Vladimir Wiki and Estragon Leakes were waiting in the Alaska State Legislature for the Governor to bring a budget that would solve the state's 4 billion dollar deficit.
“We've been waiting here for the Governor or someone like him for nearly a year Estragon.”
“Sure Vlad, and he's bound to show up with an economist or someone like one.”
“Uh huh. All we need to do is wait.”
Still waiting at the start of the next legislative session, Vladimir and Estragon had grown fashionable beards. They felt more like sourdoughs of yore. To in snowed in Juneau in December or January they would get off their bench and stand outside on the front steps of the capital in falling flakes, providing good photo ops for media.
One day the governor actual did return finding his followers patiently waiting
“If I let the deficit rise and finance it with borrowing, in three years we can pay the debt and accumulating interest selling the Impermanent Fund. “
“That is a wise plan Governor” Vladimir said; “When the Impermanent Fund- created by the notorious correspondence school lawyer V.I. Lenin- is erased, the righteous can again rule Alaska without homeless riff raff stealing wealth from government and globalists, Harvard and Us.”
Alaska's Governor Walker is sending people west to Asia to find contractor-buyers for Alaska's natural gas. Alaska has a government budget crisis and Governor Walker wants to build a new natural gas pipeline that he hopes will help pay for the cost of government.
Apparently Governor Walker has no idea how government is supposed to be financed. Governments over history usually were financed with income tax. The state of Alaska has doesn't have an income tax. Because of the 'blessing' of North Slope oil sales and royalty income the state government was financed since the 1970s largely by oil corporations. With so much fracking going on that made the U.S.A. the world's largest oil producer with a super-abundance of fossil fuels the value of oil has declined. Quantity flowing through the pipeline has declined too. It's a quarter of the glory days. Fracking in the future may refill Prudhoe Bay reserves in effect some day in the future if it doesn't pollute so much and if the world still allows the primitive technology of burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere to continue. For the time being the oil corporations don't need that, allow they might choose to frack Alaska in a couple of decades if the U.S. supply dwindles much and if fuel cell and super-conductor technological developments die.
Governor Walker apparently believes that government should be funded by global corporations- especially those producing fossil fuels for the public to consume. The trans-Alaska pipeline project of 1974 was driven by a tight oil supply with Arab nationalization of its oil fields and OPEC forming soon following. Governor Walker is an action figure for the state workers that want to build its own pipeline in a time of a 4 billion dollar budget deficit. If it was built it probably wouldn't produce anything in revenue for at least five years and the Governor is likely to be a one-term guy.
Since the Governor has attacked the soft underbelly of the people's personal finance; the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend- taking more than half this year and giving it to his bureaucracy, voters will look for someone who will restore it and finance government the old fashioned way with income taxes, reductions in the number of government personnel and a search for new business development that would produce more tax revenue.
It could be that any government official could approach the Chinese Communist Government and ask them to pay for the development of an Alaska natural gas pipeline paying Alaska 10% royalty for all of the gas flowing through it quantitatively. The 10% would be set to the world's prevailing natural gas value on the spot market. Thus 90% of the gas would be in essence free for the communist ships at Cook Inlet to transport to Shanghai to fuel that nation's industry replacing many very dirty coal fired power plants.
The Chinese have an excellent engineering capability with numerous Red Army personnel able to build bases along the Alaska interior pipeline corridor and surveyors to check things out and get development of the long-range project going. Some might find the idea of Chinese Communist development of Alaska's resources, or even development by global corporations instead of Americans, offensive. The Governor might discredit naysayers as mere disgruntledites. I wouldn't be the judge of that. As an Alaskan I don't get much pork fried rice, of that I'm certain.
Alaska could use a flat 10% income tax with those earning fewer than 22,000 annually exempt. The state has more transient seasonal workers than most other who pay no state taxes, yet the state many of the state government hate the idea-especially since the state is one of the largest employers in Alaska. The state government generally wants to rely on royalty finance because the corporations don't want to pay any taxes and legislatures desirous of kickbacks are afraid to rock the boat. Like cargo cults researched long ago the government thinks that because a pipeline built by the private sector produced billions and billions of dollars they just need to build one themselves. If the money was there the private sector would build it themselves if able to clear environmental hurdles including leakage of the radical greenhouse gas methane to the atmosphere.
Eventually, in two or three years without a state income tax the legislature with a vast new public debt and interest payments upon it will look to the Alaska Permanent Fund principal itself as a way to bail themselves out. When that 57 billion or so is sold off then it will perhaps actually regard an income tax as the best available choice for government finance. Politicians may actually hate the Permanent Fund as socialist and intend to treat it as an impermanent fund that should be sold and laundered to special interests via state contracts.
