text: The shipping rates from Seattle to Alaska are the most expensive routes in the world, bar none. The Seattle longshoreman and the barge companies should pay for the port since they profit the most and have had a special law that has protected their business and jobs for too many years.  Ironically it was Sheffield that shut down the construction of the grain export facility leaving Delta farmers with full silos and broke. Then the State shut down the meat processing facility in Fairbanks so the chicken, hog and cattle farmers lost everything.  What this State needed to do a long time ago and still needs is a rail line to the lower 48. Then we will have some competition in shipping. Screw Seattle. The Chinese and other cargo ships can land here (not necessarily Anchorage either) and we can train (back haul) the goods to the mid-west easy enough. Sheffield's plan failed because it never was about benefiting Alaska but about enriching a contractor friend or a kick back. Why no train?