Memnison Journal

Lobbyists are gnashing their teeth and rending their garments; what are they to do without having a ready-made place to grease palms now that Ted Stevens is leaving the Senate?

To maintain an open line to Mr. Stevens, the association hired Ms. Sutherland, who left Mr. Stevens not long after delivering those warnings to open her [...]

Big story in the Anchorage Daily News on the failings of Alaska education.
• Alaska’s dropout rate, at 8 percent, was double the national average in the 2005-2006 school year, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Department of Education.
• 38 percent of today’s ninth-graders will have no high school diploma 10 years from [...]

This works for either me or Meredith.  There’s some question as to whether Susan has been in Mexico; if she was, it was to take two steps over the border in Tijuana or something.

This is Mere’s states.  California from when we brought her home, Massachusetts from a trip to the Boston Worldcon, and the rest [...]

The AP and others are now declaring Mark Begich, the Mayor of Anchorage (D), has beaten Senator Stevens for the Alaska Senate seat.  The margin is too wide for a free recount, and it’s unlikely that the GOP will pay for it or Stevens can - or that it would make any significant difference.
The recount [...]

Begich (D) is up 814 votes over Senator Stevens (R), with another 38,000 votes to go - in strong Democratic districts in Alaska.

Alaska Senate: 221,173 votes were already counted; a new estimate shows that the uncounted votes there are around 90,600 - about 30% of the total!  (PDF with the details as to what sort of votes and from where)  And this isn’t complete; absentee votes are still trickling in in the mail.  They’ll start counting these [...]

Alaska: Still 81,000 uncounted ballots (absentee, some early ballots and the ‘provisional’ ballots) to go to be checked out in the next couple of weeks.  The gap is presently around 3,200 out of 210,000 cast.  (PDF of where the present votes came from)
Minnesota: With a 221 vote gap out of 2,500,000 ish voting, there’s a [...]

…for a few things to be resolved, elections wise.
The Presidential vote in Missouri and the 2d Congressional district of Nebraska. The former leads a very narrowly for McCain and the latter for Obama.  This would be the first time that the kinky division of electoral votes by Congressional district (which only figures in Maine [...]

The Republican leader of the Alaska State Senate is incensed at the McCain campaign’s intrusion and efforts to stonewall the Troopergate investigation, and is looking at calling the State Senate back into session to force the matter.  Quotes after the cut:

Highly recommended blogger: Mudflats
Alaska legislator Les Gara on the McCain campaign’s push to stonewall the Troopergate investigation by the State Legislature.
State Senator Charlie Huggins, (R-Wasilla) was the Republican to vote for the 13 subpoenas against Todd Palin and the state employees over Troopergate.
“I say let’s just get the facts on the table, the sooner the [...]

And reformers can be undone by machines, when they trade their aspirations for power:

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,” - Sarah Palin, at the RNC last week
Well, yeah, you do, and you’re supposed to handle them halfway well.

“That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.”  - Sarah Palin, at the RNC.
“You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — made a profit,” John McCain said, introducing Palin.
Palin did place it on eBay, all [...]

If Sarah Palin tries to tell you she did in and refused the money for the bridge-to-nowhere in Alaska, she’s lying to you.  And if she tells you she’s a hardnosed fiscal conservative and as against earmarks as John McCain, she’s lying to you some more.

In Alaskan politics, you have to remember that the main support of the state revenue system is the tax-on-oil-stuff coming out of the north slope…and that all Alaskans get a cut back from the state of around $1700 a year in ‘reverse taxes’.  So EVERYONE supports drilling in ANWR in Alaskan politics.  Otherwise, they’d have [...]