It would be better to avoid taking half of the income of the payment to all of the people-the PFD-that is in effect a new tax that is regressive and hits the most poor the hardest and while being trivial for the rich. The loss of the PFD make drive out many marginally existing Alaskans leaving the state an exclusive place set aside for corporate and government cadre an Red Army gas engineers.
The fisherman-Governor of Alaska Jay Hammond was something of a genius in creating the state permanent fund to share the wealth of Alaska sales of natural resources with the people. Governor Walker in taking more than half of the people's share is more working less than a miracle creating innovative, positive finance ideas.
The Governor probably isn't a bad guy. It's just that he has no idea how to rightly oriented and serve the people rather than oil corporations. He is looking to the past the dog whose master has sailed away, never to return (Juneau has a statue of such a loyal dog on the city cruise ship wharf-a most admirable beast yet not a good role model for creative financial brainstorming).
In the tight era the state University system still participates in interstate sport when the cost of flying teams south and staying over is just not affordable. Alaska itself has far better and more challenging sports opportunities than anything sweaty, dirty stadias of the 48 states can provide.
Regard the Anchorage to Fairbanks marathon. At 360 miles and ascending to the Denali Park entrance before a downhill toward the Yukon river valley preparing for it is an athletic challenge. Another sport is the newish one of riding bicycles on the Iditarod trail to Nome. There are additionally innumerable mountains to run up, vast river systems to race down (or up) in kayaks. Countless scuba diving sports opportunities. Ice log rolling in the Arctic ocean near Barrow and Barter Island, boulder hurling on beaches everywhere, glacier ice climb racing, para-sailing from mountains greater than 15,000 feet etc. Students very sports challenged can join a military reserve training program if guaranteed local deployment. There are no comparably enjoyable sports activities down south that are regular intercollegiate sports.
A democratic government (or republic) financed with an income tax has an implicit natural feedback loop regarding size and cost of government. Citizens care more about the quality and integrity of government rather than not at all since it's free and can be corrected or contained best with lawsuits.
The state of Alaska has ample natural resources to attract developers some of whom would comply with contemporary rational regulatory ecospheric criteria, even with the presence of a state income tax. It is nothing to fear, not even for those making themselves government servo-units of great foreign and/or global corporate powers.
“We've been waiting here for the Governor or someone like him for nearly a year Estragon.”
“Sure Vlad, and he's bound to show up with an economist or someone like one.”
“Uh huh. All we need to do is wait.”
Still waiting at the start of the next legislative session, Vladimir and Estragon had grown fashionable beards. They felt more like sourdoughs of yore. To in snowed in Juneau in December or January they would get off their bench and stand outside on the front steps of the capital in falling flakes, providing good photo ops for media.
One day the governor actual did return finding his followers patiently waiting
“If I let the deficit rise and finance it with borrowing, in three years we can pay the debt and accumulating interest selling the Impermanent Fund. “
“That is a wise plan Governor” Vladimir said; “When the Impermanent Fund- created by the notorious correspondence school lawyer V.I. Lenin- is erased, the righteous can again rule Alaska without homeless riff raff stealing wealth from government and globalists, Harvard and Us.”
Alaska's Governor Walker is sending people west to Asia to find contractor-buyers for Alaska's natural gas. Alaska has a government budget crisis and Governor Walker wants to build a new natural gas pipeline that he hopes will help pay for the cost of government.
Apparently Governor Walker has no idea how government is supposed to be financed. Governments over history usually were financed with income tax. The state of Alaska has doesn't have an income tax. Because of the 'blessing' of North Slope oil sales and royalty income the state government was financed since the 1970s largely by oil corporations. With so much fracking going on that made the U.S.A. the world's largest oil producer with a super-abundance of fossil fuels the value of oil has declined. Quantity flowing through the pipeline has declined too. It's a quarter of the glory days. Fracking in the future may refill Prudhoe Bay reserves in effect some day in the future if it doesn't pollute so much and if the world still allows the primitive technology of burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere to continue. For the time being the oil corporations don't need that, allow they might choose to frack Alaska in a couple of decades if the U.S. supply dwindles much and if fuel cell and super-conductor technological developments die.
Governor Walker apparently believes that government should be funded by global corporations- especially those producing fossil fuels for the public to consume. The trans-Alaska pipeline project of 1974 was driven by a tight oil supply with Arab nationalization of its oil fields and OPEC forming soon following. Governor Walker is an action figure for the state workers that want to build its own pipeline in a time of a 4 billion dollar budget deficit. If it was built it probably wouldn't produce anything in revenue for at least five years and the Governor is likely to be a one-term guy.
