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National: After Congress Fails to Reach a Deal, Trump Signs Pandemic Relief Orders By MARY KAUFFMAN - Yesterday, after stimulus talks broke down on Capitol Hill, President Trump signed an executive order and issued three memoranda that are intended to provide financial relief to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The president's actions have already been criticized by Democrats.

Actions taken by President Trump address extending federal unemployment benefits, defering payroll taxes, extending moratoriums on evictions, and deferring student loan payments.

In a Memorandum, President Trump's order would extend unemployment federal benefits at a rate of $400 per week, with states covering 25% ($100) of the cost and the federal government would cover the remaining 75% ($300). The plan would be funded using federal monies from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster relief fund. However, it is unknown is governors will push back on this.

During negotiations, Democrats had proposed $600 weekly and Republicans were proposing $200 weekly in federal unemployment relief. Along with other items, Congress came to no agreement after weeks of discussions and negotiations. The $600 weekly federal unemployment relief expired on July 31, 2020 creating a financial hardship for many Americans.

This action could be challenged legally since the Constitution gives Congress control over federal spending. Pelosi said on Fox News Sunday, it would take a while if at all to accomplish putting money in the American people's pockets. However, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said today that the Labor Department working with states believe that it could happen much faster, adding that people could expect checks in a couple of weeks.

Quoting the Memorandum on Authorizing the Other Needs Assistance Program, as of the latest report from the Treasury Inspector General regarding State expenditures, more than $80 billion of CRF dollars remain available, to supplement the billions of dollars States have received in other Federal assistance, such as the $8.8 billion in emergency assistance provided under the Stafford Act.  In addition, the Department of Homeland Security’s Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), has more than $70 billion in emergency assistance funding available.

In a Memorandum on Deferring Payroll Tax Obligations in Light of the Ongoing COVID-19 Disaster, the president also announced that he would "delay" payroll taxes until the end of the year for those earning up to $4,000 biweekly, or $104,000 annually. Trump went on to say that he would forgive the taxes entirely if re-elected in November and "possibly" make the payroll tax holiday permanent. 

President Trump also directed the Secretary of the Treasury to use his authority to defer certain payroll tax obligations with respect to the American workers most in need.  This targeted action intent is to put money directly in the pockets of American workers and generate additional incentives for work and employment, right when the money is needed most.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Fox News Sunday, "What the president did is unconstitutional slop." And said that making a payroll tax cut would undermine Social Security and Medicare. Payroll taxes fund social security and Medicare. - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Alaska: Alaska Jury Trials Suspended through November 2, 2020, by Special Order of the Chief Justice - Chief Justice Bolger issued Special Order 8183 on Thursday extending the suspension of in-person criminal and civil jury trials until November 2, 2020.

The order recognizes that holding in-person jury trials at the current time could be detrimental to the health and safety of Alaskans because of rising COVID-19 case counts and increasing community spread. The current circumstances of the pandemic make it challenging to have jurors and all necessary trial participants gather in indoor settings for in-person jury trials. Although jury trials play a critical role in our justice system, Alaskans must be safe when fulfilling their civic duty as jurors and participating in a trial. The order notes that on approximately September 18, the chief justice will review whether to continue the suspension beyond November 2.

Although the order generally suspends all jury trials, it also authorizes the presiding judges of Alaska’s four judicial districts to allow an in-person jury trial to proceed in “exceptional circumstances.” Any in-person jury trials will be conducted with strict adherence to CDC recommendations and state and local health mandates. In addition, the chief justice may allow jury trials to proceed as pilot projects to test health and safety procedures; these would allow the court to make sure that jurors can serve effectively and safely before additional jury trials take place. For example, the chief justice has already authorized civil presumptive death trials, which are generally limited in time and use six jurors, to be held by videoconference. - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Ketchikan: Ketchikan Borough Awarded $93K Transportation Grant Fund Posted & Edited By MARY KAUFFMAN - Alaska Congressman Don Young announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has awarded the Ketchikan Gateway Borough $93,000 under the Buses and Bus Facilities Grant Program.

This program makes federal resources available to states and direct recipients to replace, rehabilitate and purchase buses and related equipment, in addition to supporting the construction of bus-related facilities.

"Access to public transportation is not unique to large cities in the Lower 48. The truth is that in Alaska's urban areas, children and families rely on buses to get to work, school, and around the community," said Congressman Don Young. - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Ketchikan, Mat-Su Libertarians part of nationwide convoy across more than 160 cities
Ketchikan Convoy "Let Her Speak"
Photo courtesy Paul Robbins, Jr.

