Fairbanks International Airport already has a good name. Keep it.

The federal building in Fairbanks is named for the late Rep. Don Young, who was a federal employee for a half-century.

In addition to the Don Young Federal Office Building, the 2,598-foot volcanic peak in the Aleutians formerly known as Mt. Cerberus is now “Mount Young” in his honor. And the Jobs Corps Center in Palmer is the Don Young Job Corps Center, all names created through the federal law signed by President Biden called the “Don Young Recognition Act.”

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Dermot Cole Comments
AG Taylor's family advertised plan to get $8,000 private school tuition subsidy; Deputy AG says it's unconstitutional to get state funds to cover most or all private tuition

In May 2022, the wife of Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor said she would seek $8,000 in public funds from the Family Partnership Charter School in Anchorage to subsidize two-thirds of their children’s tuition at a private school in Anchorage.

“Using public correspondence school allotments to pay most or all of a private educational institiution’s tuition is almost certainly unconstitutional,” wrote Deputy Attorney General Cori Mills, in an opinion dated July 22, 2022.

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Dermot Cole Comments
Kroger/Albertsons merger would lead to Alaska store closures, reduced competition, higher prices

Under the proposed $25 billion corporate merger between the companies that own Fred Meyer and Safeway, 14 stores in Alaska would be sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers, a company that hasn’t been in the retail business in Alaska.

Kroger, which wants to acquire Albertsons, says it needs a merger to become larger and be better able to compete, so no one should expect that the 14 stores to be sold to the smaller company would be long for this world. Kroger has not identified the 14 stores.

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Dermot Cole Comments
Alaska attorney general nurtures right-wing demands for vigilante justice

Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor bowed to right-wing demands to cripple the role of prosecutors in a secret grand jury proceeding that became a “vigilante circus,” as the lawyer for the chief target of a runaway grand jury puts it.

Other circuses may follow, as the Dunleavy administration is now asking to spend $502,000 a year to hire a lawyer, a paralegal and an assistant to work with “investigative grand juries.”

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Dermot Cole Comments