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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