Let me count the ways
by digby
So every Villager is frantically tweeting this allegedly brilliant quote from Lisa Murkowski this morning:
“I cannot understand why this administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska”
Perhaps Lisa Murkowski doesn’t understand that Alaska is in the United States? And that the people of the United States (not to mention the world) have an interest in insuring that the arctic isn’t degraded any faster than we are already degrading it?
Perhaps she also doesn’t understand that Iran is not part of the United States? That it is a sovereign nation over which the president has no authority while he does have authority over the “sovereign state” of Alaska?
Here’s the full quote (above link):
What’s coming is a stunning attack on our sovereignty and our ability to develop a strong economy that allows us, our children and our grandchildren to thrive,” said Murkowski, who spoke to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell about the department’s plan during a brief phone call Friday, in a statement. “It’s clear this administration does not care about us, and sees us as nothing but a territory. … I cannot understand why this administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska. But we will not be run over like this. We will fight back with every resource at our disposal.”
Whatever:
Here is the cognitive dissonance. More and more Alaskans, particularly of the Republican stripe, identify the federal government and pork-barrel spending as the enemy, although Alaska was built by both.
Alaska’s appetite for federal dollars has always been voracious and is not confined to the stimulus. A study by Prof. Scott Goldsmith of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, noted that an “extraordinary increase” in federal spending drove the state’s pile-driver growth of the last 15 years.
In 1996, federal spending in Alaska was 38 percent above the national average. Thanks to the late Republican Senator Ted Stevens, who was Senate appropriations chief for several years, and to the military, which keeps expanding its bases here, Alaska’s share now is 71 percent higher than the national average.
Some of this owes to the expense of serving Alaska’s rural reaches. But much is bred in the bone. The federal government carved this young state out of the northern wilderness, and officials here learn to manipulate federal budget levers at a tender age.
Still, many see strings attached. Lynn Gattis, a Republican Party official, lives by a lake in Wasilla, surrounded by aspens. She is a sourdough Alaskan, meaning she was born here, and she is a pilot, which means she threads her way around those cloud-hugging peaks. She knows that the federal government paid for the port of Anchorage and the highway that leads to Wasilla allowed Target and Sports Authority to take root.
But she sees a government that delays oil exploration, as President Obama did recently; that regulates timber and salmon harvests and hydropower; and that, in her view, cares more about polar bears than about Alaskans. (The government lists as endangered the beluga whales of Cook Inlet, a vast gray expanse that stretches out from Anchorage. Some Alaskans argue that this could stall construction of a multimillion-dollar bridge, which as it happens would be paid for by the federal government.)
“It just feels like the federal government intrudes everywhere,” Ms. Gattis said. “Enough Ivy League lawyers — let’s get people who can dig a mine and run a business.”
This sentiment baffles Tony Knowles, a long drink of a man who worked on the North Slope oil rigs before becoming the governor of Alaska in 1994 as a Democrat. He understands the frustration that comes with bumping into federal officials at each turn. But the trade-off is not so terrible, he notes, such as having the feds pay to put broadband in Alaskan villages.
“Nobody likes to have all their eggs in one basket, and so you do feel vulnerable,” he said. “But Ted Stevens, who was a Republican and beloved, was never shy about bringing money in.”
Some Alaskans have made a founding narrative of their grievance. “Before statehood, when a distant federal bureaucracy managed our resources, Alaskans experienced devastating economic effects,” Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, says on his Web site.
The historical record is a bit more complicated. Federal dollars, fishing and timber sustained Alaska until the discovery of oil in the 1960s. Victor Fischer, who helped write the state constitution in the 1950s, shrugs.
“There’s all this verbiage that says we’re the frontier, rough and ready,” says Mr. Fischer, lithe and sardonic in his mid-80s. “The Feds paid for everything, but the conflict runs through our history.”
Yep. They didn’t build that.
The fact is that the Arctic is vital to the continued health of the planet. It needs to be protected. Too many Alaskans, sadly, aren’t dedicated to being good stewards and would turn the whole place into a strip mine if it meant putting some temporary money into their pockets. So I have an idea. Let’s just have the federal government pay every adult who was an Alaska resident as of January 1, 2015 50k a year tax free for ten years. That would probably make up for anything they’d make on some short term projects in the wildlife refuges or the Arctic ocean. I’d have zero problem with that and I’d guess the majority of Alaskans would be for it too. Unfortunately, it would preclude some of the big guns getting rich so there would still be mighty outcry. But considering the history of federal largesse to the state it would hardly be unprecedented.
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