column that was going to make the Anchorage municipal elections coming up to be the sexiest most riveting thing you’ve ever read. Then someone did something stupid in Juneau, so you’ll have to wait a week while I sort this doofus out.

First, the reporting on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders from Kyle Hopkins and Marc Lester for the Anchorage Daily News has been incredible. Disturbing, and incredibly needed. Two percent of children born in Alaska have FASD. We need solutions and education. Sadly, we have a “think tank” formed by Sen. Pete Kelly that is sitting on empty.

Last week, Kelly, in an interview with Hopkins, revealed his plan to end this preventable disease. Educating the public through a media campaign about drinking while pregnant sounds like a great idea. OK, so there’s a fume in the think tank. Training mentors in communities to deal with women drinking during pregnancy seems reasonable.

Then Kelly said the state would pay for pregnancy tests in “plastic, plexiglass bowls” to be placed in the ladies rooms of bars and restaurants across the state. You know, so if you’re on a date and are about to order a martini, you can excuse yourself to find out if you are pregnant or not. Maybe that makes perfect sense if you’re a man.

“Well, I guess you’ve got a designated driver now,” is the new, “honey, we’re pregnant!”

Women who are planning for a family aren’t taking their pregnancy tests in bars. You know why? Because they are PLANNING for a WANTED child and aren’t cocktailing it because they don’t want to marinate the fetus THAT THEY WANT. (Note: They may start because those tests aren’t free at the grocery market.)

So someone who is checking at the bar is a different story. It may not be the ideal place to get the news that you’re going to be a mom. I suggest Planned Parenthood because the trained folks there talked me off the ledge when they informed me I was pregnant 18 years ago. Then they asked me if I had a drinking or drug problem or was in an abusive relationship then gave me some vitamins. You know, the stuff a bartender isn’t prone to do.

The disconnect is astounding.

When Hopkins asked the senator if he would support free birth control in bars he answered “no.” Because the thinking is a little opposite. This assumes that if you know (you are pregnant) you’ll act responsibly. Birth control is for people who don’t necessarily want to act responsibly.

“I’m not going to tell them what to do. Or help them do it. That’s their business. But if we have a pregnancy because someone just doesn’t know, that’s probably a way we can help.”

Yes. The senator thinks women who use birth control are doing so to be irresponsible. How is that even possible? Controlling your fertility is the most fiscally and morally responsible thing you can do as a woman.

Kelly doubled down defining publicly funded birth control as “a level of social engineering that we don’t want to get into.”

Social engineering? But putting a bouquet of EPT tests in bar bathrooms isn’t social engineering?! Cutting the funding of birth control to low-income women isn’t social engineering?!

A few weeks ago, Sen. Fred Dyson balked at funding birth control because we shouldn’t be paying for people’s “recreation.” Yeah. But we do want to fund their pregnancy tests? Oh, and through Medicare and the VA and IHS we pay for Viagra and Cialis. Any calls to defund that? Erections have consequences.

I swear, if men could get pregnant you could buy a Plan B latte at Starbucks.

Children can survive and heal from horrible things in their lives. Sexual assault, physical and emotional abuse, illness. They cannot recover from FASD. The damage is permanent. They don’t grow that part of their brain back. We prosecute people who hurt kids but not women who knowingly drink when they are pregnant.

I hate abortion. Absolutely hate it. I would love it if abortion clinics were closed all across the country because there was zero need for them. That isn’t going to happen. I hope this isn’t breaking news but people like to have sex. I know. Shocker.

Republicans in Juneau don’t understand a great way to end abortion is to prevent pregnancy. And a great way to end FASD is to make sure women who are binging have education and access to affordable prevention and treatment.

I realize math is hard for many of our representatives in Juneau (yeah, giving away billions doesn’t help the coffers.)

Let me break it down.

Boy + Girl – birth control = baby.

Girl + alcohol – birth control = FASD.

Get some higher octane in the “think tank” and get a real solution.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

I’m still getting used to seeing the Walter J. Hickel Expressway signs. I still think Wally’s Way would have been better, but it gives me a chance to remember to read “Who Owns America” again. My copy has a brown signature inside. A treasure.

