by Linda Kellen Biegel Last week, I listened-in on an Alaska Public Offices Commission hearing regarding an old friend of ours here at Mudflats, Mr. Bob Griffin. You remember Bob: – In April 2011, he ran on his status as a veteran and a pilot in order to win a seat the Anchorage School Board [...]

I had great fun hosting Firedoglake’s book salon yesterday. Authors Amanda Coyne and Tony Hopfinger were there to answer questions about their new book/stocking stuffer Crude Awakening – Money, Mavericks and Mayhem in Alaska.  For those of you who weren’t able to make it, below is my introduction with a link to the conversation at [...]

By Linda Kellen Biegel   Mudflatters, think wayyyyyy, wayyyyyy back to October of 2010 and you might remember Representative William Thomas, Jr., a Republican legislator from the beautiful little town of Haines, Alaska. Representative Thomas is not someone who generally comes to my attention way over here in Anchorage. However, in September of 2010 while [...]

Mel Green on her blog Henkimaa did an excellent piece on Governor Parnell’s most recent appointees, with the no-holds-barred title: Is Alaska Governor Sean Parnell a Christian dominionist? And just what is a “Christian dominionist”? Well, it’s a lot like a Christianist. Here’s Wikipedia: In a politico-religious context, dominionism (also called subjectionism) is the tendency [...]

Tuesday night yielded mixed results for both the Anchorage Assembly and School District. Assembly: It Could Have Been Worse Although the final verdict isn’t yet in on one progressive incumbent, and a pile of absentees are still outstanding, things aren’t looking great for Mike Gutierrez. With a 252 vote deficit to overcome, Gutierrez can in [...]

There are actually 6 seats up for election on the Anchorage Assembly. However, we are going to focus on three of them for two very good reasons… 1) The incumbents are under attack from Mayor Sullivan, 2) and under attack from corporations and big-monied businesses. The attack-ees are Harriet Drummond, West Anchorage: Elvi Gray-Jackson, Midtown: [...]

You may remember that earlier in the month, Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) held several days of workshops so that people could better understand the proposed changes being made to their regulations. The workshops went quite well (I attended them all by teleconference) and I was very pleased not only that APOC had them but [...]

When the word “lobby” is used in Alaska, the first thing that logically springs to mind is Big Oil. However, there is a very powerful lobby which has reigned supreme in this state longer than the oil companies and it revolves around Alaska’s favorite drug-of-choice, alcohol. Why is the alcohol lobby so influential in Alaska? [...]

The Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) is in the process of updating the regulations covering the three areas within its purview: Campaign disclosure, Regulation of lobbying, and Legislative and Public Official financial disclosure.  Usually, this process is done by making the changes public on the APOC website and then through a series of formal meetings where [...]

Many of you know about the APOC complaint I filed against Rep. William Thomas, Jr. (R-Haines) because he claimed ads like this were “thank you ads,” not “campaign ads”: The status of that complaint is basically where we left it in my last post on the subject. The APOC staff re-opened the investigation, as the Commissioners [...]

Some of you have been following the saga here on Mudflats about my APOC complaint against Alaska House District 5 Representative William Thomas, Jr. (R-Haines) and his re-election campaign. The complaint (plus amendment) deals with 17 ads placed and designed by campaign Deputy Treasurer James Studley and charged to various Haines businesses. My complaint asserts [...]

A week ago Friday, I testified at the hearing for my first APOC complaint–Kellen vs. Thomas et al. It seemed to go very well…better than I’d hoped.  I wasn’t planning on writing another post about it until there was a decision (I didn’t want to irritate the Commission until after they decided) but I also [...]

UPDATE - For those who are interested in listening to the hearing, the information can be found HERE. Teleconference number 1-800-315-6338, Code 4176#1 ********* Everyone may remember a few weeks back when I filed an APOC complaint against Rep. William Thomas, Jr. (R–Haines). I posted about the APOC Complaint I had filed against the re-election campaign [...]

Back on October 13th, I posted about the APOC Complaint I had filed against the re-election campaign of Representative Bill Thomas, Jr. (above, on the left, with Sen. Al Kookesh, who appears in several of the ads.) The complaint is in response to a newspaper advertising campaign consisting of 12 ads which ran in the [...]

  In June of 2009 I embarked on an idealistic journey. Thanks to many Alaskans and folks across the country, I was able to raise enough money so that the State of Alaska would release the Records Request they had been sitting on for months. When the emails arrived and the only “good stuff” was [...]