Editorial is same old song, different remix
I’ve read some bad editorials in my time but the Frontiersman’s “Now’s the time to move the legislators closer to the people” is one of the worst. A poorly put together remix of the same old song, “It can’t work right if I can’t drive there,” which when listened to carefully sounds more like “Juneau has it but we want it.”
It doesn’t sound any better now than it did 20 years ago.
You state that the crux of the problem is summed up by an e-mail offering to take letters and photos from Talkeetna to Juneau. What problem? There is no postal service, telephone or Internet in Talkeetna?
People are relegated to participation by proxy? What then is the purpose of elected officials? Are you so naive that you think some personal eye contact in the capital will change the way our Legislature does business? It’s a wheeling, dealing, vote selling, trading and swapping ego and power game. How much less of yourself do you have to give up for a committee chairmanship than you do for a few bucks or a dinner? It really has nothing at all to do with fully empowering Jane and Joe PFD collector. We’re the jerk voters who cut game time from 121 to 90 days, maybe.
And you see evidence that inaccessibility may contribute to malfeasance and indictments? Did you try some of your eye-to-eye on the MEA board? You can drive over there in a couple of minutes. How did that work for you?
Won’t be any fog delays and stagnation? What do you mean? That’s a great description of our Legislature in session anywhere.
We have so many important issues facing us, as Alaskans, that you do us a disservice by trying to grind your old axe. It’s apparent that we have a problem with our choice of legislators. I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that it’s not moving the Legislature “closer to the people.”
I guess you would call me a marginalizing traditionalist, but after 55 years in Alaska I think that I’m a realist. And you most certainly fall into the unrealistic special interest category. Let the sun shine in.
By the way, do you have another simple solution for the proxy problem we have with Washington, D.C.? Like maybe if we could get Congress to Wasilla you could eyeball them into shape?
Jim Bennett
Soldotna