So, as I pull onto Wally’s Way, heading south, the voice of Lori Townsend making me feel better about the news on my radio. Seriously. If there’s a meteor bearing down on Earth and we’re all gonna die, she should be the one announcing it-she makes even Alaska news sound better.

My phone rings.

“Did you know about Cathy Giessel’s crazy payback bill?”

I’m sorry, bring me up to date, I can’t track all the crazy that woman has to give.

Just so you don’t feel like you’re eavesdropping, here’s the “crazy.” Sen. Giessel, locked in a tight race againstpopular former House Rep. Harry Crawford, is now doling out millions in state dollars for campaign contributors. Apparently the State of Alaska has an extra $1.9 million per year laying around to drop on for-profit DMV service providers — who already charge Alaskans a big fat fee for service. Apparently the “free market” doesn’t work for at least one of Giessel’s campaign contributors, and the state needs to subsidize her seemingly profitable business. Wait a second! I thought the government wasn’t supposed to “pick winners and losers,” Cath.

So, it’s $1.9 million. Here’s what Sen. Giessel said in some “Talking Points” about her bill, “This is not a giveaway, it is a reallocation of funds.” Exactly, a reallocation to a few rich businesspeople. Interestingly, Sen. Giessel thinks it’s OK to reallocate state funds to businesses, especially when they give her campaign contributions, but not to the poor, tired masses — since she voted against an amendment to cut DMV fees by 15 percent for all Alaskans.

Before we started giving $2 billion dollars of oil profit away for nothing every year I guess a million here and there wasn’t so noticeable.

Oh, but wait! The legislators who voted for this oil giveaway have suddenly noticed, (the shock!), that giving away billions and getting nothing in return leads to… wait for it… billions in deficits. Wow. It’s like a regular Mensa convention in Juneau.

You can’t make these people up. What’s the solution? Apparently $1.9 million is just enough to help out your friends in the private DMV business, but not good enough for a DMV fee cut for average Alaskans and $1.2 million is certainly way too much for getting doctors interested in coming to Alaska to care for our underserved.

I realize compromise is not a strong suit for most of our representatives, but here’s a thought. Why don’t the Neighborhood Health clinics also renew vehicle tags. Or maybe Cathy’s friend with the DMV shop can start swabbing for strep and can practice saying “turn your head and cough.”

Or we could vote for representatives that don’t seem to be so short-sighted.

Or Cathy can drop her silly anti-free-market bill and save us the $1.9 million to put towards student loan repayment for new Alaskan doctors.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

“WHY do YOU have to argue with the professor EVERY class?! Can’t you just let him talk so I can write this stuff down, take a test, graduate and get a job?!”

Oh, that was a weekly conversation with some of my UAF classmates. (You’re shocked, I know.)

I sat enraptured by Terrence Cole’s take on history. He was right, the historical truth was often most boldly told in political cartoons rather than in textbooks. I listened in Dr. Pierce’s class. He was quite old, with even older maps. I told him once the continents had moved since his maps were made. He smiled.

I behaved for the most part until I was in Dr. Claus Naske’s class. I took every course he taught. He was assigned to be my advisor.

It’s hard for me to think about him without breaking into a giant smile. He always seemed to get me going, and I did the same for him. He kicked me out of class once. I waited outside the door and argued with him all the way to his office. What about? Who knows?

He pushed my buttons, but he made me better at asking questions. He invited me to Thanksgiving with his family. It was lovely. We went to wine tastings on Thursday nights at the campus pub. He hated my boyfriend and called him “the fake Fabio.” He was right. He described me as “wonderfully irreverent.”

Naske’s office was full of pictures of his wife and family — and piles of books in, you know, a controlled academic sort of mess. A flannel shirt with a bolo tie was his standard attire.

Here’s the thing about Naske: He taught me to really love Alaska by helping me understand it.

