Sunday, May 19, 2024
Home Blog Page 1225

Blogger reposts his account of Rogoff crash landing

Suzanne Downing
-
0

 

Alice Rogoff swims away from her plane.
Alice Rogoff swims away from her Cessna 206 on July 3, 2016. Photographer unknown.

MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARING DOCUMENTATION RE-EMERGES ONLINE

When Alaska Dispatch News publisher Alice Rogoff crash landed her plane into Halibut Cove on July 3, an eye-witness travel blogger, Scott Frederickson, captured the whole scene with photos and a written account. He posted it, but the item disappeared mysteriously soon thereafter.

Fortunately, Frederickon has reposted his account at his travel blog, where he added this paragraph:

Several days later, in the local paper, no article appeared telling the truth of what happened. I then published my post and it was picked by local media and television stations. Since then, I have had conversations with the FAA, NTSB, and the pilots attorney. Oh, just write a simple travel blog for my friends can get you in a shit load of trouble. Remember, the rules are not made for the rich, they’re made specifically for the little people – to keep us in line. Keep your eyes on the rich and make them follow the same rules ALL people have to follow in order to preserve a great and honest society.

BLOGGER HOLDING HIS CARDS CLOSE

Must Read Alaska contacted Frederickson, who said that his blog has everything in it that he wants to say about the incident and that he does not wish to be quoted anywhere. But a careful reader might infer that the travel blogger felt pressure from Rogoff’s attorney, which led to the three-week disappearance of his written account while he sorted out the threat. Journalist Craig Medred was the first to raise the issue of the blog posting being removed.

As the Rogoff accident shows, the world is a much more documented place than it was a generation ago. Citizen bloggers, citizen journalists, and social media hobbyists have tools on them at all times to record events as they happen, whether they’re in Ferguson, Missouri or Halibut Cove, Alaska.

Thus, the line between journalist and citizen documentarian has been blurred, and citizens like Frederickson can find themselves in uncomfortable positions once the lawyers start calling.

Health care increases slowed by $55 million in state funds

Suzanne Downing
-
0

ALASKA CONSUMERS FORCED TO BUY ON INDIVIDUAL MARKET GET ONE-YEAR BREAK

The President and White House Staff react to the House of Representatives passing the bill on March 21, 2010.
President Obama and staff react to the House of Representatives passing the Affordable Care Act on March 21, 2010.

Health care inflation was 1.3 percent nationally in 2015.

But the last company standing in the Alaska health insurance market, Premera Blue Cross, is raising its rates by 10 percent for individuals — you know, the individual Alaskans who have no choice but to purchase from Premera.

Yet the company is tickled pink. It’s thrilled to announce that, for the first time in three years, it is not having to raise its rates by more than 35 percent. We’re supposed to be cheering the slowdown in insurance increases.

Why so little, when it was predicted that rates would soar by more than 40 percent?

It’s because the State of Alaska has kicked in $55 million this year through Governor Walker’s House Bill 374. The money came out of the General Fund.

HB 374 pays the costs of between 450-500 very expensive patients. Those patients are part of the “risk corridors program” and they are supposed to be picked up by Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), to be paid directly to the insurance companies.

But the federal government reneged, just as Obamacare opponents said it would do.

In fact, the feds only paid 12 percent to Moda in the Alaska and Oregon markets, leaving the company no choice but to sue the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) for $180 million, for Fiscal Years 2014 and 2015 for Oregon and Alaska. That will cover the 88 percent the company didn’t get paid when the feds stiffed the bill. The lawsuit is pending now, and Moda has left the Alaska market where it took such a haircut that it practically went under.

Why did the state pick up the $55 million in funding for these sick individuals rather than let Obamacare just collapse?

The people in Alaska were facing another 40 percent increase to cover these “risk corridors” and higher cost of Alaska health care. They were in revolt.

Some 23,000 people in Alaska buy individual insurance on the exchange, (far less than had been promised) which is now composed of just one company — Premera.

Those people were fed up. The State of Alaska knew that thousands would walk out on the individual market because they could simply not afford it. It was better to pay the IRS a pound of flesh. Gov. Walker and the Alaska Legislature made a policy decision to save Obamacare in Alaska.

Without the State General Fund picking up more of the cost of health care, the public would have seen a 120-150 percent increase in their health care insurance in just three years.

