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March 28, 2024

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Friday, January 28, 2022

APOC Ruling Assigns Large Penalty to Bob Griffin for Multiple Campaign Violations

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 (he lost), in a campaign best-known for the accusations of illegal yard signs. He was also one of Mayor Sullivan’s chosen-ones in that campaign, receiving donations from the both the Mayor and his wife. — In May 2011, Mr. Griffin showed some questionable judgement through…

We Won! Alaska Takes Two of the Top Ten Most Bizarre Political Ads (video)

Are we really surprised that Alaska is overrepresented in anything having to do with bizarre politics? No, we are not. Inspired by the very strange Herman Cain ad, in which his campaign manager, as a finale, takes a nice deep drag off a half-smoked cigarette, followed by a cutaway to an extreme closeup of Herman Cain staring in to the camera and taking a full ten seconds to finally and veeery sloooowwwly smile, the Washington Post has posted the top ten most bizarre political ads of all time. Guess who won the top spot? Anyone living in Alaska at the…

Almost a Year Later, APOC Will Render a Verdict on Rep. Bill Thomas

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 Rep. Thomas was running a reelection campaign, I was alerted to some very strange discrepancies regarding some regular ads running in Haines’s only newspaper, The Chilkat Valley News. After doing much research, I filed a complaint with Alaska Public Offices Commission on October 13th: The…

Palin Emails: Todd is a “private citizen”…except when he’s not…

I have a little bit of personal experience with this Palin email thing. However, mine were so redacted, they were no fun at all. So, like many others, I’ve enjoyed making up my own searches of the awesome 2011 Palin Email Database, courtesy of MSNBC and Crivella West. The REAL fun happens when I’m searching on one topic and stumble upon another quite accidentally. For example, I was doing a search on a lobbyist name or two and found this email from Palin’s assistant/residence manager: From : Erika Fagerstrom [erika_fagerstrom@gov.state. ak.us] Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 1:43 PM To: Governor…

Why Is Twice-Failed School Board Candidate Bob Griffin Following School Busses?

By Linda Kellen Biegel No, this is not a joke. Bob Griffin, Mayor Sullivan’s candidate for School Board (including personal donations from the Mayor and his wife) even had an encounter with the Anchorage Police School Resource Officers over the whole thing. From a recording of the May 23rd School Board Meeting: Don Smith: The other thing…I understand there was some kind of a school bus study being done by an independent group… Carol Comeau: Do you want me to tell you the story? Don Smith: I’m curious where it’s at now because I’ve been hearing stories that indicate the…

“Superintendent” Sullivan’s Education Summit — What is the Goal?

In a previous post on the “Anti-Public Education Agenda”, we discussed how corporations and right-wing radicals were driving the “school choice” and education reform movements nationally and statewide. However, no one has played politics in this arena quite the way that Mayor Dan Sullivan has here in Anchorage: — Since the early days of his Mayorship, Dan Sullivan began waging an all-out war against public employees …especially those who are unionized. — Throughout his term, Sullivan has continued a pattern of putting hand-picked highly-partisan candidates in major appointments and to outwardly support them in supposed non-partisan races against people who…

The Anti-Public Education Agenda Comes to Alaska…

…And Hardly Anybody Knows It Many of us have heard the stories: new Republican Governors and Tea Party majorities in state legislatures across the country have been targeting public employees and their salaries, pensions, health benefits, etc… Along with this, there has been a major push at another budget-cut target — public school systems. Public Education faces massive cuts in Texas ($4 bil), huge cuts in Wisconsin ($900 mil), more cuts in North Carolina, budget cuts and a removal of the school districts’ tax authority in Pennsylvania (inhibiting individual districts from raising property taxes), and a governor-declared “financial emergency” in…

Voices from the Flats: The Anonymous Bloggers on Palin’s “Fishing Philosophy”

We here at Mudflats have great respect for the writers at the wonderful blog “Anonymous Bloggers,” who live and work in Rural Alaska and other locations outside of “Los Anchorage.” I am especially excited when they pool their experience and write a post on one of the most confusing aspects of Alaska life — fishing rules and regulations. Here, Alaska Pi and Ugavic address Palin’s audacity while visiting New Hampshire in pretending that she had a clue about fishing regs and what was good for Alaska. I encourage you to go to the blog and read the original post and…

Mark Halperin Slurps-up Sarah’s Spoon-fed Spin

  By Linda Kellen Biegel I watched a piece last night on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” that was good overall. It was about Palin’s bus-to-nowhere tour: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy I was pleased that O’Donnell pointed out the potential illegalities involved in using her SarahPAC money, regulated by the Federal Election Committee, on a “family vacation” rather than on a campaign. At one point, he even mentions that the media doesn’t report on such things because frankly they generally don’t understand them. That statement proved to be ironic. O’Donnell then…

Once Again, the Assembly is Sullied by Dan

Back when the Anchorage Assembly Chair was Dan Sullivan, he presided over a “meeting-before-the-meeting” of the Assembly. This is a meeting they have before their regular Tuesday Assembly meeting to basically get the organizational flotsam and jetsam out of the way…present amendments, new ordinances, etc…so that time isn’t eaten up on Tuesdays with “making the sausage.” Though the “open meeting laws” in Alaska ensure that anyone can sit in on these, at this particular meeting more members of the public were present than usual. You see, the debate over the ordinance that would halt smoking in the hospitality workplaces was…