As an online tool for tracking some state spending in Alaska, the new Checkbook Alaska website is an important advance over what has gone before.
But the state needs to do much more to live up to the 2022 law that says “The Alaska Online Checkbook Act shall be construed in favor of disclosure and transparency.”
Read MoreIf the Alaska Supreme Court listens to what Sen. Mike Dunleavy claimed a decade ago, then Gov. Mike Dunleavy will lose his effort to funnel public funds to private schools and the Alaska Superior Court decision will be upheld.
On April 10, 2013 Sen. Mike Dunleavy said he knew it was illegal to allow public funds be used to pay tuition to allow a student to take even a single course in a private school.
Read MoreWhile Sen. Dan Sullivan stood in a room with other obsequious Republican senators, competing to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces, Sen. Lisa Murkowski found something better to do—have lunch with friends.
“I haven’t gotten any cards saying we wish you were there,” Murkowski told reporters, the Washington Post said.
Read MoreThe governor’s office has yet to explain why it falsely claimed to be gathering signatures for education petitions.
Read MoreThis is a reminder that Gov. Mike Dunleavy continues to pay Virginia publicist Mary Vought $5,000 a month for public relations work in Washington, D.C. under a questionable no-bid contract that has been extended or amended eight times without public justification or discussion.
Her husband is former federal bureaucrat Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist radical who is central to the Trump 2025 drive to remake the federal government and cater to Trump’s dictatorial whims. “Post-constitutional” is the euphemism in which Russell cloaks his scheme.
In a speech that didn’t get enough attention last year, Russell attacked legal immigrants to the United States, claiming that they refuse to assimilate. I suspect his real targets are not all legal immigrants, just those from what Trump calls “shithole countries.”
Read MoreThe Dunleavy administration is trying a new tactic on its state-funded data mining operation to promote non-existent “petitions” to boost Dunleavy’s efforts to direct more public money to private schools.
In 2019, Dunleavy claimed he was gathering signatures on a petition to submit to legislators to support a Permanent Fund Dividend of $3,000. He also claimed he had a petition to cap government spending. And a petition to pay back PFDs.
But there were no petitions. He was simply collecting names and addresses of people who could be called upon for political support, disguising the nature of the exercise by calling them “petitions.”
He’s doing the same thing again.
Read MoreA Fairbanks high school math teacher and mother of two has begun to fill in the gap for those who have asked for analysis of the recent charter school study touted endlessly by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Education Commissioner Deena Bishop and many Republican legislators.
West Valley High School teacher Beth Zirbes, who has master’s degrees in math and statistics from UAF, makes a clear case that the situation is far more complex than the simplistic portrayal by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Education Commissioner Deena Bishop and many Republican legislators.
I commend Zirbes for devoting many hours of her own time to try and put this study in context, showing its strengths and weaknesses and why more work needs to be done. This should not be the end of the analysis, but the beginning.
Read MoreAnchorage attorney Craig Richards, who helped defend Gov. Mike Dunleavy against the recall, has been getting $12,000 a month from the state for the past year as “statehood defense coordinator.”
As I’ve written here before, the no-bid contract the Dunleavy administration created for Richards violated numerous procurement regulations.
Now he has a new contract, which again makes a mockery of the state procurement laws. Richards has basically become a part-time political employee of Dunleavy.
Read MoreFairbanks volunteers who have joined Moms for Liberty are looking for books to ban in local school libraries, including books they have not read.
It’s no surprise that they have found plenty of objectionable words and want to read them out loud at school board meetings.
Members of the club, including Ruth Ewig, Gail McBride, and Cynthia Wozniak, want their opinions about acceptable books and objectionable words to become the law of the land. McBride and Wozniak made that clear in testimony to the school board this week.
They denounced “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, with McBride and Wozniak saying it should be immediately removed from school library shelves. Lots of other books should be pulled as well, they said.
Read More“As the nation’s largest non-profit legal firm solely dedicated to religious liberty, our legal services are always provided at no charge to you,” the Texas-based First Liberty Institute says.
The Dunleavy administration has chosen three lawyers of the First Liberty Institute to help defend the practice of using state funds for private schools, contrary to the language of the Alaska Constitution.
The Alaska Constitution says, “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or private educational institution.”
Read MoreWall Street Journal reporter Molly Ball wrote: “Sen. Dan Sullivan stood beside the newly elected Taiwanese vice president in an orchid-draped room of the island’s presidential palace, making a promise that wasn’t wholly within his power to keep.”