Since the Governor has attacked the soft underbelly of the people's personal finance; the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend- taking more than half this year and giving it to his bureaucracy, voters will look for someone who will restore it and finance government the old fashioned way with income taxes, reductions in the number of government personnel and a search for new business development that would produce more tax revenue.
It could be that any government official could approach the Chinese Communist Government and ask them to pay for the development of an Alaska natural gas pipeline paying Alaska 10% royalty for all of the gas flowing through it quantitatively. The 10% would be set to the world's prevailing natural gas value on the spot market. Thus 90% of the gas would be in essence free for the communist ships at Cook Inlet to transport to Shanghai to fuel that nation's industry replacing many very dirty coal fired power plants.
The Chinese have an excellent engineering capability with numerous Red Army personnel able to build bases along the Alaska interior pipeline corridor and surveyors to check things out and get development of the long-range project going. Some might find the idea of Chinese Communist development of Alaska's resources, or even development by global corporations instead of Americans, offensive. The Governor might discredit naysayers as mere disgruntledites. I wouldn't be the judge of that. As an Alaskan I don't get much pork fried rice, of that I'm certain.
Alaska could use a flat 10% income tax with those earning fewer than 22,000 annually exempt. The state has more transient seasonal workers than most other who pay no state taxes, yet the state many of the state government hate the idea-especially since the state is one of the largest employers in Alaska. The state government generally wants to rely on royalty finance because the corporations don't want to pay any taxes and legislatures desirous of kickbacks are afraid to rock the boat. Like cargo cults researched long ago the government thinks that because a pipeline built by the private sector produced billions and billions of dollars they just need to build one themselves. If the money was there the private sector would build it themselves if able to clear environmental hurdles including leakage of the radical greenhouse gas methane to the atmosphere.
Eventually, in two or three years without a state income tax the legislature with a vast new public debt and interest payments upon it will look to the Alaska Permanent Fund principal itself as a way to bail themselves out. When that 57 billion or so is sold off then it will perhaps actually regard an income tax as the best available choice for government finance. Politicians may actually hate the Permanent Fund as socialist and intend to treat it as an impermanent fund that should be sold and laundered to special interests via state contracts.
It would be better to avoid taking half of the income of the payment to all of the people-the PFD-that is in effect a new tax that is regressive and hits the most poor the hardest and while being trivial for the rich. The loss of the PFD make drive out many marginally existing Alaskans leaving the state an exclusive place set aside for corporate and government cadre an Red Army gas engineers.
The fisherman-Governor of Alaska Jay Hammond was something of a genius in creating the state permanent fund to share the wealth of Alaska sales of natural resources with the people. Governor Walker in taking more than half of the people's share is more working less than a miracle creating innovative, positive finance ideas.
The Governor probably isn't a bad guy. It's just that he has no idea how to rightly oriented and serve the people rather than oil corporations. He is looking to the past the dog whose master has sailed away, never to return (Juneau has a statue of such a loyal dog on the city cruise ship wharf-a most admirable beast yet not a good role model for creative financial brainstorming).
In the tight era the state University system still participates in interstate sport when the cost of flying teams south and staying over is just not affordable. Alaska itself has far better and more challenging sports opportunities than anything sweaty, dirty stadias of the 48 states can provide.
Regard the Anchorage to Fairbanks marathon. At 360 miles and ascending to the Denali Park entrance before a downhill toward the Yukon river valley preparing for it is an athletic challenge. Another sport is the newish one of riding bicycles on the Iditarod trail to Nome. There are additionally innumerable mountains to run up, vast river systems to race down (or up) in kayaks. Countless scuba diving sports opportunities. Ice log rolling in the Arctic ocean near Barrow and Barter Island, boulder hurling on beaches everywhere, glacier ice climb racing, para-sailing from mountains greater than 15,000 feet etc. Students very sports challenged can join a military reserve training program if guaranteed local deployment. There are no comparably enjoyable sports activities down south that are regular intercollegiate sports.
A democratic government (or republic) financed with an income tax has an implicit natural feedback loop regarding size and cost of government. Citizens care more about the quality and integrity of government rather than not at all since it's free and can be corrected or contained best with lawsuits.
The state of Alaska has ample natural resources to attract developers some of whom would comply with contemporary rational regulatory ecospheric criteria, even with the presence of a state income tax. It is nothing to fear, not even for those making themselves government servo-units of great foreign and/or global corporate powers.
No comments:
Post a Comment