Court Delivers Double-Whammy Over Pebble
Friday, the Alaska Supreme Court issued two decisions that will have far-reaching impacts about how the Department of Natural Resources conducts business in hard rock mineral exploration, and the ability of the State and others to chill opposition. While the two cases involved the Pebble Prospect exploration, neither will impact the development of that mine. Background In 1988, Teck Cominco drilled the first exploration wells in what would become the 360 square-mile Pebble Prospect. By 2010, ownership of the Pebble claims would change hands from Teck Cominco to Northern Dynasty Minerals to the Pebble Limited Partnership. Collectively, those entities would…
Alaskans Call Out Bully Governor
About 80 people gathered in the spirit of righteous indignation today outside the Anchorage office of Governor Sean Parnell. Protesters called on Parnell to drop the administrations campaign to recoup legal fees from a lawsuit involving the proposed Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay. He’s demanding a million dollars from 88-year old Vic Fischer, an original framer of the Alaska Constitution, and 80-year old former First Lady of Alaska, and others. The stalwart bunch fought the state and sued unsuccessfully for the public’s right to know about exploration work at the mine site. And if you’re wondering about the answer…
Torches and Pitchforks for Parnell
There are certain times when a government crosses a line, and there’s really no other way to adequately express one’s feelings about it than by deploying torches and pitchforks. The glinting of the tines in the firelight, the surging of the crowd, the bellowing of moral outrage… Ahhh. There’s really nothing like it to get the ol’ blood pumping. Well, I guess there is another way, but I’m reasonably sure it’s illegal, and though it might be satisfying the irony of retaliating against a bully by tarring and feathering him could not be overlooked, and might garner said bully some…
Parnell Targets Former First Lady
Obama is a socialist. Health care is communism. Closed parks are fascism. It’s weird the way words and labels get thrown around these days. Apparently dictionaries are one of the things some people no longer believe in. Here’s a word that doesn’t get thrown around but should: corporatocracy. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a society or system that is governed or controlled by corporations.” I joke about living in a resource colony but it isn’t actually funny. When the Corrupt Bastards Club was running the Legislature, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski asked them to effectively strip Alaskans of the right to…
Alaska vs. Outside Corporations, the Choice is Ours
By Sen. Hollis French Two recent news items out of Norway caught my attention. The first happened April 30 when Gov. Parnell went there to discuss tax policy. The second was the announcement on May 6 that Norway had decided to make a change to its oil tax laws. Now, I don’t know whether the governor was responsible for the May 6 tax change. But I like to imagine that the Norwegians listened very carefully to the governor’s reasons for lowering taxes here. Being the sober and meticulous people they are, they ran a complex cost-benefit economic analysis on his…
Former First Lady Smacks Down Gov’s Oil Tax Plan
Today former Governor Jay Hammond’s widow Bella and his daughter Heidi Hammond have called for a TV ad from a group calling themselves “Resource Full Alaska” exploiting Jay Hammond to be stopped immediately. The ad has the brass cojones to compare Jay Hammond, arguably Alaska’s most popular former governor, to its current oil shill CEO Sean Parnell. The ad calls on the legislature to pass Parnell’s oil tax plan which would drain the state’s coffers to the tune of $2 billion a year. “I was never consulted about this television ad,” said the former First Lady. “Jay Hammond never would…
Pebble Mine, Dirty Gold, and the Corporate War on Alaska’s Salmon.
[This article is cross-posted at The Huffington Post] A lawsuit was filed today claiming that all Pebble Mine’s state permits violate the Alaska constitution. Skulduggery surrounding Pebble Mine? Imagine that. On the receiving end of these legal accusations is the State Department of Natural Resources. The suit was filed today on behalf of eight communities in the Bristol Bay area by plaintiffs including Vic Fischer, one of the drafters of the Alaska Constitution, and Bella Hammond widow of the revered Governor Jay Hammond who had previously said “I think Jay would first and foremost think of protecting that area, mainly the fish and…