Obama's Economic Plan For Alaska : Think Small

Gas prices are soaring. The Keystone pipeline from Canada is dead. Alaska is oil rich and Obama supports making more jobs and strengthening the economy in Alaska.

Does this mean Obama supports drilling for more oil? Drilling for what we know is there?

No. He's for strengthening the rural economies. Oil is big business, not rural.

How do you support rural communities? By spending money on them. But spending on what?

According to the Department of Commerce, the Obama administration is investing in fish.

Oil has been stopped due to environmental concerns. It is bad for the fish, birds, and animals. But a rural community that catches, kills, and sells fish in their spawning grounds is okay. It wasn't oil that killed them.

So what sort of investment is being made? It is hard to say. The government blog post has two or three paragraphs of double talk about investing and support. There are two things that are almost a solid contribution that the government is providing.

1) Enhancing the skill of the local work force. I think the government is spending money teaching people how to work in a fish factory. Maybe they built a school? Working in a fish factory must be more complicated than I thought that we need our tax dollars spent on it.

2) Help develop a regional fisheries business cooperative. Sounds like the government is helping to form a union.

Even with these two semi-specific ideas I have no idea what the government has spent our money on. All I know is that our money is spread in a rural area. Is it going to artificially inflate the area through building unnecessary buildings for unnecessary schooling or conference centers? Is it just going down the tubes in training sessions that normally happens on the job? Spent to fund meetings of several companies to discuss fish?

Instead of the government taking our money and distributing it here and there around the country trying to prop up different industries, let us keep our money and buy products. Let the companies earn the money. If they get money without earning it there is no need to move the company in the right direction. No company needs to move in the right direction if it will get propped up by the government.

Even worse, by redistributing our money to such small sectors of the economy, how many more government workers will be needed to expand this practice? You know they want to.

We will get a big government to prop up small business.