The same dark money group that is now funding a voter initiative on campaign contributions, so the dark money Outside groups can continue to control elections in Alaska, is responsible for making Alaska’s elections insecure back in 2016 through a voter initiative that has, since 2017, registered people to vote automatically whenever they apply for a Permanent Fund dividend. Even if they aren’t citizens.
New Venture Fund put at least $565,000 into the effort in 2016 that succeeded in convincing Alaskans to pass a ballot measure that allows anyone who even applies for a Permanent Fund dividend to get a voter identification card. They should return it if they are not a U.S. citizen, but it’s all on the honor system, according to the Division of Elections.
The New Venture Fund, a subset of the dark-money Arabella Advisors umbrella of political operations, now wants Alaskans to sign a petition saying that individuals can’t contribute more than $2,000 to campaigns, which leaves the dark money groups like the New Venture Fund in control of Alaska elections in perpetuity, because groups like NVF can set up any number of subgroups to funnel money in ways average Alaskans can’t.
With just these two programs — no voter registration controls and preventing people from contributing to campaigns, Alaska will be at the mercy of Outside dark money.
In response to Must Read Alaska‘s story over the weekend, functionaries of the Governor’s Office have told Alaskans that there is nothing that can be done to fix the automatic voter registration problem and that it’s not really a problem. The Must Read Alaska report, they say, is a nothing-burger.
But there is at least one fix. The executive branch could work with the legislature to repeal or amend the Permanent Fund Dividend Automatic Voter Registration Program. The executive branch — the governor and lieutenant governor — could call for a pause in the program while a legal review is done to see if it violates the Alaska Constitution or state statutes.
The seriousness of the problem is hardly in question. The New Venture Fund already finances the 907 Initiative, The Alaska Center for the Environment, the Alaska Venture Fund, and even Alaskans for Posterity, a group that tries to trick people into thinking it is the free-market group known as Americans for Prosperity-Alaska.
The New Venture Fund is the equivalent of a political party in Alaska. It has far more money and influence in elections than the political parties combined.
A Dunleavy Administration employee privately contacted Must Read Alaska subsequent to our story on the flaws in automatic voter registration, and said that the PFD automatic voter registration program is highlighted in the Elections security audit produced by Kelly Tshibaka, former commissioner of Administration, with recommended solutions.
That state’s election security report, completed in 2019, has never been made public and those who have asked for it, including legislators, have had their requests refused. What else is in this report that the public cannot see?
Fairbanks Republicans in District 33 met over the weekend and endorsed Nick Begich for Congress.
It brings the number of districts endorsing the 46-year-old Alaska Republican, who is running a campaign to replace Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola to 12.
Districts that have announced their endorsement for Begich now include 1, 6, 8, 17, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 33, 34, and 36.
Also, six of seven Alaska Republican women’s clubs and both of the Young Republican clubs endorsed Begich.
There are a handful of House districts in Alaska that are extremely rural and heavily Democratic voting, and do not have a committee of Republicans.
Begich now has the support of one-third of the organized Republican districts.
The rest of the districts have made no commitment to any Republican. Two districts have also passed resolutions saying that whoever comes in after the first-place Republican needs to drop out.
Not a single Republican committee has endorsed any of the three other Republicans running for Congress.
Also endorsing Begich on Monday was former Alaska House Rep. Norman Rokeburg, who said, “I served with both Mary Peltola and Dahlstrom in the Alaska House. I am supporting Nick Begich for Congress.”
One of the biggest dark money groups in the country, which has controlled many of Alaska’s election outcomes over the years, is the New Venture Fund. It’s a name every Alaskan should know, but that few do.
The New Venture Fund is the group behind a new pop-up group called Citizens Against Money in Politics, which seeks to instate a $4,000 campaign contribution limit in Alaska elections for groups, and a $2,000 limit for ordinary citizens. The group is collecting signatures all over the state, most recently in Fairbanks.
This weird signature gatherer that claimed to be indirectly associated with me, which is a lie.
