By TOM BOUTIN
What follows is something I sent to newspapers in Alaska some time ago, and one or more have published it.
I would guess that almost none of the readers here at Must Read Alaska are not voting for Nick Begich, but it’s extremely important to emphasize that we all must urge family and friends, store clerks where we shop, people we see at the gun range, old acquaintances we may see, and anyone else who will listen to the importance of sending Nick to Washington rather than Mary Peltola.
Mary Peltola is guilty of joining the elites in trying to fool us into believing that Biden has the lucidity and situational awareness to actually be doing his job.
In doing so she likely leveraged the fiction there to bring back to Alaska federally borrowed dollars, especially to rural constituencies it seems, and that reveals a contempt for most of us and for the seriousness of the federal deficit.
She sometimes expresses an arrant misunderstanding of the inflation and economic dislocation Alaska is experiencing right now. Part of the reason many working-age Alaskans who want to climb the economic ladder (but not work for government) are leaving the state and other working-age Alaskans are choosing food stamps and fentanyl when there are plenty of well-paid jobs available is the very policies touted by Mary in her political campaign.
I watched all the debates. Mary has never done anything foolish, but neither has she ever said anything wise. She trades for her own account, as we all do, but she identifies her constituency as only a small subset of Alaskans when she tells the rest of us that we should be satisfied that she supports fish, families, and veterans. Who doesn’t? And what in the world does that really mean?
She held out in the Alaska House to bring expensive projects to the rural Yukon-Kusko region in return for her deciding vote in converting PERS & TRS to defined contribution, but which of those projects can be remembered or even identified today? Which village became self-sufficient upon completion of those projects?
Our entire state economy looks to government spending for food, health care, child care, housing, and investment. No state suffers as much from the federal borrowing and spending debacle, because we produce so little while consuming so much; too much bought from outside, and too little produced here for trade leaves us the most vulnerable to inflation.
We are 700,000 people living on 400,000 barrels of oil and a Permanent Fund that loses spending power every day.
Mary claims credit for bringing federal money home to the bush while not understanding that the spending causes the very inflation we fear and feel every day. No matter which party wins the White House and Congress, inflation will return big time come November 6 because the 30, 50, and 70 percent raises are actually paid at the end of the supply chain – which is us. Interest rates will again trend higher and federal banks will chase their tails. In every debate Mary has made it clear this is all beyond her understanding.
As I watched those debates it was also clear that Nick Begich understands our economic and fiscal predicament while Mary does not. The economy we planned to build with our oil wasn’t built, and we are all to blame. Drone manufacturing, seed potato prodigy, water supplied to the southwest, cold climate data storage, plastics and fertilizer hegemony, natural gas pipeline, Watana dam, carbon credit magnate, hemp farming, and missile launch dreaming disappeared as soon we stopped paying consultants.
Only two years ago state revenues were claimed to be on schedule to begin receiving hundreds of millions from standing timber carbon credits, but today there is no such entry in the state revenue forecast, so one more silly dream has disappeared. We tried to replace declining oil production with imaginary comparative advantage, and all we got are food stamps and fentanyl. Mary is the ghost of our misspent past, and sending her minority voice back to Washington would convert the office from a quaint embarrassment to a grave impediment.
The Washington to which we sent Ted, Frank and Don (and what a great job they did) was entranced by Alaska but that time is very distant. The investment banking firms that urge dismantling TAPS went from billions to trillions in measuring their capital while we were focused on keeping up with food stamp enrollments and funding the state budget.
The debates also revealed that Mary is trending toward being imperious, always a hapless sign in a public official. As a first impression she can appear as a heroine of excellent parts and not at all vain, but soon revealed as splenetic. She might be bound for Dancing with the Stars, or Saturday Night Live, but Nick will explain Alaska and help us find our place in this century.
Mary looks backward to seek even more deficit spending but it’s Nick who shares our realistic vision for Alaska: so please be sure to vote that way.
Tom Boutin is a Juneau resident who has served as chief of staff for the Alaska State Bond Committee, the Alaska State Pension Investment Board and the Alaska Retirement Management Board. He also was the CEO of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-owned bank, appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. In addition, he worked for many years in the forest products industry.