“Maybe Congress isn’t entirely comatose,” the right-wing Wall Street Journal editors say in an editorial praising Sen. Lisa Murkowski and four other Republicans who joined with Democrats to protest Trump tariff tantrums. Sen. Dan Sullivan can be found in the comatose section.
Read MoreSen. Bill Wielechowski is calling on the suit-happy Dunleavy administration to back a legal claim by 25 states that the Trump administration is violating the law by withholding food assistance money for political purposes.
Read MoreDonald Trump, who has repeatedly claimed there is a Japanese joint venture to build the Alaska LNG pipeline, claimed Thursday that China is going to provide lots of cash.
Read MoreIf U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is right, a big if, the Alaska gas pipeline could be a public works project funded by the Korean government under duress.
I find it hard to believe that the Koreans will do what Lutnick claims and hand over $200 billion in cash, some of which Lutnick claims would go to the Alaska LNG project, making it the most expensive example of government involvement in private industry.
Read MoreSen. Dan Sullivan said he has a “red line” that no Alaska federal judge nominees are allowed to cross.
The Sullivan mandate is that anyone trying to become a federal judge in Alaska cannot be anything like Sharon Gleason, the first woman to serve as a district judge in Alaska.
Speaking to reporters in Juneau seven months ago, Sullivan claimed Gleason has done “more damage to our state that almost anyone” with rulings he doesn’t like.
Read MoreContrary to news reports in Alaska, Tokyo Gas has not said “it would buy up to 1 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year from the proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline.”
What Tokyo Gas actually said was that it signed an agreement to “advance meaningful negotiations regarding the purchase of LNG from Alaska LNG.”
There is an enormous difference between those two claims.
Read MoreAlaska Attorney General Stephen Cox appears to think that his main job as attorney general is to insert himself into national politics, often on cases that have little to do with Alaska. In September alone he put Alaska’s name on two dozen amicus briefs generated by Republican attorneys general.
He has hired a lawyer from Outside with no Alaska experience to represent the state in courts across the country.
Read MoreDunleavy said that Crum “pursued investment opportunities with several other potential investment firms,” but the negotiations were halted. When were the negotiations halted and why?
I suspect that one of the so-called opportunities was related to Crum’s decision to use his office last spring to promote a new private investment fund called the “Frontier Economic Fund.”
Read MoreTyson Gallagher, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s chief of staff, had the Dunleavy spokesman, Jeff Turner, tell me that he doesn’t know how much the state has agreed to pay a Washington, D.C. law firm to review the DigitalBridge contract.
Ask Department of Law spokeswoman Patty Sullivan, he said. The Department of Law spokeswoman said in 10 business days she would have some kind of reply.
The Anchorage Daily News had no better luck from the Dunleavy transparency team.
Read MoreSens. Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, Rep. Nick Begich the Third and Gov. Mike Dunleavy gushed with effusive praise for Donald Trump’s social media post saying he had approved a disaster declaration for Western Alaska. But maybe they should withhold their praise until they see if FEMA delivers.
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