Gov. Mike Dunleavy and state transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson need to be honest with the public about the new plan to spend $200 million or more on road and bridge upgrades between Tetlin and Fairbanks to benefit the Kinross trucking plan.
Read MoreThe new Alaska elections director, hired for the job with no experience running elections, is off to a bad start.
Carol Beecher, a Republican and longtime state employee, claims she doesn’t know enough to say whether President Joe Biden was rightfully elected in 2020. And she refuses to say whether she believes Trump’s lies about the vote.
Read MoreThe balloon shot down over the Yukon Territory remains a former UFO, but the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade fears the Air Force has burst its world-traveling balloon, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology.
Read More“So the estimated 50 to 100 unsheltered people who live in Fairbanks find ways to survive. They walk all night in bunny boots, trying to stave off frostbite. They crowd into motel rooms 10 at a time. They build forested encampments and dig snow caves. They squat in abandoned houses and sleep in cars.”
If you haven’t done so, read the investigation of homelessness in Fairbanks in the winter by one of Alaska’s top reporters, Michelle Theriault Boots of the Anchorage Daily News.
Read MoreThe Alaska Policy Forum has long peddled the claim that the easy cure-all for public education in Alaska is to spend less money on it and redirect the money so it can be spent on private schools.
Read MoreSen. Dan Sullivan, at his boarding-school whiniest, comes across as if someone took his puppy in his inquisition of Gigi Sohn, nominated by President Biden to the Federal Communications Commission in October 2021 and opposed by all Republicans.
Read MoreThe problem with these events is not that Dunleavy went to a rodeo in Texas and to a hunting conference in Michigan, but that state employees felt the need to hide this from Alaskans when there were questions about his statement attacking Biden over the balloon affair.
Read MoreThe Anchorage Daily News says Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson has proven himself to be “unqualified, incompetent and out of his depth” during his year-and-a-half as mayor of the state’s largest city. The newspaper backed this up with a powerful editorial, one of the best I’ve seen in years, which stops short of calling for his resignation.
Read MoreI have no doubt that Sen. Cathy Giessel regrets the introduction of Senate Bill 50. I take it as a good sign that she withdrew the week-old bill, which was written at the behest of a single gas company in Cook Inlet.
Read MoreOne sign of how Dunleavy’s approach created lasting damage is the declining number of students eligible for the Alaska Performance Scholarship who choose to attend school in Alaska. The percentage of top students choosing to remain in Alaska and use this program—which is worth up to $4,755 a year—has been dropping since 2016, down from 39 percent to 22 percent.
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