 

The individual market has crashed spectacularly. The collapse was predicted by a few conservative analysts in Alaska, but they were drowned out by the protestors who said Obamacare would all work just fine, save the state money. This was the Walker mantra as well, as he expanded Obamacare Medicaid.

The $55 million with which Gov. Walker paid off Obamacare has saved the system for one year, but next year rates will climb again.

WHERE ARE ALL THE OBAMACARE PROPONENTS NOW?

Before Obamacare was enacted in Alaska, there were plenty of groups clambering and protesting to force it into a state so small that our population is that of a medium-sized city. We never did have the population to support an exchange.

Where are those pro-Obamacare groups now? Where is the hospital association, the primary care association or the tribal health care executives? Why don’t they show up and help fix the gigantic problem the state faces?

They have disappeared, the Affordable Care Act is still broken, and the $55 million is simply a band-aid that has received precious little fair coverage in the media. Alaska will have to cough up even more next year for the “high risk corridor” reinsurance program. Over the next four years, the State will cough up the money time and again.

And so it goes, the rolling collapse of Obamacare is well under way.

Fairbanks – willing to convert to gas? Meh.

Suzanne Downing
-
0

Screen Shot 2016-07-18 at 3.20.26 PM

MILD WINTERS, LOW OIL PRICES WERE THE CURE FOR FAIRBANKS

Missing from the winter malaise was, well, winter. Also absent was the annual panic attack over heating fuel prices in Fairbanks. Why? The weather warmed up and the price of heating oil dropped. Fairbanks became nearly affordable.

That is putting some potential customers’ conversion to natural gas on the back burner. “The significant change in the price of heating fuel required a fresh look at the ‘willingness to convert’ with specific attention paid to the closing of the cost gap between heating fuel and the IEP natural gas price targets,”  the July, 2016 report notes. Check out the whole report here.

FAIRBANKS PILOT PROJECT

Hitachi and Alaska Railroad have agreed to bring two 40-foot liquefied natural gas shipping containers from Japan to Anchorage in September. They will be used for a demonstration project to provide transportation of LNG from the Titan plant at Point MacKenzie to Fairbanks, in a pilot project that will take place in October and November, before the containers are returned to Japan in December. The project is to test safe rail transportation of LNG from Cook Inlet North.

LNG truck trailers in Alaska have a capacity of 10,500 gallons. In order to improve the economics of the trucking option, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority undertook a study involving several hauls from Cook Inlet.

Salix, Inc. was chosen last year as the preferred liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant respondent. The project will source gas from Cook Inlet and now must find a reliable way to ship it north. Fairbanks Natural Gas owns Titan LNG, LCC, which has a gas supply contract with Hilcorp to provide natural gas to the Titan facility through early 2018.

After 2018, additional supply will be needed, and contract negotiations have begun with Cook Inlet gas suppliers. North Slope gas was always one of the options with a gasline off take point near Fairbanks, but with the gasline now in the category of pipe dream, finding more gas in Cook Inlet for the Fairbanks market will be key.

Governor Walker’s GRAB plan

Suzanne Downing
-
0

G.R.A.B. PLAN – ‘GOVERNOR RAIDS ALASKA’S BOUNTY’

Governor Bill Walker threw a hissy last week because he could not convince enough Republicans or Democrats to go along with his plan to tax Alaskans even more than what he has already done by confiscating $1,300 from their next Permanent Fund dividend.

The dividend is our share of the bounty. Now it’s his bounty.

Here’s the Governor’s GRAB plan:

2014 – Walker took no action to cut spending.

2015 – Walker gave the Legislature a budget that was larger than the previous year.

2016 – Walker further refused to cut spending until June. Then he cut:

  • $665 million from Alaskans’ Permanent Fund dividends.
  • $430 million from the debt Alaska owes to companies that get tax credits.

Of the $1.4 billion Walker cut, fully $1.1 billion was not to state programs at all.

This, we suggest, is why he is just not hearing from Alaskans that they support taxes.

THE WALKER NARRATIVE: Governor Walker is developing an alternate world narrative. Wherever he travels in Alaska, his story goes, people rush up to him and shake his hand for “doing the right thing.”

It’s a clever tale, and who will contradict it?

