Alaska Slams Feds for Keeping Hunters off Land

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Alex SlitzAlaska lawmakers accused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of violating federal law by shutting down hunting on its lands during the government shutdown, saying a 1980 law guarantees state residents must have access to the land.

“It seems that agencies are working harder to keep people off federal lands than they have ever worked before to get them to visit federal lands,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, who questioned the Obama administration’s decisions during the week-old shutdown.

The National Park Service has faced scorching criticism for closing not just parks, but even parking lots and drives that don’t require continual monitoring or upkeep. Other federal land management agencies also are facing criticism.

A tour guide who had a group at Yellowstone National Park accused the Park Service of “Gestapo tactics” in trying to prevent visitors from viewing any of the sites, saying that while they were allowed to remain at the lodge in the park, they were not allowed to do much else — including walk on the boardwalk paths outside the lodge or visit the park’s geysers.

And when he took the tour bus with his group along the road and stopped to photograph bison, he said, a ranger drove up behind them and told them they could be charged with trespassing.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senators Murkowski, McCain and Kirk Signal Willingness to Work with Dems to Raise the Debt Ceiling Without Conditions

/20 Comments/in , /by

The United States government is expected to hit the debt ceiling in less than two weeks, and Senate Democrats have said they’re ready to raise it with a “clean” bill to avoid default on the national debt. Reports that Senate Republicans would consider supporting such a bill began to roll in on Monday.

Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have all floated the idea of voting for a clean debt limit increase, according to reports by Politico, ABC News and Public Radio International.

Though these Republicans seem willing to meet Democrats in the middle, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has made clear that the House won’t budge.

Earlier this year, Senator Murkowski stated that she did not believe the debt ceiling should be used as political leverage in seeking to obtain spending cuts from the Obama Administration and Senate Democrats.

Read more from this HERE.

Coded Message from the Alaska National Weather Service? ‘PLEASE PAY US’

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Yahoo

Photo Credit: Yahoo

Someone at the Anchorage, Alaska, branch of the National Weather Service seems to have a very important message regarding the federal government shutdown: “PLEASE PAY US.”

The acrostic message appears to have been included in the first paragraph of a weather alert issued from the office on Friday. In an acrostic message or poem, the first letters of each sentence in a paragraph combine to spell out a word that is separate from the larger text.

Read more from this story HERE.

Open for Business: Gov’t to Erect $98,670 Outhouse in Alaska

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Romtec

Photo Credit: Romtec

The Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently paid $98,670 for the purchase and installation of an outhouse at the Swede Park Trail Head in Alaska.

The purchase includes a single-vault Romtec 1011 “Aspen Single” prefabricated waterless toilet and its installation at the parking area for the trail head.

KJ Mushovic of the BLM tells CNSNews.com, “Almost half of it (contract expense) is for the cost of the toilet.”

The Oregon based company Romtec lists the “Aspen Single” model on its website for “as low as $9,999”, but the BLM says the price they paid likely includes shipping to Alaska.

“And the cost of all the materials that will have to be taken to the site, Mushovic said. “There will be earthwork that’ll have to be done.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Top 5 Reasons ANWR and Area 51 Are Alike

/1 Comment/in , /by

area_51Joe Miller gave the keynote address at the Nevada Republican Party’s Unity Dinner last night in Las Vegas.

Despite the significant geographic differences between Alaska and Nevada, the two have one important trait in common: the majority of each state’s land is owned by the federal government. In Alaska, Uncle Sam holds the title deed to over 69 percent of the Great Land, outranked only by Nevada, where the feds control a whopping 84 percent. Ten states have more than a third of their land owned by Washington, DC. Miller, if elected, wants to work with other western states to bring those percentages down significantly.

Of course some of the best known federally controlled land in Alaska is ANWR and in Nevada, Area 51. What you may not know is that there are actually many similarities between them. Here are the top five:

5. Both are set aside as a federally controlled refuge: ANWR for animal wildlife, and Area 51…it’s classified.      

4. Both have limited accessibility: ANWR is accessible only by sea and air, Area 51 is only accessible by those wearing black suits and sunglasses who go by Agent G or Q…  

3. Both are said to contain vast treasures hidden underground: ANWR, oil and natural gas, and Area 51, state of the art flying machines and some say even the Ark of the Covenant.

2. Trespassing on either will lead to a heavily armed federal agents descending upon you from above. If only the federal government could find the same sense of urgency in enforcing our borders. 

