Alaska Republicans: Jacking Up The House of Pain

The New York Times finally smells blood and dispatches a missive of dark implication from Girdwood on Ted Stevens, not a day after they rake over Don Young over the Florida cash atrocity mentioned below.

Message to Alaska: Ted Stevens has been among the most venal, arrogant, vicious insider senators for decades now. Stop acting surprised that he's probably a cheap crook as well. Hypocrisy is an art more elegantly practiced Outside.

It's time to stop taking the money and looking the other way. The Alaska delegation is and has been a national embarassment for years.

The Anchorage Daily News has been notably slow and cautious in reporting this and related stories since the May indictments. They don't have to wait on the FBI. Where are the hard questions for Alaska's political insiders? Where is the interconnection of decades of VECO's influence? Big Oil itself and its decades of easy campaign money and business opportunities for cooperative Alaska politicians sits unmolested.

You are not going to tell me with a straight face that VECO was an isolated case - that (primarily) Republican operatives and oil industry bag men never arranged for the Costco-valu-pack purchases of Alaska legislators. Is former Senator and Governor Frank Murkowski - who pushed through oil and gas tax legislation really clean? Look at other Senators, other governors, stacks of beady-eyed legislators, nameless petroleum nabobs who've been selling out Alaska for decades.

I'm sensing far too much caution from the Alaska press - you're getting scooped by the national press already. Don't embarrass the state more than it already is. The principle of wide-spread corruption based in the oil industry is established fact. Embrace the cliche and follow the money: when you find an Alaska politician with an unlimited ego, a cynical world view, an irrational skepticism of global warming and a sadistic streak, you've probably struck oil whore.