He started teaching at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1969, the year before I was born. He wrote or co-wrote a dozen books. “Alaska: A History of the 49th State” is considered a standard. He was director of the UA Press. And for many of us, he was our John the Baptist of Alaska history.

It didn’t matter whether we were drinking coffee in his office, sitting in class or relaxing in the pub, he made me fall in love with whoever he was telling a story about. As he spoke, in his distinct German accent, his arms would wave and his eyes would twinkle. As his tale unfolded, he would start laughing at his own story. And he would have me laughing too before I even knew what was funny.

For him, history wasn’t just about economics or characters or geography. It was everything weaved together, and how it all worked to make people who they are.

History loomed large in Naske’s personal story. His mother’s family had died in the Holocaust. She was a German Jew. She and her children had been saved by her husband, a Catholic officer in the German army.

It was fitting that Naske discovered the Neustadt letters in the National Archives. The letters described a mostly forgotten plan to relocate Jews from Nazi Germany to Alaska in 1939. Alaskans, including our non-voting delegate to Washington, Anthony J. Dimond, protested against giving refugee status to Jews fleeing from Hitler. Dimond’s protest, in hindsight, is both tragic and embarrassing.

Naske once told the Daily News, “In Iowa, people are more concerned with the price of hogs. People are not much concerned with foreign affairs. Look at Cambodia and the killing fields. We let that happen. Look at the Tutsis and the Hutus. What should the international community do?”

He had an amazing way of connecting history to the present. And now, when I read news of Syria or the invasion of Crimea, I hear his words.

A few years ago, during a visit to Anchorage, Naske called my radio show. We had a big time and it meant the world to me.

Through his history lessons, he inspired generations of students, a generation of Alaskans. He challenged us all to figure out what we could give back to Alaska.

This week I learned that my professor and mentor and friend had passed away. My condolences and best wishes to his family. Thanks for sharing him with so many of us for so many years.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

When you can’t win, change the rules.

I’ve wondered why our legislators have spent the better part of their time on bills likely to struck down as unconstitutional. They are trying to rewrite our constitution to hand public money to schools, deny women reproductive justice and deny citizens the right to weigh in on resource development.

Lawmakers will vote on bills that they know will end up in court. That takes money that they don’t have to pay for on either side. Maybe we need an amendment that requires those who vote for bills deemed unconstitutional have to pay the legal costs, not the state of Alaska.

I have been disappointed by some decisions by Alaskan judges, but I’ve had to shrug and know it’s our law. Oh, and there’s that handy appeals process.

It’s starting to make sense why the Republican super majority in Juneau feels so free to just make up stuff and stick it on a bill.

How our judges get selected is specific to Alaska. We have the Alaska Judicial Council, made up of three appointments from the Alaska Bar Association, three governor’s choice citizens and a chief justice. Senator Pete Kelly from Fairbanks is pushing for a change. He wants to double the number of the governor’s appointment.

Why? Because several judges have been turned away by the Council in the past several years. The are the sort of judges who could have been under the “activist judge” banner — and not in a good way. There was some mumbling from bill supporters that this was to give rural Alaskans more representation. If anyone is buying that, look at what they do and how they vote, not what they say

This idea to stack courts isn’t new. In Alaska, it would help get judges friendly to the administration on benches. That’s because the governor’s appointed citizens would outweigh the votes of the Bar Association members and judge. It’s a bit of a no brainer.

In 1935, the Supreme Court struck down multiple provisions of the New Deal. After a landslide victory in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided he’d take that as a mandate and went after the court. He proposed that he’d get to add a justice for every justice that sat on the bench that was 70 years old or older. That would have given him six appointments!

Can you imagine? See, there’s nothing in the Constitution that says the Court has to have nine judges. The first court had six judges.

Can you imagine if after the Citizens United case, or parts of the Affordable Care Act, or the most recent decision saying police don’t necessarily need a warrant to enter your home, or the Voting Rights Act decision — all terrible decisions by the Supreme Court — Obama decided to just add two more justices to the court?

Oh, lookie! Now you have to get gay married in a socialist school while eating government-funded birth control pills like they’re TicTacs while petting a spotted owl and not wearing a flag lapel pin!

