Issues? What issues?

I noted yesterday the ADN columns about the importance of paying attention to the issues at play in this governor's race and taking an interest, generally, in politics. Too bad no one in the media paid any attention.

• The ADN goes and gives us two softball pieces of Sarah Palin's life (complete with a photo gallery - let's not objectify our good-looking female candidates or anything!). They promise more on Tony Knowles and Andrew Halcro.
• The Associated Press joins in with an issue-centric but still insubstantial piece on Tony Knowles.
  
• The best we can get from the ADN's election coverage is coverage of a "dandelion tax" proposal, the latest on which talk radio host says what, and passing mention of the most pressing (and least-talked-about) issue in the state right now: the freefall of the price of oil.
  
• APRN joins the fun with a completely inconsequential story "profiling" the candidates for lieutenant governor. "Here's the next lieutenant governor: we gave them each 15 seconds to state their piece."

Particularly given the Knowles' campaigns plethora of new program promises and Halcro's repeated attempts to call attention to the need for a fiscal plan, I'd really like to see some coverage of the effect on the state budget of the declining price of oil, rather than a thin dotted line across the daily oil graph in the ADN.

And could someone explain Sarah Palin's claim that the budget can be balanced at $33/barrel oil for the next five years? Wouldn't that entail erasing the savings account? Or massive program cuts?

Would somebody hold these candidates accountable?