Posted by Linda Kellen Biegel on November 15, 2012 · 9 Comments
It was a big night at Tuesday’s Anchorage Assembly Meeting. The Anchorage School District Budget was passed, as was both the Municipal Operating Budget and the Municipal Capital Budget. However, I was there for the item that was slipped in towards the end. It was the first, last and only public meeting dedicated to Municipal Reapportionment…another word for Redistricting. You may be surprised to hear that the Assembly has been working on Reapportionment at all. You are not alone. If you remember the gerrymandering farce known as the State Redistricting process, the public meetings went on for months before anything…
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Category Alaska, Alaska Legislature, Anchorage Assembly, Bang it, Elections, Headlines, Law & Order, Municipality of Anchorage, Redistricting, Skulduggery, Strategery, Teabaggery · Tags Alaska, Anchorage Assembly, Assembly Chair Ernie Hall, Assemblyman Chris Birch, Assemblyman Dick Traini, Assemblyman Patrick Flynn, Dennis Wheeler, Linda Kellen-Biegel
Posted by Jeanne Devon on October 30, 2012 · 21 Comments
This is really more like a bag of Halloween goodies than an oyster platter. Enjoy! Quote of the Week: “Please, I’m begging you. Go vote for this guy. He’s awesome!” ~Bob Lester of the Bob & Mark Show on KWHL about State Senate candidate Ron Devon. Party’s Over! Remember the breathless complaint that was filed against Senator Hollis French, and Putting Alaskans First? The Party Planner was all in a tizzy because they used the same APOC savvy bookkeeper, and the same production company to do their commercials. Ergo, they must be in cahoots and illegally coordinating the two campaigns,…
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Category Alaska, Alaska Legislature, Alaska Politicos, APOC, Barack Obama, Election 2012, Elections, Headlines, Mitt Romney, Nation, Party Planner, Redistricting, Republicans, Strategery · Tags Alaska Hire, APOC, Barack Obama, Bettye Davis, Bob & Mark, Chris Christie, Hollis French, KWHL, Mia Costello, Michelle Scannell, Mitt Romney, NJ flooding
Posted by Jeanne Devon on September 27, 2012 · 4 Comments
‘Tis the season of the robocall. We all get them at some point – reminding us about a fundraiser, or from a candidate seeking our vote. Occasionally a candidate will get someone to call on his or her behalf. It’s usually not the sitting Lieutenant Governor. Yes boys and girls, if you live in the Valley, you may have gotten a robocall from Lite Gov Mead Treadwell singing the praises of local Tea Party types Larry Devilbiss for Mayor and Ron Arvin for Borough Assembly. Here’s what one of them said: “This is Mead Treadwell. The Mat-Su Borough has made…
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Category Alaska, Election 2012, Elections, Ethics, Headlines, Mat Su, Republicans, Skulduggery, Strategery · Tags Alaska elections, Alaska Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell, Mat-Su Borough Assembly, Mead Treadwell
Posted by Linda Kellen Biegel on July 24, 2012 · 27 Comments
In last week’s installment of the Municipality of Anchorage’s continuing 2012 Election debacle, new Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones made a disturbing find while attempting to (quite literally) clean up the old Municipal Clerk’s mess…141 unaccounted-for ballots. This has led the trusty Election Commission to meet this coming Thursday and review the ballots they missed the first two times around. While all of that has been going on, members of our Recount Observation Team have continued to research and slowly pursue the auditing process the Municipality has refused to provide. …and it’s been free of charge… The latest bombshell was discovered…
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Category Alaska, Anchorage Assembly, Anchorage Mayoral Race, Baffle it, Election 2012, Elections, Ethics, Headlines, LGBT, Mayor Dan Sullivan, Municipality of Anchorage, Skulduggery, Strategery, Teabaggery · Tags Anchorage Municipal Clerk, Anchorage Municipal Election 2012, Barbara Gruenstein, Hand Recount, Jacqueline Duke, Jeanne Friedman, Linda Kellen-Biegel, Recount Observation Team
Posted by Jeanne Devon on July 20, 2012 · 10 Comments
Well, somebody’s still mad. After he didn’t get his way during the legislative session, he broke his crayons and went home. After Governor Sean Parnell’s embarrassingly botched special session that cost Alaskans upwards of $30,000 a day, in which his woefully underprepared administration tried in vain to get the Alaska Senate to green light his second $2 billion dollar a year, no-strings-attached, prezzie to the oil companies, he’s now got another plan. Revenge. It didn’t register with the governor that Alaskans actually didn’t like his oil tax plan. They didn’t like the idea of moving $10 billion over the next…
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Category Alaska, Alaska Legislature, Election 2010, Election 2012, Headlines, Joe Miller, Lisa Murkowski, Oil Tax, Republicans, Resource Development, Sarah Palin, Sean Parnell, Strategery, Teabaggery · Tags ACES Oil Tax, Alaska Legislature, Alaska oil taxes, Alaska state senate, Bert Stedman, Bill Wielechowski, Cathy Giessel, Charlie Huggins, Fred Dyson, Gary Stevens, Joe Miller, John Coghill, Kevin Meyer, Lisa Murkowski, Sarah Palin, Sean Parnell
