The office of Gov. Mike Dunleavy contacted me today to report a “glaring error” in this blog post and suggest that I take down the post and rewrite it. According to the governor’s spokesman, Russell and Mary Vought ended their long-time marriage in 2023.

Now we know more about the Vought relationship than we do about what Mary is doing for $5,000 a month under a no-bid contract that has been extended time after time since 2020.

Mary Vought is in charge of PR for the Heritage Foundation, which led Project 2025. Russell Vought is a key contributor of Project 2025. They have two children.

“Families comprised of a married mother, father and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,” says Project 2025.

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I’m sure it is uncomfortable for former Sen. Mark Begich and former Sen. Tom Begich to have their nephew, Nick Begich the Third, espousing ideas that contradict the positions taken by Mark and Tom during their days in office.

But with their deliberate silence about Nick III, they are effectively endorsing him.

Tom Begich submitted a column to the Anchorage Daily News saying he’s fed up with Donald Trump and his “enemy within” threats.

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Suzanne Downing, the voice of Trumpism in Alaska, whined Sunday about those comparing Trump’s rally to a pro-Nazi event held at the Garden in 1939.

Downing, who advertises herself as “A Force for Good,” falsely claimed that Hitler headlined the event in 1939 at what she falsely called “Madison Square Gardens.”

There is no evidence that Hitler ever traveled to the United States.

According to Downing’s logic, which she falsely claimed is the Democrats’ logic, all of those who have ever appeared at the Garden are now to be branded as Nazis.

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“Sadly,” Senate candidate Rep. Mike Cronk of Tok complained on Facebook a few days back, “politics of negativity has become the norm. Voters are tired of it. Again, thank you for your support and voting positive!”

“Where there is fear, there is often desperation. Where there is desperation, integrity and character are too often compromised,” Cronk claims.

Sadly, that paean to the power of positive thinking comes from a guy who is lying about his Senate opponent, Borough Assembly member Savannah Fletcher.

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The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, which limits public involvement to whatever it can get away with, plans to act Wednesday on a plan to draw $20 million from a slush fund for new oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Before AIDEA acts, there should be a real public hearing with real public notice. Something far more than the limited opportunity that AIDEA is giving Wednesday at 9 a.m.

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At first glance, the obvious hole in the new Dunleavy data center drive is that he started it with a September 5 form letter to top executives of the tech companies, a missive that was no better than a piece of junk mail.

The state employee or employees who wrote the letter for Dunleavy didn’t even bother to revise the text of each letter to mention anything specific about Microsoft, Google, Apple or Meta in the body of the message, simply referring to each company as “your organization.”

It didn’t matter if he was addressing Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook or Satya Narayana Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, the letter was exactly the same.

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If Donald Trump wins the presidency a second time, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has an exit strategy from the struggles of state government.

“I would not rule it out,” Dunleavy told reporter Nat Herz when asked about whether he would seek a job under Trump. Dunleavy said he hasn’t had “that conversation” with Trump.

Dunleavy could have responded that he intends to fulfill his duties as governor and that he has no intention of quitting. “I would not rule it out,” is what a politician says when he is dreaming of a new job.

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The longer this ridiculous bureaucratic battle goes on, the more money and time will be wasted and the more uncertainty will be created about which road projects will move ahead and which will be delayed or cancelled.

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Former Anchorage Rep. Tom McKay should not be drawing his state paycheck as a legislator. Under state law he is no longer a legislator, regardless of House Speaker Caythy Tilton’s claims.

Read the state law—a legislator who resigns immediately cannot withdraw that resignation. McKay resigned when Gov. Mike Dunleavy rewarded him with a new job that McKay is ineligible to take for at least a year.

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Reporter Richard Fineberg won a national business journalism award for a meticulous investigation of an early version of the Alaska gas pipeline dream in 1979.

Fineberg’s trip to New York City to collect the $5,000 cash prize left a lasting impression on Howard Weaver, the Alaska newspaperman who at the time was the editor of “The Alaska Advocate,” where Fineberg’s treatise had appeared.