1. Finally, spending any length of time on the ground in either location could lead to close encounters with species unfamiliar to most people. 

Chill Sets In At Alaska-Based Federal Agency After One Boss Asks DC to Shut It Down

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Eileen Ogintz

Photo Credit: Eileen Ogintz

A tiny, federally-funded agency based in Anchorage is fighting for survival, and its biggest enemy may be within.

The Denali Commission, an economic development authority set up with earmarks obtained by the late Sen. Ted Stevens, came onto the radar of budget hawks in Washington when its own inspector general wrote lawmakers to tell them they were wasting taxpayers’ money.

“At this point, I recommend that Congress no longer send Denali an annual “base” appropriation,” Denali Inspector General Mike Marsh wrote in a a June 23 letter to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. “This will give Denali an incentive to leave the federal nest and chart its own course as a federal entity.

“This will also give the State of Alaska an incentive to find and fund its own solutions for the residents of “bush” Alaska — as it should,” the letter went on to state.

But that stance came as a surprise to the men and women who work with Marsh at Denali, which seeks to promote rural development, power generation and other infrastructure needs in Alaska.Commission Co-Chair Joel Neimeyer told FoxNews.com his agency does important work, worthy of federal funding. The apparently did not know about Marsh’s lobbying efforts until contacted by the Washington Post this week.

Read more from this story HERE.

Creepy Trolls at Alaska Dispatch Cyber-Stalk Joe Miller’s Pregnant Daughter

/10 Comments/in , /by

biased_media_lies_Ak Dispatch

[UPDATE: After receiving numerous untoward comments on her own web page from Alaska Dispatch readers, Kelsey Miller wrote her own response to this unwelcome intrusion on her and her husband’s privacy. You can read it HERE.]

Just when you think the media can’t go any lower, along comes online news blog Alaska Dispatch to put the ‘ass’ in class. These folks are proving to be the kind of ‘journalists’ that have to look up to the supermarket tabloids.

On Wednesday an anonymous editor reported a post on Joe Miller’s personal Facebook page (not his political Facebook page) to raise funds for his daughter and son-in-law who are serving as Christian missionaries in Mexico.

Along with a description, replete with false juxtaposition of Joe Miller’s political views on limited government and personal responsibility, Alaska Dispatch also provided a link to the couple’s personal blog, and a picture. They are expecting their first child and, due to their status as full-time missionaries, solicited funds from their network of friends and donors to cover the cost of her maternity, as well as funds for a reliable vehicle.

Alaska Dispatch was obviously trying to score cheap political points, but anyone familiar with the evangelical missionary movement knows that fund-raising of this type is standard operating procedure. In fact, some mission organizations require deputation to raise a support team of regular donors and prayer partners.

Dispatch_Kelsey_Page_1

Not only is this type of trolling by putative news organizations inappropriate, it could come with significant liability should it expose anyone to harm.

Children of politicians have always been considered off-limits, at least until Sarah Palin came on the scene. Now it appears the Alaska media is gearing up to give Joe Miller ‘the Sarah Palin treatment.’

Apparently the Alaska Dispatch’s hatred for Joe Miller cannot be satiated by lies and gratuitous smears. Now they stoop to attack his children. Have they no shame?

It’s a rhetorical question. There is no sewer these people won’t plumb in an attempt to get someone else dirty. They are cellar-dwellers.

The Alaska Dispatch appears to be a mere political mouthpiece that owner/publisher Alice Rogoff-Rubenstein is funding to protect her husband’s multi-billion-dollar empire, a massive recipient of corporate welfare. The Carlyle Group largely subsists off of federal contracting and ANC tax offsets.

FEC reports indicate that Ms. Rogoff-Rubenstein has given political donations to both Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich. Enough said.

Alaska Dispatch should remove said post, and offer a public apology. If you agree, you can contact Alaska Dispatch at (907) 743-0744.

Also, as the currency of an online publication is the traffic to its blog, I encourage you to NOT go to their website or click on ANY of their stories.

To ensure that Alice Rogoff-Rubenstein ends her political meddling in Alaska, she needs to understand that most Alaskans see through her media-charade and recognize it as nothing more than a tool to perpetuate crony capitalism.

(As of tonight, Sept. 26, 2013, Joe Miller is discontinuing his personal Facebook page. If you would like to connect with Joe on Facebook, please like his political page.)

