U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan spoke on the Senate floor on Friday about the president’s trip to Europe, pointing out some inconvenient truths for German critics of the U.S. president:
“The President also highlighted a big national security issue that is in Europe that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but that should get a lot of attention, and that is the issue of energy, particularly natural gas and how Russia feeds a lot of Europe–particularly, in this case, Germany. That undermines energy security and national security in Europe and in NATO. It is a controversial topic. A lot of countries in Europe don’t like the fact that Germany is spending so much to import Russian gas when NATO is actually focused on defending Europe against Russia. I think the President also did a good job highlighting this issue and how we need to focus on this.
“We are seeing some Europeans protesting the visit of our President, but I will state this–and you don’t read about this a lot: There has been no Western leader who has done more to undermine Western interests and Western national security and European energy security than the former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder. He was the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, and when he left office, what did he do? He immediately went to work for Gazprom and Vladimir Putin to sell natural gas to European countries, including his own government and his own country, Germany.
“To me, that represents a remarkable betrayal of Western values, NATO security, and European energy security. It doesn’t get highlighted, but, for our German friends–and they are our good, close allies–it is one thing to protest our President, but take a look at your former Chancellor. He is doing more damage to the national security of Europe and the energy security of Germany and our allies than probably anybody else in Europe.”
WATCH 15-SEC DRAMATIC VIDEO OF MAN BEING SLAMMED LIKE RAGDOLL
Joe Riggs, a candidate for House District 26 and professional-level kitesurfer, last week led a group in rescuing a fellow kitesurfer in trouble on Turnagain Arm.
The wind was strong, he said, blowing at 50-60 mph, and the waves were 10 to 12 feet high, what Riggs calls “double-head high,” a surfing term to indicate about twice the height of an average human.
Turnagain Arm is the kind of kitesurfing conditions best left to people with his skill set. It’s not the place for beginners, but Riggs is a regular at Windy Point. He and his friends wear safety gear that includes helmets, ear plugs, impact vests, floatation devices of thick neoprene, and they all look out for each other. They are all sponsored by kitesurfing manufacturers. Riggs represents Switch Kites.
“We always theorized what would happen if someone had to eject from their kites out there, but we never could practice it because it is so dangerous,” Riggs said.
The surfer who suddenly needed rescuing last Sunday was off of Windy Point, on the road side of Turnagain Arm. One of the waves touched his kite, and toss him like a rag doll into his tow lines, which are cords that connect the surfer to the kite.
Then, the unthinkable happened: The kite filled with wind again and took off, as the man struggled underwater to untangle his neck and body from the lines, which were becoming tighter around him. It all happened in an instant, as shown in this video taken by a bystander:
The surfer, still bound by his lines, was tossed 20 to 30 feet into the air, within less than a second, and them slammed onto the water, where he once again struggled to untangle himself. Just as he was nearly free, the kite powered up again, and slammed him a second time. Then a third.
The man wasn’t able to get to work his safety release, Riggs said, and he was flipped up again, with the kite moving into a pattern Riggs calls a “death spiral,” where it whipped around and around, dragging the man behind it. He was finally able to work the safety release.
“We saw it happen, and we came toward him on our boards. In a minute, he went over a big wave and we lost him, even though he was in a bright orange vest. We were trying to find him, and we broke into a grid pattern. About 10 minutes into it, someone called 911, and in 20 minutes one of our guys found him over near Hope (across the body of water).
“Three of us got around him, and one of the kiters got rid of his board and was just hanging onto the guy, trying to drag him into shore. But the wind was too strong, and the current was too strong, and our kites were just too small to fight the currents. We were dragging him, but we were headed toward Girdwood.”
Kitesurfing on Turnagain Arm.
They weren’t making progress against the wind and current, and the man was being dragged through the 50-degree water, which was flushing through his wet suit. That was a recipe for disaster.
So Riggs made the decision to go back to the other side of the arm and get a bigger kite.
“I headed back to the beach. It took me about 20 minutes. My five meters of fabric just wasn’t enough to tow him with me so I got my next kite, about 10 meters of fabric –massively overpowered. It took two guys to hold onto my harness so I didn’t get dragged down the beach.
