One of the chronic shortcomings of local government is an institutional difficulty with nuanced ideas, including that its authority needn’t always be a hammer, as every issue is not a nail. This week’s assembly debate over 14-day quarantine is only its most recent failure to paint policy with anything other than black and white colors. Some assembly members wanted to…
We are taught as children in America that we’re free to do what we want, but of course that’s not the case. Our freedoms are limited by all kinds of things, all the time. First, there are physical limitations, imposed by nature and genetics. My freedom is limited to what my body, physically, can do. No amount of training is…
Before we give all credit for bungling the coronavirus response to Donald Trump, let’s acknowledge that our very own governor, Mike Dunleavy, also made – and continues to make – important contributions to the unfolding public health disaster right here in Alaska. Dunleavy, in announcing his emergency shutdown of the state, exempted from 14-day quarantine essential workers, including the guys…
They say a child never touches a hot stove twice. Lacking the acute memory of a child, the Haines Borough is about to be burned again. The borough is slowly gutting tourism regulations that kept the industry responsible here for 25 years. Changes to borough code regarding tourism have sailed through the assembly with little comment, including reducing review of…
Oh, those Michiganders and their angry protest against the COVID-19 lockdown. I want to say to them, I’m with you. No, not like that. I’m not with their crazy conspiracy theories and their anti-government paranoia and their macaroni-and-cheese-fueled brain functioning. I’m with them to say, “Yes. You are humans, too. You are bat-shit crazy, but so is most of the…
His cringe-worthy press conferences during the corona crisis have underscored everything that’s wrong with the Trump presidency: His errors, his lies, his exaggerations, his unpreparedness, his unfocused, garbled, stream-of-consciousness meandering and his naked self-promotion. As some wag remarked, “He sounds like a kid giving a book report who didn’t read the book.” What makes it a spectacle is that while…
Pizza Joe was closing in on 30, way past the age of knowing better when he decided to jump the duck pond in his southern Ohio hometown of Cambridge. Perhaps, like so many guys who grew up riding spider bikes and watching daredevil Evel Knievel jump buses and cars and fountains on a motorcycle, Joe figured it would be fun.…
Strange things happen here in February, especially in government. But few have been as strange or as damning as the attempt by townsite police chief Heath Scott to criminally prosecute his political opponents, three years ago this month. Arresting or locking up your political opponents is associated with tin-horn dictators in lawless, Third World nations, but Scott took action akin…
Last summer, draftsman and designer Larry Larson challenged residents to submit ideas for the future of the intersection of Third Avenue and Main Streets, a hole in our downtown since the old elementary school gym there was torn down in 2011. We should take up Larson’s challenge. The fate of the lot has been a topic of discussion at least…
Heath Scott is up to his old tricks. The chief of the townsite police department, who successfully soaked taxpayers for more than $200,000 in raises and extra manpower for himself and his officers while twice overrunning his department budget since his hire in 2016, now wants to hire a sixth officer, at your expense. Or, he’d like more money for…