Relax. Obama is the worst socialist ever and isn’t coming for your guns or expanding the Court.

As much as I’d like to see the Supreme Court loaded up with people who aren’t fascists, and as much as I’d like to see the Alaska courts continue with the process that is not broken, it’s the sore loser problem that bugs me most.

The Republicans have had a few of their pet projects thrown out of our courts. Their solution? Change the way we pick judges.

If they were a sporting team would they change the way they pick referees to just people from their hometowns?

How did it work out for FDR and his plan? His own vice-president held his nose and gave a thumbs down. Folks who supported his New Deal and were disappointed in the elements struck down by the highest court didn’t support his plan to take it over. He did make three appointments to the court, one being Justice Robert Jackson who eventually oversaw the Nuremberg Trials.

Justice Jackson said, “It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.”

So, there it is, citizens of Alaska. I guess it’s up to us to keep our lawmakers from the error of stacking courts through the Judicial Council expansion.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

The muck-raking writer Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

He wrote that after running for governor in 1934. It would seem the business of politics was even more messy than the meat packing industry he exposed.

I’d go a bit further than Sinclair. It’s difficult for someone to continue getting a salary if he does understand some things and still acts on them.

It’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll give you the skinny. Most of us are familiar with the little green postcard that comes in the mail with property tax assessments. The companies that own the pipeline stretching from top to bottom of this great state are no different. They pay borough taxes to the North Slope, Fairbanks and Valdez, as well as to the state of Alaska.

To help figure out the value of that pipeline, there’s a volunteer board made up of gubernatorial appointees. It’s called the State Assessment Review Board (SARB). Oh, I’m sure folks who volunteer for this position are loads of fun at parties, but I can’t imagine trying to figure out the assessed value of the pipeline. Math boggles me at times, and the industry pressure cooker would be enough to can salmon tight enough to last until the Rapture.

One such man stepped into the cooker during Murkowski’s last year in office (a year that seemed particularly long for some reason). Let’s just call him Marty McGee, because that’s his name. By all accounts that aren’t the governor’s, Mr. McGee is the most competent person to lead Alaska’s oil property assessment.

Sorry, I get ahead of myself. The pipeline folks wanted to fill in the boxes for their own little green postcard. They said the pipeline was worth $850 million. In 2006, the Department of Revenue said the pipeline was worth $3.6 billion. The SARB said it was worth $4.3 billion. The TAPS owners went to court.

This brings us up to 2010, when a Superior Court looked at the evidence and said, you’re all wrong, the pipeline is worth $9.98 billion.

In fact, the court said there is so much valuable oil left on the North Slope that if there were no oil pipeline, the oil companies would spend tens of billions to build one.

Surprise! Pachow! That means millions more in duly owed taxes for municipalities, boroughs and the state. Relief for property owners? God willing and the creek don’t rise.

Hold the phone, cowboy.

Marty McGee was “fired” from the board by the Parnell administration. According to McGee, Gov. Parnell is trying to stack the board with oil company people, to keep the assessments low so the companies will pay less and Alaskans will get the shaft — once again.

The board, according to the state, meets once a year for a two- to three-day “meeting/hearing.” Members get standard travel and per diem. Not exactly a position that jumps you into a higher tax bracket.

Who did Parnell replace McGee with? Two oil company advocates, one of them from Salinas, Calif. Nothing like having a career oil man from another state to protect the interests of Alaskans. Who would agree to this position unless . . . well, think about it.

McGee knew the taxes paid on TAPS were low, although even he way underestimated them. The Parnell administration made up some cockamamie story about a “conflict of interest” because someone had been paid $2,100 for advisory work on another issue involving the gas company Enstar.

I was shocked to discover that “conflicts of interest” were ever a concern in this administration.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski has introduced a bill regarding such things. Alaska is late to join other states that prohibit lawmakers from voting on bills they have a clear conflict on. When voting on issues that would benefit their bosses, oil company senators just “declare” a conflict, have it “excused” and vote anyway.

