January 1, DC Insiders Strike Gold With Alaska Native Contracts

Wyatt’s Take

• $45 billion in Pentagon contracts meant for Alaska Natives barely reach them.
• Beltway executives rake in wealth while North Slope villagers remain poor.
• No-bid laws benefit the connected, not the natives.

The federal government handed $45 billion in contracts to companies claiming to represent Alaska Natives. But most of those deals end up helping white executives in Virginia, not the remote villagers of Alaska.

ASRC Federal, named for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, got more contracts than anyone. Their top brass are not native Alaskans, but wealthy Beltway insiders who live in luxury far from the North Slope.

Just last month, ASRC Federal grabbed a Defense Logistics deal worth up to $2.3 billion and another contract with a $151 billion ceiling. But less than 12% of all money lands in Alaska. Nearly all the work happens in places like Virginia.

The company boasts billions in revenue, owns millions of acres, and has a stake in valuable oil land. The real gold mine, though, is a 1971 law that lets these firms skip competitive bidding if they claim Native ownership. Unlike other minority contracts, Alaska Native firms keep their perks even as billion-dollar giants.

“Felix has a long history of working with government contractors, previously being employed with companies like General Dynamics, Sotera Defense Solutions, and Deloitte. She is, put simply, a typical Beltway bandit defense contractor,” the American Accountability Foundation wrote in a report.

Jennifer Felix, CEO of ASRC Federal, lives in a $4.3 million mansion with a private movie theater in Virginia. Her fellow executives enjoy wine cellars and Potomac River estates. Meanwhile, the only movie theater in the North Slope is closed and rusted, and local Natives struggle on food stamps.

“In the Pentagon, $100 million sole-source contracts go out the door to these 8(a) firms almost every day without any competition or opportunity for anyone else to bid,” said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

Taxpayer dollars help make Beltway insiders rich, while real Alaskan Natives barely see the benefits. A spokeswoman for ASRC Federal skirted questions about Native workers and payouts, calling their subsidiaries “operating at the direction of ASRC.”

Wyatt Matters

This story lays bare why trust with Washington is so low in the heartland. Folks in small towns do the hard work but watch the big money flow to well-connected elites. Middle America knows what fairness looks like, and it sure isn’t this.

Read the full story here