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David Rubenstein speaks at an event on July 11, 2010. (Creative Commons photo courtesy The Aspen Institute)
If you like to watch billionaires on TV, you don’t have to wait for Donald Trump to launch his own media network. The husband of Alaska Dispatch News owner Alice Rogoff now has his own prime-time television talk show.
“I began to take on the life of an interviewer, even though I have a day job of running a private equity firm,” Rubenstein explained.
“The David Rubenstein Show” launched on Bloomberg Television last week. The series is billed as “peer-to-peer conversations,” and for his first episode, Rubenstein started at the top of the billionaire list, with Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
“You’re the wealthiest man in the world for 20 years or more. Is that more of a burden than a pleasure to be the wealthiest man in the world?” Rubenstein asked Gates.
Rubenstein is the co founder of the Carlyle Group investment firm. He lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and has been married to Rogoff for 33 years. She bought Alaska’s largest newspaper in 2014.
Rubenstein is number 290 on the Forbes list of richest Americans, with a net worth $2.4 billion. He’s an advocate of what he calls “patriotic philanthropy” and this year donated more than $18 million to restore the Lincoln Memorial.
Joe Miller held a press conference at his Midtown headquarters in Anchorage on Monday evening to announce that they’d found irregularities in Murkowski’s federal filings. The Miller campaign said that shortly after he announced his intent to run, Murkowski began paying large sums of money to the Alaska Republican Party, exceeding the amount she and the party are allowed to spend on “coordinated party activities.”
Miller told a small crowd of reporters and supporters his campaign has alerted the FEC to what they’ve characterized as “highly unusual” transfers.
“We have a campaign to run, we’re gonna be focused on that. We obviously want the Murkowski campaign to understand, as well as the Alaska Republican Party, that they’re going to be held to the extent of the law, and we expect them to comply with the law.”
Miller has not filed the complaint formally with the FEC, saying the review time would put a decision after the election.
He also denied any improprieties in his filings, saying that while there might be minor errors in figures reported, the campaign has complied in reporting in-kind contributions.
Miller disagreed with the Alaska Republican Party’s claim that using resources from his “Restoring Liberty” website amounted to a violation of rules over corporate contributions.
Original story | 5:50 p.m. Monday
Joe Miller, with family in front row on stage. (Photo by Liz Ruskin/APRN)
The Alaska Republican Party has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller.
The GOP alleges Miller is misusing campaign dollars to inflate his real level of support.
The five-page complaint submitted Monday alleges Miller has made numerous violations of federal campaign finance laws — the majority connected to using his for-profit conservative website “Restoring Liberty” for the promotion of his Senate campaign, without paying for it.
Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock said over the phone that Miller failed to payback the web site for services like banner ads, email lists and calls for campaign donation.
“(It) appears to be an illegal campaign contribution to his campaign, and corporations are prohibited under federal law from contributing to campaigns,” Babcock said.
Among the many claims made by the Alaska GOP: Miller’s campaign uses an office in Anchorage, but doesn’t list rent as an expense, thereby failing to disclose what would be considered an in-kind contribution. The detailed document lists ways that Miller has used the social media accounts of and publicity connected to the limited liability corporation behind the website “Restoring Liberty,” which Miller claims reaches tens of thousands of people each day.
Babcock said that he doesn’t consider himself a “stickler” for small mistakes in what are often complicated campaign finance reports, but that Miller, who has run twice before for Senate, is demonstrating a pattern that goes beyond simple error.
“He knows the rules, and there’s just no excuse for this. I think he’s doing it because it is easier than going through the trouble of setting up your own websites and email accounts, I think it’s easier than paying for them. He runs the corporations and he’s making illegal donations through his corporations to his campaign,” Babcock said.
The complaint asks the FEC for an expedited review.
Miller’s campaign spokesperson Randy DeSoto said the complaint is without merit.
“This is a desperate attempt by the Republican party and Lisa Murkowski to distract Alaskan voters from their own apparent money laundering scheme to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars,” DeSoto said, reading from a prepared statement.
“The Murkowski campaign and Alaska Republican Party have tipped their hand to show they know Murkowski is heading to defeat,” he added.
DeSoto said the campaign is holding a press conference at 6 p.m. Monday to address its own campaign finance complaint.
The White House Tribal Nations Conference convenes leaders from the 567 federally recognized tribes to interact directly with high-level federal government officials and members of the White House Council on Native American Affairs (Public Domain photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Interior)
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell addressed AFN Friday. Jewell announced a new secretarial order that requires the Department to include Native communities and traditional ecological knowledge in land management decisions.
Earlier in her talk, Jewell reviewed gains made in recent years which have brought federal managers and tribal leaders closer together in collaboration on resource issues, specifically pointing to working toward greater tribal engagement in subsistence issues.
“I’m announcing today a new secretarial order, which encourages collaborative agreements between Interior Department’s land managers and federally recognized tribes,” Jewell said.
“The purpose is to provide guidance to our nation’s public land and water managers to make sure that when we share resources with a special geographical, historical and or cultural connection with tribes, that Natives have a meaningful and substantive role in their management.”
She cited an example of federal managers working with tribes in the Ahtna region on solutions to hunting pressure on moose.
Jewell said her new secretarial order provides guidance to managers that native communities have a meaningful and substantive role in decisions.
Sen. Dan Sullivan addresses the 2016 AFN on Oct. 21, 2016. (Courtesy of the Alaska Federation of Natives)
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan spoke at AFN Friday afternoon about improving water and sewer access in rural Alaska and about helping Alaska Native veterans.
Sullivan said that he is working to raise awareness in Congress about the more than 30 villages that still don’t have running water or sewers.
The federal government will give $1.4 Billion dollars nationwide to build new systems, but Sullivan says they need to start putting the money to work.
“The bottom line is we have to get our federal agencies to stop studying these issues and start helping us build these important infrastructure projects that are going to help our communities.”
Sullivan is also working on a bill addressing military veterans who missed the opportunity to apply for native allotments because they were on active duty. The bill would give the veterans and their families the chance to apply now.
Julie Tisdale of Anchorage is a Donald Trump supporter. (Photo courtesy Julie Tisdale)
Recent polls show the presidential race unexpectedly close in Alaska, and in the coming weeks, we’ll be checking in with voters around the state — asking what issues matter most to them and who they’re supporting as Election Day approaches.
Today, we hear from Julie Tisdale, of Anchorage. Tisdale, 47, is an accountant, a lifelong Alaskan, and an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump.
She sat down with me to talk about faith, politics, and “The Apprentice.”
You can find our other interviews with Alaska voters here:
