Sullivan goes silent on Musk/Trump decision to side with Russia against Ukraine

Sen. Dan Sullivan took a strong stand this week to support the U.S. troops who fought and died on Iwo Jima. No one in Congress will oppose the resolution he co-sponsored with about 20 other senators.

Sullivan has yet to take a strong stand in favor of the embattled people of Ukraine, who have been sold out by the Musk/Trump regime to Putin.

Trump is using Putin talking points. He has abandoned Ukraine.

Sullivan has either flipped his position to side with Musk/Trump or he is afraid to cross his leaders about the betrayal of Ukraine.

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Dermot Cole Comments
Dunleavy to scrap $50 million AIDEA budget request that would never have been OK'd

This week the Dunleavy administration is going to officially abandon the effort to give AIDEA—which has plenty of cash reserves—the $50 million, Randy Ruaro, the head of AIDEA, told the Senate Finance Committee Monday.

The reality of this situation is that there was no chance the Legislature was ever going to approve the $50 million request from Dunleavy because AIDEA has hundreds of millions it can draw upon. AIDEA is led by a former Dunleavy employee and a board of Dunleavy supporters.

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Dermot Cole Comments
Permanent Fund's $29 million Peter Pan fiasco deserves a legislative review

The Permanent Fund claimed at first that all information about the investments made by McKinley and Barings were secret, including the names of the companies. The state claimed that it would be entirely up to the two financial management companies to decide what Alaskans would be allowed to know.

As I wrote here on December 6., 2021: “The real danger is that secrecy can be a tool to hide public investments from the public to avoid controversy and public discussion. It can also be a tool that allows political influence to decide who gets the benefit of state money.”

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Dermot Cole Comments
Trump aide thinks taking over Canada is akin to Alaska statehood

Questioned on CNBC if he was trying to dream up ways to defend outlandish schemes from Trump, economic adviser Kevin Hassett claimed that making Canada the 51st state is not outlandish at all.

Hassett didn’t sound like a guy with a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He sounded like a dropout from Trump University.

No one believes that Canada is going to become the 51st state, but the price that supplicants pay to pacify and please the playground bully is to tell him he is always right about everything and call him “Sir.”

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Dermot Cole Comments
Union seeks court order to release $1 million buried state salary study

The state secretly ordered the contractor—after its report was finished last summer—to revise the work it had done and set salaries at the 50 percentile for many employees. Lowering the benchmark would lower the cost and widen the gap between state workers and other employees..
This deception, for that is what it is, goes against the letter and spirit of the state law requiring government transparency.

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Dermot Cole Comments
Begich claims credit for born-again bills pushed by Peltola in last Congress

Rep. Nick Begich the Third didn’t tell Alaskans the full story when he praised himself for getting the House of Representatives to pass two bills on February 4.

The Begich bills were copied word for word from bills introduced by former Rep. Mary Peltola.

The hearings on both took place in November, before Begich took office, and they won unanimous backing from the Republican-controlled resources committee.

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Dermot Cole Comments