First: A joyful, heartfelt thank you to each volunteer for the time and positive energies you gave to a very successful Alaska Peace Center booth at this year’s Tanana Valley State Fair! Even though traffic past the booth was somewhat lower this year, donations and sales were excellent, including our support for KWRK radio. You reported many valuable conversations, and more folks than usual expressed interest in the Alaska Peace Center. Your Presence for Peace resonated in a very special way this year. Thank you!
Second: Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by! It was wonderful to greet folks again after the more-than-a-year shutdown. The next APC meeting will be announced shortly, including a current Zoom link.
Third: The results of the Bean Poll are attached and discussed below. This was an opportunity to designate how you would like your federal income tax dollars distributed, instead of how they actually go.
Finally: Our latest newsletter, from March 2021, highlights the projects, events and our partner news from the past year and more. If you have suggestions for APC activities or goals that would mean a lot to you, please reply with your input!
Thank you so much to everyone. Peace and blessings, Maia Genaux for the Alaska Peace Center, in the unceded territory of the Chena and Tanana peoples.
Bean Poll Results: The question was: If you have 20 beans representing the federal income tax you pay, how would you choose to distribute them among the 6 categories we offered, listed here.
The results were:1) Environment 23%, 2) Healthcare 21%, 3) Education 20%, 4) Infrastructure 17%, 5) Other 10%, 6) Military 9%.
We offered this Bean Poll at the Tanana Valley State Fair, July 30-August 8, and also at the Renewable Energy Fair the following weekend. This was not a scientific poll! It was done out of informal curiosity and a desire to engage the public a bit.
Nonetheless, the results are interesting, and my effort (moderately defensible) to understand the results, in the context of the actual proposed 2022 federal budget (spending), is presented in the document linked to below. It might change the structure of next year’s poll — or not!
A summary of the total proposed 2022 federal spending, by our categories could look like:
1) Other 39% (w/ Social Security), 2) Military 28% (w/ interest on debt), 3) Healthcare 21% (w/ Medicare and Medicaid), 4) Education 3%, 5) Infrastructure 2%, 6) Environment 0-1%
Bean Poll Analysis (with pie charts).
Note: Income tax is about 1/2 of total revenue, and total revenue does not cover the total spending.
Don’t get me started on all the other things I learned! But feedback is welcome!
Peace and blessings, Maia
Alaska Peace Center 