Ketchikan: Ketchikan, Mat-Su Libertarians part of nationwide convoy across more than 160 cities Posted & Edited By MARY KAUFFMAN - Local members of the Alaska Libertarian Party, and other supporters of fair representation in Ketchikan and the Mat-Su Valley participated in a COVID-safe demonstration on Saturday, August 8th, 2020, driving convoy style through their communities in vehicles decorated for the Let Her Speak movement. 

These two Alaskan convoys joined more than 160 other convoys across the nation to protest the Commission on Presidential Debates' continued decision to silence the Libertarian Nominee for President of the United States, Dr. Jo Jorgensen, and all third parties who are listed on the presidential ballot. 

The Commission on Presidential Debates' created polling restrictions to not allow third-parties in the debate by selecting random polls to determine who is polling above 15%. The catch? Most of these polls do not even mention a 3rd party candidate. - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Alaska: UAS and UAF sign Alaska Advantage agreement, providing dual enrollment opportunities for Alaska’s high school students - Last month, the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) signed an agreement for Alaska Advantage, an innovative program which provides high-quality online dual enrollment opportunities for Alaska’s high school students.

College courses are offered by both UAS and UAF, helping students get started on earning college credit while meeting their high school graduation requirements at the same time.  Credits from these courses are accepted at both UAS and UAF and can be transferred to other institutions.  Over 25 school districts across the state of Alaska participate in the program, as well as several homeschool organizations.

The partnership between UAS and UAF opens more opportunities for students across the state providing consistent course availability, support services, advising and test proctoring, ensuring greater opportunities for student success. Tuition in the upcoming 2020-2021 academic year is $165 per credit.  The agreement outlines a shared revenue model with 80% retained by the originating institution, 10% for the delivery service/support unit and Alaska Advantage program lead at UAF, and 10% at the hosting institution. 

Dr. Maren Haavig, UAS Vice Provost, notes, “This is the perfect time for high school students and their parents to look into dual enrollment opportunities at UAS.  Dual enrollment enables students to take college courses, at a discounted rate, and receive high school and college credit at the same time.” - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Ketchikan: Beach advisories for 4 of 12 monitored Ketchikan Beaches - The results for water samples collected on Tuesday, August 4, as part of the Ketchikan Beach program are now available.  The monitoring results are summarized below:

Beach advisories were issued for four of twelve Ketchikan beaches for exceedance of Enterococci (above 130 MPN/100ml primary contact recreation). 

• Thomas Basin 620 MPN/100ml
• Seaport Beach 155 MPN/100ml
• Rotary Park Pool 323 MPN/100ml
• Herring Cove 706 MPN/100ml

The remaining 8 monitored beaches are below enterococci state recreation standards.

The next Ketchikan Beach sampling is planned for Thursday August 13th. Sample results are expected to be available by Friday August 14th.

The Alaska Beach program was initiated along the Ketchikan coastline to monitor fecal waste contamination during the 2017, 2018 and 2019 recreational seasons. The 2020 recreational season will be conducted May through September.  - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Ketchikan: New Alaska travel update goes in effect August 11th; Positive tests statewide for the previous seven days is 2.56% Posted & Edited by MARY KAUFFMAN - Alaska’s new travel protocols take effect Tuesday, Aug. 11. All non-residents must arrive with a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within 72 hours prior to departure or proof of a pending test result from a test taken within 72 hours prior to departure. This new strategy will allow Alaska to focus resources on travel within the state.

Non-Residents

• Test 72 hours before departure, and upload negative result into the Alaska Travel Portal (link will be available soon)
• If tested 72 hours before departure and awaiting results, travelers will need to upload proof of test taken into the Alaska Travel Portal and quarantine while waiting.
• If a non-resident arrives without a pre-test, testing is available for $250 per test. The traveler will be required to quarantine while waiting on results. 

• Testing remains available at no cost to Alaska residents.
• 14 day quarantine is still available to Alaska residents.
• Alaska residents traveling back to home communities in rural Alaska will now have the option of testing at the airport sites, to prevent bringing the virus into our small communities.

Upcoming Changes to Ketchikan Airport Traveler Testing Site

In anticipation of construction occurring at the Revilla side of the airport ferry parking lot in upcoming weeks, the traveler testing site will be relocated to the Gravina side of the airport.  Ketchikan Emergency Operations Center anticipates the change in airport traveler testing location to be effective on or around August 13, 2020.  The new testing operation will be set up adjacent to the airport terminal building. After deplaning, travelers will go through the screening process near the baggage claim area, and if a COVID-19 test is needed, will proceed to the testing tent immediately to the left of the exit door by baggage claim. Signage is being developed to assist travelers with the new process.  Ketchikan Emergency Operations Center will announce additional details next week. 