Last year, SB21, the governor’s oil tax giveaway bill, was passed with deciding votes from such senators.

I’m not sure Sen. Peter Micciche appreciates the irony of his protest against a Wielechowski bill trying to stop the practice. Micciche called it a “very expensive waste of taxpayer time and money.” I guess if you aren’t building a funnel to pour money on the oil companies, Mr. Micciche thinks you’re wasting your time. How is it a waste of time to keep trying to clean up the system that incubated the Corrupt Bastard’s Club?

When Micciche first ran for office, he said he worked for ConocoPhillips running the LNG plant in Nikiski and making between $100,000 and $200,000. Two years later, he lists the same job at the now “mothballed” plant, working three-quarters time and making between $200,000 and $500,000. Anyone else have a job where they work 25 percent less for a business that has been “mothballed” and doubled their salary?

If the governor will fire a state assessor trying to administer the law as the Alaska Supreme Court sees it over a $2,100 conflict of interest, when billions of dollars are at stake, then surely he will back SB 172 and SCR 15 to bring Alaska into line with most other states by not letting legislators vote on bills where they have a substantial personal financial stake, or their employers’ have one, or their spouses have one.

Things really haven’t changed much since Mr. Sinclair observed, “One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.”

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

I enjoy painting. Really. Maybe it’s because my grandfather was a painter and I really liked him, but for whatever reason I don’t mind being on a ladder with a brush for hours at a time. Oh, did you think I meant painting bowls of fruit? No. I like painting houses.

But the best part is when you’re done. You stand back and see the transformation to a new look that was long overdue. From the first drop of color on the wall to the trim caulking. There’s a start and an end.

Painting is satisfying. (I realize some people have gotten divorced over paint jobs gone sideways and not everyone feels the same, but it’s my column.)

When I started a radio show more than eight years ago, there was an opening line that introduced me every day. “Painting a red state blue, one stroke at a time…”

This week I found myself listening to the news on the radio and hanging off a ladder with brush in my hand, which made me a captive audience. “Are you kidding me?!” I kept saying to no one.

Listening to the nonsense spawned by our elected nutjobs and trying to figure out what the ham and cheese they could possibly be thinking finally drove me to crank up the new Springsteen album.

The news was ruining my “Wow! This room looks fantastic! I barely recognize it!” Maybe you recognize this feeling: Just turn off the news and try to focus on changing and improving what’s right in front of you.

(Maybe you also have wondered what kind of freak they keep in a basement naming paint colors. The “Celery Bisque” really ought to be called “Chicken Poop Green.”)

OK, so if I’m wanting to dial out of the insanity — given that I live and breathe politics — I understand why people with much more interesting hobbies and busy lives tune out.

What got me to this point? Remember last year when I was writing week after week about the doom and gloom that would come to our state if SB21 — the governor’s oil tax giveaway — passed? Oh, sweet Pete, did I not stack my soapboxes up for that one. The math?! The math! I didn’t think it would work. There I was painting away, AND I WANTED TO BE WRONG. I did. Because if I were right, Alaska was sure to suffer for it.

But the governor got his way. He promised a million barrels of new production and the Legislature fell in line. They gobbled up the governor’s fantasy like hungry chickens in a yard full of corn.

The latest estimates of new oil production aren’t even close to a million. To be precise, they are 28.6 percent of a million by 2024. (I know that sounds like a long time away, but it’s only 10 years. And in the meantime, we’ll give the producers billions.)

Then my head exploded over an amendment vote. The Special Committee on Military and Veterans’ Affairs was considering relieving temporary military spouses (not temporary spouses, but temporary to Alaska) of the duty to get a state driver’s license. When Rep. Max Gruenberg sought to include same-sex military couples in the exemption, Reps. Gabrielle LeDoux, Shelley Hughes and Pete Higgins decided they couldn’t support the gay troops.

Really? Here’s a news flash: Being gay doesn’t make someone bulletproof while he’s fighting overseas for the freedom of Alaska lawmakers to institutionalize his second-class citizenship. (Even if it’s over something as petty as a trip to the DMV.)

