We Found the Worst Candidate in Alaska!
Goodness knows, Alaska is a veritable banquet table of bad Republican entrees this cycle. But we think we may have found the worst – the Jell-O salad with liverwurst of candidates. David Nelson May Be the Worst Candidate Ever Just have to say. This 23-year old recent Florida transplant, who has lived in the district the exact minimum amount of time necessary to run for office, is lacking in just about everything but gall. Let’s start here: Lying about military service The Official Election Pamphlet (OEP) is mailed out by the Division of Elections before every election and includes information…
The call is coming from inside the House!
The End is Just the Beginning… DAY 122 IS DAY 1 The regular legislative session is over. The constitution says that the 121st day shall be the last! Unless of course they extend it for 10 days. Or unless someone calls a special session to deal with particular legislation, which is exactly what happened last night. Before legislators gaveled out, or had the chance to call themselves back to special session, Gov. Mike Dunleavy summoned the press to tell them that he’d be calling a special session on the crime bill, the PFD, and the budget. No…
Governor/Koch Brothers’ Roadshow Ends. Alaska Shows Up.
TALL TALES from Juneau Eyes on the Dunleavy/Babcock Administration The End of the Road(show) That’s all, folks! The Dunleavy/Americans for Prosperity/Koch brothers’ roadshow hit the end of the road. Let’s just say it didn’t go quite as the sponsors or the governor had hoped. After a giant protest and a RECALL DUNLEAVY banner in Anchorage, and a schooling in civic engagement in Nome, the roadshow had its final stops in Fairbanks and Wasilla. There were notably zero stops in Southeast where the governor plans to gut the Marine Highway system. THE ROAD SHOW, FAIRBANKS – THE 400 Fairbanks was having…
Plastic Bag Ban on the Horizon for Anchorage?
One word: #PlasticBagBan That’s what residents came to testify about at last night’s Anchorage Assembly meeting. Many communities in Alaska have already banned plastic bags including Wasilla, Palmer, Emmonak and several other rural villages. Now it’s Anchorage’s turn to decide. My hunch? We’ll all be doing THIS fairly soon, and good. In 1998 a voter initiative on the ballot to ban billboards read: The bill states findings and intent that Alaska be forever free of billboards. It defines billboards as any signs or forms of outdoor advertising not allowed by law. The bill also repeals a law recently passed by…
Alaska’s Monied Masters & the Senate Race
It was probably five years ago when the Koch Brothers hit my radar. I was at a conference of grassroots community folks and one guy in particular was describing these eccentric brothers, born into wealth, who were hell-bent on remaking America. Their predatory libertarian hybrid philosophy wasn’t new to me. I grew up around cranky old men who lived in cabins and argued with each other around the big table at the Anchor River Inn. Oh, they’d all come to Alaska to get away from America. The difference between their rants and the Koch Brothers? They were poor. All they…
Religious Groups and Koch Bros. Target Voters
Editor’s Note: The Mudflats team has been reporting on a developing story here in Anchorage (LINK, LINK) . Zach Roberts, whose journalistic efforts on this topic have been recognized on a national level has this piece cross-posted at TruthOut.org. ********************* In audio obtained from a Family Council fundraiser in Anchorage, Alaska, Truthout has learned that a number of right-wing religious groups, including Focus on the Family, have been working with the Koch brothers to target voters across the country using their multimillion-dollar voter database known as Themis. At a fundraiser held at the Anchorage Middle Eastern restaurant Aladdin’s last week,…
Money Changers in the Temple
Someone called me a communist this week. Pop Moore was a teacher and principal at Nikolaevsk, a Russian village near Homer, from 1970 until 1992. My mother taught school there. I grew up hearing stories from Old Believers who had escaped Soviet communism, about barns full of men, women and children burned to death for not renouncing their faith. I saw handwritten holy books that had been strapped to the heads of men swimming across rivers into China to escape, before China went communist. I was about as tall as the post office counter when a clerk said to Pop,…
Alaska Gets Gouged
I’m never surprised by the unabashed glee with which those on the right shill for the rich and powerful, but the Republican support for the fuel price gougers here in Alaska has even me flabbergasted. Alaska’s gas prices are through the roof. Why? Oiligopoly. Two refiners control virtually 100 percent of the gasoline market — with Tesoro controlling 80 percent and Flint Hills, owned by the Koch brothers, controlling 20 percent. You know the Koch brothers: job creators extraordinaire. They’ve enjoyed a decade of low taxes, fired 13,000 workers since 2007 and seen their net worth skyrocket from $34 billion…
ALEC v. the Middle Class
By Thomas Dewar The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed corporations. —Thomas Jefferson ALEC is a dating service for state legislators and corporations. —Ed Muir, AFT Who Is ALEC? If you really want to know who and what is behind something in government, follow the money. It’s not a coincidence that the recent assault on workers and their unions occurred simultaneously in different states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey and others. Or that, closer to home, there is now a war on Alaska’s public schools. Funded…
“Superintendent” Sullivan’s Education Summit — What is the Goal?
In a previous post on the “Anti-Public Education Agenda”, we discussed how corporations and right-wing radicals were driving the “school choice” and education reform movements nationally and statewide. However, no one has played politics in this arena quite the way that Mayor Dan Sullivan has here in Anchorage: — Since the early days of his Mayorship, Dan Sullivan began waging an all-out war against public employees …especially those who are unionized. — Throughout his term, Sullivan has continued a pattern of putting hand-picked highly-partisan candidates in major appointments and to outwardly support them in supposed non-partisan races against people who…