Though Leery of Washington, Alaska Feasts on Its Dollars

[spanone]

'Alaska’s share now is 71 percent higher than the national average'

PALMER, Alaska — Backed by a blue row of saw-toothed mountain peaks, the Republican state lawmaker Carl Gatto finds himself on a fine roll.

Roll it back, he says, roll back this entire socialistic experiment in federal hegemony. Give us control of our land, let us drill and mine, and please don’t let a few belugas get in the way of a perfectly good bridge.

“I’ve introduced legislation to roll back the federal government,” he says. “They don’t have solutions; they just have taxes.”

And what of the federal stimulus, from which Alaska receives the most money per capita in the nation? Would he reject it?

Mr. Gatto, 72 and wiry, smiles and shakes his head: “I’ll give the federal government credit: they sure give us a ton of money. For every $1 we give them in taxes for highways, they give us back $5.76.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/19stimulus.html?pagewanted=print

[mike r]

1. And for that, we get Palin

the epitome of rugged self-sufficiency