Dunleavy's posturing, pandering and appeal to ignorance

Here is how the former Alaska lawyer behind the Wickersham’s Conscience blog sizes up the political posturing of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his latest administrative order.

His political analysis is succinct, right on the money and better than anything else I’ve read on the matter.

From Wickersham’s Conscience:

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy issued an Administrative Order November 2 which provided, among other things,

[T]he Dunleavy Administration is ordering:

1. The Attorney General to review any federal vaccine mandate issued by the Biden Administration and determine whether there are legal grounds to challenge such mandates in court.

2. To the extent allowable by law, no state agency shall participate in, or use state funds or personnel, to further a federal vaccine mandate for employers.

Perhaps Governor Dunleavy is unaware that Alaska law mandates each school student in Alaska, unless exempted, be vaccinated for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chicken pox, and haemophilus influenza type B. It’s a total of seven vaccines, some of them involving as many as three shots. And they work; those diseases are pretty much eradicated in Alaska schools as a consequence of that set of immunization requirements.

So why the gigantic fuss about vaccination for a coronavirus that has killed nearly three-quarters of a million Americans? Could it be – gasp! – political posturing? Pandering to your base? An appeal to ignorance? An absolutely, criminally cynical attempt to get yourself re-elected, no matter how many deaths you cause?

And there’s this:

The U.S. Army Alaska ordered all troops to get the COVID-19 vaccination. All of them.

The U.S. Army Northern Command requires all soldiers to get a total of twelve vaccinations.

Alaska day care workers, prison guards, college students and many others have mandatory vaccine requirements.

Alaska Airlines requires vaccinations for all of its employees.

And Governor Dunleavy, ask your Attorney General – whoever it is this week – about the Supremacy Clause. You know, the part of the U.S. Constitution that says where the U.S. laws and your silly edicts contradict, the U.S. laws pretty much always control.

While you are thinking about those points, consider this one: 26.9% of the State of Alaska’s budget is federal funding. Your silly posturing, your idiot edicts, are jeopardizing more than a quarter of Alaska’s already strained finances.

We get that you want to be re-elected. We get that there’s little, maybe nothing, you won’t do to attempt that goal. But, to quote the late, great Joseph Welch,

You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Joseph C. Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy, June 9, 1954

(Most of the blog posts on Wickersham’s Conscience are the work of a retired Alaska attorney, nature photographer, would-be geologist and fly fisherman who moved to Idaho in 2015 after more than 60 years in Alaska. He began his blog in 2008. As WC notes, “Leaving Alaska hasn’t stopped him from writing about Alaska.”)