Excellent question Marinus van der Lubbe.

Size matters in this instance - Alaska is so large and so remote its nearly impossible to monitor or track overall quality of life and even harder to correlate it to the federal dollars received. That said, quality of life is a relative thing. Some who live in remote cabins with no running water have a fabulous quality of life where someone in Anchorage with running water, bus service and public schools - doesn't.

I believe that the privileged few take their money elsewhere, i.e. condos in Palm Beach or bed & breakfasts in Mexico. Because most Alaskans live paycheck to paycheck and the cost of flying to another city within Alaska is comparable to an L.A to NYC trip... well, I think you get the picture - and as Palin demonstrated some just don't get out much, let alone read.

I see the enormous effort many Alaskan take to get involved, to monitor industries and governments in Alaska but due to the distances find it nearly impossible to compare notes with each other and least of all attract the attention of governing authorities. When they do attract some attention they are drowned out by slick ad campaigns paid for by Big Oil and now obviously - its own representatives who are promised jobs they aren't qualified for, land deals no one else gets, etc. etc. in exchange for their "point of view".

It takes some spectacularly sexy scandal to get the FBI involved - where everywhere else in the U.S. relatively small time public corruption crooks are regularly prosecuted - ours get richer and more powerful each election cycle. The banality of evil wins.

Alaskans were happy to see Uncle Ted get off because the crime he was convicted of pales in comparison to what's really going on up here. Like sending some poor slob to jail for growing pot in his closet while people who siphon millions off of construction projects and grant programs are rewarded for their crimes. We're sick of it and Alaska's culture is sick because the reality is you can't beat 'em so the only way (in many cases) to feed and clothe your family is to join 'em.

Alaska doesn't need more Federal dollars in grants or programs for infrastructure and the like, it needs to get the same level of services of law enforcement that the rest of the country gets.

Alaska Native Corporations and Community Development Quota Programs designed by Ted Stevens set up a system where under the guise of protecting "Native culture" corporations are given special rights that no other corporations are - and even less oversight. My understanding is that the only group tasked with overseeing these special corporations are their shareholders who are defined as impoverished and "disadvantaged" - so they should be solely responsible for tackling corporate abuse?

That's why Halliburton and Blackwater have joint venture (and mentoring) agreements with some Alaska Native Corporations because what used to be illegal as a regular corp isn't anymore... where the inmates rule the asylum.