Also was taking up 4 handicap parking spaces right in front of Safeway in North Pole, AK. He did not have permission from The property owner and had to have the police called to have… pic.twitter.com/WeNGVmQ0Nw
This initiative would give the ability of groups like the New Venture Fund to create numerous pop-up groups and spend money changing outcomes in Alaska, while putting regular citizens at a disadvantage for fighting them. It’s similar to what happened with 2020’s Ballot Measure 2, which brought in the ranked-choice voting method now used in Alaska, to disadvantage Republicans except for Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
The New Venture Fund, along with ASEA, AFL-CIO, and NEA-Alaska — also among the biggest forces in Democrat politics in Alaska — are doing what they say the Legislature should have done — create campaign contribution limits in Alaska. The limits that were the law of the Great Land, limiting contributions to $500 per individual to a campaign, were overturned by the Ninth Circuit and currently there are no limits at all on how much can be spent on a campaign.
The campaign limit laws, however, give particular power to those groups that are “independent expenditure groups,” which is what the dark-money constellation of which the New Venture Fund is but one hot-burning star. New Venture Fund is a subset of Arabella Advisors, which has become synonymous with political “dark money.”
Year after year, Arabella guides donor money, which includes money from foreign billionaires like Hansjorg Wass, to the subgroups — New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty and Hopewell Fund. Rarely do those donations show up in a candidate’s campaign finance disclosures. But take, for example, Forrest Dunbar’s run for mayor of Anchorage. The Sixteen Thirty Fund funneled $35,000 into a group called “Building a Stronger Anchorage,” which was created solely to get Dunbar elected.
If New Venture Fund is successful in getting the signatures it needs to get campaign finance laws back on the books, it will pour millions into convincing Alaskans to vote for the initiative at the ballot box — all under the guise of making elections fair. In reality, it will make elections work for the New Venture Fund and its affiliates out of D.C.
The New Venture Fund also spawned “The Alaska Venture Fund,” a group that takes credit for stopping mining in Alaska.
For the Citizens Against Money in Politics, the group has reported $91,656.46 in contributions so far this year, with $75,000 coming from the New Venture Fund, and the AFL-CIO and NEA-Alaska contributing $5,000 each.
There is no group that has organized in order to combat the effort to limit the rights of citizens to contribute to campaigns.
And there is no sure way to know whose money is being laundered through New Venture Fund in order to change Alaska elections to benefit New Venture Fund and labor unions.
Citizens Against Money in Politics is headed in Alaska by Juneau Democrats, with former Attorney General (and former Mayor of Juneau) Bruce Botelho leading the charge.
Botelho brokered the deal that put Bill Walker and Byron Mallott together after the ballot was already set in 2014, helping that ticket to become the Democrats’ nominee for governor and lieutenant governor. He was a significant player in the drive to take the Republicans’ primary away from them and implement ranked-choice general elections in Alaska.
Donald Trump told Fox News last week that he will refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, which have been drained to dangerously low levels by the Biden Administration.
Trump said the Biden has been gambling with American security in order to try to force gasoline prices lower.
“[Biden is] using the strategic reserves, which is meant for military, which is meant for war, and very important things, he’s using it to try and keep gasoline prices down,” Trump said, referring to election-year politics. “We can’t allow that to happen. We don’t need energy from any other country. We have to fill up the strategic reserves again. It is the lowest number it has ever been.” he added.
When Biden took office, the nation had 638 million barrels of oil in reserve that were to be kept in storage in case of a national emergency. Biden drew the volume down to 346 million barrels for two years, and particularly leading up to the 2022 midterm elections, in an effort to drive down gas prices for Americans and increase the chances that Democrats would win their elections. He then started to rebuild it to its current level of 375 million barrels.
