Open season on Alaska.

• Author: McCorkle, Vern
• Position: From the Publisher

It's true. A good offense is also a good defense. Perhaps that is why Alaska is the state folks love to hate in the Lesser 48. We're bigger, potentially richer (certainly in resources and prospects) and Outsiders get downright jealous of our position-geographically and economically. We understand all that. We usually do things in a big way, so it easily follows that when we err, we do that in a big way, too. Alas, a real big way!

Taking pot shots at Alaska does not require a permit-it's always open season on us. And we take most of it with as much humor as we can muster and usually do not mention scores of Congressmen whose districts, according to a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, have received $1.1 billion (correct) in farm subsidies to more than 170,000 persons long dead, not to mention hundreds of living millionaire farmers still receiving government subsidy checks.

Have we stood up and bellowed about that, embarrassing those Congressmen and women? No, we have not, although perhaps we should have. And they now have the audacity to rant and rave about roads and bridges we need for legitimate growth and development, just as we built the Brooklyn Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, and countless post and military roads in earlier times, partially funded by federal dollars.

Comes now something that is a very major concern: Icons of business and industry apparently caught amuck; some confessing to wrongdoing.

And as if that weren't bad enough, government leaders we trusted and admired enough to elect and re-elect, now stand accused of misdeeds.

One even found guilty and convicted.

Now is the time for Alaska businesses and Alaskan men and women to stand tallest. This is not the time to hunker down and blow off this whole unfortunate affair in which Alaska finds itself the...