Tongue Depresser in Juneau
Republican fart jokes on the House floor? No prob. But let a Democrat show a little tongue, and the capital screeches to a halt. A crucially important presser was held in the Capitol yesterday. Sure there are bills regarding transportation, energy, oil taxes, finance, education, uteruses… But the Interior Alaska Delegation of the House had some super serious stuff that needed to be dealt with. In the Speaker’s Chambers, belonging at the moment to Mike Chenault, members of the press were gathered – statewide newspapers, TV stations, journals, the Associated Press – all to hear that Rep. Scott Kawasaki stuck…
Corrupt Bastard Comes to School Board **VIDEO UPDATE**
UPDATE: Mr. Corkran withdrew his name for consideration on Sunday afternoon. On Monday, Thomas P. Corkran will be sworn in as a School Board member. He was selected by the Anchorage School Board after four rounds of voting to fill the seat vacated by Gretchen Guess. The board had boiled the candidates down to two, and selected Corkran over the CEO of Avant-Garde Learning Alliance, Kameron Perez-Verdia. There were 41 applications: why did they pick this guy? Do our School Board members know how to Google? I’m hoping the answer is no. Why? Because the alternative is spooky. Mr….
Palin Fiddles While Alaska Burns
Former half-term governor Sarah Palin marches ever-onward toward becoming the Don Rickles of the conservative right. It’s a lofty goal with plenty of competition. Alaskans will remember that even back when Palin was governor, she was never happier than when she was mocking and deriding the Republican establishment. In her home town of Wasilla, it was then Senate President Lyda Green. Later she graduated to throwing tomatoes at Governor Frank Murkowski. Several of those tomatoes were direct hits, resulting in her ascension to the Governor’s Mansion. She was also the presence behind the scenes of an attempted but failed Republican…
Senate Votes to Give Big Oil Billions
Here’s your highlight reel from the Senate oil tax debate. Late Wednesday night the Alaska State Senate voted 11-9 to give billions from the state treasury to the oil industry. A 10-10 vote would have killed the bill. Amendments and debate took all day, and went well into the night. The bottom line is that the senate voted to give away the farm, in exchange for nothing. No increased promise of production, exploration, or jobs. It might incentivize them to do something though. Magically. If we’re lucky. That’s the argument of the 11 Senators who voted for this historically bad…
(GetEr)Dunleavy Steps on His Own Twitter
Oh, dear. Brand spanking new Senator Mike Dunleavy (R) from the Mat-Su Valley, all eager and fresh out of the chute, steps into Juneau and on to his own… Tweet. Now, to non-Alaskans, or those who do not eagerly follow the continual shenanigans an skulduggery of the Alaskan political scene, this may seem like just a regular old tweet. But to those who lived here in the 2000’s, or what we in Alaska like to call the “Naught-ies,” the hashtag #geterdone would by hilarious, if it weren’t so incredibly eerie and seemingly prophetic. You see, way back in the mid-Naughties,…
2012 Parting Shots
If you live in the Lower 48, you may be under the illusion that your state knows how to do “trashy” and “no way—that’s not for real!” It doesn’t. Not compared to Alaska. So sit back with some popcorn and check out the pros. Parenting Fail If you’re going to engage your own son in LSD-fueled hand-to-hand combat in the street over a woman (!), at least don’t do it in the nude. In Spenard, that makes you such a cliché. Poor Kids Get Baked Speaking of excessive nudity, House Finance Co-Chair Bill Stoltze refused to allow a vote on…
Sitting Legislator Calls Opponent “A-hole”
The votes in the state’s two closest legislative races are in. Senator Hollis French will return to Juneau after winning his race against Bob Bell by 54 votes. And 24-year old Democratic candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins managed to eek out a victory in the District 34 House race by only 32 votes, meaning that his opponent Republican Bill Thomas can ask for a recount if he wants one. Kreiss-Tomkins whose mother is a beloved physician in the district, ran an assertive person-to-person campaign, visiting all the small islands that comprise most of the district, and really getting to know his constituents….
Bob Bell Enabled Corrupt Bastards
I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be more honest for us to turn our elections into auctions. Put a law or candidate on eBay and let the bidding begin. Of course school lunch subsidies, minimum wage and other “special interests” wouldn’t have a hope, but a governor willing to give $10 billion to the oil industry would be going-going-gone in seconds. Wait a minute … Did I forget? We used to have public policy on the auction block. A company called Veco Corp., which depended on Alaska’s oil majors to survive, purchased favors from elected politicians for decades. That finally…
Parnell Headlines Evangelical Fundraiser to Break Up Bipartisan Coalition
Governor Sean Parnell will headline a fundraiser today at 4:30pm for Alaska Family Action, the political wing of the Alaska Family Council headed by Jim Minnery. The Alaska Family Council is an activist group whose “pro family” agenda includes promoting extreme anti-choice and homophobic policies. They also advocate public funding of private religious schools, and other “matters of religious liberty.” And try to screw up elections by encouraging voter fraud. So, why is a sitting governor headlining this fundraiser? The answer is two-fold. First, it is because he aligns with everything espoused by the organization. His extreme stances on social…
Schaeffer Cox Trial – The Book of Armaments, Chapter Three
I rushed in to the court house on Day 3 of the trial of Schaeffer Cox, Coleman Barney, and Lonnie Vernon, and did the security drill. I passed the first checkpoint, but the second screening caused the security man to say, “Do you have any batteries in there?” Asking me if I have any batteries in my bag is like asking me if there’s a loose button in my house. I’m sure there must be, but I cannot verify it for sure, or tell you exactly where it is… And so the rifling through my giant saddle bag began –…