News from Hughes » Highlights and 4th of July Greetings 2023

4th of July Greetings and Highlights

Coffee Chat July 8

I try not to inundate you with emails after the legislative session ends, but every once in a while, like with this email, I’ll send you a few items you might find relevant. Today, I wanted to be sure you knew you’re invited to my coffee chat this Saturday, July 8 at 9:00am. The flyer with location details is below. This is a great chance for you to give input as well as to ask questions about the wrap-up of the legislative session and the work ahead.

Time for Silent Majority to Speak Up

We are still standing up to ensure our girls have a fair, safe, and even playing field in sports. Support is gaining with a Gallup poll showing 69% of Americans agree athletes should only participate on teams that match their sex at birth, 26% disagree, and 5% are of no opinion.

Why am I bringing up this topic? We need the silent majority to speak up! Your voice of support is absolutely essential right now here in our state. The Alaska State School Board will be voting on a policy to protect girls’ sports on July 26. Written comments are due July 21; those willing and able to orally testify in support are needed the morning of July 26 too to speak before the Board by zoom/phone. Scroll down to the image below for details. The opposition is fewer in numbers overall but tends to show up in higher numbers. Let’s show up this time! I have multiple articles on this topic (protecting girls’ sports) you can read here.

Food Security Work

If you’re wondering how I’m working on your behalf during this interim period away from Juneau, the flyer below about farms is a good hint of one of my big focus areas this summer. I am the Chair of the statutory Alaska Food Strategy Task Force (AFSTF) which is picking up where the earlier short-term task force left off (the governor’s 2022 Alaska Food Security and Independence Task Force). It is made up of a 9-member executive board with an additional 27 members, each with knowledge and expertise in key areas related to food security.

The bulk of our work is during the interim so between the Task Force as a whole and its committees, we have spent a lot of time drilling down on issues. I have asked the committees to not just prioritize recommendations but to also to develop timeline estimates and suggested action plan steps. As part of this work, this summer I have been connecting in-person and by phone with farmers in Mat-Su and across the state, have visited farms in the Delta area and the Mat-Su Experiment Farm and will be visiting the Plants Material Center in Palmer as well as Fairbanks area farms.

Contact my office if you are interested in attending AFSTF meetings (some in-person, some by zoom) and/or would like to give public testimony. Be sure too to see the image below about nominating a farmer for the 2023 Farm Family of the Year!

What’s Next?

I will continue working on several fronts in preparation for the next session. The governor has discussed the possibility of a special session in October for work on a fiscal plan. Although I’ve been an outspoken fiscal plan proponent, after 8 years of the legislature kicking the can down the road, I see little chance for progress without something to incentivize and motivate those who have blocked movement of the fiscal plan components through the legislative process and instead have preferred using the PFD each year to pay for government.

Education funding within the base student allocation (BSA) might motivate some to get on board and support a comprehensive fiscal plan. During the session, I strongly advocated tying education funding to learning outcomes and directing funds to teachers and classrooms: I continue to promote this concept to help address our public school learning proficiency crisis (average proficiency in all grades, all subjects hovers around a statewide dreadful average of 30%). Without this tie and a fiscal plan so we know we can afford it, there’s little chance the BSA bill (SB52) will pass. If those legislators advocating for education funding would get on board with linking school funding to student outcomes and with a reasonable fiscal plan, we could help both our students and our state.

Keep scrolling, my friends!

Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom, so you don’t miss out on what may be relevant to you. In closing, I want to let you know how great it is during the interim to connect with many of you at meetings and events and as I am out and about. Along with enjoying more time for grandchildren, parades, and (soon) dipnetting, I truly treasure in-person interactions with you. Stop by my coffee chat on Saturday or call my office to set up a time to connect!

Working on your behalf,

P.S. Don’t be a stranger

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Hope to see you Saturday!

Time for the silent majority to speak up!

Support our farmers!

Wondering why temperatures have been so cool? It’s because this isn’t really summer, it’s road construction season!

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.