Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 178
Most people are not wealthy, or even close to it, though many enjoy reading about and watching and following the lives of the rich and famous. Maybe it’s envy, maybe it’s enjoying hanging on the drama, laughing at the comedy and gawking at the lavish spending. Or maybe it’s just the dumb things rich people do with their lives, the way they behave and the things that show how out of touch they are with the real world. Of course, I have a couple of examples. First, it’s the opposite of conspicuous consumption, which is when rich people buy exp...
The next two years may be Alaska’s last chance for productive, bipartisan legislative action. The state House and Senate have both organized in bipartisan coalitions, with Democrats, Republicans and independents pledging to work together on the big issues facing Alaska. Sadly, that across-the-political-aisle cooperation could end in two years. Alaska’s switch to open primaries and ranked-choice voting for the 2022 and 2024 elections encouraged candidates, particularly Republican candidates, to appeal to moderate and nonpartisan voters ins...
I’m on the five-year plan for colonoscopies. The doc keeps finding small polyps that he cuts out and so he tells me to keep coming back to avoid a worse fate. As uncomfortable as it is, at least the prep work for that is brief and painless compared to the excruciatingly long and upsetting presidential elections which come every four years. Something is wrong with politics when I dread elections more than colonoscopies. Yes, the voting is over, though it will take several more days or weeks or court decisions to know the final outcomes of the p...
It’s not only the fault of the people who post insults on social media, who embrace the politically inspired lies and accept the politically driven threats of violence as a necessary means to the end they favor. Nor is it only the fault of people on the other side of the political world who lecture but don’t listen, who can’t understand why so many Americans are drawn to the ever-expanding lies and ever-cruder insults yet sit by all too quietly, waiting for the turmoil to pass. It’s like the entire nation is living through a Florida hurricane,...
Making it easier for Alaskans to cast their ballots shouldn’t be about how they vote, which way they lean politically or how much they favor one party over another. Admittedly, elections are partisan. Sadly, increasingly so. Candidates, their fat-funded political action committees and political parties have turned the nation’s elections into an endless stream of negative attack ads that prey on the public’s fear of anything that will get them to the polls. It’s bad enough that partisanship has taken over election campaigns. But those same ug...
Supporters of Herbert Hoover’s 1928 campaign for president ran newspaper ads with the headline, “A Chicken for Every Pot.” An impractical campaign pledge, though maybe it helped: Hoover won the election. But he then presided over the start of the Great Depression in 1929, when many could afford neither a chicken nor a pot. Almost 100 years later, political campaigns are still promising a better life for voters, though the price tag has risen far above the cost of a chicken, or a pot, or even an entire new kitchen. In rare cases, the count...
Southeast Alaska communities and their local newspapers share a common problem: Not enough people, and the ones who are here are getting older. For the communities, an aging and declining population means not enough people to fill jobs. It means falling further behind in providing services that attract and retain new residents, making the situation worse. For newspapers, it means a declining population of readers as aging residents who grew up with their local paper die out. Younger generations are so unconcerned about the necessity of...
Whichever side wins the national election Nov. 5 needs to think about why they did not get a larger share of the vote. Not that they ever really expected to win over the hearts, minds and ballots of 60% of voters. The honest reality is that most candidates would accept 51% as a clear victory in this divisive world. OK, maybe they’re prefer 52%. But they’ll happily declare a mandate on the thinnest of margins. Gloating is ugly. It makes sore losers out of disappointed losers. Even worse, many of those sore losers are increasingly embracing anger...
To say I am resistant to change is an understatement. I acknowledge that it happens in life — after all, I am about to turn 73 — but that doesn’t mean I embrace or enjoy it. Rather, I quietly accept change, though not happily, just like I accept that rainy fall comes after summer, and that my 20-year-old spices don’t seem to smell like anything anymore and it is time to buy new jars. My resistance to change in life was obvious when I was getting coffee with a friend recently and pulled actual change out of my pocket, just as I’ve done sinc...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy made the pledge and he’s stickin’ to it. Too bad he is putting national anti-tax politics above tax fairness in Alaska. Specifically, he vetoed legislation this month that would have taxed car rentals through online platforms the same as car rentals from brick-and-mortar agencies with local offices. And he vetoed legislation two years ago that would have taxed vape and e-cigarette products the same as traditional tobacco products. The car rental fairness legislation passed with 51 out of 60 state senators and rep...
We deliver you the Sentinel as one piece, whether in print or online. If you’re reading this in print, just pretend that the sheets of paper folded together are one piece. Regardless of how you read the paper, it has five elements: Paid advertising, news, the Sentinel’s editorial, my personal opinion column and opinions from our readers. Each has different rules and standards. Each is essential for newspapers that want to serve their community. Paid ads are pretty simple: The advertiser, be it a business or an individual or a government agency,...
Remember those perplexing math problems in school? Not the easy ones that required only simple subtraction, addition, multiplication or division. I’m talking about those word problems that told what seemed like a purposefully confusing story about trains moving in opposite directions at different speeds and you had to calculate how far apart they would be in an hour. I figured the purpose was to teach us problem solving. Though in my early school years, the biggest math problem I wanted to solve was how to buy 25 cents worth of candy when I h...
Candidates have long waged election campaigns on catchy slogans, snappy jingles, popular promises and misleading but memorable mottos. It’s getting worse. The music is better but the lyrics are lacking. Vagueness is in vogue. The less specific candidates are with their actual plans to fulfill campaign promises, the less the opposition and analysts can pick apart the flaws. Running for president or Congress? Promise more funding for child care, lower taxes, lower prices at the grocery store, stronger defense, defeating China for jobs and i...
