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Murkowski supporter makes history: first legislative candidate to be kicked off ballot for claiming to be “homeless”

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Barbara Bachmeier, a candidate for the legislature, was kicked off the ballot by Alaska’s Division of Elections, for being homeless.  More specifically, she did not meet the residency requirements for state house District 13 because, as recently as ten months ago, she had been “living in a camper shell on the back of her truck,” according to Newser.

Some suspect that Bachmeier was not homeless at all, but that she was actually living in another residence outside of the district.  They believe that the story about her living out of her truck was fabricated in an unsuccessful attempt to meet the district’s residency requirements.

The decision to give her the boot from the ballot after she had already been certified may be unprecedented in Alaska state history.   The Division of Elections reported yesterday that such decertification has not happened during the current director’s four year tenure, maybe longer.

Ms. Bachmeier, a former service member who claims a stress-related disability, was a prominent Murkowski supporter who harassed Joe Miller personally as well as some of his supporters in 2010.  In one particularly infamous event following the general election debate in October, Bachmeier followed Mr. Miller’s party out of the parking lot and tail-gated Miller’s vehicle at high speeds.

Photo credit: BarbaraBachmeier.com

BP suspends massive Liberty Project in Alaska

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BP has indefinitely suspended a $1.5 billion offshore oil project in Alaska due to cost overruns and technical setbacks, a company spokeswoman said on Monday.

An 18-month company review concluded that the Liberty project, a field with about 100 million barrels of recoverable oil, should not go forward as planned, said Dawn Patience with BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.

“We are not going to pursue Liberty in its present form,” said Patience. “The project, as it’s designed right now, doesn’t meet BP’s standards.”

Under plans submitted five years ago to regulators, Liberty would have been the first oil field located entirely in Federal waters offshore Alaska. Back then, BP expected production to begin in 2011.

A BP review found that Liberty — slated to produce 40,000 barrels a day — would have cost “a lot more” than the $1.5 billion BP had planned to spend there and would have taken several additional years to begin production, Patience said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit:  mikebaird

Alaska Tea Party Goes after Leftist Senate Coalition

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As the big field of Republican challengers jostles to get noticed against incumbent state senators, a common target has been emerging for many of them: the bipartisan coalition that has governed the Alaska Senate.

“It’s partially why I’m running,” said Mike Dunleavy, a tea-party backed Republican from Wasilla challenging Sen. Linda Menard, a first-term Republican and a member of the coalition. “I don’t believe the coalition represents the constituents. I think it represents itself.”

“Senate District K deserves to have a senator who stands firm on their principles by refusing to join a coalition that gives the Democrats control,” Jeff Landfield said in May when he announced he was taking on veteran Anchorage Sen. Lesil McGuire in the Republican primary. She’s also a member of the coalition.

And at a recent candidate forum sponsored by the Anchorage Tea Party, two other Republican senate candidates, Liz Vazquez and Bob Roses, signified in a panel question that they wouldn’t join a bipartisan coalition “similar to the one structured in the Senate.” Both are running in districts represented by incumbent Democrats who are part of the coalition — Hollis French and Bill Wielechowski.

To help defeat the “bipartisan” leftist coalition, please visit the Conservative Patriots Group and donate to their efforts.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: neolibertariandotcom

Russian bombers making practice runs on AK’s Ft. Greely, Vandenberg AFB over last two weeks

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Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers entered the U.S. air defense zone near the Pacific coast on Wednesday and were met by U.S. interceptor jets, defense officials told the Free Beacon.

It was the second time Moscow dispatched nuclear-capable bombers into the 200-mile zone surrounding U.S. territory in the past two weeks.

An earlier intrusion by two Tu-95 Bear H bombers took place near Alaska as part of arctic war games that a Russian military spokesman said included simulated attacks on “enemy” air defenses and strategic facilities.

A defense official said the Pacific coast intrusion came close to the U.S. coast but did not enter the 12-mile area that the U.S. military considers sovereign airspace.

The bomber flights near the Pacific and earlier flights near Alaska appear to be signs Moscow is practicing the targeting of its long-range air-launched cruise missiles on two strategic missile defense sites, one at Fort Greely, Alaska and a second site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Saad Faruque

Alaska Oil Output Drops Significantly as North Slope Production Declines

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Alaska crude-oil production dropped 11 percent in June from a year earlier, the largest drop in almost a year, after Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., operator of the cross-state pipeline system, conducted maintenance and as output from wells declined.

Production averaged 516,871 barrels a day last month, down from 581,297 a year earlier, the biggest decline since output fell 15 percent from July 2010 to July 2011, the state Department of Revenue said on its website. The pipeline delivered 570,770 barrels a day in May.

Production peaked for the month at 592,381 barrels on June 12 and fell to a low of 380,893 on June 2, when crews scheduled valve testing.

“Any fluctuations in throughput are due to planned maintenance,” Michelle Egan, a spokeswoman at Alyeska, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Output on the 800-mile (1,287-kilometer) Trans-Alaska crude system has declined annually since 2002 as falling yield from existing wells hasn’t been replaced, according to the state tax division. Crude-oil output from Prudhoe Bay averaged 305,132 barrels per day in June, down from 324,919 in May, the state said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: Arthur Chapman

Congress probes land deal in Alaska’s Tongass forest

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For decades, conservationists, the U.S. Forest Service, tribes, Native corporations and the people who live in the Tongass National Forest have warred over how to manage the vast temperate rain forest that covers most of southeast Alaska.

The fight resurfaces in Washington this week, as the Native corporation Sealaska makes a case to a Senate committee that it should be able to pick new acreage outside of the original land grants it never took ownership of.

The company’s choices are controversial, in part because they include valuable old-growth timber that many would like to see off limits to logging. Some local groups also have concerns about how Sealaska plans to address important cultural locations in the acres it wants, including places that are part of their ancestral history.

The 17 million-acre Tongass is the nation’s largest national forest. Because development came relatively late to southeast Alaska, parts of the forest are little different from how they were centuries ago. The forest, with 11,000 miles of shoreline, is home to bears, salmon and the largest known concentration of bald eagles.

Sealaska argues that it’s sought for decades to assume ownership of all the acreage it was granted under 1971’s Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the landmark legislation that settled aboriginal land claims by the state’s Native people.

Read More at The Miami Herald by Erika Bolstad, McClatchy Newspapers