The ALASKA GOVERNMENT is controlled by Unions and special interests in the Legislature, in the Executive and in the Courts. We are still a colony of the United States of America, controlled by the Seattle suburb of Juneau, where our capitol is maintained despite The People voting to move it in the 1970s. Many people come here for their Alaska Adventure and leave nothing of value.
MEA Serves Eagle River Well (2021©donnliston.co) When Chugach/Eagle River wanted electrical power, at a time when the community was sleepy but growing, Municipal Light and Power (ML&P) didn’t want the bother of hooking us up from Anchorage. A Chugiak area activist, Justine Parks took the steps to involve Matanuska Electric Association (MEA) in delivering …
The Anchorage School District is too big, with a top-down Command-and-Control system accountable to a school board governed by members elected at-large, but ultimately accountable to no one to assure Local Control, according to former ASD teacher and principal, Sean Murphy. This is the dimension of the Anchorage School District: 46,115 students, of which more …
Our ASD Public Education Challenge: Parents in Eagle River/Chugiak Deserve Local Control Read More »
Are Honest Alaskans Being Played for Fools? During the mid-1980s I volunteered to be an election worker at the Douglas #1 (04-330) voting precinct. I had my boat/home parked in the then minimalist harbor for a while, and was registered to vote there, so I thought it would be a good thing to do. …
Looking Back, And A Vision for the Future (2021©donnliston.co) Anyone who has lived here any length of time knows the region of the state that includes Eagle River/Chugiak/Peters Creek is a unique part of Alaska. Dan Kendall once represented this area on the Anchorage Municipal Assembly and has experienced the effort to preserve the qualities …
Addressing Alaska’s Hierarchy of Needs This is an update of a story that first appeared February 10, 2021. Alaskans are generally stuck at the bottom of the 5-level pyramid of human needs defined in Abraham Maslow’s 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation. His 1954 book “Motivation and Personality” expanded on this theory and remains a …
Elections Have Consequences Reflections In December of 2021 on what we hoped might be possible after the election. The Alaska Legislature in recent years has become a spectacle. We have voted for people who we thought understood what Alaskans want: Safety and Security, Limited and efficient State Govern-ment, Protection of the Permanent Fund with use …
Who Cares about Alaska FoodSustainability? WITH STORY UPDATE RESPONSE FROM ADF&G (2020©donnliston.co) This is a story of one man attempting to deal with the machine known as the State of Alaska. We who have lived a long time in Alaska know this machine well because it creates dependency while asserting to promote Alaskan independence. The …
The Long View of Crime in Alaska (2020©donnliston.co) During the 1970s construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline we saw our state transformed by crime; as also happened in previous fur and gold rushes. It happened simultaneous to the influx of people flooding here to build that engineering marvel, while some others arrived for diabolical …
Who does the Alaska Legislature Really Represent? The Alaska Economy is staggering like a weakened 11th round boxer, from a half-year Coronavirus Pandemic bout, but the Alaska Legislature made no attempt in Juneau to stop the move of $4 Billion from the Permanent Fund Earning Reserve Account (ERA) to the untouchable principal of the fund …
