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Alaska’s politicians, dragging out the flag, mom and apple pie, are stumbling all over themselves trying to save our Permanent Fund dividends from, well, Alaska’s politicians.
Democratic Rep. Chris Tuck and Republicrat Gabrielle LeDoux are the latest publicly to join the festivities, opining in an Alaska Dispatch News op-ed that Alaskans, by golly, have a right to the annual payout; that it should be enshrined in the Alaska Constitution.
What a lousy idea. Or is it?
Count me among the reviled buzz-killers who believed — and still believe — the Legislature’s codifying the annual payout in 1980 was a grievous policy error; that handing out free money is a mistake. It eventually would become the tail wagging the dog, we thought. And it has. (Yes, yes, and I revel in cashing mine in all my conflicted, hypocritical glory.)