Alaska and You

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Alaska and You
August 14, 2006; Page A8

(snip)

Later this year every resident of Alaska will get a check in the mail for roughly $1,000 -- or $4,000 for a family of four -- simply for living in the state. In some years the annual payment has been nearly $8,000 per family. The money for these bonuses comes from the interest earned on what is now a $35 billion oil-revenue investment fund that Alaska has amassed since the late 1970s. While $75 oil is pinching pocketbooks in the lower 48 states, for the 640,000 residents of Alaska the cost of energy has been a gift. Some 85% of the revenue the state collects comes from oil severance taxes -- a levy applied to the 850,000 daily gallons of North Slope oil that travels via pipelines such as BP's to the rest of the nation. As a result, Alaska is only one of nine states without a state income tax, and one of only two (along with New Hampshire) with no income or statewide sales tax. Alaska is the only state that can fund government services by exporting its tax burden via energy taxes to the other states.

And here's the political rub: Alaska is also the largest state recipient of federal spending earmarks. The Tax Foundation says Alaskans receive nearly $2 of income transfer from the taxpayers of the other 49 states for every $1 they pay in taxes each year. Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation calculates that Alaska gets $5 of federal highway spending for every $1 in gas tax money it pays to the federal trust fund -- twice as much back as any other state. We all know about Alaska's $230 million Bridge to Nowhere -- a federally funded highway project that will connect the town of Ketchikan (pop. 9,000) to a tiny island with a population of 50. But this white elephant is no anomaly. Year after year the 49th state manages to secure federal dollars for skating rinks, sea otter recovery grants, berry research, the Arctic winter games, native-Alaskan museums and miles upon miles of roads through deserted areas of the state.

The reason: The state's Congressional Members have so much seniority that they sit on the thrones of the most powerful spending committees. The state's lone House member, Don Young, is chairman of the Transportation Committee and was once quoted in the New York Times as saying he'd "like to be a little oinker myself," referring to pork-barrel spending. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is the number two Republican (and former chairman) on the Appropriations Committee, the Grand Central Station of earmarks.

(snip)

Messrs. Stevens and Young maintain that the local projects they fund are of the highest value to the public. Perhaps so, though our Alaska contacts tell us that even local residents are embarrassed by all the pork in their backyard. The best way to sort out which bridges, museums and research grants are worthy, and which are a waste, is to stop the earmarking and require the residents of this rich state -- and others -- to fund this stuff themselves.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115550985628634607.html (subscription)

[oneighty]

1. Socialism

Yes indeed.

Sharing with the citizens the mineral profits from State owned land. What a unique idea.

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