Fun Facts about Alaska

The youngest state in the union founded in 1959. Joe Biden is 17 years older then the State. It is also the one of the smallest states with a population of 670,053. Delware Has :853,476 Rhode Island has: 1,067,610. 10.0% of Alaska's population live in poverty. Residents are actually paid to live in the state, this year they received $1654.00. 80% of Alaska's revenue comes from oil. It holds 3% of the world's oil supply. The United States uses 25% of the world's oil. The Exxon Valdez is the largest oil spill in US History. Recently the Supreme Court lowered the money Exxon had to pay of the original $507.8 million settlement. The Valdez remained in service until 2002. The affects of the spill are still visible almost 20 years later. In one quarter year Exxon made $10.7 billion thats $1,300 a second. Since the Valdez, Exxon has made more then any company in history; $404 billion in 2007 alone. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) became federally protected under General Dwight D. Eisenhower at the same time Alaska became a state in the Union.


and now some fun Eisenhower quotes:
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." President Dwight Eisenhower, November 8, 1954

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ... Is there no other way the world may live? " -"The Chance for Peace" - a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations -- corporations.Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."-From his farewell address.