“This is the message our bipartisan delegation wants to send to the people of Taiwan: ‘You can count on the United States of America,’ said the silver-haired Alaska Republican, a recently retired Marine.”
There is nothing “wholly” about this.
Sullivan never questions the brilliance of the convicted felon. And Sullivan cannot keep any promises to Taiwan if Trump wins because a Trump promise is as good as a degree from Trump University.
Read MoreGov. Mike Dunleavy is spending state money on another data mining expedition on Facebook, claiming he has petitions on parental rights and education reform.
Are the petitions real? What do they say? Who will get the petitions? Who knows?
“By clicking submit, you agree to send your info to Governor Mike Dunleavy, who agrees to use it according to their privacy policy,” the Dunleavy ad says. “Facebook will also use it subject to our data policy, including to auto-fill forms for ads.”
One of Dunleavy’s new ads features a fake photo of four lecherous old characters with oversize noses polluting the room with cigar smoke and a headline, “They don’t want you to have parental rights.”
Other ads with alleged petitions claim that teachers are quitting their jobs because the Legislature failed to approve Dunleavy’s teacher bonus plan and families are fleeing the state because of a lack of education “reform,” a word means whatever you want it to mean. Everybody loves reform. And everyone loves parental rights.
Read MoreFour of the six Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation trustees refused to follow a legislative directive to close their new five-employee Anchorage office, claiming the Legislature doesn’t have the power to stop them.
This is not a smart move by Jason Brune, Adam Crum, Ryan Anderson and Gabrielle Rubenstein, who may think they are free to ignore the Legislature because they operate with the political blessing and protection of Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
Read MoreWhoever wrote the column in the Wall Street Journal published under the name of Alaska Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum has him puffing himself up for a national audience, claiming that he manages more than $138 billion for Alaskans and state retirees.
“I manage more than $138 billion in fiduciary assets as Alaska’s commissioner of revenue and as a trustee of the state’s retirement management system and the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.,” says Crum, who earned a master’s degree in environental health sciences in 2015 at Johns Hopkins.
As a legislative candidate in 2016, Crum described himself as a “business owner, truck driver and carpenter.” He also said gold could be a significant revenue source for the state.
Read MoreSuzanne Downing has yet to retract the story on her website that falsely claims Larry Persily, one of the most accomplished political reporters in Alaska, can’t be trusted when he talks about taxes because he doesn’t have a current Alaska business license.
“Take your tax advice from this guy???’ Downing said on Facebook.
Better to take advice from someone with Persily’s strong credentials than a person who can’t look up a business license on the state website.
Read MoreThree Fairbanks school board members are taking issue with assembly candidate Tammie Wilson’s claim that Hunter Elementary School provides such a poor education, based on standardized test scores, that no students should be attending school there.
I asked all the school board members to comment and receieved responses from Brandy Harty, Meredith Maple and Bobby Burgess.
Read MoreFairbanks financial planner Josh Church complains in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that I quoted him out of context, but fails to give any specifics to back up his claim.
I did not quote him out of context.
Here is what I wrote on May 18, an opinion column in which I said that Church has extreme views on education and politics that he concealed from the public.
Church was the spokesman for the group Tammie Wilson created to oppose the education ballot proposition and to participate in the October municipal elections.
Read MoreThe most important piece in the Financial Times story is that Rubenstein is now directly contradicting—through her father’s spokesman—claims made in emails by two of the leading executives of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.
She claims she did not set up an APFC meeting with her dad and that she did not attempt to get investment associate Catherine Hatch, a corporation employee, fired. Her spokesman claims these are “falsehoods.”
Read MoreIt’s not the leak that matters, it’s the substance of the leak, the conflicts of interest.
But the trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation want to focus on preventing future leaks, ignoring the behavior of trustee Gabrielle Rubenstein as documented by Marcus Frampton, the chief investment officer of the corporation, and Allen Waldrop, the director of private equity for the fund.
Read MoreBorough Assembly candidate Tammie Wilson claims the standardized test scores at Hunter Elementary School are so low that no students should be going to school there.
"Would you attend a school in which 15.69 were proficient in English, 9.8 percent was proficient in math and 28.26 in science?” Wilson lectured the Fairbanks school board Tuesday.
“I don't think many of you would send your kids there and I don't think we should be sending any kids to there or find out why they're so low."
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