“I fought my way back over, and it took every bit of skill that I had. I managed to get to him and — I could barely control this overpowered kite — I had a rope to tie him, because he was too cold, he just couldn’t hold on that well at that point. I just kept talking to him all the way across. That kite was so overpowered even with the two of us, we went so fast we were skipping over the water like we were being towed by a ski boat.”
There were mud-sand bars and channels to cross on the road side of the arm, so the two had to walk through the mud and then relaunch the kite to get across the channels. They worked together and then finally, Riggs was able to walk his friend up to the Seward Highway, where the fire department checked him out.
Joe Riggs kitesurfing — and wiping out — on a calmer day.
A paramedic and firefighter for 10 years, Riggs knew that hypothermia was stalking them both.
“He was extremely cold. It took 15 minutes to walk him out but during that time he recovered,” Riggs said.
“The paramedics checked the kiter out at the scene and he’ll be okay, but it was a close call. I’m grateful for everyone who participated in the rescue – in all likelihood, their efforts saved his life,” Riggs said.
“Don’t forget, it just wasn’t me out there.We had a team working the problem and he always had two other kiters with him once we found him.”
All three men who are vying for District 26 as Republicans are heroes — Laddie Shaw is a retired Navy Seal, and Al Fogle is retired from the U.S. Army, serving in the infantry in Iraq.
But none is as expert on a kiteboard as Joe Riggs, who might find that politics is actually a lot less intense, and maybe even a bit more mundane than an average day on Turnagain Arm.
The Tuluksak Native Community Village Council voted 5-0 to oppose the development of the Donlin Gold Mine. Tuluksak says it opposes the mine due to the “extreme ruin, destruction and danger it should pose to the Yuuyaraq health and welfare in the Indigenous Tribes and the people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region.”
The council voted on July 5, becoming the second Native tribe in the region to oppose the Donlin mine. The Orutsaramiut Native Council had protested, for nearly identical reasons.
On July 7, some Calista Regional Native Corporation shareholders spoke their concerns about the mine’s impact on subsistence at the corporation’s annual meeting. To support them, the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Alliance has emerged as a rallying cry against the proposed mine, putting Calista and Kuskokwim Corporation in awkward positions, since they own the subsurface mineral rights, but have leased those to the project. The alliance says it is planning more protests and organizational activities in the region.
The environmental impact statement for the proposed mine has been completed and a record of decision on the permit is due in August. The opposition to the mine has come after the public comment period closed.
Donlin Mine is in area to the north and west of another proposed mine — Pebble. That project, whose name is a household word in Alaska, has been mired in controversy, lawsuits, and even federal embargoes for years. Gov. Bill Walker has come out in opposition to Pebble since he became governor, although in 2013 he was in favor of the permitting process. He has not stated where he stands on Donlin.
Donlin sits on one of the biggest undeveloped gold deposits in the world. Owned by Novagold Resources and Barrick Gold USA, the joint venture with Calista is 12 miles from the Kuskokwim River and is capable of producing 1.5 million ounces of gold during the first five years of operation, leveling off to 1.1 million ounces during the rest of the mine’s life, which is expected to be 27 years.
The project could bring 3,000 construction jobs and up to 1,400 operational jobs to the region.
Anchorage police arrested two 26-year-old men in connection with a shooting at 12th and Hyder Street in Anchorage, where a toddler was shot by a bullet while inside her home on 11th Avenue in May.
David M. Freeman faces charges of Assault I, Assault III, Misconduct Involving a Weapon I, Misconduct Involving a Weapon II, Misconduct Involving a Weapon IV, and Reckless Endangerment.
Argenis Guzman faces charges of Assault I, Assault III, Misconduct Involving a Weapon I, Misconduct Involving a Weapon II, Misconduct Involving a Weapon IV, Reckless Endangerment, and Tampering with Physical Evidence.
One man is still on the lam and is believed to have fled the country.
At 4 pm on May 21, police took several calls about people shooting at each other from vehicles. The two suspect vehicles were a red 2002 Dodge Ram pickup and a silver 2012 Toyota Camry.
The investigation found that it was a case of road rage between two men, which escalated into gunfire exchanged during a high-speed chase.
A bullet entered the nearby home of a family and struck the child, who ended up hospitalized for a week.
