Are you an adult with children? Have you ever tried to tell a teenager that he/she couldn't do something in today's world? When you do that, be prepared to develope a close, personal relationship withe the left-wing lesbian social workers at your friendly, local Child Protective Services or whatever they call it in your soviet. Telling the little brats that they can't do something is child abuse in the eyes of modern teachers and social workers and you can get ready to support them even while you're doing time.

There doesn't need to be an investigation. The ministerial directions given by the Division of Elections were consistent with long-held AKSC interpretations of Alaska election law. A vote for "other" would have been counted as a vote for "other." You know, the craziness here is the Lt. Gov. who runs Elections was a Palin favorite and on of the few, IIRC the only, Frank Murkowski appointee she kept, and he performed some valuable services for her, for which she rewarded him both by making him a Lt. General as Alaska's Adjutant General, and by making him Lt. Gov. when she quit, depite the fact that Alaska law doesn't contemplate there even being a Lt. Gov. if the Lt. Gov. becomes Governor. The Superior Court judge was likewise a Palin...

In forty years in government and politics I learned that the one immutable law is that the first casualties of any revolution, left or right, are the revolutionaries. Take that lesson to heart.

The reason you self-described true conservatives SHOULDN'T take over the Republican Party is that you have an unerring sense for the shallow end of the gene pool with the Christine O'Donnels and Joe Millers of the World. Anyone who knew anything about Republican Party politics in Alaska knew that Joe Miller was a certifiable lunatic. On his good days he was at best Sarah Palin's puppet and he had a past that simply wouldn't stand ANY oppo research. None of the "revelations" came as any surprise to anyone with a passing familiarity with Alaska politics. Because of the parental notice initiative on the ballot, the preachers in Alaska's "Bible Belt" from Wasilla north to the Fairbanks suburbs, east to Tok, South to Glenallen, and back...

Saint, liberal fools like you don't understand where their food comes from. I prefer to shoot halibut of any size, say over 80-90 pounds; it's quick and doesn't give them the opportunity to thrash around your boat and tear things up. Nice little .410 shotgun does the trick and you can just off the fish while it's still in the water. A really skillful halibut fisherman can just slit their throat and get their main nerve at the same time and they "relax," but unless you're really good at it, you just make a big fish really angry. If you've ever eaten halibut in some fancy fern and oak restaurant, somebody hit it in the head, slit its throat, or shot it, but urban castrati like you don't have to see it done. Now salmon, everybody hits...

jeff, if you were a Reagan conservative, you'd be able to spell his name.

Figures don't lie, but liars do figure. It is damnably difficult to compare MOST government jobs to private sector jobs. Most of them are government jobs because the private sector can't or won't do them. There really aren't a lot of FBI agents, State police, snow plow operators, air traffic controllers, social workers, or correctional officers in the private sector. The only places you get any true intersection with the private sector is in such work as clerical/secretarial, not there's much of that since the advent of the desktop computer, custodial, gray collar trades and crafts, and some, only some, construction management and design. I've done, or at least had done, government salary surveys. The very hardest part in...

i did labor relations for a unionized state government and ran the L/R function for about five years until I retired in mid-06. We'd had a decade of stasis or even concessionary bargaining because of revenue limitations. All through the '90s employees got almost no general increases, avg. 3-5% total over the decade, but since most of them were on merit system style step scheme and employee who was never promoted or reclassified could have gotten as much as a 35% wage increase in that stagnant wage decade. The only ones who were really affected by it were those at the top of their range. We had a relatively decentralized HR system, much like the Feds' system and a Democrat came in in '94 and in the guise of "examining our...

There is a lot less to this than meets the eye. Even if there is no general increase, because of the "merit step" pay system most employees will get a 2+ to 3+ percent increase each year. Incentive awards will still be available, just not to the relatively few political employees. And the most insiduous thing available for those who really know how to work the system is you just get your job reclassified from Widget Making Techician to Widget Making Specialist or Widget Making Supervisor and you can get yourself a really nice raise; that's the ruse they used to give all sorts of WH staff raises despite the alleged freeze of WH wages.

CeeTee, you're government school "education" is showing. You're the kind of mindnumbed robot that gave us Comrade Obama. Facts: At the first sign of development, either in the appropriation or permitting process, the Greenies and the unions will unite in opposition. The unions' support can be bought with a Project Labor Agreement and Davis-Bacon or better wages, so-called prevailing wages and conditions. The Greenies can sometimes be bought off by adopting bleeding edge "green" technology in the project, hiring a bunch of Greenies to act as watchdogs on the project, and whatever other demands might be fashionable at the time. If the developer doesn't want to play ball with the Greenies, they flood the editorial pages and blogs with...