Avoid extremists
Letter to the Editor
The extremists in the Republican Party continue their cynical attempts at dominating the political landscape in Alaska. With little sense of statesmanship or compromise and acting with a wide-ranging political intransigence they've insulted many Alaskans with the Legislative debacles and failures of the last several years (they seem at times like some kind of Republican Taliban because of their social and political intolerance).
Now Frank Murkowski wants to be governor, his only plan for solving our fiscal problems is to get ANWR developed, to get a gas-line built, and to start cutting trees, achieving these goals, I assume, by giving away tax incentives to his corporate fat-cat buddies and gutting the regulations that protect us. He is part of this hypocritical school of Republican thought that rants about Big Government spending yet they are willing to go into deficit to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy and create unnecessary big-money projects for their corporate friends.
The same arrogant thought process leads them to declare some laws invalid and then ignore them simply because they disagree with them such as leaving their political litter along the highways. What bothers me the most is that there is a group of people in our state that are politically powerful and have a lot of money available to them that conspire to control so many things that affect all of us. And I don't believe that most of the benefits of their strategy trickle down to the rest of us.
It's important that people register to vote, get informed about the candidates and issues and then vote! Do not support people who are ideologically inflexible. Vote for people that are willing to work with others, that will vote across party lines for a good idea and intelligently solve the problems that face us. We have to solve the fiscal crisis, we need to resolve the subsistence issue, and we must adequately fund education, public safety and highways. We must elect people that are committed to being part of the solution and not to the idea of obstruction and inaction.
Eric Graves
Ester, Alaska