Later, an officer conducted a traffic stop on a red Dodge Ram. In plain view in the truck’s center console was a box of 9mm ammunition.
The driver was transported to APD Headquarters for questioning.
After obtaining a search warrant, officers searched the vehicle and found a 9mm spent shell casing in the front cab area along with handgun magazines and ammunition.
Less than three hours after the shooting on May 21st, the driver of the Toyota Camry ditched his vehicle and reported it as stolen.
On May 29, police got a call from North Eagle River Loop Road and found the vehicle there, with extensive damage.
A month earlier, Troopers responded to Bogard Road in Wasilla, for a report about a driver pulled off the side of the road, and asleep at the wheel.
Troopers found David Freeman in a 2016 Chevy pickup. While he was not under the influence, he failed to disclose to officers that he was carrying a concealed firearm on him, even after being questioned by Troopers about whether he was armed. Freeman was issued a mandatory court citation for Misconduct Weapons in the 5th degree and released, and his firearm was seized.
Among his other minor scrapes with the law was a 2013 case where he challenged someone to a fight and was arrested for disorderly conduct. The conviction was eventually set aside.
The Anchorage Daily News on Friday posted a plea written by Gov. Bill Walker, “Why I reduced the Permanent Fund dividend.”
The governor was writing in his official capacity as the highest elected state official, but directing people to watch a campaign video before they make up their mind about his official policy actions in reducing their Permanent Fund dividends by one half.
His piece never explicitly asked for people’s votes. But the link in his op-ed is to the same campaign video he has promoted on his campaign Facebook page for the past three days.
Must Read Alaska finds it unprecedented to allow a sitting governor to publish an official op-ed that is a plea for support for his re-election during the campaign season, and then link it to an actual campaign video.
It’s illegal for a governor to use both his official capacity and his campaign capacity in one opinion piece. State officials must step outside of the actual state-owned property to work on campaigns, and Walker is clearly speaking in his official role in this op-ed. If he used State employees to write the op-ed, then he has used State employees for campaigning.
Complaints about this illegal behavior would have to be brought to Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth , a close ally of the governor, for prosecution.
The Anchorage Daily News is the newspaper that brought Bill Walker to office in the first place, with its biased coverage during the 2014 campaign cycle, when the paper operated as the Alaska Dispatch News under the ownership of Alice Rogoff.
After the Must Read Alaska News Flash (an email newsletter) went out to 11,123 readers today, with details about the governor’s op-ed, the entire opinion piece was removed from the Anchorage Daily News web site, and this item is now in its place:
TWO VIOLATIONS
From the campaign violation side of things, this was an illegal donation from the ADN and the Alaska Journal of Commerce, both owned by the Binkley Company.
To its credit, the company took down the ADN version of the op-ed, although the Journal of Commerce version remains up as of this publication time. Must Read believes it is unlikely the Binkley Company will face sanctions by APOC, due in part to its timely removal of the piece.
From the government ethics side, this is very likely a misuse of State resources. The “People’s lawyer” can be reached at: [email protected], but it seems unlikely that she would launch an investigation of her boss’s actions.
Complaints to the Alaska Public Offices Commission about the corporate contribution should go to Tom Lucas, at [email protected]. Be sure to mention that there was no “Paid for” disclosure in the governor’s opinion piece.
The question that APOC should ask is “Who penned this op-ed? Was it official staff or campaign staff?” That will get to the root of the problem.
The governor’s article also ran in The Frontiersman and the Kenai Peninsula Clarion, but those newspapers removed the offending link.
Here’s the text of the top of the governor’s opinion piece as it ran in the ADN, with the link to his campaign ad:
Why I reduced the Permanent Fund dividend
By Gov. Bill Walker
Why did I reduce the Permanent Fund dividend in 2016?
Before you make up your mind on the decisions about the budget and the fiscal plan, please take a moment to watch this video.
The decision to reduce the PFD in 2016 in response to Alaska’s fiscal crisis will be one of the defining issues of this election. Our opponents on both the left and the right have criticized this decision.
Some Alaskans believe that it was a terrible decision that we never should have considered, that this decision was unnecessary, that if we had cut more out of state government, we could have avoided making any changes to the way we manage the Alaska Permanent Fund….