But notice how the Rasmuson Foundation has stopped publishing polls that show how Alaskans are more ready than ever to be taxed. In fact, all of the external organizations have gone dark in recent weeks. Gone are the astroturfing (fake grassroots) organizations. Poof.

WALKER PHONE IN: Gov. Bill Walker called into the Anchorage Assembly meeting on July 12.

Then he did a live shoot with a KTVA reporter.

Then he summarized what he said to the Twitter-verse: “Due to legislative inaction, property taxes will go up and Alaskans will have to pay more for services,” he threatened.

“In the social service world, we call this the perpetrator blaming the victim,” said one legislative aide.

“Someone needs to tell the governor that the Anchorage mayor is taxing people at the cap already,” according to an Anchorage resident attending the meeting. “The only thing left to use is the $5 million that Berkowitz and the Assembly promised to rebate to property taxpayers, since we’re already at the cap.”

The voters, with “Yes on 8” reaffirmed the formula for property taxes in April, which prevents exactly the kind of scenario the governor is threatening.

The mill rate was also set in April, which takes care of this year.

In the future, the State could take away municipal assistance and revenue sharing, and cities would have to make up the difference with property taxes, at least in Anchorage. (But not in Indian Country.)

Gov. Walker’s next phone-in to an assembly meeting is said to be Tuesday in the Mat-Su, where he will again tell the borough representatives he needs their help passing taxes.

THREATS AND LIES: At a Fairbanks rally against the Permanent Fund dividend cut, a verbal threat was made against Sen. John Coghill for his vote on SB 128. It was heard by several people.

Legislators are feeling the pressure from the public as Gov. Walker continues to blame them for what he actually did, which is take their money by fiat.

Note to readers: Make no threats against lawmakers, no matter how much you disagree. But readers already knew that. Pass it on to nonreaders: No threats in a civil society.

Senator Dan Sullivan to speak at convention

Suzanne Downing
-
0
US Sen. Dan Sullivan
US Sen. Dan Sullivan

ALASKA’S RISING STAR GETS SPOTLIGHT

Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan will be one of the speakers at the Republican National Convention, his office has told Must Read Alaska. The exact time will be announced soon, but it will be in “prime time” for television viewers.

Sullivan will be flanked by several freshmen senators who ushered in a strong Republican Congress in 2014.

Sullivan was sworn in as Alaska’s eighth United States Senator in January of 2015. He serves on four Senate committees vital to Alaska: the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee; the Armed Services Committee; the Environment and Public Works Committee; and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

U.S. Senate is his first held elected office. Prior to his election, Sullivan served as Alaska’s Attorney General and Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

As Commissioner of DNR, Sullivan had responsibility for one of the largest portfolios of oil, gas, minerals, renewable energy, timber, land, and water in the world. He developed initiatives that spurred responsible resource development, energy security, and a new jobs across the Alaska economy.  He led the streamlining and reform of the state’s regulatory and permitting system.

Sullivan is an infantry officer and Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.  His official biography lists numerous command and staff positions, both active and reserve, including TRAP Force Commander and 81mm mortar Platoon Commander, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable); Weapons Company Executive Officer, Second Battalion, Fifth Marines; Commanding Officer, Delta Company, Anti-Terrorism Battalion; Executive Officer, Echo Company, Fourth Reconnaissance Battalion; and Commanding Officer, 6thAir Naval Gunfire Liaison Company (ANGLICO).  In 2004, Sullivan was recalled to active duty for a year and a half to serve as a staff officer to the Commander of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, spending substantial time deployed in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia.  In July 2013, he was recalled to active duty to serve with a Joint Task Force in Afghanistan focusing on dismantling terrorist networks and criminalizing the Taliban insurgency.

Sullivan was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for President George W. Bush. He served as a Director in the International Economics Directorate of the National Security Council staff at the White House.

More smokin’ hot AGDC documents

Suzanne Downing
-
0

POSSIBLE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST NOTED

Forwarded to Must Read Alaska, is this redacted document. We don’t know the “to” and the “from” of this interesting memo, evidently written by Alaska Gasline Development Corporation vice chair Hugh Short to an unknown party, defending the hiring of Keith Meyer, the new president and CEO of AGDC.

What caught our eye is the reference Short makes to Meyer and an ownership of distribution from an unknown company that is alluded to in the pentultimate paragraph. What company is that and why did it raise a red flag?

