If the past is any guide, the Fairbanks news coverage of this debacle will be based on the press release from the state, which is pure campaign propaganda for Dunleavy and Fairbanks Mayor Jim Matherly.
Read MoreAmanda Holland, who held key positions in the Dunleavy administration on a temporary basis, is now one of the movers and shakers in a company called OrgShakers, a firm that received a no-bid contract from the Dunleavy administration worth $722,000.
Read MoreGov. Mike Dunleavy refuses to answer written questionnaires from Alaska news organizations, claiming he has such a long public record that news organizations can look up the answers on line. If you do that, you’ll find a long public record of evasion, deflection and political dodgeball.
Read MoreBy relying on state-paid “volunteers” for campaign work and claiming that campaign tasks are state business, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has run his campaign for nearly a year and paid next to nothing for campaign staff.
Read MoreVanity Fair writer T.A. Frank calls for a “reconsideration” of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a long piece in the Washington Post Magazine. He tries to elevate her decision to abandon the governor’s office in 2009 into a noble action. It’s nonsense.
Read MoreThe fault for abandoning the Chena River State Recreation Site in Fairbanks rests with Gov. Mike Dunleavy, legislators who didn’t question the budget plan and city and borough officials who have failed to call out this mismanagement.
Read MoreDunleavy has never answered the simple question of who in the governor’s office decided to reward Clark Penney with a no-bid contract. Dunleavy claimed he had no idea. Alaskans deserve an answer, especially now that Bob Penney has emerged again as a Dunleavy megadonor, giving $100,000 so far to the Dunleavy reelection campaign. Dunleavy’s brother in Texas, Francis Dunleavy, has given him $200,000 so far.
Read MoreThe truth is that Kelly Tshibaka’s parents were not homeless when they moved to Alaska in 1975, no matter how many times Tshibaka repeats the lie. They were camping.
Read MoreAlaska news organizations have failed to examine Tshibaka’s two-year tenure as administration commissioner and neglected to challenge her robotic assertions that Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him.
Read MoreIt’s no surprise that Sarah Palin swallows Donald Trump’s lies about who won the 2020 election, while Democrat Mary Peltola does not. But Nick Begich has refused to answer the question. He is trying to appeal to those who believe Trump’s lies without ever saying he believes Trump’s lies.
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Anyone in Alaska willing to give that much to Trump’s favorite charity is a candidate for the Golden Oosik Award.
When Sarah Palin performs in public, one of her stock lines is that she “has nothing to lose,” portraying herself as someone who no longer takes offense at what people say about her, a line she has been repeating since her 2008 campaign for vice president. But that’s not what the claimed in court during her lawsuit against the New York Times.
Read MoreBy courting Trump’s support and flattering the former president, thinking it will help their chances at the polls, Dunleavy, Palin and Tshibaka are willing to put their personal pursuit of power above all else, spreading dangerous lies that put our nation at risk.
Read MoreThe state has now sold the ferry Malaspina to political supporters of Dunleavy for $128,250. The pattern of neglect that led to this has not been examined in Alaska.
Read MoreDunleavy’s announcement does not say how or if the state plans to address the conflict of interest created by Rubenstein’s presence on board. Her father’s company manages about $825 million for the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Read MoreMuch of what Palin says is borrowed from the material she began to rehearse as a VP candidate and she still uses many of the same tired phrases in her rambling monologues about freedom and natural resources—she’s in favor of both—and her opposition to nefarious attempts by mysterious anti-American forces to deprive people of their rights.
Read MoreThe time demands of the Dunleavy reelection campaign dictated the decision to start selling lands in the Nenana agricultural area before the state worked out key details about access and electricity. The state says it will build access roads and get electricity to the site next year, but bidders are being told that there are no access roads, no power and no guarantee of either.
Read MoreIt will take millions in private investment with uncertain prospects for profit to develop large-scale agriculture in Nenana, but the state is putting the land up for auction with low minimum bids. The rushed nature of the sale is not about growing food, but about growing votes for Dunleavy.
Read MoreIn 2013, legislative lawyers told Dunleavy and his staff member, Bethany Marcum, that the matter is a complex one that would have to be decided by the Alaska Supreme Court. A key 1979 decision found that tuition grants for Sheldon Jackson University, a private college, were illegal under the Alaska Constitution.
Read MoreWhat’s more alarming than this attempt to circumvent the language of the Alaska Constitution about diverting public money to private schools is that Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor has a clear conflict of interest that should disqualify him from deciding the matter.
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