Friday, March 7, 2008

My Upcoming Spring Break Tour

Ray Metcalfe and I talked for a long time on the phone today.

I've written here a couple of times about Ray's Anchorage real estate tour, on which he explains some of the highly questionable if not outright illegal real estate sale and leasing deals that have gone down in Anchorage or are ongoing. All of Ray's gems involve prominent Alaska politicians, their families and cronies.

We're going to bring along a videographer and post the final result here, on YouTube, and at other sites, with links to the YouTube content.

This blog has been commenting about and critiquing Alaska politics for four months and four days. Ray has been trying to clean up Alaska politics for about 60 times as long. He's undoubtedly the greatest muckraker in Alaska history, and we need to help find more ways to help him get the truth out.

2 comments:

clark said...

when a real history is written of the alaska corruption scandal, there will definitely be a chapter on metcalfe. he was a state legislator in the early '70s, correct? a little before i paid detailed attention to politics. i remember 10 or 15 years back when he started the republican moderate party in alaska. why we'd need such a party [there were already democrats, after all] i don't know, and apparently he now agrees. i guess i still fault him for brokering the land deal for the hazmat facility in ship creek/fairview. [at least, the project didn't happen.] nothing illegal about his actions, but he might have realized people would object to it, for good reasons. it would be really amusing to hear some inside information on questionable real estate transcations and how they've contributed to the evolution of anchorage. it seems like whenever mass consciousness of those issues reaches critical mass, it's always too late. so it's about sensing the moment in history and trying to change some minds! it's amazing to me how much is going on -- we're still levelling hundreds of acres of trees for questionable retail and hotel development, but we can't do any substantive areawide planning. we're talking about freeway tunnels yet we can't save the best and most significant building in downtown anchorage.
money, money, money!

Philip Munger said...

I'd never thought of that kind of comparison between the 4th Avenue Theater and the costs of various new projects. I suppose a lot of others have, though.