The oil industry has already cued its publicity people to recite text from the Fear and Loathing Anti-Tax Playbook handed down by oil company employees since the discovery of Prudhoe Bay: Any tax increase, no matter how small, will kill investment and ruin the industry, the Fear and Loathing playbook says.
These bills will not kill investment, though there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, along with the fear and loathing.
Read MoreThe challenge of finding ways to pay for an increase in education funding is not the impossible dream that Republicans in Juneau claim.
Compromises to establish a reasonable dividend and raise taxes would put the state on a stable footing, ending the era when a governor can introduce a budget with a $1.5 billion deficit and abandon his responsibilities.
Read MoreRepublican legislators are hiding behind the Dunleavy Knows Best fraud, refusing to admit that the real reform Alaska needs is to decrease class sizes. The only way to decrease class sizes is to hire and retain qualified teachers. That requires more funding from the Legislature and governor.
Read MoreAnyone who issues a press release saying a Bible parable offers a valuable lesson for government is not separating the spiritual from the secular, but combining the two.
Read More‘The Bible’s parable of the talents offers a valuable lesson for government, as it does for spiritual life. The good and faithful servant is the one who takes his employer’s money and increases it, while the unfaithful one simply buries it in the ground. When it comes to America’s abundant natural wealth, we face a similar choice,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a press release printed by the Wall Street Journal.
The state sermon does not say anything about saving for the next generation or the generation after that. Or that the good and faithful servant could be a foreign mining company hoping to make a killing from public resources.
The reverend governor also didn’t mention the long-term value of leaving wealth in the ground that belongs not just to those alive now, but to all future Americans.
Read MoreSen. Dan Sullivan is running for reelection in 2026. Holding him accountable means that his statements and actions, especially those in which he reverses his so-called positions to avoid offending Musk and Trump, need to be monitored and understood.
Read MorePresident Trump wants to take over the U.S. Postal Service and fire the bipartisan postal review board, the Washington Post reported Thursday night.
Alaska has more to lose than anywhere else in the country if this happens because the bypass mail subsidy program, a central element in Alaska commerce, would certainly be at risk of elimination once again.
Read MoreRep. Nick Begich the Third doesn’t get it. The DOGE boys are not under attack because some of them are young.
This is not about the age. It’s about incompetence and lies. Nick the Third has become a regular conduit for those lies.
Read MoreSen. 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.
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.
Read MoreRep. Nick Begich the Third, who claims to be a technology whiz, is mechanically repeating the lies of co-president Elon Musk.
One of the latest is Begich promoting the Musk lie that millions of people over 100 are collecting Social Security.
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