You're right that this is tiresome -- this will be my last post -- but you're not right that military expenditures alone explain the largesse. In 2010, federal spending per Alaskan minus taxes received was $15,197 -- defense spending accounted for only $7,337.59 of that amount.
And from a 2010 NYT article:
"Alaska’s appetite for federal dollars has always been voracious and is not confined to the stimulus. A study by Prof. Scott Goldsmith of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, noted that an 'extraordinary increase' in federal spending drove the state’s pile-driver growth of the last 15 years.
"In 1996, federal spending in Alaska was 38 percent above the national average. Thanks to the late Republican Senator Ted Stevens, who was Senate appropriations chief for several years, and to the military, which keeps expanding its bases here, Alaska’s share now is 71 percent higher than the national average.
"Some of this owes to the expense of serving Alaska’s rural reaches. But much is bred in the bone. The federal government carved this young state out of the northern wilderness, and officials here learn to manipulate federal budget levers at a tender age."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/19stimulus.html?pagewanted=all