“Alaskans Against Dunleavy” opened up an Alaska post office box late last month and registered with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, but it’s not quite an Alaska group.
And it may have forgotten one key component of a campaign: Buy your URL — your online address — right away.
Since it was still available, the group that actually supports Mike Dunleavy for governor purchased the name and set up a site spoofing Alaskans Against Dunleavy, its founder, Seattleite, Justin Matheson, and the candidate Matheson supports: Mead Treadwell.
Such are the hijinks that happen in independent expenditure groups — those ad hoc groups that form up to support or oppose a candidate.
In this case, we’ll let the site do the talking. It’s all in good humor …. (until, of course, it isn’t):
After a meeting in his D.C. offices today, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan says he will support Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
His endorsement was made following an hour-long chat between Sullivan and Kavanaugh, which highlighted a number of national and Alaska-focused legal issues. Here’s what Sullivan said about the meeting:
“Today, I met with Judge Kavanaugh to discuss at length and great depth his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court and his viewpoint on a variety of national and Alaska-focused legal issues. The meeting was extremely constructive and an important opportunity for Judge Kavanaugh to reaffirm what I’ve known about him for some time. He is someone who will interpret the law and Constitution as written, he holds a healthy skepticism regarding the expansive power of federal agencies, he is a strong protector of the Second Amendment, and he has the values, temperament and humility I believe Alaskans will value on the Supreme Court. I also took the opportunity to familiarize Judge Kavanaugh on a number of critical Alaska-focused federal laws, such as ANILCA, ANCSA and the new ANWR law. I think Judge Kavanaugh meets the qualifications we should be looking for and I plan on supporting him as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.”
Congressman Don Young also issued a statement today. He will not be part of the confirmation process, as that is a Senate function, but urged a speedy process:
“While I am a Member of the U.S. House and Constitutionally do not have the authority to vote on Supreme Court Justices, the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy presents our judicial system with a critical vacancy. An empty seat on the Supreme Court needs to be filled expediently particularly as the Court will be considering important cases, like that of Alaskan John Sturgeon.”
State Medicaid officials might have gotten suspicious when the Tundra Suites in Bethel went from billing Medicaid $4,000 a month in 2016 for the Medicaid patients coming into town, to billing $56,604 a month in December of 2017.
But evidently they didn’t. The tens of thousands of dollars being billed to the State by a 13-room hotel each month wasn’t what tipped the State Department of Health and Social Services off to the fraud. The State just kept paying the exponentially increasing bills, no questions asked.
What got the State’s attention was that other hotels in Bethel complained they were not being paid by the State of Alaska for housing patients. Their bills to the State were being refused.
As it turns out, they were being refused because the Medicaid housing vouchers they were submitting had already been paid to Chin Kim, the 100 percent owner of the Tundra Suites, a 13-room hotel that is a registered Medicaid provider, and which has a sketchy past, including being involved in some illegal whiskey sales a couple of years ago.
Medicaid dollars don’t only pay for doctors and hospital services. They also pay for transportation and other costs to and from medical hubs like Bethel and Anchorage. The State has aggressively enrolled people in villages, already covered by Indian Health Services, into the Medicaid program under the Medicaid expansion that came with Obamacare.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Medicaid expansion increased revenues to IHS and tribe-owned facilities. Before the expansion, IHS and tribe facilities depended on congressional appropriation. In FY 2017, Congress appropriated $4.8 billion for IHS. Third party payers include Medicaid, and with Medicaid expansion, many more costs are covered, without a congressional appropriation. There is no spending limit — i.e., no budgets capping expenditures — which makes it an attractive line of business.
Bethel is a hub community for 48 predominantly Native villages from Akiachak to Upper Kalskag. Patients from those villages have been signed up for the state’s Medicaid program under the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and the Walker Administration, which signed onto expansion in August of 2015.
Patients in the Bethel region frequently visit the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, the biggest health provider in the region. With uncapped dollars from Medicaid, this means a lot more trips to town, more hotels, taxis and restaurants that are eligible to receive the patient vouchers.
It was only a matter of time before those vouchers became a form of fungible currency in the community.
IT UNFOLDED IN JANUARY
In January 2018, the Alaska Department of Law’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit was tipped off by the Department of Health and Social Service which said Tundra Suites was billing for housing Medicaid recipients who were not actually staying at Tundra Suites. They were staying at other hotels in the area, staying with relatives, or weren’t even in Bethel at all.
