By ALEX GIMARC
In the political world, you can almost always explain past and future actions by simply following the money. Who does this spending benefit? Who is getting political support? Who is being excoriated? Who is yelling loudest?
Here in Alaska, education is one flash point, with the money going to the various education unions rather than “The Children.” Failure to belly up to the trough with sufficient support is painted as lack of support for The Children rather than very real concern for the complete lack of accountability and abysmal performance of public education in this state over the last several decades.
Similarly, the push for a return to defined benefit pensions for law enforcement is another, newer one, that will quickly be extended to all state union employees. Failure to support is excoriated as lack of support for law enforcement, a laughable charge given the robust gun culture of Alaska.
We can’t afford either, but no matter, as the “All Your PFD Belong To Us Caucus” (formerly the Bipartisan Caucus), have them paid for, first with shrinking the Permanent Fund dividend to a vestigial $1,000 and when that’s gone, they go after the corpus of the Permanent Fund itself to pay for their new obligations.
Who benefits from all this? Democrats, who are purchasing the votes of their supporters with other people’s money. In fact, with the theft of the PFD, they are purchasing political support with the money of individual union members and their families.
This is such a great scam that Republicans have gotten into the game. The two vectors are rural broadband and climate change / green energy spending. Lisa Murkowski is the most obvious practitioner of this.
Rural broadband is a uniquely Alaskan form of grift, with tens of millions of dollars appropriated to make rural broadband available to the Bush. The politicians who support this grift give the free money (taxpayer’s money) to broadband providers who lay fiber and hook up individuals and communities to the internet. Those providers then turn right around and write checks to political campaigns of politicians who support the ongoing grift.
This grift completely ignores the rise of Starlink, satellite-based broadband that can be hooked up for a few hundred dollars with monthly service in the $120 range. But nobody gets elected pushing Starlink. Note that if individuals are getting their full statutory PFD, they can afford roughly three Starlink subscriptions per year. That won’t elect any democrats or rainy day RINOs, but no matter.
Our final example comes from climate change / green energy spending most recently authorized in the Biden Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022. A lot of the money authorized has yet to be spent or committed. The Trump DOGE team recommended eliminating most of the unallocated spending, something which distresses Alaska’s Senior US Sen. Lisa Murkowski greatly.
When you have a huge pile of money lying around, there is always the possibility of graft and corruption, though in this case that corruption is just as possible as night following day.
The Biden administration managed to shovel $100 billion dollars in green energy grants, loans and commitments out of the front door of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) in the 76 days between Nov 5 and Trump’s inauguration Jan 21. That program managed to write just over $40 billion in the 15 years of its existence before Election Day 2024. No corruption there, I’m sure (/sarc).
Of course, our senior US senator is completely silent about that corruption, though she is quite vocal about reversing the cuts.
One of the observations made by Elon Musk during the DOGE process is the following:
“One lesson I remember from the PayPal days: Do you know who complained the loudest? Fraudsters. There would be immediate over the top indignation from the fraudsters. We’re going to see outrageous stuff from fraudsters as we continue cracking down, they’re the loudest.”
It is always nice when the Other Side tells you who they are, what they are, and what they want. It is even better to listen to them and have an appropriate, timely response.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