AGDC HUGH SHORT MEMO

BIO OF AGDC CHIEF

Earlier this week, Meyer tried to hire his daughter to work in the AGDC’s Houston office, which will be the hub of activity going forward. His efforts were turned by by board Chairman Dave Cruz, who told the Alaska Dispatch he would guard against nepotism.

A published bio of Meyer at LNG America shows his possible financial interests that may have posed a concern:

Keith Meyer is a seasoned executive with more than 34 years of experience in the energy industry, including LNG receiving terminals, natural gas pipelines, storage projects, power plants, gas liquids plants, and gas separation projects spanning four continents.

Mr. Meyer has served in executive positions at Fortune 500 companies, primarily engaged in energy infrastructure development and small fast-growing energy companies. He was president of Cheniere LNG when that company developed North America’s largest LNG import terminal. Mr. Meyer joined CMS Energy to grow its non-utility gas transmission business and led the domestic and international pipeline and gas storage development efforts while assisting with power plant development activities.  He also previously served as Chairman of the Board of Flex LNG, a public company developing floating LNG production facilities.

Additional activities include acting as commercial lead on the team that assisted the Israeli Government in the analysis and preparation of bid documents for that country’s LNG import terminal.

Mr. Meyer is an MBA graduate of Rice University and has served as guest lecturer at Duke University, Louisiana State University, the University of Houston, and has been a course instructor for Rice University’s Energy Management Certificate program.

AGDC’s draft initial plan for the ‘new’ gasline

Suzanne Downing
-
0

SMOKIN’ HOT DOCUMENTS

For the curious, here are the plans that the new head of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation has in mind for the restructuring of the Alaska AK-LNG project, where the State moves into the lead role as the developer of the gasline. A more complete story is here.

AGDC - AK LNG Project Concept Document

AGDC - AK LNG Project Concept Document1

AGDC - AK LNG Project Concept Document2

AGDC - AK LNG Project Concept Document3

AGDC - AK LNG Project Concept Document4

AGDC - AK LNG Project Concept Document6

AGDC - AK LNG Project Concept Document7

Book review: The Gettysburg Gospel

Suzanne Downing
-
0

271 WORDS AND HOW THEY CAME TO BE

gettysburg gospelLincoln’s Gettysburg Address is on parallel with the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in its stature.

As the most famous speech in American History and just 271 words long, it implied so much and in such lofty terms, without actually stating uncomfortable truths directly.

On that cold November day in 1863, when the graves of thousands were still fresh in the ground, Lincoln only sought to give his seal of approval to the battlefield cemetery, which contained the mortal remains of both Union and Confederate fighters. But he gave our nation reason to believe in fighting on for the cause of free people.

If you like Garry Wills’ Lincoln at Gettysburg, you will also appreciate the vivid writing in The Gettysburg Gospel, which deepens our understanding of the content and the context of this remarkable speech, and the promise of the nation that inspired it.

Earlier that year, in the heat of summer, ten thousand soldiers’ bodies were dusted over with dirt and lime, while swarms of flies and human and animal excrement covered the field, and the carcasses of three thousand or more horses and mules were rigor mortis on the land around Gettysburg. Twenty-one thousand were wounded. “War had come to them. And then it had gone and left the horror behind.”

It’s difficult to imagine what that scene looked like and smelled like, but we know from this description that it was hell on earth for the 2,400 sturdy Scotch-Irish and German people who inhabited Gettysburg. They became coffin-makers overnight. The white powder of lime covered everything “like snow in July,” as the town coped with the stench, the fear of disease, and the throngs of strangers — some to find their loved ones, some to loot, and others just war tourists, there to witness, to “gawk.” Gettysburg, for a time, ceased to be a town, but became a collection of hospitals, one person observed.

The Gettysburg Gospel transports the reader back to the day and sets the scene into which President Lincoln would offer his words of hope, solace, and healing for a nation so divided.

AGDC has initial plan drafted to ‘go it alone’

Suzanne Downing
-
0

WOULD FORM NEW COMPANY, OWNED BY AGDC

The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation may not want to call its new plan a “go-it-alone” strategy, but it definitely has the feel of a project takeover.

Keith Meyer, AGDC photo
Keith Meyer, AGDC photo

We are told the new draft plan by AGDC is floating around in the Senate, and it indicates the agency would form a new sub-entity to own, commercialize, finance, design, build and operate a gasline system. The agency would move full-steam-ahead without further market analysis.

