Both her tax “reform,” ACES, and her gasline contract, AGIA, are the political equivalent of vaporware. In the process of marketing this vaporware she managed to completely alienate the Producers of Alaska’s oil and gas and to give a half billion dollars to a Canadian company that is probably laughing uncontrollably at the Alaskan rubes as it spends the money that it doesn’t have to do anything for. Unfortunately, AGIA and ACES are both the sort of vaporware that gets lots of advance orders and sends the stock through the roof enabling the owner to sell that stock at enormous profit before all the suckers figure out that they didn’t buy anything. Obviously, you bought a bunch of the IPO.

The ONLY thing all the Palin sycophants know about her with any certainty is that she carried a special needs baby to term and apparently either instilled a pro-life attitude in Bristor or insisted upon same – actually, under Alaska law Bristol could have just disappeared for an afternoon and “resolved the issue” without so much as a by your leave to her parents. The rest of what most of you know is an image manufactured by the McCain campaign and the very little bit of print and video that is out there about a person who was quite obscure prior to McCain’s selection of her. If the majority of the Republican Party is willing to consider her the national standard bearer on such a thin reed, the Party is in even worse shape than I thought.

She’s a Republican officeholder with some national name ID, much of it negative, that’s it. I was the good Republican soldier while she was the nominee. I feel no such obligation now. She’s the Governor of MY state and she and her administration make decisions that directly effect my life and livelihood and the welfare of my children – at least the two who haven’t abandoned Alaska’s stagnant economy, low wages, and high costs. So, what she does here is the only thing of any importance to me.

Here’s the deal, Andrew: she’s an opportunist who works with other people’s appointments and isn’t averse to the odd policy compromise? Big deal. Politics is the art of the imperfect. Reagan raised taxes to balance the budget and legalized abortion as governor. He’d never win the nomination today based on that record. And yet he’s still he best thing that ever happened to this country.
All I care about is that Palin’s the greatest communicator we’ve produced since Reagan, and that she’s solid on the issues that matter nationally: war and peace, culture of life, second amendment etc. What do I care about her position on ‘unrestricted general funds available for appropriation’. A president has assistant deputy OMB directors for that sort of piffling stuff.

I note that I offered you a deal to help you get rid of your perceived problem in 2012 and you rather continue your guerilla war against the standard bearer of your own party.

She was the consumate “good ol girl” and those “good ol boys” that she loves to castigate as a part of her maverick/reformer persona put her in high places; she built her career on the bodies of the people who helped her. That spot on the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission was a pure patronage reward to her from Frank Murkowski and it sure as Hell wasn’t about her comprehensive knowledge of the oil and gas industry. There ain’t a whole lot of oil and gas stuff with the PTA or the Wasilla City Government. I know EXACTLY what happened in her famous “outing” of the State Party Chair, and it ain’t what she says happened. No, I’m not saying she’s lying. I am saying her version is a combination of her own ignorance of the situation and a nice spin she’s adopted.

She’s assembled an administration comprised primarily of holdover congenital ‘crats, mostly Knowles appointees. We should have fired them in Murkowski but didn’t for various reasons few of which were good reasons. On top of what is essentially the Knowles administration, she has brought a few trusted Wasilla buddies, none of whom know a thing about running a large organization, a few people with some legislative staffer experience, and an assortment of people with various beefs against the Murkowski Administration, e.g., most of her Natural Resources and Revenue people – the folks who brought us AGIA and ACES.

She’s been an opportunist at every step of the way and her actual governance has been characterized primarily by pandering, e.g, the Resource Rebate. The Democrats developed the meme that Murkowski’s taxation changes were too generous to the Industry and she jumped on it. Maybe it was, but it was what it took to get the producers to actually make a deal to bring gas to market – Gov. Palin’s AGIA line doesn’t have any gas and no way to get anybody to give it any, and TransCanada has a half billion dollars of Alaska’s money. Her ACES revenue/taxation plan places Alaska at the mercy of the Industry’s accountants. Since it is based on “profits,” the vertically integrated producers can put the profits wherever in the stream is most advantageous to them. Neither Alaska nor any other government has the staff, skill, and resources to do battle with Exxon over whether they made that billion here or in Texas or in Nigeria. That’s why we abandoned any notion of revenue based on anything other than volume way back when she was Sarah Barracuda on the HS basketball team, well actually, way back when she was in grade school. If the Government isn’t just bought off from pursueing it at all, we’ll be in court with the Producers for the next twenty years trying to figure out just how much they made last year and what they owe in taxes. See, e.g., the twenty year saga of the Exxon Valdez damages.

Leaving aside the unconstitutionality of a dedicated fund, the Education forward fund takes all the pressure off Alaska’s profligate school districts. When they have to go to the Leg every year and beg, they can be held accountable. Now there’s no way to say “no ticky, no money” when they waste money.