But, to be fair, I’m sure it isn’t just the gay soldiers and airmen they don’t support. I expect they’re also wondering: How can we disrespect the Muslim, atheist and immigrant servicemen and women? Perhaps I’m naive to think “supporting the troops” means a lot more than sticking a Chinese-made magnet on your tailgate.

Oh, and if I get one more email from ayatollah Jim Minnery of the Alaska Family Council begging for money so he can continue the fight against women’s right to control their bodies, I may lose it.

Really, buddy? If you don’t like abortion, take Step One: Get the vasectomy. Step Two: Teach men and boys where babies come from and how to get a grip on their hormones. Step Three: Make sure contraception is available to everyone who might slip up and have sex.

And finally, Mullah Minnery, the day you start fighting for nutrition programs, child support and health care for children and pregnant women is the day you can call yourself “pro-life.” Until then you’re just Alaska’s leading advocate of forced birth by poor women.

Alaska is a big place. It’s in need of a very big paint job. Big enough to get us back to some semblance of sanity. Yes, I realize paying attention to politics and politicians is not quite as much fun as watching paint dry, but as the late Pete Seeger said, “Participation — that’s what’s gonna save the human race.”

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

It was probably five years ago when the Koch Brothers hit my radar. I was at a conference of grassroots community folks and one guy in particular was describing these eccentric brothers, born into wealth, who were hell-bent on remaking America.

Their predatory libertarian hybrid philosophy wasn’t new to me. I grew up around cranky old men who lived in cabins and argued with each other around the big table at the Anchor River Inn. Oh, they’d all come to Alaska to get away from America. The difference between their rants and the Koch Brothers? They were poor. All they could do was pound their fists and have their coffee refilled. The Koch Brothers are worth $36 billion each. Yes. Combined, they are worth $20 billion more than the Permanent Fund.

In campaigns during 2012, 17 groups enjoying tax-exempt status with ties to the billionaire brothers spent $407 million. That’s a lot of money to push your ideology. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s craptastic 5-4 decision that check-writing is free speech, this is now our norm. Before you holler that unions can do the same, the Kochs’ contribution was higher than all union spending on campaigns in federal, state and local races combined.

So far in this election cycle, $1.1 million of Koch money has been spent on Alaska television ads. (I realize the stations like this, but they don’t require integrity. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case this year being argued by a Republican outfit that says they have the right to lie in advertising.)

The Koch Brothers have also been active in shaping the politics of Alaska through their funding of the American Legislative Exchange Council. That organization’s attacks on voting rights, public schools, health insurance policy and reproductive fairness for poor women are all underwritten with Koch Bucks.

The Koch brothers have other interests in Alaska. They’ve done business here for years. This week, while buying more than $100,000 in attack ads opposing health care, they announced plans to close the Flint Hills refinery in Fairbanks. This has huge effect on not just the city of Fairbanks’ tax rolls, and 80 employees’ jobs, but it may put cargo planes in a pinch without jet fuel. And what will the railroad do with nothing to fill all those tank cars? This is far-reaching and we’re going to feel it (although it won’t amount to a pimple on a pea under the mattresses of the Koch brothers).

Our Washington, D.C., delegation and the governor all made sure to let Alaskans know they thought this closure was a bad idea. Funny that some candidates for U.S. Senate, namely Dan Sullivan and Mead Treadwell, are seemingly mute. They want Koch money to run ads on their behalf during the general election.

Koch got your tongue, fellas?

As bad as closing the refinery will be for our fellow Alaskans in the Interior, what the Koch brothers are doing to our state through other means is actually much more damaging. They inherited more than money from their father, who built 15 oil refineries for Stalin before moving to America. Daddy was an active opponent of Social Security and the New Deal.

The Koch’s disdain for public education, voting rights and (other people’s) personal property (they’re happy to use eminent domain to snatch rights-of-way for their pipelines) are percolating in our co-opted state legislature. (See, if you don’t vote the way that benefits them, they run someone against you.)