The new company owned by AGDC would do all the work that three other partners are now doing.

That work would include the $65 billion in financing to make the gasline a reality, with a final State of Alaska investment decision deadline of July, 2018, and start-up by 2023.

Companies that actually own the gas would be marketing their gas through the gasline, which may explain in part why Gov. Bill Walker has insisted in seeing the companies’ marketing plans.

AGDC has been reluctant to release the draft plan because, according to a memo from Keith Meyer:

“Unfortunately, the apparent willingness of some authors in the public domain to take certain terms out of context or make a story where no story exists, has led to a request by one of the parties to not release a draft concept and instead wait for a more definitive agreement; we are sympathetic to that argument and have decided to comply with that request for now while a more definitive agreement is in the works.”

That same letter bristled at the characterization by some that the agency/state was going to “go it alone” in this new plan of attack.

HOUSTON WILL BE A CENTER OF AGDC ACTIVITY

At the board meeting of AGDC on Thursday, new President Keith Meyer told the board that the agency will open up a new office in Houston, Texas, which will become the center — or at least the brain trust — of operations. He plans to hire three new people, one of which is his daughter, who he said has expertise in Quickbooks and Excel spreadsheets.

No one at the meeting said anything about Alaska hire or nepotism, and there was no board action taken — or requested — on the matter of AGDC essentially shifting some of its operations to Texas. How much in salary the three employees will make is murky, but Meyer said the two that were not his daughter would be in travel status regularly. The individuals to be hired are people with whom Meyer worked in a previous capacity in Houston.

Update: The Alaska Dispatch is reporting that the AGDC Board Chair Dave Cruz will not allow the daughter to be hired.

AGDC is exempt from procurement laws and is supposed to operate independent of the Governor’s Office, but close observers say the two have become intertwined to the point that they are in constant deliberative communication, operating as one.

AGDC has a history of creating subsidiaries since last fall’s attempt to focus on an in-state gasline. The AGDC communications effort back then was headed by Luke Hopkins, who then filed to run against a member of the Senate who had a large part in creating AGDC — John Coghill.

WALKER’S DEMANDS FOR MARKETING PLANS

Background: The state Division of Oil and Gas on June 30 rejected BP’s 2016 plan of operation for Prudhoe Bay. The letter by Oil and Gas Director Corri Feige, allows the company to operate until Nov. 1, but demands critical gas marketing information that BP says it cannot give.

BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil have repeatedly said that giving over marketing information would be an anti-trust violation and also run afoul of Securities and Exchange Commission laws.

Feige wrote that major gas sales, in the relatively near future, are required. But the letter does not specify why there is such urgency for marketing gas for a gasline that AGDC now says won’t be ready to deliver product until after 2023, at the earliest.

Governor is bully culprit, complaint says

Suzanne Downing
-
0

GOVERNOR APOLOGIZES

In a quickly issued apology, Gov. Bill Walker yesterday walked back his threats against lawmakers and candidates, in which he had stated that he would be interviewing each of them to determine which of three plans they supported, and then, in veiled terms threatened to work against them as candidates if they chose wrong.

Screen Shot 2016-07-14 at 9.59.33 AMWithout admitting to wrongdoing, he stated:

“While it has been determined that the statement I made about the upcoming election was not a viol
ation of the ethics act, I want to clarify that I am not trying to influence an election. I am trying to inform the public about what the legislature’s own analyst has called the ‘gravest fiscal crisis in state history.‘ I want Alaskans to know the consequences of action and inaction. I regret any misunderstanding this may have created.” –Governor Bill Walker

COMPLAINTS MOVE FORWARD

Meanwhile, two other ethics complaints were in the queue against the governor today. Representative Tammie Wilson of North Pole filed this one:

Public Officer complaint 2

Public Officer Complaint 3Public officer complaint 1

Government transparency activist Andree McLeod was preparing to file another. An exerpt from the McLeod complaint draft:

Walker July 14 2016 Ethics Complaint

 

 

 

 

 

1...1,2241,2251,226...1,233Page 1,225 of 1,233

About us

Must Read Alaska is news of people, politics, policy, culture, and happenings in Alaska.

Contact
4021 West Hill Road,
Homer, AK 99603
[email protected]

The latest

© Must Read Alaska