For the price of the Iraq War, we could give each Alaskan ten times the gifts that Senator Ted Stevens, lied about receiving.
On October 27, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty of seven counts of making false statements about $250,000 in gifts that he had received. While polls currently show him leading his Democratic opponent Mark Begich by 1%, Nate Silver notes that many absentee and early ballots have yet to be counted. There are 683,478 people in Alaska. Giving each of them ten times as much as Stevens received would cost $1.71 trillion, $1.29 trillion less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the total cost of the Iraq War.
