Opinion

Thank you, Gov. Mike Dunleavy

Satire column: ‘Right Answers Only’

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

America is the greatest nation — that is a fact. Out of all the states in the union, Alaska stands alone as the best. Like exemplary states before it, Alaska wasn’t always this perfect. 

Pioneers and rugged leaders worked tirelessly to shape the state into what it has become today — a utopia. One leader in particular has had an immeasurable impact on our great state. It’s time we looked back at his achievements and properly honored him.

Thank you, Gov. Mike Dunleavy. 

One of Gov. Dunleavy’s many accolades is becoming the first incumbent Republican governor of Alaska to be reelected since 1978. Dunleavy’s achievement is even more impressive when the efforts to unseat him during his first term are considered.

One year into Dunleavy’s term, radical leftists across Alaska attempted to cobble together a farcical recall petition in 2019. Reasons for the recall were usual liberal gripes about elected officials doing their jobs in a way that the snowflakes don’t approve of.

The initial petition gathered enough signatures to be certified by the Alaska Division of Elections, but organizers were unable to gather — or forge — enough signatures to trigger a recall election. 

The left subsequently failed to elect someone whose policies they approved of, leading to continued whinging throughout Dunleavy’s second term.

Another area where Dunleavy has excelled is the Permanent Fund Dividend — or PFD. 

Dunleavy has worked tirelessly to promote major spending on securing full PFD payouts for residents of the state. After all, Alaskans deserve $3000 checks every year for having a pulse.

Detractors of the governor claim he has not accomplished these goals and that proposing to spend $1.5 billion of the state's savings on one PFD payout is foolish. 

However, the fault actually lies with a group of individuals hell-bent on making Governor Dunleavy’s job impossible — the state legislature.

By plotting, scheming and manipulating the budget, the state legislature has made every effort to give Dunleavy a bad image. It has single-handedly neutered the PFD payout every year, setting this year’s payout as the lowest inflation-adjusted dividend in the history of Alaska.

While the legislature uses smoke and mirrors to claim the state’s budget is unsustainable — blaming an overreliance on oil revenue — many Alaskans see through its lies. They know that the state doesn’t need more taxes to balance a budget — they just need line-item vetoes to eliminate wasted spending.

This is an area where Gov. Dunleavy has excelled during both of his terms. The legislature has enabled various institutions to be mediocre and rewarded incompetence with continuously-increasing annual revenue in the state’s budget.

Dunleavy made healthy cuts to the state’s budget through line-item vetoes once he recognized this wasteful spending. 

The most notable examples are in education — a $70 million cut to the University of Alaska system in 2019 and a $200 cut to the base student allocation this year.

Gov. Dunleavy has maintained that these cuts are for the benefit of the education system in Alaska, and that makes sense. 

Think of education funding like a supply and demand graph: funding is the supply, and educational quality is the demand.

When the right spot is reached, there’s equilibrium, and the quality of education is the best in the nation. When one variable is out of line, the other suffers. 

Clearly, education has been receiving too much funding. As a result, the quality of education has been suffering. Dunleavy is simply trying to bring about equilibrium.

Dunleavy has been a force in setting the state up for success far beyond his time in office. Many in Alaska are panicking about the looming natural gas shortage, but our fearless leader has made it his personal mission to build a pipeline from the North Slope to Nikiski to solve this crisis.

In other news, Dunleavy has made changing the state nickname from The Last Frontier to The Pipeline State a top priority.

A significant part of Dunleavy’s success as governor has come from surrounding himself with the most competent staff in the history of the state. 

Some highlights include Deena Bishop, who had an honest mistake of AI use blown wildly out of proportion, and Jeremy Cubas, a modern-day pro-family philosopher who was wrongly canceled by the woke mob for having a podcast.

It is a travesty that term limits exist at all levels of government, but especially at the state level. Gov. Dunleavy has made a herculean effort to keep Alaska in its spot as the greatest state in America. He should be allowed to stay in office for as long as he wants. 

Since he can’t, it’s likely the rabid liberal mob will seize its chance to vote in an extremist to undo Dunleavy’s policy changes, ruining Alaska forever.