Here’s the latest ad from U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, which this time features Iraq War Veteran, Master Sgt. Troy Bouffard, who credits Begich in the ad for pushing the administration to help save 3,000 jobs in Alaska by keeping the F-16 fighter jets at Eielson Air Force Base. As a member of Senate Armed Services Committee, Begich held up the nomination for the promotion of Lt. Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle to four-stars and taking command of Pacific Air Forces until he got a commitment to keep the F-16s in Fairbanks.

About 50 people chanted, waved signs and rang bells –one even rode a unicycle–to greet a group of men who showed up to bid on three properties in the Government Hill neighborhood in order to make room for a bridge that would span the Knik Arm. The Department of Transportation put out a bid to buy the properties in order to demolish them. It is spending anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million to get the job done. That’s on top of the roughly $2.5 million the state paid to acquire the properties. About seven men showed to walk through them. They were media shy and wouldn’t answer questions, particularly with the crowd of protesters across the street, imploring them to go away.

The bridge, if it gets built at all, is years away from being complete. It has yet to get necessary federal loans–loans that the state has applied for repeatedly and has been turned down for repeatedly. And even if it gets the loans, it still needs a host of permits, including from the Corp of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Continue reading →

GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan released his fundraising numbers on Tuesday for the second quarter of the year, which runs from April to June 30.  During that time, he raised $1.2 million, bringing his total haul in the election cycle to $3.8 million. It’s the third straight fundraising quarter that Sullivan has raised over a million dollars. Official FEC reports aren’t due until July 15.

No word yet on what Joe Miller and Mead Treadwell, the other Republicans running in the primary, have raised, though it likely won’t be nearly as large of a number. Begich released his numbers last week, saying that he raised $1.25 million in the quarter. He also touted in a release that he had 700 new Alaska donors. It was the first time since Sullivan has entered the race that Begich raised more than Sullivan, albeit only by $50,000.

Sullivan’s campaign said that 1,000 Alaskans have donated since he announced in October, and that in the current quarter, Sullivan raised more than $195,000 in Alaska, with over 400 new Alaskan donations.

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich’s campaign sent out a release on Monday questioning GOP Senate candidate and Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell’s commitment to privacy. The release pointed to a company that Treadwell helped form in 1995 called Digimarc, which has provided the potential technology for REAL ID, “an invasive national ID program widely unpopular with Alaskans of all political leanings,” the release said.

“Almost everyday Mead Treadwell tells Alaskans the government ‘snoops too much’ while concealing his history of profiting from a national ID card scheme Alaskans roundly rejected as an invasion of privacy,” Susanne Fleek-Green, Begich’s campaign manager, said. Continue reading →

Here’s MSNBC’s Morning Joe having some fun with Sen. Mark Begich’s strategy to distance himself from President Obama, highlighted in a not completely flattering Washington Post article:

From the Washington Post piece:

Begich, 52, is a first-term senator known for being pro-gun and pro-oil. But he is not actually that well known for anything. In the Senate, Begich is a junior figure, moving through the chamber’s power structure at the speed of a mastodon trapped in a glacier. Over five years, just one of his bills has been passed into law. It renamed a courthouse in Anchorage…. But now, thanks to the midterm elections, Begich is temporarily one of the most important politicians in the country. Continue reading →

From a Brad Keithley Facebook post on where Alaska has fallen short on managing its oil patch:

There are success stories also where government owns the lands, but no disrespect intended, Alaska is not one of those and has done a horrible job at managing the lands. Basically we have lived off of the two large lighter oil discoveries at Prudhoe and Kuparuk (and a few satellites along the way) for decades and never had to do much else to manage the lands better. Now that those are producing at much lower levels, we don’t have a good strategy in place — as the owner of the lands — for further development. Given our position, the two best corollaries to look to are how the US has managed the Gulf of Mexico and Norway. The US has been successful in the GOM by only charging royalties and no severance taxes. The resulting low costs have encouraged investment and development, despite the higher cost and risk environment. Norway has gone about it differently by eliminating lease bonus payments, royalty and engaging in co-investment. As a result, even though it has imposed higher costs Norway actually has reduced risk and created alignment in a way that has enabled it to drive investment and activity in a way Alaska hasn’t….But of course …. no one wants to listen to that. The existing players on the Slope are satisfied with the current (largely non-competitive) arrangement where they set the pace of development and most of the Alaska players don’t have a clue (and don’t bother to take the time to learn about) alternative approaches, and as a result just rely on the current industry to continue to identify the terms for development.