Created in 2022 with excessive hoo-ha by the Legislature and the governor, the 36-member Alaska Food Strategy Task Force is getting off to a slow start.

At a May 26th introductory meeting, task force leader Sen. Shelley Hughes looked for volunteers to chair three subcommittees to compile rushed reports by July 15 on three major issues—growing the agriculture industry, growing markets for local products and improving transportation and infrastructure.

The 36-member task force was supposed to have started strategizing last winter, with a report due by the end of this month on three on three of the major challenges facing agriculture in Alaska.

We should add bureaucratic inertia and task force redundancy to that list, as this effort is repeating work done last year by the Alaska Food Security Task Force.

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Wellspring Ministries of Alaska, an Anchorage right-wing religious organization led by Art Mathias, enjoys tax-free status under federal law.

Mathias’s church is a leading entity in the attempt to overturn ranked choice voting in Alaska.

On Dec. 16, 2022, Mathias filed papers in Washington creating a new church that is an “integrated auxiliary” of Wellspring Ministries. The leaders of the “church” are Mathias, his wife and Philip Izon.

The alleged “church” is called the Ranked Choice Education Association. The founders claimed to the state of Washington that the purpose of the “church” is to “promote Christian doctrines.” But it’s all about politics.

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The proposed Tetlin mine would be among the highest grade open pit gold mines in the world, if not the highest, according to Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, the geologist and mine promoter who sold the idea to Kinross of trucking the ore nearly 250 miles across Interior Alaska to Fort Knox.

The ore is now expected to produce twice as much gold per ton as estimated in 2018 when a study said the capital costs of building mine processing facilities at Tetlin could be recovered in two years of mining. The after-tax internal rate of return was estimated at 29 percent with a grade of 4 grams per ton. Now the grade is expected to be 8 grams per ton.

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How many 82-ton ore-hauling trucks per day will Kinross run between the proposed Tetlin Mine and the Fort Knox Mine?

The shifting estimates from the company show that this is, at least in part, a public relations matter.

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In this corner we have Sen. Cathy Giessel and Rep. Zack Fields joining the promotional parade of oversimplistic claims about how to deal with China, ignoring what the cost would be to consumers.

And in this corner we have Rep. George Rauscher attacking the very idea of studying how much carbon dioxide is released in creating steel, plastic, etc., ignoring the cost of climate change or the consequences to consumers.

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The hypocrisy of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor is on full display with the state claiming that we must have AM radios in electric cars because of the need for emergency communications.

Taylor has just signed onto the latest right-wing Republican chain letter whining about the future of AM radios in cars, while Dunleavy has just vetoed $1 million for public radio in Alaska.

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The Alaska Permanent Fund would have been better off divesting from fossil fuel companies a decade ago, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.

The study found that the Permanent Fund would have $1.5 billion more, which is about $2,000 per Alaskan.

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Cook Inlet natural gas will not be able to keep the heat and lights on for all concerned during the next decade, according to a study led by Enstar, the Canadian company that supplies natural gas to Southcentral.

The leading long-term option for filling the gap, the study says, is an in-state gas pipeline, subsidized by the state, a fossil fuel solution that downplays renewables.

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With Aniak residents facing a four-fold increase in power bills, it’s hard to see how the village can survive without immediate help.

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska heard from dozens Aniak residents Wednesday morning on phone lines, pleading for immediate assistance and asking why the state has refused to do anything. They said the survival of the community is at stake

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The refusal of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to engage in a public evidentiary hearing on the most important case in the RCA’s history—the sale of BP’s assets to Hilcorp—is at the center of the Supreme Court case at which oral arguments took place Wednesday.

The attorneys for the RCA, Hilcorp and BP all defended the actions of the RCA and did not deal with matters of substance, but instead focused on technicalities and process.

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