By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
Phil Izon, a lifelong Alaskan, didn’t build the PFD Doomsday Clock as a gimmick. He built it because Alaskans deserved to know the truth—not the sugarcoated headlines, not the legislative spin, but the cold, undeniable reality:
Your dividend wasn’t reduced. It was taken. Stolen. Redirected behind closed doors. Quietly siphoned from the pockets of working families and handed over to the same political machine that promised to protect it.
This wasn’t an honest debate about budgets. It wasn’t shared sacrifice. It was a betrayal — engineered by a small circle of legislators and bureaucrats who put unions, special interests, and Lower 48 donor networks above the very people they were elected to serve.
These weren’t budget cuts — they were backroom raids.
They didn’t ask your permission. They didn’t hold a vote of the people. They didn’t amend the law. They just ignored it.
They gutted a statutory formula that was designed to protect Alaskans—especially the working class and rural families—and they converted it into a slush fund for bureaucrats, nonprofit insiders, and political operatives who answer to dark-money donors, not to you.
Year after year, they diverted billions with a shrug, while you paid the price in higher heating bills, stretched grocery budgets, missed mortgage payments, and kids forced to forgo opportunity. The wealth that was meant to build your family’s future was quietly absorbed into a government system that only grows, never gives back.
This is not governance. This is economic colonization.
And Phil Izon’s PFD Doomsday Clock doesn’t just keep time, it counts every dollar taken and exposes the names, the votes, and the mechanisms that made it possible.
Let’s not pretend this was accidental. It started with Gov. Bill Walker in 2016 and continues to this day. Billions that should’ve gone to Alaskans went instead to government unions, bureaucratic expansions, and a web of Lower 48-funded nonprofits. And behind it? The usual suspects: Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors, and the 1630 Fund — dark-money power brokers pulling strings from outside our state.
These same groups engineered Ranked Choice Voting, Automatic Voter Registration, and a laundry list of “equity” and “climate” programs run through groups like SalmonState, Alaska Venture Fund, and Alaska Outdoor Alliance. What they actually did was install a new political machine designed to keep the public out and redirect Alaska’s resource wealth to the select few.
And the PFD? It was the first casualty.
Just a few figures from the PFD Doomsday Clock:
- 2018: Alaskans were owed $2,900. They were paid $1,600. Over $800 million stolen.
- 2020: $992 paid. Over $1 billion diverted.
- 2022: Should’ve been $4,200. Got $3,284. $600 million redirected.
- 2023: Lawful amount: $3,900. Paid: $1,312. $1.5 billion reallocated.
- 2024: Should be $4,000. Paid: $1,718. $1.3–1.4 billion stripped away.
If the statutory formula had been followed, dividends would rise above $4,000 annually by 2029 and reach $5,000 by 2035. A family of four will have lost over $180,000 during this 20-year period. That’s not hypothetical — it’s real money that could have gone toward tuition, mortgages, groceries, heating oil, or medical care.
So where did it all go?
Into the state’s political machine. Into unaccountable education bureaucracies. Into pension systems and NGO slush funds. Into the hands of consultants and campaign donors who make a living expanding government, not serving the public.
Alaskans never voted to give away their dividend. But the same network that re-engineered our elections made sure that our voices no longer matter—by installing politicians who do their bidding.
And here’s the part that too many still don’t understand:
Government money doesn’t vanish. It gets reassigned. It gets redistributed. It gets redirected, usually upward.
There’s a dangerous myth, whispered into our politics and baked into our complacency, that when funds go into the hands of the government, they somehow just disappear. That it’s all too complex to follow. That it’s nobody’s fault when money meant for the people evaporates into a black hole of “budgetary necessity.”
But that’s a lie.
Money doesn’t disappear — it moves.
And it moves exactly where someone tells it to.
When the Legislature strips the PFD from your family, it doesn’t evaporate into the ether. It flows—into union pensions. Into multi-million-dollar grants for political nonprofits. Into expanding agencies that never shrink, never reform, and never return a dime of value to the people footing the bill. It funds bloated administrative offices, ESG consultants, DEI contracts, and the revolving door of insiders who profit every time the public loses sight of where the money goes.
The mindset that government spending is just some fuzzy abstraction is how they get away with it.
Because if the people think the money’s just “gone,” there’s no one to hold accountable.
But when you follow the dollars—when you trace them from the hands of the working class into the spreadsheets of political allies, lobbyists, and ideologically driven nonprofits—the betrayal becomes personal. It becomes visible. And it becomes something we can fight.
That’s why the PFD Doomsday Clock matters. Because it shatters the illusion. It draws a straight line—from what you were supposed to receive to where it actually went.
This isn’t accidental.
It’s not mysterious.
It’s engineered.
Every dollar the government takes without transparency or consent is a dollar it assigns a new owner. And spoiler alert: It’s not you.
So the question is no longer whether the money is gone.
The question is: who has it now?
And why are you, the rightful recipient, the one being told to tighten your belt?
This isn’t just about restoring the PFD.
It’s about breaking the mindset that the government’s money is anything other than your money, whether it was taxed, seized, or withheld from the people it was meant to serve.
Theft disguised as budgeting is still theft.
And the Doomsday Clock exists to call it what it is—and to help Alaskans take it back. Every dollar. Every vote. Every piece of the future that belongs to them—not the machine.
Because until every Alaskan understands the scale of what’s been lost—and the forces behind it—we will continue to lose more.
This isn’t about partisan politics.
This is about who owns Alaska’s future—you, or the people who think they’re entitled to rule you.
And that’s why the Doomsday Clock exists:
To make sure the theft is no longer silent.
To make sure the people know.
And to make sure that one day soon, they take it all back.
This is why Phil Izon built the Doomsday Clock—and why Phil created the upcoming film:
“The Permanent Short: Alaska’s Reallocation of $25+ Billion from the Citizens of Alaska to Unions and NGOs” It is scheduled to premiere in October.
In the meantime, you can explore: PFD Doomsday Clock 2.0 (adjusted for inflation and investment loss), the Alaska Budget Analyzer, and more films and tools at: TropicTundra.com
Stay awake. Stay vocal. Stay Alaskan.
Michael Tavoliero writes for Must Read Alaska.