I guess I’m glad the Resource Rebate didn’t go into the Permanent Fund because it would have been lost in the market meltdown, but I’m not a big PF fan anyway. What Alaskan’s really needed though was some help with energy prices, not some money for a new flat screen. One thing that might have helped with the brutal heating oil and diesel prices in rural Alaska would have been to enter into a fixed price contract at less than the market with one of the refineries to produce refined product for Alaska use only. That would have genuinely helped the people in rural Alaska with their $7-10/gal. fuel. With the pander bucks, who knows where the money went, but I’m willing to bet Alaska Airlines got more than anyone else.

As I’ve said here before, I don’t think I ever worked for a political manager who didn’t have a list of people he didn’t want to become former employees. I’ve made lots of them into former employees and I’ve told my principal it couldn’t be done in many instances as well. If the Tpr. Wooten thing had come to me, I’d have looked at it and if it could be done, he wouldn’t even be a memory and any union grievance would be strictly duty of fair representation. If I looked at it and concluded I couldn’t do it, if I’d have heard anything more about it or been pressured in any way about it, I’d have ratted off whoever was doing it so fast it would make your head swim. Reporter’s numbers fall trippingly off my fingertips. The whole TrooperGate mess was simply incompetence at the staff level that she compounded by first welcoming a look at it without knowing what might show up and then by trying to hide stuff. She WILL eventually be forced by a court to give up all that stuff she’s tried to hide. If you know that going in, why do it? Did nobody tell her? Did they tell her and she didn’t listen? My usually reliable sources tell me that you DO NOT tell her things she doesn’t want to hear. That’s a bad, bad trait in a political executive.

Now I can get lots and lots further down in the weeds about budget and personnel issues and labor relations issues, but it’s the sort of stuff that makes most people’s eyes glaze over. But if it is your belief that I don’t have substantive issues but rather have some sort of sour grapes thing going, well, we can talk about subfunds of the general fund and their Constitutionality and we can talk about the meaning of the phrase “unrestricted general funds available for appropriation” when some OMB weenie uses that phrase. We can tallk about all those holdovers she’s left around who run the government for their own benefit rather that the benefit of the People. I can keep going.

He insinuates that the Murkowski’s, Stevens and Young are really not all that bad. “We” in the lower 48 got what we wanted when Stevens was convicted, he said. Etc., etc, etc….

I think one of the good ‘ole boys is just unhappy to not be one of the good ‘ole boys anymore.

Achance, this should NOT be taken as an indictment of your contribution to the site. I read and enjoy most of your posts. You are certainly the most knowledgeable around here on the subject of Alaska. You just seem to be a little vague in your descriptions of Ms Palins shortcomings.

As far as Palin in the primary and what you would do in the general, I think you went a bit far there…weren’t you pretty upset about the ouster of Stevens because of precisely the type of reasoning you are using to justify voting Dem against Palin?

BTW, still waiting for that email to let me know you have completed and posted a diary on nuts and bolts politics. Seriously, I want to know the ins and outs and you have the knowledge…share it brotha.

As for your policy questions:

- AGIA: generally suspicious of these sort of inducement payments, but understanding of the need to nail this one down before opponents of the deal try to break open negotiations for the umpteenth time. On these sort of intractable dossiers, unless you keep moving forward, the whole thing falls apart.

- forward funding education: given that your constitution (art. 7) makes the state responsible for maintaining a system of public schools, this seems perfectly acceptable to me. In Europe (look it up, it’s somewhere far, far away) this measure is generally used as a cost controlling measure (people tend to negotiate less vigorously about what’s further into the future).

- resource rebate: provided it’s a one-off and indeed linked to the renegotiated (previousy rather corrupt-smelling) deal with the northslope oil companies, it’s fine with me.

And about the executive privilege thing: are you in fact Andrew Halcro? Only he is sad enough to ask about something as irrelevant as this.

Now will you kindly never bother me with this stupid local politics stuff again?

How about a deal: you work hard to get her re-elected, then I will work hard to get her a house and a job in Washington DC in 2012. That way, we both get what we want. Live and let live, dude.

I think the bottom line is our W(h)ino doesn’t much like the lady. That’s sad for him, but not something he should bother us with.

And my point still stands: she’s not just your governor anymore, she’s our national standard bearer. To quote Disraeli: damn your petty village dislikes, stick to your party!

I happen to be a strong supporter of the Gov myself, as you are (maybe not AS strong, but up there.. ).

Palin’s approval ratings, although down since she was associated with the disaster that was the McCain campaign, are still in the miid-sixties, which is very good.

So the number of Republicans who do not approve of her, added to the number of Democrats who disapprove of her simply because she’s a Republican, added to the number of independents who disapprove of her, is a sum which remains smaller than the number of Alaskans who approve of her.

- JP

Now I’ll let Art eviscerate you.

Oh, and that well you’re talking about was in fact a pool of petty corruption. Small fries compared to BlagoRahma, I’m sure, but corruption all the same.

Of course Fagan has ties to Murkowski and oil; so does everybody else in the State that doesn’t work for a union or a greenie group. You Palin sycophants are cultists who haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.