Alan Boraas

Use oil wealth for alternative energy

Gov. Sean Parnell has framed this year's statewide election as about lowering oil taxes to stimulate oil exploration and production to refill an emptying trans-Alaska pipeline. Lowering oil taxes has been an agenda for petroleum corporations doing business in Alaska since the 1980s, so it's not...

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Archive by category ''Alan Boraas

  • ALAN BORAAS

    'Socialist' label is just a smokescreen

    One of the most vocal criticisms of President Barack Obama is that he's a socialist. The label is usually accompanied by a statement that the president has created a $15 trillion debt and he's leading us to ruin and he must be stopped.

  • ALAN BORAAS

    Save the kings; ban factory trawlers

    While reds are abundant this year, king salmon are scarce. For the first time in history, the second run of Kenai kings has been closed to sport fishing. Near me, small groups of trophy king salmon fishers grimly surveyed the scene below.

  • ALAN BORAAS

    By losing cannery, we lose history as well

    The last of the early 20th century salmon canneries on the Southcentral Alaska road system is being torn down. The Libby, McNeil, and Libby cannery at the mouth of the Kenai River started operation in 1912, was rebuilt after a 1921 fire and canned salmon until 1998, although in later years it shifted...

  • ALAN BORAAS

    Let tourists really experience Alaska

    According to a recent news item by KBBI's Aaron Selbig, come September Anchorage, Kodiak and Homer will no longer be ports of call for Holland America's 14-day Alaskan Explorer cruise.

  • ALAN BORAAS

    Juneau's Big Men should be scrutinized

    Like Viking raiders returning from Lindisfarne, Alaska legislators are plying the fjords north from Juneau, bringing to their constituencies the spoils of the battle for infrastructure also known as the Alaska state capital budget.

  • ALAN BORAAS

    'Prosperity theology' embraces wealth

    In 1905 Max Weber wrote "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" in which he described how a religiously instilled work ethic became a moral imperative in forcing capitalist economics. Weber went beyond the surface structure of Protestantism and probed deeper political and economic aspects...

  • ALAN BORAAS

    Electronic media become 'game change' in elections

    Fifty years ago media scholar Marshall McLuhan predicted, indirectly, the events portrayed in the HBO film "Game Change." For those who haven't seen it, "Game Change" depicts the events surrounding Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy as the poorly vetted nominee copes with the scrutiny that...

  • ALAN BORAAS

    Wolves not key to declining number of Kenai moose; habitat change is

    In an effort to enhance the moose population for sport hunters, the Board of Game has authorized killing wolves from helicopters on the Kenai Peninsula. It's a temporary measure that will have little long-term effect other than a lot of dead wolves.

  • ALAN BORAAS

    Dec. 21 end of a cycle, not end of time

    As popularly portrayed, the end of the world will occur on Dec. 21, 2012, when the Mayan calendar stops. To late-night comedians and other sophisticates, the Mayan calendar is just another unscientific superstition by an indigenous group.

  • ALAN BORAAS

    Unlike people, corporations keep dragging chains of greed

    In 1843 Charles Dickens, 67 years after Adam Smith published the definitive work on pre-corporate capitalism, "The Wealth of Nations," wrote a brilliant critique of its social evils in "A Christmas Carol." Smith defined capitalism as efficiently providing goods and services, not as making money ...

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