By SUZANNE DOWNING
May 19, 2026 – The men who founded the United States weren’t perfect. They argued bitterly, formed factions, carried grudges, and made compromises that may not have stood the test.
But they were serious men dealing with serious matters. They understood that government was not performance art or a social club where lawmakers could burn endless hours posturing while the future of a nation hung in the balance.
In 1776, the signers of the Declaration of Independence put their names on what was essentially their own death warrants if the revolution failed.
In 1787, the framers of the Constitution gathered in Philadelphia to salvage a fragile republic that could easily have collapsed into chaos or monarchy. The average age of the signers of the Constitution was just 42 or 43 years old. James Madison was 36. Alexander Hamilton was barely into his 30s. Jonathan Dayton was all of 26. Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman of the group, was 81.
Most were young, but they were giants. These men forged a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution, and eventually a Bill of Rights that became the foundation for the most successful constitutional republic in human history. They debated the nature of liberty itself. They designed checks and balances. They created a system intended to restrain centralized power and preserve free enterprise. They risked everything they owned to do it.
Now look at the Alaska Legislature.
In the same week lawmakers managed to endanger the most significant economic opportunities in state history — the Alaska LNG project — they also found time to make the giant cabbage the official Alaska state vegetable.
You almost have to admire their arrogance.
Rome had bread and circuses. Alaska has cabbage ceremonies while legislators toy with price controls on natural gas.
At one point during this session, lawmakers floated amendments that would effectively allow the Legislature to set the price of Alaska’s own natural gas. That means it could come back year after year and change the price that producers could charge Alaskans. Think about how absurd that is. Alaska is sitting atop one of the largest untapped natural gas reserves in North America, and our political class is so economically illiterate that some of them apparently believe government pricing schemes are the pathway to prosperity.
These are the same lawmakers who annually ignore their own statutory Permanent Fund Dividend formula. The law says one thing. The Legislature does another. Every single year. They treat statutes as suggestions whenever it’s politically convenient.
Yet somehow the Democrat-led majorities imagine themselves capable of micromanaging energy markets.
The founders would have stared at this behavior in disbelief. It’s jaw-dropping what Alaskans are having done to them.
Our founders were men who rebelled against centralized economic control from a distant monarchy. They believed free markets and private enterprise were inseparable from liberty itself. They did not dump tea into Boston Harbor so future legislators could sit around Juneau devising quasi-socialist pricing schemes for natural gas while simultaneously sabotaging investment confidence.
And then there is the sheer incompetence.
The founders conducted a revolution against the most powerful empire on earth, established a new nation, survived war, bankruptcy, internal division, and foreign threats, Indian raids, and still managed to produce enduring governing documents that have survived nearly 250 years.
Meanwhile, Alaska’s Legislature lurches from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis, and turns major legislation into Christmas trees overloaded with unrelated political ornaments.
The gasline legislation became exactly that: a chaotic vehicle for unrelated demands, side deals, ideological hobbyhorses, and political leverage plays. Legislators seemed less interested in securing Alaska’s economic future than in using the project as hostage collateral for pension fights, education spending demands, or internal caucus warfare.
One gets the sense that many lawmakers are no longer governing at all. They are merely emoting.
The contrast is painful.
Alaska’s Legislature increasingly behaves like vandals wandering through a world they neither understand nor appreciate. They inherited a state rich in resources, strategic importance, and economic opportunity, yet behave as though prosperity itself is suspicious.
What makes this especially maddening is that nearly every major positive development happening for Alaska right now is occurring outside the Legislature’s competence.
Movement on the gasline? Driven largely by private industry, international partners, and federal executive action.
Increased oil production? That’s Industry.
New lease sales? Those were federal policy shifts.
Land transfers to Alaska? Again, executive action and long-term legal work.
Growing cargo dominance at Anchorage? Geography, logistics, private enterprise, government getting out of the way.
Everything this Legislature touches turns to a dung heap.
The framers of the Constitution were hardly saints. None of us are in that category. But they possessed something sorely lacking in modern governance: seriousness. They understood consequences. They understood that prosperity requires stability, competence, and restraint.
