We Have To Cut Government Spending…
That doesn’t involve what I’ve been getting all my life…
That’s the credo of many of the “Tea Party” candidates, and it is getting really annoying.
Take Joe Miller [Please!]
Miller is running for the Senate from Alaska and complaining about run-away government spending. Except, that doesn’t include his free education at West Point, or the help he got after leaving 3 years of active duty to attend Yale Law School. Or the salary he has received for various judicial posts for the state of Alaska, or the Federal Court [which paid his wife to be his clerk], or the money he received as a part-time attorney for the North Star Borough government. But the government wastes a lot money, apparently all money that doesn’t benefit him.
He has only been in Alaska 15 years, but he has already run for the state legislature, and drew a reprimand for using North Star Borough resources while doing it. For someone who claims to think that the government is worthless, he has put a lot of time and effort into getting government paychecks.
The Miami Herald reports that Alaska’s Miller files complaint against Native PAC. He has a lot of damn gall after accepting all kinds of help from outside the state to file a challenge to the right of Native Alaskans to support the candidate of their choice.
The Tundra Drums reports that the AFN endorses Lisa Murkowski. The Alaska Federation of Natives support her because she sits on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and has supported them while there. They believe in showing their loyalty to people who have demonstrated their friendship.
As an AFN representative noted, if Miller really thought there was a problem with the Native Alaskan PAC, he would have filed his complaint when they first started running ads, not two weeks before the election. If he had filed immediately the Federal Election Commission could have acted before the election.
4 comments
I’ve always found it a bit odd that so many glibertarian and teabagger types are elected from the one state in the union that actually gives every resident an annual stipend — about $2,000 per year the last time I looked, and why don’t the rest of us have that kind of socialism? They’re also third from the top on the list of states that receive more federal money than they pay in taxes, like all but a couple of the other red states (that “red” designation is really starting to seem ironic, isn’t it?).
That would be because the other states don’t charge the corporations who strip their wealth. The annual payment is for the oil. State government in Alaska is paid for by the same tax, so the Feds and local governments are the only people who actually tax Alaskans.
A lot of Federal expenditures in Alaska are for things that the state provides in other areas, like roads, or private companies provide, like telephone service. For years the Air Force was the local phone company for most of Alaska. Telephones were only available around military bases.
The question is why Alaska should be an exception from the other states, not to mention the enormous giveaways of Federal natural resources. And, as I said, how the residents reconcile those royalties with their right-wing politics.
Of course I never could understand how the local right wingers’ heads don’t pop from their own hypocrisy, either. Without Tyndall AFB and Social Security, Panama City basically wouldn’t have an economy.
PJ, why do you think there is going to be a logical reason for what these people do? Global climate change is more visible in Alaska than anywhere else in the US, but a huge percentage of Alaskans are still in denial about it.
This is about belief and self-image, not reality. Too many of them think they live the life of pioneers, even though they are now a radio/cell call away from help. They think they are going to strike it rich from a mineral find. They aren’t in this world.