Charles Koch ran an opinion column a few years ago that bashed the government for picking and choosing winners. “There are now businesses and entire industries that exist solely as a result of federal patronage. Profiting from government instead of earning profits in the economy, such businesses can continue to succeed even if they are squandering resources and making products that people wouldn’t ordinarily buy.”

Really? This right after they landed an $85 billion contract with the federal government and raking in billions in federal ethanol subsidies.

Unfortunately, the Koch Brothers aren’t leaving Alaska. They’ll be here telling you who to vote for, what schools to pay for, who should have voting rights and whether to provide health care for poor people.

Lucky us.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

I’m not sure what’s important to you when you buy a car but safety is high on my list. (I’m on a 20-year Subaru streak — it’s about love.) I watch the commercials with crash test dummies because I want some idea how safe I’ll be in a crash.

Now imagine if you found out that the crashes that got tested were only 5 miles an hour. (They aren’t but pretend with me for a second, folks.)

A five-star rating in a 5 mph crash wouldn’t mean much.

That’s basically what happened when oil leases off Alaska’s northern coast were put up for sale in 2008. The environmental impact statement by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management was based on a hypothetical level of oil development arbitrarily set by a BOEM analyst. Oh, how about a nice round number of 1 billion barrels?

Fine. Except it is way low. Exactly 12 times too low, according to development projections the BOEM made in 2006. About like the difference between a 5 mph crash and a 60 mph crash.

The people of the village of Point Hope had some concerns about offshore oil development. They get their living from the waters the oil companies were circling. Environmental groups signed on to their concerns. Some people want to save whales and seals so Alaskans on the North Slope can eat as they have for the last 10,000 years. So they sued the federal government.

Radical, I know.

The oil companies and the state of Alaska went to court to support the feds. The state wasn’t there to protect the Alaskans or safeguard our coastal waters. Prospective oil royalties from development weren’t going to go to the state; those go to the federal government. No, the state of Alaska was there to justify 5 mph crash safety tests. Despite the David-and-Goliath matchup, the court ultimately agreed with the plaintiffs and the notion that impact studies need to be based on likely impacts.

That led, at least in part, to the announcement this week that Shell won’t resume exploratory drilling in the Arctic this coming summer.

To you politicians — damn near all of you in Alaska: Will you stop acting like anyone who wants reality-based environmental standards in resource development is some patchouli-soaked, bike-riding, waffle-stomping, granola-crunching hippie radical anti-capitalist? If someone wants a car with safety standards based on 60 mph instead of 5 mph, they aren’t “anti-car-travel.”

Democratic Sen. Mark Begich sounded exactly like all the Republicans running against him:

“It is simply unacceptable that judicial overreach is getting in the way of letting Alaskans develop our own natural resources. Development in the Arctic has already been subjected to unprecedented safety standards — far more than domestic production anywhere else. I’ve worked for years to get all the federal agencies working together to permit Arctic projects, now we need to tackle the all too common legal stonewalling by outside groups. That’s why I am re-introducing my legislation to ensure there is a judicial endgame for Arctic developers when they have invested billions of dollars in developing our resources.”

Um, Point Hope villagers seem less like “outside groups” than some others (for example, Royal DUTCH Shell).

Stonewalling? Is brushing your teeth stonewalling cavities? What’s that line about “an ounce of prevention … ?”

We all had front-row seats to Shell not getting its act together in the Arctic. The company is pulling in its oars because, as it announced, its fourth-quarter net profit was down 74 percent. (Not to worry, it was still a hefty $1.78 billion.)

Theirs was a long list of missteps. Other companies interested in the offshore Arctic should be mad at Shell, not the drilling skeptics. Why aren’t Begich and the rest decrying Shell’s hubris and incompetence rather than “judicial overreach?”

Shell ran its rig aground not once but twice. Last year its crews pulled out of Dutch Harbor into a 100-year storm with inadequate towing gear just to avoid a tax bill.

The Deadliest Catch fishermen were still at the dock but Shell let some bean counter send its rigs into the Gulf of Alaska for an oil company’s version of pocket change? They’re lucky no one got killed.

