Tag: Alaska

Is The Media Hypocritical?–Part Two

I recently ask this question and of course, got NO replies but –YES–they are hypocritical!  Why?

Months ago, a preacher of Obama’s made some inflammatory statements that are still being used in the media, at least by some, but there have been some statements made by some close to Palin that seem to be off limits.  Like?

This is an exerpt from Levi Johnston’s myspace page.

On his MySpace page, Johnston boasts, “I’m a f – – -in’ redneck” who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes.

“But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s- – – and just f – – -in’ chillin’ I guess.”

“Ya f – – – with me I’ll kick [your] ass,” he added.

He also claims to be “in a relationship,” but states, “I don’t want kids.”

Thank God no one on Obama’s team ever said these things or he would be left ofn the curb by the party.

Next there is the all quiet Alaskan Independence Party, of which Palin’s husband is a member and Palin has made some speeches to in the past.

The founder of the Alaska Independence Party — a group that has been courted over the years by Sarah Palin, and one her husband was a member of for roughly seven years — once professed his “hatred for the American government” and cursed the American flag as a “damn flag.”

The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that’s now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

“The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government,” Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.

“And I won’t be buried under their damn flag,” Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. “I’ll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.”

At another point, Volger advocated renouncing allegiance to the United States. In the course of denouncing Federal regulation over land, he said:

“And then you get mad. And you say, the hell with them. And you renounce allegiance, and you pledge your efforts, your effects, your honor, your life to Alaska.”

And the Rev. Wright said what?

If the media is fair and balanced then I am a Republican….beleive me there is NO WAY IN HELL that is a possibility.  Did anyone see the movie “Idiocracy”?  Watch it, there is your future as long as you let the media do your thinking for you.

What Did Palin Do To The Alaskan Oil Industry?

These are exerpts from a piece in the WSJ.

Oil companies in Alaska are paying more money in taxes than ever before. The state’s oil and gas tax revenues for its just-ended fiscal 2007 topped $10 billion. That’s twice as much as fiscal 2006 and four times more than 2004.

Some supporters of Barack Obama see that money coming in and say that John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, must have done what Sen. Obama wants to do — sock those companies with a big fat windfall profit tax. This is a deeply misleading reading of her 2007 tax reform.

A few years ago, Alaska had a big problem. Despite high oil prices, the state’s fiscal future was in peril because the state relies on only three aging oilfields for 80% of its oil and gas tax revenue.

As a new governor in 2007, Mrs. Palin stepped in to address the fiscal crisis and restore accountability. Working with Democrats and Republicans alike, she chose a 25% profits tax. But in lean years the state reverts to a 10% gross revenue tax on legacy fields that do not require massive continuing inputs of new capital.

Relative to the old system, Mrs. Palin’s plan — called “Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share” (ACES) — improves incentives for developing new resources. It ensures the state does well in boom times — as it is doing now — when oil prices are high. But it also hedges against low prices in the future by ensuring that oil companies exposed to commodity price swings don’t face a crushing tax burden when commodity prices fall.

Her plan includes an escalator clause that gives the state a larger share of revenues when oil prices rise. This is common to production-sharing agreements all over the world.

Mr. Obama proposes to give each American a $1,000 check funded by windfall profit taxes to ease the pain of high energy prices. Some say Mrs. Palin’s ACES is like that, because this year every Alaskan will receive a $1,200 check as a share of the oil bonanza. (The check comes in addition to the approximately $2,000 every Alaskan will receive this year as a dividend from the Permanent Fund, which was established by state constitutional amendment in 1976 as a way of sharing the state’s mineral wealth with the people.)

The real comparison is not between Mr. Obama’s windfall profit tax and Mrs. Palin’s risk-and-profit-sharing plan. It is between Alaska’s constitutional rule — that the people must share directly in the state’s mineral wealth — and Mr. McCain’s proposal that coastal states should share in federal offshore oil revenue. His plan is for the funds to be used for public purposes like roads, schools and conservation. A share of royalties dramatically improves the coastal states’ incentive to support drilling. But if Mr. McCain offered every individual American a royalty check too, he might find it easier to sell his program.

Why Is Palin Popular In Alaska?

Welcome to the People’s Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the state’s Republican governor. That’s $22,400 for a family of seven, like Palin’s. Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests oil revenues from state lands, has paid out a dividend on invested oil loot to everyone who has been in the state for a year. But Palin upped the ante by joining with Democrats and some recalcitrant Republican state legislators to share in oil company windfall profits, further fattening state tax revenue and permitting an additional payout in tax funds to residents.

No wonder she is popular with voters in a state whose residents pay no income or sales taxes but are blessed with state coffers rolling in cash at a time when all other states are suffering. Indeed, when the oil companies pay more taxes to the state of Alaska, they get to write that off against their federal tax obligation, leaving the rest of us to make up the shortfall.

The state of Alaska owns most of the oil-producing land and has been getting upward of 85 percent of its budget from the oil companies that lease the fields, even before Palin helped increase the state’s cut.

But wait!  Obama has suggested a windfall profit tax on the oil companies and McCain has ridiculed him for suggesting it.  But yet, his running mate has it in place in her state.  Just how will McCain justify this to the base.  Will he now support the tax?  JUst how will this play in this election?

Alaskan Independence Party

Tonight, Sarah Palin will be nominated as the Republican Party’s choice for vice president of the United States.

