Christmas Countdown

Don't forget to view my Christmas letter if you want my complete year, 2007. I thought that I should tell you a little about some of the local scandal in this blog. There's a big political scandal going on now, with some of our state politicians getting 5 and 6 yr. jail sentences for bribery and such, but the local radio personality had me laughing as he told the story of the bankrupt Matanuska Dairy. You may wonder how dairy cattle business can work in this Alaska Climate. Well, wonder no longer, it simply doesn't work. This 75 yr old company has been losing money for years, so a few years ago, the state came to its rescue and bought it. Now you know as well as I do, the state is not going to be able to run a dairy, but that was its intent. Our most attractive lady governor seems to have lost her mind, as she continually tried to revive it. When the Board of Directors said there was no hope, she fired all of them, and appointed a new Board. However, they continued to lose over a million dollars a month, so Gov. Palin put out for bids to sell it. Now who is going to buy such a company? My laugh came as radio commentator, Mike Porcaro, said that they had a box of sealed bids they would be opening on Thursday, so when Thursday came, they opened this box, and there were NO bids in it. Does this remind you of Geraldo Rivera? Sad, but true, so they are now supposed to close down on Dec. 17th, and sell what equipment they can. This is not unlike what happened to our huge, multi-million dollar building that housed the Alaska Seafood Institute. Now if you can't make a profit, paying only $1/yr. rent, and having an abundance of fish just down the road, something got to be wrong. Leave it to the state government to screw that one up, too. However, that story has a happier ending, because when they put out for bids, they got three! One was illegible handwriting of a local doctor, who is not known for any common sense, so that was discarded, and I don't remember the second one, but the third was a viable bid by Changepoint Church, which is a megachurch, and they have been doing some amazing things there since taking over around a year ago. But that is not the story for this blog. It's the dairy. It's totally ridiculous. They also have their home office in some now expensive real estate on Northern Lights Blvd. and I'm wondering what's going to become of that with the demise of the company. But it hasn't happened yet, and things could still turn around. Now isn't this funnier than reading about all the Christmas parties I've been going to? Sure is!