Why is Joe Miller, a self-professed staunch defender of liberty, a TEA Party favorite, and someone who has reported to be in the middle of the recent internal wars within the Alaska Republican Party for the last three years a bad idea for Alaska? Answer?
When you invite auditors into your business, it is always a good idea to make sure that their assumptions and your assumptions match. Such is the problem with the Legislative Audit Agency’s audit of the proposed Knik Arm Bridge that was so gleefully reported by the local fish wrapper and democrats in opposition to it last week.
Last November’s election was a watershed for Alaska. Not only do we have the opportunity to overturn the stunning mistake made during the Palin years of gouging North Slope oil producers with a dangerously high tax rate, but we have a conservative majority in the legislature that is willing to address other festering issues. One of those issues is education.
Our Boy Senator made his yearly address to the Alaska Legislature a couple weeks ago. In it, he fired the first rounds in defense of the seat he won after the leftist lawyers in the (In)Justice Department wrongly convicted Ted Stevens in 2008.
I got to thinking about how Washington deals with budgets and how the rest of us do. Listening to the incessant caterwauling, threats and scaremongering from Obama over the sequester last week led me to an attempt to try to put this all in perspective.
Clean water and clean air standards have long been a large caliber club used by greens to beat businesses, state and local governments about the head and shoulders. They offer the perfect opportunity to demagogue anything that is released into the watershed or the atmosphere, for who could possibly be against clean air or clean water.
Our Federal Masters a couple weeks ago announced that there would be no road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to connect King Cove with the Cold Bay Airport. Obama’s Loathsome Cowboy Ken Salazar did the deed. Predictably, the Alaska congressional delegation went apoplectic. But, as usual, the back story is more interesting.
Anybody else wonder why we suddenly have been treated to a massive wave of ads by ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and the Humane Society?
Among a littany of other studies, the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation releases an annual economic forecast. Their 2013 report, available now, is a great synopsis of Anchorage-specific data on growth within industries, population totals, and unemployment rates.
By now the news of Obama's nomination of Sally Jewell, the current President and CEO of every hippie's favorite outdoor gear store, REI, to head the Department of the Interior has reached those of us in the Tundra. We're not impressed.
Despite local support, Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected a plan today to build a one-lane medical access road to the Cold Bay airport for residents of the remote Aleutian village of King Cove.
Ok, so Anchorage has hired a new clerk. Is it too much to ask that the new clerk crack the cutting edge technology that is MS Word? Don't worry. This isn't going to be a long rant, and this isn't huge issue, but it does bother me.
Alaska faces a comparable and equally dire fiscal crisis to that which has developed at the federal level. Due to current excessive state government spending, future Alaskans are facing a lower standard of living than present day Alaskans. As a consequence, Alaska needs its own state level statute restricting excessive spending and may benefit from a pledge to support it.
Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind brings the author’s Moral Foundations Theory to America’s political discussion, arguing that our political debates are often intractable because our political views are associated with six areas of taste developed over such a long period of time that there is little we can do to change the mind of our political opponents.
For any Alaskan interested in getting a better understanding of our state’s history of resource development and the resulting impact on our state’s political culture, Icebound Empire: Industry and Politics on the Last Frontier is well worth the read.