The reserves are still at the lowest level since they were. first filled after being established in the early 1980s and the levels are barely higher than last year, when Biden promised he would refill it. Although his administration has announced that it would purchase oil for the reserve, it has canceled most of those purchases.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a federal government complex of four sites, each with with deep underground storage caverns created in salt domes along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. It was established to prevent another oil crisis, such as the one that occurred in the 1970s.
Rick Whitbeck, Alaska director for Power the Future, said, “It’s good to see someone running for president understand that energy security is national security. Our nation’s strategic petroleum reserves were never designed to be used as a political football. The Biden administration has done exactly that, manipulating them for political gain and votes, instead of for their designated reasons.”
Energy is on the ballot in November, Whitbeck said: “Let’s hope America makes the right choice, and we can return to energy dominance once again as a country.”
How does one define a coward? Or if we don’t want to judge their character, perhaps their actions, which we would call “cowardly”?
And what is a “chicken hawk”? This was a term used by the media to define politicians who were eager to use military force, but to let others do it. The term was thrown most often at neo-con and globalist, former VP Dick Cheney. Perhaps now the Democrats will have their own.
You have heard that bullies are really cowards, but they use their aggressiveness to cover their inner fears. Bullies always pick soft targets, never ones that might match their own physique or militant character. In school, bullies picked on the class nerds, never the class jocks. If you have ever seen the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, villain Lee Marvin picks mercilessly on the nerdly Jimmy Stewart, who is serving steaks in a crowded saloon … until Marvin scornfully trips him, and John Wayne’s steak finds the floor.
Wayne ordered Marvin to pick up the steak, off the floor, which would be demeaning to the bully. He would not allow Marvin’s sidekick to do it. The room hushed, expecting a shoot-out. After a lengthy stare-down, Stewart, eager to avoid bloodshed, shows true courage by scolding them both, and picks up the steak himself. Marvin and his crew dash out the door and shoot wildly into the air to create confusion, keep people scared of him, and make good their escape.
Tim Walz is a Chicken Hawk: first he parades his military service. And why would a politician do that? Why, to show his courage, a virtue people admire even in an enemy. But now the truth about Walz is emerging, for resigning from his unit when it was going to be deployed to Iraq.
To borrow a phrase from submarine movies: “Damage control — Report!”
The Deep State always has some damage control handy. “Simply say that you resigned in order to run for Congress.”
Yet his own compatriots know better, and are telling about his shameful resignation to the alternative media, and how the entire structure of the unit was compromised by needing to bring in unfamiliar replacements.
The next move would be to have the media lackeys to either discredit the sources, or to suppress them.
Next: At a campaign stop for governor some years ago, Walz said that we need more gun control, and that he proudly disowned the NRA. “I have handled weapons in war” he told his audience, and they should not be in the hands of citizens.
“Damage control: Report!”
“Simply say that you merely misspoke. You meant to say, ‘I have handled weapons of war.’ ”
It never occurred to Walz that his own citizens of Minnesota might need them to protect their life and property during the 2020 riots, when he delayed calling out the National Guard.
Oh, and then he spoke of how the riots were “exciting” and were “restoring a sense of optimism coming back.”
WATCH: Tim Walz calls George Floyd riots ‘EXCITING’… Blames ‘society’ for civil unrest. pic.twitter.com/8jdaEOxpBp
And what of Kamala Harris, who set up a bail-bond fundto get them back on the streets as soon as possible?
“Damage control: Suppress!”
But it gets worse: Mother Teresa of Calcutta knew who “the poorest of the poor” were, the A-1 most helpless members of the human family: The pre-born children, firmly fixed into the gunsights of Planned Parenthood, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The unborn are easier targets than the Class Nerd or Jimmy Stewart, so Walz knows a soft target when he sees one.
Here is how a coward struts his “courage”: Bragging that he defied Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s advice to tone down his baby-killing rhetoric, signing a bill that allows elective abortion up until birth. If you view the video, it looks like Walz is about the burst a blood vessel, as he literally shouts his aggression to his radical audience.
“And my record is so pro-choice, Nancy Pelosi asked me if I could tone it down. I stand with Planned Parenthood, and we won!”
