Opinion and analysis shaped by the forces moving public life — from Washington to Ketchikan.
Read LatestVan Abbott's featured column for this month — read the full text on the Showcased Op-ed page.
A war without congressional consent is not a demonstration of strength. It is a confession that the case for it could never survive public scrutiny.
— Van Abbott · Betrayal: A War Without Consent · Ketchikan Daily News
Van Abbott's most widely published op-ed — click Read Full Article to open the complete text in Google Drive.
Read Full Article →The deficit is not a number. It is a choice — a choice about whose needs are treated as emergencies and whose emergencies are treated as luxuries.
— Van Abbott · The Deficit Is Real. The Concern About It Is Selective. · Ketchikan Daily NewsVan Abbott's most-read Substack piece. Click Read Full Article to open the complete op-ed in Google Drive.
Read Full Article →A war without congressional consent is not a demonstration of strength. It is a confession that the case for it could never survive public scrutiny.
A war without congressional consent is not a demonstration of strength. It is a confession that the case for it could never survive public scrutiny.
There is a difference between strength and recklessness. One protects national interests through discipline and foresight. The other gambles with them — and sends someone else to pay the debt.
When the government stops telling the truth, it doesn't merely fail to inform. It actively misleads — and the distance between those two things is the entire width of democratic accountability.
The deficit is not a number. It is a choice — a choice about whose needs are treated as emergencies and whose emergencies are treated as luxuries.
Every election cycle produces miscalculations, but only rarely does a political decision misfire so completely that it reshapes an entire presidential field.
The MAGA movement accelerates American decline across nearly every institutional pillar that sustains a modern democracy and a stable economy.
Van Abbott spent three decades in Alaska municipal government, serving in senior roles at the City of Ketchikan, Fairbanks Municipal Utilities Services, Anchorage Telephone Utility, and the KPU Telecommunications Division.
He is a regular contributor to the Ketchikan Daily News, Juneau Empire, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Homer News, and Peninsula Clarion, and has been published nationally in the Anchorage Daily News, Kansas City Star, Washington Spectator, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Wichita Eagle, Brattleboro Reformer, Mississippi Free Press, Illinois Sentinel, USA News Hub, Hawaii Ka Wai Ola, Ann Arbor Independent, and others.
Abbott and his wife retired in Ketchikan. He writes from there, where the political winds from Washington are visible not in what is said but in what arrives — or doesn't — on the ferry dock and in the annual budget.
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