In a decades old game of monopoly, played in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness, corporate interests may soon get to make another move – straight to the bank.

The company that has profited for over 40 years by clearcutting Alaska’s Tongass National Forest may soon be rewarded with yet another exclusive 23-year contract.

Since 1954, the Louisiana Pacific Corporation’s Ketchikan Pulp Company (KPC) has owned a 50-year, taxpayer-subsidized monopoly over most timber harvests in the Tongass. Now the Alaskan congressional delegation is offering legislation that would guarantee KPC most of the annual Tongass timber supplies until 2019.

Meanwhile, the taxpayer continues to fork over subsidy money. According to a 1995 U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report, logging activities in the Tongass cost the taxpayer $42 million in 1992, $31 million in 1993 and $30 million in 1994. In fact, the Tongass program loses more than any other National Forest harvest program.

But KPC, which holds the only exclusive timber contract out of 155 National Forests, is cruising past “Go” straight to another sweetheart deal. In June, the Alaskan delegation introduced legislation (S. 1877 and H.R. 3659) that would guarantee KPC a new 23-year contract to replace the old one, which would have otherwise expired in 2004.

Incredibly, the new contract is even sweeter than the last, allowing for increased harvest, assurance of continued government subsidies, and suspension of key laws that might infringe on logging opportunities. Not bad for a company that has, to date, paid over $6 million in civil and criminal fines for infractions of the law regarding its logging activities.

In addition, in 1983 the Forest Service estimated that KPC’s monopolistic practices had cheated the federal government out of $60-80 million. As usual, it’s the American taxpayer who loses this Congressionally mandated game.

General Madness

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), a long time military reformer, thinks the Marine Corps should not be adding generals while cutting marines. While the military is supposed to be tightening up in order to provide a more efficient national defense, the FY1997 Defense Appropriations Bill provides for 12 additional Marine Corps Generals. More generals means more desk jobs, more support staff, more bureaucracy, more perks and, of course, more taxpayer money. Don’t too many generals spoil the troops?