Today’s Alaska Legislature is not serious. Not every member, of course. But the majority is a hot mess and the institution itself increasingly feels untethered from reality, as though performance politics and emotional grandstanding have replaced disciplined governance.
So here we are: We are heirs to one of the greatest constitutional experiments in history, yet governed by people who cannot reliably follow their own dividend formula, who flirt with controlling natural gas prices, and who derail a generational energy project while celebrating cabbage symbolism.
The founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
This Legislature can barely pledge not to wreck the gasline before lunch.
Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.
14 thoughts on “Suzanne Downing: Look how far we’ve fallen, from the Founding Fathers to the Alaska Legislature”
The political class, with the occasional exception, are much like a virus. Feed off the host until it’s dead then spread to wherever else they can. We have them in Alaska politics. They move here, like rep zach fields from California, and immediately begin trying to enact policies that mirror the disastrous policies of that failing state. Rep johnson of palmer has accomplished the amazing naming of a state vegetable! It feels like many of our legislator’s minds are in a vegetative state. We have historic opportunities right now.
If past performance is any indication of future performance, Alaska is in for a rough ride with the current crop of “leaders” in Juneau.
Yes we have fallen far from what the founding Fathers envisioned for Alaska including going over the cliff on Alaska’s Constitution that reads, ”The Legislature shall provide for the utilization, development, and conservation of all natural resources belonging to the State including land and waters for the maximum benefit of its people”., No where in the Alaska Constitution does it include foreigners. Good by foreigner pebble, good by delisted middleman Glenfarne, and don’t let the door hit you in the______, well you know the rest of the story 😉
> apparently believe government pricing schemes are the pathway to prosperity.
That is the marxism I write of so frequently. It is baked in at this point in most pols regardless of party. The actually think government is a solution instead of the reality of its dead hand.
> The law says one thing. The Legislature does another.
Their criminality is not rhetoric, but an actionable offense. I pray I see the day.
> One gets the sense that many lawmakers are no longer governing at all. They are merely emoting.
> Everything this Legislature touches turns to a dung heap.
Excellent article.
The AK legislature is the official state vegetable.
GREAT ZINGER, mep!
That is good! Complete with self manufactured compost.
Well, what is the root of the problem? Is it the constitutional structure of the Legislature?Or is it the type of people we elect and if it is then what can we do about it? Right now it seems public office attracts people that are not the best and the brightest in our pool of human talent. And then even the smart ones are sometimes motivated by bizarre beliefs and value systems, Or maybe that is just the average human condition? And the Legislature truly does “represent” the People?
Don’t miss this one: THE RUNAWAY CABBAGE. Perhaps they might like to make this the new STATE SONG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGBe0PFVy0U&list=OLAK5uy_ne3z9hwThIV2yF_KtQ6DarBcXJZusKoL4
To most Alaskans, Juneau is a deep dark cave with full of dead end rooms and theives. Public tv does broadcast a little of what happens, although it’s obvious most decisions are made in private.
Only well funded scheming public and private lobbyists
can make the trek and buy the results. Oh, and don’t discount the outside $ buying a majority of advertising each election.
We have a few good elected representatives that receive media mention, but usually derogatory or deceptive.
Thank you Suzanne for keeping us aware better than any other!
Spot on. It is sickening, and I can’t help but credit our declining election integrity and RCV. Add also the Alaska GOP inability to rein in the imposters and make it hard, or ideally impossibly, for them to masquerade as conservatives. Low voter turnout, low info voters, deception, weeks to finalize elections, cheat by mail, RCV – what can we expect? We now have a legislature full of cabbage heads with very few leaders or statesmen to be found.
Very few Americans from Boomers, FenX, Millennials/GenY, and GenZ have honor and they don’t even know what honor is.
Go easy on the legislators and aids (Downing and Readers); they can’t help being stupid; no more than a child never read to when he was under five can’t help remaining stupid, no one read to him all the time, his brain is a little under developed. To which I strongly doubt the parents of the legislators and their staff read to them when they were under five just by the way the act and they act no different than Most adults today.
The founders were well read in classical literature, Greek, English, maybe even Hebrew, and read to growing up especially the bible was part of their literacy development whether or not the founders were following God as an adult they still weren’t ignorant of the Word of God.
Dumpa bunch of cabbage at their local offices