We’re in this together, but you need us more.

I spent a good part of today updating Palintology.com.  I have a separate email account set up to receive Google Alerts regarding Governor Palin so I don’t have to spend hours looking for stories online everyday. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything so I had a good month’s worth of news to sort though. It’s one thing to hear the news day by day as it happens but something interesting happens when you see a month’s worth of headlines at once.  There was an obvious theme through out the last month’s Sarah Palin news and it was strongly punctuated by the last two stories posted here: “Oil tax at heart of corruption probe in Alaska” and “Alaska gets tough on Big Oil.”

Listening to talk radio and reading message boards recently, it’s obvious most people are fed up with business as usual and want politicians and oil companies held accountable for their actions. People are very passionate on both subjects.  They want prison time for ethics violations and a fairer share of oil profits from safe and responsible producers.  But once you start doing what it takes to get those things, people freak out.

Review of the PPT has been hotly debated as a waste of time and money despite the fact that we have legislators now convicted of taking bribes and the investigation isn’t even over. Even the FBI asked Governor Palin to hold back on her own investigations as to not muck up theirs. Obviously there are more indictments coming.

Coupled with that you have the current tax structure under-performing than projected by that ”tainted” process. For the life of me I don’t understand why some (I’m looking at you Dan Fagan & Lyda Green) can’t put the two together for at least the possibility  that we got shafted and we need to at least double check that we got a fair deal.   The price of a special session far under weighs the millions of dollars we didn’t get as promised from oil tax revenues.

Then you have the Chicken Littles running around crying about how “if you tax any more, the oil companies will leave!! Oh noes! And the pipeline is only running at 1/3 it’s capacity already!!” And there isn’t an Alaskan alive that hasn’t been inundated with oil company propaganda that tells us daily that we would be broke and destitute if it wasn’t for them. Our very state would fall apart at the seams if they weren’t around. Never once have I heard them mention the billions of dollars they make in our little partnership, just what we get…and could lose.
Yes, I do find it rather disturbing that the pipeline is only running at 1/3 the capacity. That raises a separate set of questions entirely but to stay on point, doesn’t that make our resource even that much more valuable? If the oil companies were really worried about us drying up any time soon they would make a more concerted effort in exploration, wouldn’t they? But they don’t. Because they know, just like we do, that there are many more untapped oil & gas reserves, and trillions of dollars, left in Alaska and they aren’t going anywhere. They’re making record profits most every quarter already and our share is not performing as promised.  It’s time to call their bluff and get a fair price for our non-renewable, very valuable resources.

I haven’t checked today…what’s oil up to now? Almost $90 a barrel?

Go ahead Big Three…leave.  I dare ya.