Alaska State Government Considers Corporatism

The Alaska State Government is in effect considering privatizing itself to become a corporate funded entity. Oil tax 'royalties' from sales of North Slope crude on state lands leased to global oil corporations comprised the bulk of the state budget since the days of Governor Jay Hammond and the oil boom of the 1970s. Hammond created a permanent fund investing in Wall Street with an endowment from the oil money so the people could share from state sales of oil to the private sector too. It was not created to generate funding for the state government.

Government is supposed to pay for itself through taxation instead of being an unaccountable to the people private business. Taxation that pays for government is a two-edged sword that requires government accountability to their bosses-the people paying the taxes. When people pay no taxes they have little control over their government; government is loyal to those giving it succor, if the people are not disarmed politically or practically. With the drop in oil price per barrel to about $40 the state budget has a three billion dollar deficit so the Governor and legislature are searching low and high for ways to pay the bureaucracy and kickback to community contractors at a level to which they have become accustomed. Now the state permanent fund is the glistening apple in the eye of the state Government.

The government is looking to redirect the permanent fund and its wealth of Wall Street stock investments from the people it was intended for to the government itself. That would in effect make the state perhaps the best example of a corporatist political takeover of government. Corporatism was invented by the Italian fascist dictator, radio commentator and theorist Benito Mussolini, and has seen its stock rise versus communism and democracy for the past several decades. In cash flow volume tough times the government has to pay itself first, and let the people struggle as best they can. In the every government for him or her self, idea-challenged economic jungle, government collectives and affiliated kickback recipients of the private sector are billion pound/dollar/yuan/peso guerrillas.