Wow, that took courage, Mr. Walz. You out-lefted Nancy Pelosi!
We are dealing with the demonic in this election. Whatever flaws exist in the alternatives, pale before the reality of this evil, lying, wicked, cowardly, bullying, doubling-down national ticket of death. They enjoy the continued support of big business, the media, academia, mainstream medicine, the anti-human globalists, and the endlessly deep pockets of the federal government.
A note to the remaining sensible Democrats out there: You still have a chance to step out of your self-induced stupor. This is not a matter of Left v. Right, Liberals v. Conservatives, Democrats v. Republicans. We are dealing with people who hate humanity. It is “Us” v. “Them.”
You will not be safe with these people.
None of us will be.
Bob Bird is past chairman of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show on KSRM radio, Kenai.
The U.S. Secret Service, state, and local law enforcement partners, conducted a payment card skimming and Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) fraud outreach operation Aug. 1-2 in several Alaskan cities.
The law enforcement team, which included the Secret Service, Anchorage Police Department, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Alaska, U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, and the Alaska State Troopers, visited 165 businesses in Anchorage, Palmer, Wasilla, Kenai, Soldotna, and Seward.
They inspected ATMs, gas pumps and point-of-sale terminals for skimming devices and left educational materials for business owners and managers.
Two skimming devices were recovered during the operation. In total, more than 1,750 point-of-sale terminals, gas pumps and ATMs were inspected, the agency said.
“In the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in credit card skimming and EBT fraud in the greater Anchorage area,” said Glen Peterson, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Seattle Field Office, whose area of responsibility includes Alaska. “Our goal is to locate and remove skimming devices before people’s credit card data can fall into the hands of criminals.”
This as the first time an outreach operation such as this has been conducted in Alaska by the U.S. Secret Service.
EBT information and other payment card numbers can be stolen when criminals install an illegal skimming device to the point-of-sale terminal in order to capture card information. They then encode the stolen data onto another card with a magnetic strip, such as a gift card or hotel key. It is estimated that skimming costs consumers and financial institutions more than $1 billion each year.
Law enforcement agencies have seen a nationwide increase in skimming over the past 18 months, particularly targeting EBT cards, which are sometimes known as “food stamps.” Each month, taxpayer money is deposited into government assistance accounts intended to help families pay for food and other basic items. This enables criminals who steal card information to time their fraudulent withdrawals and purchases around the state government’s monthly deposits, the agency said.
In 2020, a man with a Romanian passport was arrested for using credit card skimming devices in Alaska.
Marcus Rosu, an international criminal who lived in California, was sentenced in 2021 to 30 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release for bank fraud using a device to steal credit card information through skimming. He was required to pay $57,713.53 in restitution to his known victims. But he was released Aug. 26, 2022.
According to court documents, he became the subject of a federal investigation in February of 2020, when the United States Postal Inspection Service intercepted a package containing hundreds of fraudulent bank cards containing customers’ card information. The cards were backtracked to more than 70 banking institutions in southern California and some were traced to fraudulent transactions in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley. Through the course of the investigation, Rosu was identified as the suspected mailer of the package.
Republican committees of District 1 in Ketchikan and District 28 in Wasilla now have voted to endorse Nick Begich for Congress. The primary election in Alaska ends on Aug. 20, and thousands of Alaskans have already voted an early absentee ballot.
Both Nick Begich and Nancy Dahlstrom attended a candidate forum in Ketchikan, and the decision by the district was made after the forum ended and the district had a chance to discuss the candidates. Dahlstrom has not received a single endorsement from a district.
Districts that have announced their endorsement for Begich now include 1, 6, 8, 17, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34, and 36.
Also, six of seven Alaska Republican women’s clubs and both of the Young Republican clubs endorsed Begich.
Begich now has the support of 30% of the organized Republican districts — not all districts in Alaska have organized Republican groups. The rest of the districts have made no commitment to any Republican, but 30% represents a huge swath of the state saying they want Nick Begich as he attempts to replace Democrat Mary Peltola in Congress.