“Richard, a banjo-playing railroad buff, flew as far as Seattle but then hopped freights from there to New York and back. He told me he kept the check in his shoe for safekeeping on the return leg,” Weaver wrote in his autobiography.

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Republican Congressional candidate Nick Begich the Third has tried hard to distance himself from a company owned by his father, Nick Begich Jr., an enterprise that remains one of Begich the Third’s largest income sources.

Begich the Third claims he has nothing to do with Earthpulse Press or any of the ideas promoted on its defunct website about mind control, weather control, government conspiracies, etc. He merely collects money from the company as a 17 percent owner.

That’s not exactly true. For the past 12 years, Begich the Third has been a company director, treasurer and secretary of Earthpulse Press.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy has spent $9,640 of state money on partisan political ads, many of which referred to “petitions'“ on education reforms and parental rights.

There were never any petitions. It was a scam.

He was simply collecting names and addresses of people who could be called upon for political support.

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The funeral service for Dick Olson, long a mainstay of KJNP radio and television, will be Friday at 11 a.m. at True North Church, followed Saturday by a memorial potlatch at the David Salmon Tribal Hall.

I always enjoyed talking to Dick when our paths crossed in Fairbanks, as they often did for decades. He attended many public events representing the Gospel Station at the Top of the Nation and always did so with a friendly smile and a welcoming presence.

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“The Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) concludes the 2024 federal fiscal year with the successful delivery of over $1B of transportation related projects,” the department claims.

Well, that’s part of the story.

The department is still not telling the whole truth about the State Transportation Improvement Plan and the August redistribution debacle.

The DOT deception machine is working overtime, trying to conceal failures by pretending they didn’t happen and simply proclaiming victory.

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Billionaire Jeff Hildebrand is more likely to show up in the news for his exploits in exclusive polo clubs across the country or for raising money for Donald Trump than for any of the details on what his company, Hilcorp, has in mind for Alaska.

Hilcorp certainly likes it that way.

Even in Houston his limited name recognition is such that on April 3 this year, the Houston Chronicle headlined a short profile this way: “Who is little known billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand? What to know about the richest man in Houston.”

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Alaska news organizations and political leaders have never paid enough attention to Jeff Hildebrand, though he is the single most important player in the Alaska economy and one of the richest men in America.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump asked the oil and gas industry this year to give $1 billion to Trump’s campaign as a “deal.” He promised to reward industry owners with tax cuts and other government actions—an exchange that sounds exactly like bribery.

Hildebrand was one of four oil tycoons who hosted a Houston fundraiser for Trump in May at which the host committee members gave $250,000 each or $500,000 per couple, the Financial Times reported.

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A fresh reminder that former President Donald Trump does not know the name of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and that he continues to lie about the oil prospects of the coastal plain.

"We have Bagram in Alaska,” Trump said in a campaign event in Michigan, confusing ANWR with an airfield in Afghanistan.

“They say it might be as big, might be bigger than, all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn't do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done,” said Trump.

“In their first week they terminated it,” Trump said, while host Sarah Huckabee Sanders nodded in approval.

Trump has been lying about ANWR and its oil potential for six years. He has also lying about the fossil fuel reserves of the United States and lying that oil production would increase fourfold with him as president.

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As I reported here on August 28, the state missed out on more than $50 million in federal funding for highway projects because of the continuing troubles with the handling of transportation planning.

The Anchorage Daily News picked up on the story Sunday, with a story that includes the claim that the Dunleavy administration is pleased that it only received $19 million of the $71.4 million sought through the so-called August redistribution process.

“We are actually pleased to have captured this $19 million,” said Shannon McCarthy of the transportation public relations department.

The transportation department may be pleased with itself. I don’t know why.

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Private companies that do business or want to do business with the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation often pick up the tab for corporation employees to travel to office sites, conferences and other meetings.

There are rules in the Alaska Administrative Manual about how to handle this, but the Permanent Fund has not followed them.

With more and more companies offering to pay for travel, the fund is proposing to change the way it accounts for these trips to come into alignment with the state regulations.

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