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Ted Stevens Loads Up the Big Internet Truck
For Another Campaign


Good news, everybody—Alaska’s own Senator Ted Stevens is planning to run for re-election in 2008. (Why not? He’ll only be 84).

"I intend to stay as long as God and the people of Alaska allow me to secure these projects for Alaska," he told The Hill newspaper.

While that sounds more like a threat than a promise to wary taxpayers, the antediluvian Senator has many more “projects” to secure for the folks back home before he hangs up his cranky pants and calls it a career. Much has been made of his Bridge to Nowhere (estimated cost: 223 million dollars), but for the true fans of pork, what inspires admiration most is not the showy, spectacular waste; it’s the quiet heroism of the workaday porker. And nobody does it better than Ted.

Citizens Against Government Waste reports that last year Stevens’ “projects” included a million dollars for “alternative salmon products” (a disturbing image), 1.3 million for “berry research,” and 98 thousand dollars for the Alaska Sea Otter Commission. (What do sea otter commissioners do, exactly?)

My own favorite however, is detailed in my book, Naked Republicans, A Full Frontal Exposure of Right-Wing Hypocrisy and Greed. It’s nowhere near the biggest slab of bacon, but it’s arguably the most colorful.

In 2005, Alaska Airlines rolled out what it called a Salmon-Thirty-Salmon, a jet painted to look like a fish. The paint job cost a half million dollars, and the tab was picked up by the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Except that the Marketing Board gets its funding from the federal government---thirty million dollars so far. And how does the Chairman of the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board express his gratitude? Probably by saying:

“Thanks, Dad.”

Yep, the Chairman is Ben Stevens, son of Ted. Given the Senator’s understanding of the internet, let’s hope they don’t communicate via email. You know how clogged those tubes can get.

Senator Stevens is too modest to remind us that he is president pro tempore of the Senate, making him third in line for the presidency, in case, you know... And when you consider Mr. Bush’s propensity for pitching off his bike (to say nothing of choking on pretzels), and Dick Cheney’s heart, we’d better all pray that Denny Hastert starts using the House gym real soon.