An alternative traveler testing site on the Revilla side will also be established, in order to accommodate travelers on Revillagigedo Island.  The additional site will be available for the testing of both interstate and intrastate travelers arriving through various means of transportation including private vessels and planes, and will accommodate vouchers for the 7-14 day follow-up travel tests. The alternate traveler testing site may be incorporated into the Berth 3 Drive-Up Testing operation, or it may be determined to be at a different location. Additional information will be provided next week. - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Alaska: Board of Regents rescinds its decision to study a UAS-UAF merger and provides new direction; hears update on universities’ COVID-19 plans for fall semester - The University of Alaska Board of Regents voted last week 9-0 to rescind its June 4th motion to prepare a conceptual plan for merging the University of Alaska Southeast and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and passed new a motion directing the president to work with the chancellors and shared governance in a transparent and inclusive manner to:

• develop clarity and standards for administrative and instructional costs relative to student enrollment, and review structural options;

• analyze opportunities and costs associated with a greater presence of fisheries and ocean science programs on the Juneau campus;

• redouble efforts on collaboration across the system, program sharing, and partnerships with industry, communities, and tribal organizations; and,

• assure the Alaska College of Education has clear roles and responsibilities for program delivery that address the priority of teacher education that are transparent and well-integrated across the system.

Alaska Senator Jesse Kiehl (D-Juneau) commented on the Regents vote to keep the University of Alaska Southeast intact. “The Board of Regents got it right [Wednesday]. UAS is such a valuable part of Alaska’s higher education system, it would be a mistake to dissolve it. Today’s vote sets the board firmly back on the path of looking at the entire University system, to benefit all Alaskans.  

“Alaskans know the governor’s veto pen tipped UA into crisis. The Regents are now forced to save postsecondary education – from diesel mechanics to doctorates. I’m glad they’ll again do that with their eyes on our entire state," said Kiehl.

Bears alert scientists to secret salmon streams
By NED ROZELL
A grizzly bear sow and cubs fish for chum salmon in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, in northern Alaska.
National Park Service photo by Matt Cameron

Alaska: Bears alert scientists to secret salmon streams By NED ROZELL - Right now, on the brushy tundra of northern Alaska, grizzly bears are gathering at quiet streams and rivers, attracted by the largest calorie reward they can find — spawning salmon.

Until recently, scientists did not know salmon swam up some of these waterways, nor that grizzlies were fattening up on them before entering hibernation.

Mathew Sorum is one of several biologists for Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve who tracked northern grizzly bears. He and his team found the bears were catching and eating chum salmon in places researchers had not documented as salmon streams.

Starting in about 2008, the scientists, including Sorum’s colleagues Kyle Joly and Matt Cameron, heard from pilots who flew over the Brooks Range that they had noticed grizzly bears congregating along Arctic rivers in August and September. Sorum thought that was curious, because no researcher had ever reported grizzly bear use of salmon in the central Brooks Range before those pilot reports.

The Gates of the Arctic scientists in 2014 started a study on northern grizzlies. They captured several bears and fitted them with GPS collars. The collars indeed showed that several bears were moving to tributaries of big rivers not known to host runs of salmon, in this case chum salmon.

The biologists then ground-truthed the satellite results by walking along riverbanks, as well as inflating boats and floating down rivers. On all these trips, they searched for signs of bears eating chum salmon.

They saw bears, and found the remains of salmon carcasses, and bear scat containing fish bones and gills.

How could people have missed those salmon runs that are so important for bears and other creatures?

“The headwaters of the Kobuk and Koyukuk Rivers are extremely remote and difficult to access,” Sorum said. “One stream we surveyed was a 300-mile bush-plane flight from Fairbanks. In that region it’s possible that large chum runs have occurred for years without published documentation.

“It’s also possible that climate change is expanding the northern range limit, and that the chum runs we identified are a more recent phenomenon.” - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Fish Factor: Weak salmon returns hit Alaska communities hard By LAINE WELCH - Unless you fished for salmon this summer at Bristol Bay, it’s been slim pickings for fishermen in other Alaska regions. Salmon returns have been so poor that communities already are claiming fishery disasters.

Cordova’s City Council last week unanimously passed a resolution asking the state to declare disasters for both the 2018 Copper River sockeye and Chinook salmon runs and the 2020 sockeye, chum and Chinook runs at the Copper River and Prince William Sound. 

The resolution also urges the state and federal governments to declare a “condition of economic disaster in Cordova as a result," reported Seafood.com, adding, “The town of 2,500 is now the first of what will likely be at least one or two others to ask for a fisheries and economic disaster declaration in 2020.”

The sockeye fishery at Chignik on the Alaskan Peninsula also has remained closed again this year. So few salmon have returned state managers said it is unlikely escapement goals will be achieved for the third consecutive year.

