"Hey, Uncle Ted! How about earmarking a bit of pork for me!"

I am big enough to admit it when I am wrong. Seeing as how no one is around, it is easy to admit that my prediction about Fabulous Frank Murkowski winning the Republican Primary was wrong. Very wrong. He finished a distant third with about 18% of the vote. Sarah Palin was the clear winner with somewhere around 51%, and John Binkley with 30%. There were too many missteps by Murkowski in the past couple of years: the jet airplane, the discontinuation of the longevity bonus, his secretive negotiations with the Sisters for a gas line, etc. That BP was forced to shut down a large portion of its Prudhoe oil field in the week leading up to the election didn't help his cause either.

I am not going to predict the out come of the Knowles vs Palin contest at this point. It will be interesting to see the sprint to November.

There were a couple of ballot measures that managed to pass. One delt with reforming lobbying practices in Juneau. It was hard to see how it would have had any appreciable effect other that to punish the part time lobbists who have day jobs.

The second measure imposed a $50 tax on cruise-ship passengers. Buried in the text was a provision that requires environmental compliance officers aboard some cruise ships and allows individuals to bring suits against the cruise companies for environmental damages. I suppose that this is intended to encourage "participation" in the regulatory process but it smacks of a full employement-act for lawyers. After all isn't that what Alaska Department of Environmental Compliance for? To police, monitor and enforce compliance? Of course, the state also was supposed to be watching BP as well. Hmmm. More bad timing?

What is the most troubling about measure 2, is the latent hypocrisy that it exposes in Alaskan voters. Alaskans stand proudly on their soap boxes and declare that taxes are an abomination; anti-American; anti-freedom; legalized theft; you know the mantra. But apparently taxes are alright when they are imposed on someone else; Corollary: Big government is bad unless it benefits me!