The vouchers, which come in paper packets, contain an original and three copies for a total of four Medicaid vouchers per packet. Each packet has the same authorization number, which appears on all four vouchers for flights, taxis, meals, and hotels with pre-approved “Medicaid providers.” The providers (hotels, taxi companies, etc.) then submit the vouchers to the State of Alaska for reimbursement.
Tundra Suites was one of those Medicaid providers.
Once the investigation started, other irregularities emerged. Tundra Suites was housing people together in rooms, when the guests were clearly not related to each other. Normally, vouchers would cover the cost of an escort for a family member, but in this case, investigators found that people were sharing rooms when they were from different communities altogether, with no known connection.
In one example from Dec. 18, 2017, Tundra Suites submitted a voucher stating that a 69-year old man stayed in Room 5 on that night, and submitted another voucher stating that a 20-year old female recipient from a different community stayed in the same room on the same night. Tundra Suites billed Medicaid for each recipient separately.
When investigators looked into it, the escort that was supposed to stay in that room was in Anchorage, not Bethel, during the medical travel.
Kim was also billing Medicaid recipients more than he charged other travelers. If two recipients and each of their escorts were put in the same room, he’d charge $356 a night for that room, when normally he’d charge $320.
Medicaid recipients do not have to pay any of the room charge, so there is no financial incentive for recipients to share a hotel room, and there was also no shortage of rooms in Bethel, investigators said, so there was no reason to pile people up in rooms.
There were other ways the hotel was scamming the State, including nights when Tundra Suites billed Medicaid for more recipients than the hotel even has rooms to house people, and instances where more than four vouchers were submitted by the various providers with the same voucher number. In other words, someone was altering the voucher numbers.
While investigating the Tundra Suites, investigators found that Mi Ae Young, who had previously scammed Medicaid when she operated a Bethel taxi company, was now assisting Tundra Suites and doing billing to Medicaid for the hotel. She lost her Medicaid provider status as a cab owner, and was thus prohibited from participating in any activity related to Medicaid. The work she was doing was apparently under the table.
The plot thickened.
According to the State’s case against Kim and Young:
“During the investigators’ recorded interview with Young in March 2018, she made several phone calls in Korean while in the presence of the investigators. During one of the calls, she spoke to an individual later discovered to be Yeong Jin, an enrolled Medicaid taxi cab provider. The audio recording of Young’s side of these phone calls was later translated and transcribed. The translation revealed that while the investigators were with Young, she made a call to Jin and instructed him to contact Tundra Suites and tell them that investigators were with her and would be going to Tundra Suites. Young told Jin to pass on the message that Tundra Suites should get the papers ready for the investigators, except for the ones that they had altered; Young told Jin that they should hide those forged vouchers. Unbeknownst to Young, other investigators were already at Tundra Suites collecting documents at the time of this phone call.”
As it turns out, Mi Ae Young was also submitting claims for cab driver Jin.
Kim testified under oath that in April or May of 2017, a person from “the government agency” told him to stop billing separately for recipients an escorts that shared the same room.
But those practices continued and it doesn’t appear any sanctions were likely to be imposed until other hotels complained and the entire billing scheme blew up in January, 2018.
Sen. Dan Sullivan is among the first people who will have a private sit-down meeting with Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump announced Kavanaugh’s appointment on Monday night.
Yesterday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski told the media it might be “several weeks” before Kavanaugh would meet with the Alaska delegation, and it’s not until then would she have the opportunity ask him questions. Murkowski said she has not yet met him but had already started to go through his record as a jurist.
But Sullivan has a previous relationship with Kavanaugh. The two of them served in the administration of George W. Bush.
Kavanaugh, 53, served as a judge on the the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals since 2006. Before that he spent five years working for the Bush administration. He taught at Yale Law School, Harvard and Georgetown. Kavanaugh graduated from Yale University and Yale Law School. Sullivan is a graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown Law School.
Sullivan’s meeting with Kavanaugh is expected to be on Thursday.
Earlier this week the two senators from Alaska sent initial statements to the media about the Kavanaugh appointment. Those are linked in the story below.