“It’s looking like one of the worst years in Chignik history,” Ross Renick, area manager for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game told KDLG in Dillingham.

Salmon catches throughout Cook Inlet are bleak again this year with a total take barely topping 2.7 million, mostly pinks. Only 748,000 sockeyes have come out of the Inlet so far this season.

Southeast Alaska communities also are being hit hard by weak returns; by Aug. 8 the total catch for the region had yet to reach six million salmon. For pinks, the catch was nearing 4 million out of an already low forecast of 12 million fish, one-third of the 10 year average of 35 million humpies.

Also low were pink prices – a nickel a pound compares to a regionwide average of 33 cents in 2019.

For chums, the Southeast catch had yet to reach 1.5 million out of a projected take of 9 million fish.

Sluggish chum returns to the Yukon means summer fishing is likely over and ADF&G said no commercial openers are likely for this fall.

Low numbers also reduced fishing time at Norton Sound where only pinks have again shown up in strong numbers, but with no buying interest.

At Kotzebue, a total harvest could come in at under 200,000 chums for the first time since 2009.

Across the state, the peak for coho salmon production is still a few weeks but catches so far are skimpy compared to past years. A total catch of 4.2 million silver salmon is projected for the season.

There are a few notable mentions for Alaska’s 2020 salmon fishery.

For the first time since 2015 commercial fishing occurred in the Kuskokwim region.

Kodiak’s pink salmon catch has been strong and steady, nearing 9 million.

Alaska sockeye catches have tracked nicely with preseason projections at over 44 million fish so far.  More than 39 million of the reds came from Bristol Bay but fishermen are not happy.

A base price of 70 cents a pound is down 48% from last year and “has understandably created anger and confusion among fishermen,” said the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association in a statement on market condition.

In all, Alaska’s statewide, all-species salmon catch for 2020 is projected at nearly 133 million fish. - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

DANNY TYREE: IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF V-J DAY THE LAST HURRAH? - My first knowledge of the War in the Pacific probably came from then-new episodes of “McHale’s Navy” and the 20-year-old “Made in Occupied Japan” dishware that my mother collected.

Seemingly overnight, I find myself struggling to do justice to the topic of the 75th (!) anniversary of V-J (Victory over Japan) Day.

(Japan declared total surrender to the Allies on August 15, 1945. Many nations do use the 15th for V-J Day remembrances, but President Truman delayed the official U.S. commemoration until September 2, when the formal surrender document was signed aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. I guess, like the coroner of “Oz,” Truman wanted to ensure that imperial Japan was “not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.”)

World War II veterans (from both the European Theater and Pacific Theater) were all around me when I was growing up. They were neighbors, churchgoers, shopkeepers, government officials, coaches and more. I never thought they were a dime a dozen, but I did take it for granted they were… immortal.

Again, seemingly overnight, most of those veterans are now deceased or in failing mental/physical health. Ditto their spouses, their older children (who aided the war effort by planting Victory Gardens and collecting scrap metal) and an alarming number of their younger children (my generation – the postwar Baby Boomers). - More..
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

PETER FUNT: WHAT’S TO DEBATE ABOUT NEEDING MORE DEBATES? - In a presidential campaign that has twisted at every turn, it’s no surprise that the latest issue up for debate concerns debates.

Surprisingly, the Trump campaign now favors more debates, while some liberal pundits are suggesting that there should be fewer – maybe none. Seems clear to me: In a pandemic-torn campaign, voters will benefit from as many presidential face-offs as possible.

Writing to the Commission on Presidential Debates, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani argued that a fourth debate should be added to the current schedule of three, with the first moved up before early voting gets underway.

Giuliani noted that by the time of the first debate on Sept. 29, “as many as eight million Americans in 24 states will have already started voting.” Even more ballots will have been cast by the second and third debates, Oct. 15 and 22.

The CPD said it would not move the planned debates earlier. However, the group indicated that if both Trump and Biden want a fourth debate it would consider the request.

Both campaigns should act immediately to arrange a fourth event, in the interest of filling the gaps in this most unusual presidential campaign. Both candidates have been off the trail, with rallies and virtually all public appearances canceled. Democrats announced that Biden will not be going to the convention in Milwaukee to accept his nomination, opting to speak by video connection. Republicans will hold a modified convention in Charlotte but Trump, too, will appear via video.

At this point, nationally televised debates are all that remains of a conventional campaign. - More...
Sunday PM - August 09, 2020

Political Cartoon: Biden Basement Slogans
By Rick McKee ©2020, Counterpoint
Distributed to paid subscribers for publication by Cagle Cartoons, Inc.