The bellicose claims of Sen. Dan Sullivan about the future of Taiwan must be treated with skepticism because he speaks in an oversimplified manner that overlooks a complicating factor—the danger of a World War. According to Sullivan, if China attacks Taiwan, the U.S. should promise to repel China.
Read MoreGov. Mike Dunleavy said it would be a “knee-jerk reaction” to subsidize child care providers as some legislators are proposing to keep more providers in business and make the service more affordable for families struggling to care for their kids while working outside the home.
Instead of acting, Dunleavy chose his preferred reflexive behavior—he created a task force to study how to improve child care and pay people more to care for children.
Read MoreIt’s not clear what the governor’s Office of Food Security has done since last September. It is an exaggeration to call whatever it is an “office.” It exists on paper, using “existing personnel and monetary resources,” Dunleavy’s order said.
The office has no phone number, website, email address, physical address or office that I can find. There is no Office of Food Security listed in the state list of offices. There is no contact information for the ghost office.
Read MoreThe state House, which is tied up in budget knots as I write this Wednesday, is struggling to approve a budget with a deficit of a half-billion dollars or more.
Three of the provisions in SB 114, the oil tax bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Wielechowski, would cover most or all of that shortfall, anywhere from $400 million to $600 million. These ideas are not getting enough attention.
Read MoreThe Ted Stevens Foundation and UAA Chancellor Sean Parnell signed an agreement under which the Stevens family and the foundation will be able to continue to sanitize the papers of Ted Stevens, a massive collection of thousands of boxes that is to be donated to UAA.
Read MoreSen. Dan Sullivan, who never criticizes Donald Trump, hasn’t read the Trump indictment, but claims the unseen document “has moved our country into banana republic territory.”
It’s startling to see Sullivan sound off from a position of ignorance when he spent the entire Trump administration perfecting the art of pretending he couldn’t comment because he had not read about whatever Trump was up to at the moment.
Read MoreIn the decade since its adoption by the Legislature, one of the enduring mysteries of the Alaska oil tax system known as SB 21 is that no one ever explained where the $8-per-barrel tax credit plan came from or justified the choice of that number.
On the afternoon of March 29, 2013, the sliding scale appeared as if by magic in a House Resources Committee bill, replacing the $5 per barrel credit that had been in the Senate version.
Read MoreThe Dunleavy administration has in the past declared its support for two of the key provisions in the oil tax bill introduced by Anchorage Sen. Bill Wielechowski.
Not once, but twice.
Holding Dunleavy to this pledge should simplify the politics of the matter somewhat for the modest changes offered by Wielechowski.
Read MoreAn industry group called “Alaska Resource Education,” has long been creating materials for Alaska schools to promote the virtues of oil and gas, mining and forestry development.
The materials on its website have value, but the organization doesn’t always reveal that there are valid opinions among Alaskans other than those dear to the hearts of the Resource Development Council and Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
Read MoreThe vast 4,700-box collection of Stevens papers should have remained in Fairbanks at the largest and finest research library in the state, but the heirs of Stevens decided to move the papers to Anchorage in 2015 for reasons they never explained.
If a first-rate biography of Stevens is ever to be written, the author will have to rely on this vast collection and have full access to tell the man’s story—his triumphs as well as his failures.
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