The fight is real as the last week before the primary commences. Political action committees from Washington, D.C. are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars a day into Alaska media buys to try to stop Nick. Ads are everywhere — television, radio, YouTube, and even telephones — to the point of annoyance, according to several Alaskans who say they can’t even watch their favorite shows right now, due to the political ad interruptions.
Begich is outspent by Peltola — and it’s not even close. Although he is the most popular candidate for local donations from Alaskans, the national money that Peltola has obtained is unheard of in Alaska campaign history. The Democrats are working hard to save her in a year when Donald Trump is on the ballot and many Alaskans will be motivated to vote. Peltola’s campaign treasury has millions of dollars to persuade Alaskans to return her to Washington.
Within hours of winning the gold medal in the women’s 66kg Olympic boxing match against China’s Yang Liu on Friday, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who has been ruled to be a man by the International Boxing Association, filed a complaint against X/Twitter with the Paris court system’s center for combating online hate. He’s upset that people have objected to him fighting in the women’s division.
Millions of people around the world have questioned why someone like Khelif, who has had all the advantages of a testosterone-fueled physical development, should be allowed by the International Olympics Committee to fight in the women’s category. Without question, he is larger, has the physical characteristics and bone structure of a man, and has crushed his competition. He is not transgender but, according to the IBA, is technically male.
Although Khelif and a Taipei boxer named Lin Yu-Ting, also preparing to fight for gold, claim to be women, they have both X and Y chromosomes, said the International Boxing Association, which confirmed that in a press conference during the Olympic Games. Scientifically, this makes them men who are choosing to box in a category more advantageous to them.
X/Twitter is an American company. This is not the first time that it has been subjected to harassment by the French for allowing people to express their opinions.
On May 26, 2021, six French organizations brought charges against Twitter, both the international company and Twitter France, failing to promptly and systematically remove what the groups said was racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic messages posted on Twitter and reported by its users.
According to Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression center, the associations were UEJF (Union des Etudiants Juifs de France), SOS Homophobie, SOS Racisme, AIJP (J’accuse! Action Internationale Pour la Justice) MRAP (Le Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples) and LICRA (La Ligue Internationale contre le Racisme et l’antisémitisme).
“The organizations’ claims were based on several reports and bailiff’s findings from 2019 and 2020, which allegedly established that only 9 to 28 percent of hateful messages posted on Twitter were removed within 48 hours,” the university reports.
France does not protect freedom of expression in the same way it is generally protected in the United States. According to French law, an insult of a person or a group of people because of their origin or their membership or their non-membership, true or supposed, to an ethnic group, a nation, sexual identity, gender identity, disability, a race or a specific religion is punishable by a fine of €500, or up to €3000 for a repeat offense.
In England, where riots have broken out as people protest the violence of immigrants who have taken control of the country, one police chief has warned that he will be coming for Americans who post information about the riots, he will extradite them, and he throw them in British prison.
“We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told Sky News. When asked if that meant Americans, he said, “Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.”
NLRB v Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp (1937) established pristine and fabricated legal doctrines through case law. It marked one of the early instances where judicial pragmatism played a role in interpreting the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document.
This approach considers social and historical contexts rather than relying solely on strict textual reading of the Constitution.
Moreover, the case law-established doctrine of labor rights, particularly the principle of collective bargaining, is grounded in the broader framework of workers’ rights, now firmly established in U.S. labor law through the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
In NLRB, the Court affirmed the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act, emphasizing that labor relations and the right to organize are essential for preserving industrial peace and preventing disruptions to interstate commerce.
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who wrote the opinion for NLRB, four years previously wrote the majority opinions which declared unconstitutional three center pieces of FDR’s legislative hegemony.
Reacting to the defeat of his New Deal legislation by the court, President Franklin D. Roosevelt resurrected a plan from the Woodrow Wilson administration to reorganize the court, which although the plan was never adopted by Congress impacted the political standing of the court.