But back home, she has cheered the work of a tiny party that long has pushed for a statewide vote on whether Alaska should secede from those same United States. And her husband, Todd, was a member of the party for seven years.

“Keep up the good work,” Sarah Palin told members of the Alaskan Independence Party in a videotaped speech to their convention six months ago in Fairbanks. She wished the party luck on what she called its “inspiring convention.”

The Alaskan Independence Party, founded in 1978, initially promoted “the Alaskan independence movement.” But now, according to its website, “its primary goal is merely a vote on secession.”
For all but two months from 1995 to 2002, the governor’s husband was registered as an Alaskan Independence Party member, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.

With McCain’s campaign emphasizing patriotism — his latest slogan is “Country First” — the Palins’ links to a party founded by the late secessionist gold miner Joe Vogler could prove awkward.
Leaders of the party say many of its 13,681 registered members have joined out of frustration over restrictions that the federal government has placed on the use of its vast land holdings in Alaska. Beyond the secession vote, the party also advocates gun rights, home schooling and abolition of property taxes.

A question-and-answer page on its website asks, “Aren’t most Alaskan Independence Party members a bunch of radicals and kooks?”

“The party has its share of individualists, in the grand Alaskan tradition,” the answer says. “No longer a fringe party, the AIP is a viable third party with a serious mission and qualified candidates for elected offices.”

McCain’s Vice

Nope not talking about his propensity for porn or his habit of betting on cockroach races; I am talking about the Veepstakes. The day after a ground breaking historical speech given by the democrat presidential nominee, McCain and his Boyz are trying to control the media’s conversation and attempting to put the Obama speech in the background.

The media is reporting at 0600 hrs that a charter plane flew from Fairbanks, Alaska to Dayton, Ohio, the location of where McCain will announce his running mate. Then it is reported that Romney will not be in Dayton, and then a bit later it Will Not be Romney. The Pawlenty, governor of MN, a one time fav, will be delivering pizza for Dominoes. And Lieberman is giving oil changes in Greenwich.

So at about 0735 hrs the list was down to Ridge and Palin, governor of Alaska. But then at 0800 hrs the media said that Palin will be in Alaska to be there to unveil the newest and last quarter. Now we are down to Ridge. The speculation continues and fires the media for the day.

Now we are reporting on the tube that Ridge is not being vetted, he was not asked for info to be checked. So now at 0815 hrs we are back to Lieberman. The Mccain camp is playing the media like a cheap drum—I Love It!

0915 hrs Gov. Palin is once again in the mix according to NBC News. Romney is reported to be flying to Boston. So far Ridge is the only one that has not been eliminated, at least once, anyway.

NBC has confirmed that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska will be John McCain’s pick for VP.

Drama is over let the crap begin!

The G.O.P. Is Just Plain Scary!

Senator Ted Stevens’s easy victory in Alaska’s Republican primary on Tuesday sets him up for two more fights this fall that are likely to be much tougher: one in the general election and the other in the courtroom.

The senator received 63 percent of the primary vote against six challengers, even as he faces a trial in September on charges that he concealed $250,000 in home renovations and gifts provided by an oil services company, VECO.

Why would the people want a crook to represent them?  It is just scary how the voter is duped time and time again.

The Exxon Valdez Ruling

On June 25, the next-to-last day of the current term, the United States Supreme Court slashed the punitive damages judgment for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The award was reduced from $2.5 billion to only $507.5 million—an amount equivalent to a few days’ profit for the giant oil company..

Exxon Mobil Corporation paid more than $1 billion to settle state and federal claims for environmental damages. The company went to trial in 1994, however, against a class action suit by over 32,000 individuals and small businesses devastated by the accident, predominantly commercial fishermen, native Alaskans and local landowners, who claimed that Exxon’s reckless conduct caused the accident

Just in case you are not old enough to remember the diaster:

Witnesses testified that before leaving port Hazlewood consumed five double-vodka drinks, an amount that would have rendered any non-alcoholic unconscious. When tested by the Coast Guard 11 hours after the accident Hazlewood still had a blood-alcohol level of .061, meaning that during the wreck his level was about three times the legal limit for driving a car.

As the ship approached a well-known reef, Hazlewood set the autopilot, increased speed and turned the ship over to a subordinate unlicensed to perform the maneuver necessary to avoid running aground. The Exxon Valdez hit the reef, spilling crude oil into Prince William Sound. Hazlewood then tried to “rock” the ship free, a procedure that spewed more oil and risked killing the crew.

The result was the largest oil spill in US history: 11 million gallons covering 11,000 square miles, including 1,300 miles of pristine shoreline. The spill devastated the local economy as well as the environment. Estimated losses in the sport fishing industry alone were almost $600 million over the two years following the accident. Within days an estimated 250,000 seabirds perished, along with thousands of otters and seals. Despite billions of dollars in cleanup, the environmental effects of the spill still linger. Much of the oil seeped below the surface of affected beaches, decaying at a rate of about three to four percent per year. Animals that dig in the sand for their food continue to be contaminated.

Now that that is out of the way.

The essence of this ruling is that it drastically reduces the power of punitive damages to deter the most harmful conduct of big business and makes it much more difficult for plaintiffs’ lawyers to finance costly and protracted litigation like the Exxon Valdez case. The court has taken what was once considered a big club for plaintiffs and their attorneys and whittled it into a toothpick.