[UPDATE: After receiving numerous untoward comments on her own web page from Alaska Dispatch readers, Kelsey Miller wrote her own response to this unwelcome intrusion on her and her husband’s privacy. You can read it HERE.]

Gullible Green Sailors Trapped in the Arctic

/15 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: netrightdaily

Photo Credit: netrightdaily

The naïve advice of ardent activists can kill. Last spring, Paul Beckwith of Sierra Club Canada predicted that the Arctic seas would be ice-free ice this summer. (So did Britain’s BBC network.) This exciting adventure opportunity attracted a variety of yachts, sailboats, rowboats, and kayaks owners to try sailing the fabled Northwest Passage.

As a former sailboat owner I can understand their excitement, but my heart aches for the agonies they now face. The Arctic sea ice suddenly expanded 60 percent this fall, after the coldest summer in the modern Alaska temperature record. The passage is now impassable. More than a dozen of the boats are trapped, apparently even including a group of tiny American jet-ski “personal watercraft” that were attempting to cross from the east coast of Russia to the North Atlantic. Arctic observers are now warning that even Canadian icebreakers might not be able to rescue them.

The Northwest Passage blog reminds us that fall super storms are a potentially deadly fact in Alaska. “It is only a matter time. . . . Give Mother Nature her due time and she will move billions of tons of sea ice and push it up against the Alaska Arctic coast—effectively closing the door to exit the Arctic ice from western Canada. . . . No icebreakers are going to be able to offer any assistance. Mother Nature is mightier than all the icebreakers put together.” Note that the Atlantic exit is already problematic.

Helicopter rescues on Arctic ice are incredibly expensive, involving hundreds of miles of flying by copters and crews expensively maintained in that icy and sparsely populated region. Additionally, all the lovely boats become write-offs.

Read more from this story HERE.

Texas Vet Hopes to Bury Father Lost for Decades in Alaska

/0 Comments/in , /by

picture - Vet AlaskaA 77-year-old Southeast Texas man hopes to one day be able to bury the remains of his father after the discovery last year in an Alaskan glacier of a military plane that crashed in 1952, killing all aboard.

Retired Col. Jerry Hoblit, a Vietnam veteran, was 16 when he learned that his father, Col. Noel Hoblit, was among the 52 people killed when the Air Force C-124A Globemaster crashed on Nov. 22, 1952, on Mount Gannett.

“I was asleep and I heard the commotion downstairs. My mother was crying,” Jerry Hoblit, who lives in Willis, about 50 miles north of Houston, told The Courier of Montgomery County (https://bit.ly/14uNnAd ). “Being an Air Force brat, I knew exactly what was going on.”

The debris was discovered in June 2012 while Alaska National Guardsmen were flying a Blackhawk helicopter during a training mission near the glacier about 40 miles east of Anchorage. The excavation process has slowly moved forward since then.

After the crash, military teams tried to go to the site, but constant bad weather got in the way until it got buried in the snow and became part of the glacier.

Read more from this story HERE.

Another Alaska U.S. Senate Race, Another Attack on Free Speech

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: aflcio

Photo Credit: aflcio

For the second U.S. Senate election in a row, the incumbent campaign is threatening Alaska television stations over political ads it doesn’t like.

In 2010 while fighting for her political life after losing the Republican primary to Joe Miller, Sen. Lisa Murkowski had her legal counsel send letters to Alaska television stations warning them that they were putting their Federal Communications Commission licenses at risk by running ads against her that were paid for by the Tea Party Express.

Murkowski’s counsel claimed the ads constituted “false advertising” and the stations could lose their FCC license by continuing to run them. Of course, Murkowski’s lawyers knew (or should know) full well that as a public figure, her chance of proving slander or libel were virtually nil and the stations were in no danger of losing their broadcast licenses.

But that didn’t stop them from trying to put the arm on Alaska media stations — “nice FCC license you have there, be a shame if something happened to it” — and thankfully no one pulled the ads based on the Murkowski campaign threats…

So here we are again almost three years to the day later, and Sen. Mark Begich had his lawyers at Perkins Coie in Washington, D.C., fire off a letter to Alaska TV stations Sept. 5 demanding they “immediately” stop running ads sponsored by the American Energy Alliance accusing Begich of wanting you to believe “a carbon tax is a good idea.”

Read more from this story HERE.