In April 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act by a 5-4 vote, which signaled a politically motivated change in the court’s jurisprudence. Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes, a progressive Republican, was the deciding vote.
“A switch in time saves nine” was the media’s slogan regarding the change in the Court’s jurisprudence in the wake of Roosevelt’s court- packing furor.
Interestingly, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion, which ruled against the Roosevelt Administration and was appealed in NLRB, clearly stated, “The Constitution does not vest in the Federal Government the power to regulate the relation as such of employer and employee in production or manufacture.”
In the U.S. Supreme Court’s NLRB dissent by Associate Justice James Clark McReynolds and joined by the other members of the Four Horsemen — Associate Justice Willis Van Devanter, Associate Justice George Sutherland, Associate Justice Pierce Butler, the dissenters stated: “It puts into the hands of a Board power of control over purely local industry beyond anything heretofore deemed permissible.”
During the Great Depression this changed the court’s judicial philosophy from the need of productive economic issues to the maelstrom of individual rights. The irony was explicit.
Effectively, the court’s upholding of the National Labor Relations Act aborted what remained of states sovereignty in favor of federal collective planning.
It took the doctrine of federalism and perverted it to tyranny.
Before NLRB, federalism yielded a splendid differentiation of sovereignty and authority between the states and the federal government. Simply, the federal government had the authority to regulate interstate commerce, and the states had authority to regulate intrastate commerce.
Hamilton in Federalist Papers No. 11 addressed the necessity of a unified regulation of trade among states under the federal government.
Madison wrote in Federalist No. 42 the need for a strong federal authority over interstate commerce to prevent states from imposing duties and tariffs on goods passing through their jurisdictions, which would hinder trade and economic unity. These duties would ultimately burden the producers of those goods and the consumers purchasing them.
The Constitution’s Commerce Clause was designed to address these economic concerns by granting Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.
While social interactions and dealings between people are an essential part of society, the constitutional discussion and the intent behind the Commerce Clause were more centered on regulating economic activity to create a unified and efficient national market. The broader social interactions were not a focus, although they were implicitly acknowledged as part of the overall context in which commerce occurred to enable local productivity.
Intrastate commerce pronounced this as an essential local part of commerce which was guaranteed by the 10th Amendment.
Before 1937, intrastate commerce was largely regarded as the responsibility of the states. The Founders saw commerce as more than just large-scale buying and selling. It was a principle that safeguarded state sovereignty and autonomy within their own borders.
This autonomy enabled states to drive socioeconomic productivity and nurture interpersonal relationships within their communities. For the Founders, intrastate commerce was not merely about economic transactions but was deeply rooted in the social interactions among people at the local level, which, in turn, generated economic benefits.
This multiplicity of interactions made up the strength of the states and ultimately the federal government.
The original text of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was designed to limit the federal government’s powers, reserving most powers to the states and the people. The expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause that emerged later in NLRB was not envisioned by the Founders.
Specifically, in cases like NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., the Court interpreted the Commerce Clause in a broader manner, thereby expanding congressional power over intrastate commerce. This interpretation was based on the Court’s view of the evolving needs of the nation and the economy, rather than a strict adherence to the original intent of the Founders. The decision reflected the Court’s judgment that federal regulation was necessary to manage the complexities of a modern, interconnected economy.
Supporters of the NLRB argue that the Constitution, as a living document, is intended to adapt to changing circumstances. They believe that the economic realities of the modern age necessitate a more flexible interpretation of the Commerce Clause to effectively address the complexities of an interconnected economy.
One can argue the merits and defects of these extra-constitutional doctrines and principles, but the real question for me is do they belong in American federal jurisprudence? Would these better serve the public in a state’s system?
NLRB v Jones & Laughlin Steep Corp amended the U.S. Constitution without ratification.
Michael Tavoliero is a senior contributor at Must Read Alaska.