Heck, their spill-response barge was fined for spilling fluids in a Washington harbor. Laugh or cry, your choice.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals isn’t to blame because the BOEM used “5 mph” for its crash test. Shell has more than demonstrated the need for federal regulators to require realistic crash tests, just as they do for cars.

The profits from this development don’t belong to all of us — but the risk certainly does.

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio. 

Shannyn Moore for the Anchorage Daily News

Our governor gave his State of the Colony speech this week. In it, he tied “school reform” (by which he apparently means amending the Alaska Constitution to allow spending public money on private and religious schools) to raising the state’s contribution to each student’s education.

I guess taking hostages is now Standard Operating Procedure for Republican elected officials. And even if those of us who like our constitution just the way it is were to acquiesce, Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed “increase” in education funding wouldn’t come close to replacing what schools have lost to inflation in just the last three years.

Almost as soon as Alaskans started to howl about his blackmail attempt, Parnell threw that baby in reverse and backed away. “Oh, noooo, I’d never say what I just said before I found out I wasn’t king! Sheesh! What do you take me for? Hurumpf. Wait, was that on tape?”

The American Legislative Exchange Council, the group that artfully married lobbyists, big corporations and conservative legislators from across the nation, has pushed privatization of schools across the country. It’s still their agenda, though it has been a disaster for teachers, students and the public.

For example, in Milwaukee, the base student allocation is $6,442 a year. (In Alaska, it’s less than $5,700.) Under their “Milwaukee Parental Choice Program,” a private school called LifeSkills Academy took more than $2 million from the Department of Public Instruction before moving out of its rented space in the night and disappearing.

The LifeSkills students then had to squeeze into other schools that didn’t get the money that should have come with them — straining teachers, classrooms and diverting precious resources from other students.

And the LifeSkills kids needed all the help they could get. According to the local paper, “No students attending LifeSkills were proficient in reading or math in 2012-’13, except for a single fourth-grade student, according to the most recent state achievement results.”

When was the last time you heard about a public school taking the state’s money and skipping out for a beach in Mexico.

LifeSkills Academy? Is that a solution to the problems of educating Alaska children?

I haven’t taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the state of Alaska, but I know a guy who helped write it, and English is my first language.

Here’s what it says about education:

“The legislature shall by general law establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the State, and may provide for other public educational institutions. Schools and institutions so established shall be free from sectarian control.

“No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

“Free from sectarian control” seems pretty clear to me. Alaska’s founders weren’t inventing the wheel, they were expanding the Territorial Organic Act of 1912, which required the separation of church and state schools.

Exactly how much will Parnell’s “privatizing” of Alaska schools cost? Sen. Berta Gardner produced a nonpartisan legislative study that showed it would run about $100 million a year to add a for-profit system. That seems like real money when you see 159 teachers lose their jobs to offset part of a $23 million budget shortfall in Anchorage.

Our public education system can, of course, use improvement. But at this week’s Anchorage School Board meeting some wonderful achievements were recognized. Graduation rates are up significantly, juvenile crime rates in Anchorage are down significantly, and more children are participating in vocational education programs.

For the past few years, the Legislature and governor have demanded “improvements” before increasing school funding. In fact, Parnell famously called education “the ultimate giveaway.” That’s either ironic or psychotic.

That attitude is the polar opposite of the one he took with the oil companies. He didn’t even require them to make commitments to produce more oil before he gave them tax breaks, much less make them produce more first. But that wasn’t a “giveaway.”

But schools? With them he’s Mr. Tough Guy: “You’ll get no more money until I see ‘improvement’ and ‘reform’! ”

Part of the success we’ve seen in our schools in recent years is attributable to programs that were cut just last spring because of lack of money. Graduation coaches and regular counselors, security personnel and career guides are no longer there to help students who need help to make it. Nothing says, “Good job! Way to go!” like a pink slip.

I agree with radio storyteller Garrison Keillor: “When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”

Shannyn Moore is a radio host on 1480 AM in Washington, D.C., and on Netroots Radio.