Zencey is Limbaugh's mirror image

By TOM BRENNAN

When political types say a newspaper has a vendetta against them, most people assume they are exaggerating — and usually that's correct.

Brennan

But former state Sen. Ben Stevens has a legitimate claim in his problem with the Anchorage Daily News. Take for instance the oft-repeated "news" that Stevens was fined $5,000 by the Alaska Public Offices Commission for not reporting details about his business clients while he was in the state Senate.

But the newspaper has published not one word about the fact that Superior Court Judge Sen Tan ruled on May 5 that APOC was wrong and the fine was invalid. The judge said APOC misinterpreted the law and Stevens wasn't required to provide more information than he did.

Almost every day last week, the ADN did dredge up unproven allegations linking the former state senator to a corruption investigation. One day it even ran photographs of Stevens, along with shots of his father, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, and Congressman Don Young in an article about the corruption probe.

They ran above a gallery of eight photos of individuals who have been firmly linked to the investigation. Three of the eight are in prison and the caption gave . . .

Exxon files $800 million claim against state

Palin to call session on energy relief

State pledges millions to reduce coastal erosion

Senate OKs temporary halt on oil into U.S. reserves

30 dead after five bomb blasts rock western India

China quake death toll tops 12,000 with 18,000 buried

Congress messes with your HSA

By MICHAEL F. CANNON

Never mind the presidential race. The battle over who will control your health care is already taking place, under the radar, in Congress.

Cannon

In April, House Democrats passed legislation that would impose onerous and unnecessary reporting requirements on people with tax-free health savings accounts, or HSAs. As of January, more than 6 million Americans have health savings account coverage. That includes nearly 640,000 Californians, or about 3 percent of all Californians under age 65. In some states, HSA plans cover nearly one in 10 people under 65.

Current law requires HSA holders to document their withdrawals in the event of an IRS audit. The new legislation would require every HSA holder to document every HSA withdrawal, every time they file their taxes.

Some politicians just don't want workers to control their own earnings and have launched an all-out assault on HSAs.

That's right: Congressional Democrats have found a way to . . .

Environmentalist hot air
heats atmosphere

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

Williams

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."

Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation . . .

Lew Williams was an editor
who fought for Alaska

By WILLIAM J. TOBIN

ALASKA LOST ONE OF ITS truly good guys — and one of its greatest newspapermen — a week ago yesterday when Lew Williams Jr. died at the age of 83 in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. He was a Democrat of the old school, one who had little patience with the anti-growth, anti-development liberals who now have taken over the party in Alaska and nationally, not to mention Anchorage, as well. His vision of Alaska was that of the state's first elected governor, Bill Egan — another Democrat who believed it was the destiny of the 49th State to have a strong economy built on development of its boundless natural resources.

Tobin

WILLIAMS' DEATH came as a shock to his friends in Ketchikan and throughout the state. The long-time publisher of the Ketchikan Daily News and a regular weekly columnist after his formal retirement 13 years ago, admitted to have been feeling poorly for two or three weeks, suffering from what he thought was a bad case of the flu. He sent an e-mail to the Voice of the Times a couple of weeks ago, apologizing for not having a new column ready — but promising to send one along as soon as he was back on his feet. Instead, his wife, Dorothy, finally convinced him he needed to see a doctor — and with that came the sudden bad news.

ALTHOUGH HE WASN'T able to come up with yet one more column, after a 72-year career in journalism that began in 1936 when he was a carrier boy for the Juneau Empire, it was totally in keeping with his newspaper training that he still was thinking of meeting yet another deadline — looking ahead, as was his dedicated custom, to what could be done to help Alaska achieve . . .

Expanding our tourism industry

By JEREMIAH SCOBY

With the current economic woes and high fuel prices, Alaska has a good opportunity to attract more visitors.

Scoby

Tourists, otherwise interested in traveling overseas, are going to want to stay in the U.S. because they not only have less money to spend, but also face a double whammy from the slipping dollar. Although the Legislature took a good step by increasing tourism promotion funds, more should be done to support this vital industry.

Tourism is one of the largest and most prominent industries in Alaska. Last summer Alaska received 1.71 million visitors, up almost 100,000 from the prior year. Our Northwest neighbor, Washington, is trying to strengthen its tourism industry in order to mimic the success we have seen in bringing tourists to the last frontier.

Last year, Washington's governor, Christine Gregoire, sat down with executives at the Alaska Travel Industry Association to come up with a plan to increase tourism in the state of Washington. Much of their new travel industry model is based on the one we have here in Alaska, says Ron Peck, president of the travel association.

The main attractions for bringing visitors to Washington are the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and Mount Rainier. Here, the favorite destinations for tourists are . . .

Hillary finds her way too late in the game

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

WASHINGTON — By the time Hillary Clinton figured out how to beat Barack Obama, it was too late. When she began the race in 2007 thinking she was in for a coronation, she claimed the center in order to position herself for the real fight, the general election. She simply assumed the party activists and loony left would fall in behind her.

Krauthammer

However, as Obama began to rise, powered by the party's Net-roots activists, she scurried left, particularly with her progressively more explicit renunciation of the Iraq War. It was a fool's errand. She would never be able to erase the stain of her original war vote and she remained unwilling to do an abject John Edwards self-flagellating recantation. It took her weeks even to approximate the apology the left was looking for, and by then it was far too late. The party's activist wing was by then unbreakably betrothed to Obama.

But going left proved disastrous for Clinton. It abolished all significant policy differences between her and Obama, the National Journal's 2007 most liberal senator. On health care, for example, her attempts to turn a minor difference in the definition of universality into a major assault on Obama fell flat. With no important policy differences separating them, the contest became one of character and personality. Matched against this elegant, intellectually nimble, hugely talented newcomer, she had no chance of winning that contest.

She tried everything. Her charges that he was a man of nothing but words came off as a petulant, envious attack on eloquence. The power to inspire may not be sufficient to qualify for the presidency, but it is hardly a liability.

She tried a silly plagiarism charge, then settled for . . .

Incredible Shrinking ADN insults conservatives

By PAUL JENKINS

What’s not to love about newspapers? The good ones have personalities, quirks and style. Love them or hate them, they have something to say. Sports, even coverage of things other than women’s badminton. Comics that are funny. Ads. Columns. News, unless we’re talking about the Incredible Shrinking Newspaper here. Opinion. Feisty letters to the editor. They have it all. Even the lousy ones serve a purpose. Ask a bird.

Jenkins

Yet with the exception of just a tiny handful, newspapers across the nation are drying up like raisins in the sun, and editors and publishers cluster at three-martini navel-gazing sessions to ponder: What is going on? It’s the Internet, they say. The public is stupid, they say. Young people do not read, they say. Too bad they never take a moment, scratch their heads and wonder whether the problem could be them. Maybe their newspapers stink.

Our Incredible Shrinking Newspaper is a great example. Its mother ship, California-based McClatchy Co., says in its Securities and Exchange Commission report that the ISN’s circulation is down on weekdays and Sundays, and its revenues are off by more than $5 million. Add to that the siphoning of dough from the ISN to help ease McClatchy financial woes brought on when it devoured the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain for $4 billion. Its stock was selling for 9.46 at one point yesterday. A year ago it was trading for a little more than $30 a share.

Is it possible in these difficult times that the ISN has become so preoccupied, so estranged from its readers that it has lost focus? Can we take what it says seriously anymore? For all intents and purposes, it appears . . .

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