Posted by The Mudflats on May 5, 2012 · 18 Comments
Brad Friedman, an award-winning investigative journalist and expert on issues of election integrity, and the Diebold AccuVote system used in the recent Anchorage Municipal election, had comments about inaccuracies told by the Election Commissioner Gwen Mathew at last night’s meeting of the Assembly to certify the election. His outrage, and call for both Mathew, and Deputy Clerk Jacqueline Duke to be removed from their posts immediately, is a sentiment shared by a growing number of Anchorage residents who are becoming more informed regarding their ineptitude and outright misinformation. Here are Friedman’s comments after watching Mathew’s testimony at Thursdays Assembly meeting,…
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Category Anchorage Assembly, Anchorage Mayoral Race, Anchorage School Board, Election 2012, Mayor Dan Sullivan, Skulduggery, Strategery · Tags Anchorage Election Commission, Anchorage Municipal Election, Brad Friedman, BradBlog, Diebold, Diebold Accuvote, Gwen Mathew
Posted by Jeanne Devon on April 29, 2012 · 59 Comments
I don’t mean to gloat. I’m not generally a gloater. Schadenfreude is not my thing. But if I were going to gloat, now would be the time. Hypothetically. It seems… how shall I put this delicately… the the Alaska Republican Convention has turned into what their one time golden child Sarah Palin would call – “a cluster.” @AnchTeaParty on Twitter was kind enough to tweet live from the convention: 17:20 Still no results on election of #Alaska Party Chair. Saying we must leave the hotel ballroom now. 17:21 Chair just declared the convention adjourned with no vote to adjourn and no…
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Category Election 2012, Joe Miller, Municipality of Anchorage, Republicans, Strategery · Tags Alaska Republican party, Alaska Republican Party Convention, Anchorage tea party, Givemeliberty.org, Joe Miller, Lisa Murkowski, National Clean Elections Lawsuit, Randy Ruedrich, Ron Paul Alaska, Russ Millette, We the People project
Posted by Jeanne Devon on April 27, 2012 · 21 Comments
Things aren’t going well for Sean Parnell. It all started last week when he called the legislature into special session to talk about three things, the most difficult and contentious of which was oil and gas production taxes. The governor sent his team to Juneau with a bill. For purposes of readability, we’ll refer to this bill (SB3001) as what it is metaphorically – a cow pie. Hatching the Idea What the governor wanted in this new “hybrid” bill was to give all kinds of breaks to big oil companies for fields that are already producing, and not so much…
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Category Alaska, Alaska Legislature, Oil Tax, Party Planner, Resource Development, Roll your eyes into it, Sean Parnell, Skulduggery, Strategery · Tags Alaska Legislature, Alaska special session, Bert Stedman, Bill Wielechowski, Bruce Tangeman, Bryan Butcher, Exxon, Hollis French, Joe Paskvan, Lesil McGuire, SB3001 Alaska, Sean Parnell, Senator Gary Stevens
Posted by Jeanne Devon on April 26, 2012 · 16 Comments
And the crowd goes wild! Remember when I compared the Resources Committee meeting of the State Senate to a hockey game, and said I thought that they ought to have a rule just like in the peewee leagues, where when one team is like 20 points up they just call the game so the other side can slink away and lick their wounds instead of continuing to endure the public humiliation? Well, guess what? Even though that rule doesn’t exist, Bryan Butcher, Bruce Tangeman, and Co. have been recalled back to the locker room. That’s right – Parnell’s…
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Category Alaska, Alaska Legislature, Oil Tax, Sarah Palin, Sean Parnell, Skulduggery, Strategery · Tags ACES Palin, ACES Parnell, Alaska Legislature, Alaska legislature special session 2012, Alaska SB3001, Bert Stedman, Bill Wielechowski, Bruce Tangeman, Bryan Butcher, Hollis French, Sarah Palin oil tax plan, Sean Parnell
Posted by Jeanne Devon on April 25, 2012 · 22 Comments
~The security seal used to secure memory cards into Anchorage’s insecure Diebold AccuVote machines. Today in the Mayor’s conference room in City Hall, the Election Commission released the results of its report and recommendations, including revised numbers that say that 65 of 121 precincts ran out of ballots at some point during the day – a higher total than the 55 previously reported. The commission’s report came after two meetings with voters and poll workers who spoke one-on-one with an individual election commissioner. Mudflats contributor Elstun Lauesen was there today when Commission Chair Gwen Matthew read the entire report aloud….
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Category Anchorage Mayoral Race, Anchorage School Board, Election 2012, Ethics, Mayor Dan Sullivan, Municipality of Anchorage, Skulduggery, Strategery · Tags Anchorage Assembly, Anchorage Election Commission, Barbara Gruenstein, Diebold Accuvote, Ernie Hall, Gwen Matthew, Jacqueline Duke, Municipal election