Some of the best times in life are when a bad thing turns into a good thing. When frustration and disappointment transform into happiness. It’s not magic, though it seems magical. It’s when someone you don’t even know steps up and does something nice. I recently flew to Washington, D.C., and being frugal, which sounds so much better than cheap, took a 53-minute train ride from the suburban airport to the stop closest to my downtown hotel, rather than the more convenient but 20 times more expensive taxi. The Metro train station was almost a mil...
To modernize an old expression, Alaskans are fiddling while the Permanent Fund burns. Not literally, of course. The Permanent Fund’s stocks and bonds, real estate deeds, lease agreements and investment contracts are all safely stored. But the fiddling part, that’s true. And because it’s a state election year, we can expect a lot of candidates to turn up the volume on their fiddles. No matter how off-key the music, no one ever loses an election by playing happy tunes about big Permanent Fund dividends. No one wins an election talking about...
Former President Donald Trump has a narrow lead in most polls in a tight race for the White House, but he is far and away the leader in handing out personal insults. This guy tosses out crude nicknames, offensive language and outlandish statements like shark hunters toss out stinky chunks of fish meat to attract their catch. It’s called “chumming,” but there is nothing chummy about U.S. presidential politics. And the “catch” is voters. Trump has a massive mental thesaurus of insulting names for his political opponents, a strategy he has relie...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has long prided himself on being a fiscal conservative. He has consistently adhered to that mantra, with the exception of his long-standing advocacy for a state checkbook-draining supersize Permanent Fund dividend. As a fiscal conservative, the governor has always talked of keeping a short leash on spending, a tight rein on appropriations, a firm grip on the budget. Too bad that stinginess extends to explaining his budget vetoes. Critics of Dunleavy’s vetoes of legislative appropriations for the state fiscal year that s...
Unbelievable, which is the opposite of what real news should be. But believe it that Elon Musk is pushing errors and false news into the heads of people around the world. Whether for his personal profit, personal ego or personal fun, it’s irresponsible and dangerous. Musk, a serial entrepreneur who is as flaky as cold cereal, believes Grok, his artificial intelligence service pedaled through X, formerly known as Twitter, should be a news source. “What we’re doing on the X platform is, we are aggregating. We’re using AI to sum up the aggrega...
Wrangell is in a Goldilocks situation when it comes to tourists. Too many is no good. It would leave the town feeling stuffed. Too few is what we have, leaving the town hungry to fill its economic bowl. Just enough more visitors to warm up the economy would be the right amount. Too bad it’s not as easy a choice as Goldilocks picking which porridge to bear down on. Wrangell is not a tourism-dominated community like Skagway or Juneau. Nor does it want to be. But a little more sales tax revenue would be a good thing, particularly if those sales t...
The state of Alaska, with all the legal wisdom of a political agenda and the flowing words of a high-priced law firm, has filed a claim against the federal government. Nothing new about that — the state has filed and signed onto more lawsuits against the national government in recent years than President Joe Biden has forgotten dates or former President Donald Trump has told lies. Nothing to be proud of in any of that. The state’s latest legal endeavor came July 2 in a dubious lawsuit — with a few errors and omissions for poor measure — that as...
A long time ago, the Sentinel called out a mayor for taking an action without city council approval (this was before Wrangell became a borough). The mayor had sent a letter to a federal agency, stating the city’s official position on an issue — but it was merely his personal opinion. There was no council discussion, no public notice. It wasn’t that controversial a position, but the point was that the mayor, no matter how well meaning, should not speak for the city without first making sure the elected council is in agreement. The mayor came...
Most everything pays better than newspapers. A lemonade stand in the winter, a barber shop at a convention of bald men, dry cleaning services for Carhartts — even canned farmed pink salmon at an Alaska street fair — all could be more profitable than running a newspaper. I used to think that publishing a quality paper, full of accurate, informative and entertaining news, always taking care to spell everyone’s name correctly, would produce enough revenue to pay the bills. But after reading more about political campaign donations, I reali...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, his attorney general and others in the administration are spending a lot of time and state money defending Alaska against its perceived political enemies, fighting the U.S. government at every turn of the river, protecting Alaskans from the latest federal regulations and standing up for conservative values. The list includes picking fights with private banks that want to move away from oil and gas lending, egging on fights over library books, supporting the state of Texas in its fight to string razor wire along the border...
There is nothing longer in America than a presidential election campaign. And that is not a good thing. A long vacation is enjoyable. Long summers are a treat. Reuniting with long-lost friends is special. But long campaigns are becoming indescribably painful. Just think of an Excedrin headache that lasts all year for more than 240 million eligible voters. It could be like the supply-chain shortages of the pandemic, with people clearing out store shelves and grabbing for the last bottle of headache medicine. Still not convinced how miserable...
The expression, the best things in life are free, applies to fresh air, the view out the window and a positive attitude. For the next five weeks, it will also apply to the Wrangell Sentinel. Starting this week, the Sentinel has turned off the paywall to its website. Anyone with a keyboard, a mouse, a smartphone, a swiping finger or a voice-activated personal assistant will be able to go to wrangellsentinel.com and read all the news they want. Normally, the online edition of the Sentinel is available only to people who buy a subscription. As old...
