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Alaska Center for Public Policy Newsletter |  |
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Greetings From Our New Downtown Office... But first, an important announcement if you have unintentionally received the Alaska Center for Public Policy Newsletter. You may permanently unsubscribe from this newsletter by scrolling to the bottom of the newsletter and clicking on SafeUnsubscribe. Otherwise, read on! We have exciting news. The Center's new office is located at 441 West Fifth, Suite 405. However, we are only partially moved in, primarily because our phone and Internet provider lost the paperwork for the installation of both. After a "frank exchange," we have established that telecommunications should be up and running by the last week in July. Ironically, that corresponds with the first week of my vacation which will last until mid-August. Sometime after that, we will have an open house. Meanwhile, we are looking for donated furniture such as a conference table that seats eight to ten, and two desks or computer workstations. Thanks for your support. And, yes, there is more good news. We are now the proud owners of a completely rebuilt web site. Until recently, the main ACPP website and the ACPP blog were two separate web sites running on two different types of software. Now they have been combined into one efficient, easily maintained content management system which will make it easier for us to provide you with the public policy information you need. Please take a look at it and tell us how you think we can improve it. Lawrence D. Weiss Ph.D., M.S., Executive Director
"Mandatory arbitration clauses are used to deny millions of Americans their right to sue in court. Buried in the fine print of many form contracts?for employment, rental, credit, phone service, and insurance?are mandatory arbitration clauses that waive the right to access the courts. They force individuals to argue their cases through private arbitration, a costly private legal system that favors defendants." I would like to draw your attention to an excellent policy brief on the ubiquitous and harmful mandatory arbitration clauses that are almost impossible to avoid in today's society. The analysis was done by the Center for Policy Alternatives, "the nation?s only nonpartisan nonprofit organization working to strengthen the capacity of state legislators to lead and achieve progressive change.?
July 1 has come and gone, and Senate Bill 141 has been implemented. This means that new public employees in the state of Alaska--such as police, firefighters, and schoolteachers--will have no pension plan in addition to not being eligible for Social Security as public employees. This makes public employees in the state of Alaska the most vulnerable public employees in the entire United States, because there is no other state where public employees have neither a traditional defined benefit pension, nor Social Security. Early this month Superior Court Judge Larry Weeks denied a request by several Alaskan unions to issue an injunction against the state and block implementation of the new defined contribution retirement plan. You can read selected quotes from Judge Weeks regarding his decision, and you can read a memorandum which outlines the argument used by a coalition of labor unions in this case, in a recent blog posting at the ACPP web site. In addition, there are a number of recent blog postings that discuss the broader issues of retirement security in Alaska.
For every one dollar we get in a tax cut, we are burdened with over three dollars of new debt. A new report jointly released by the Alaska Center for Public Policy and by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) finds that the ?borrow-and- spend? fiscal policies of the Bush administration have saddled most Alaskans with a debt burden that far exceeds the value of the meager tax cuts we have received since 2001. You can find the complete article on this subject, including a link to a detailed analysis of the tax consequences for Alaskan families, in a recent blog posting at the ACPP web site. |
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