Alaska Ping!
Cell phone companies have a similar sweetheart deal.
Alaska Ping!
The hard part is acting surprised.
There’s a 50yr plus history of cable companies bribing politicians to secure exclusive territories, starting in the big metro areas in the 1960s.
Lemme guess: free internet for everyone including people in the remotest areas. That’s a lot of cable wire strung all over Alaska.
The whole state is already on welfare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Permanent_Fund_Dividend
Our capacity to produce things exceeds our ability to even consume them, so more and more industries are relying on government mandates to: (1) give money to people so they can buy more products from those industries, and (2) compel customers to do business with them.
This is exactly what ObamaCare was all about.
This is also why every major U.S. grocery retail chain lobbies heavily to increase eligibility for food stamps.
“Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System now is filled to only one-quarter capacity, “
Thank the feds for that.
Would be interesting to hear former Governor Palin’s take on their current financial issues.
In Alaska, all the (Visible) taxes we pay are local. All tax dollars stay in your own community and state revenue flows downward to the boroughs, cities, towns and villages. Individual Alaska residents receive an annual dividend check from the Permanent Fund. Last year it was $2000. Since oil revenue has tanked the politicians are desperate to maintain their Cadillac government but have no money. They want to raid the permanent fund and The governor has capped the dividend payments at $1000, the balance to go to the state. They want all of it, of course, but that would be political suicide.
Just like the wild hogs in the story, the government has come to depend on the lavish oil revenues and low income people in Alaska have come to depend on the annual dividend checks. For some of them it amounts to 20% or more of their income. For others it pays their federal taxes. Many of us donate all or part of the dividend to charity through the Pick-Click-Give program.
The charity donations are important because they support many local services and amenities like local public radio, the Humane Association, school sports, Little League and churches (There are twelve active churches in this little Alaska island town of 2500 souls)
The state cannot implement a state sales tax because local communities have long financed local government with sales taxes. The additional burden of a state tax would destroy local businesses. Severe cutbacks in state government, a raid on the permanent fund and a state income tax are all being considered. The politicians are beside themselves.
We are being bombarded with “We’ve got to DO something!” ads aimed at softening up the voters and mitigating the backlash that will come when the politicians eliminate the dividend and implement state taxes to avoid cutting spending.
And, of course, everyone wants to protect their state subsidies. Public broadcasting, for example. Our local radio station gets a third of their funding from the Feds, conditional upon certain criteria being met. They are able to meet these criteria because they get a third of their funding from the state and a third from private donations. State funding must be cut. Private donations will suffer due to the loss of the Permanent Fund Dividend checks. They are facing the loss of virtually all of their funding. No more public radio which, incidentally, is the ONLY radio and the ONLY form of broadcast communication available in many rural communities, including this one. That isn’t just the ability to listen to classic rock and Prairie Home Companion. Weather alerts, tsunami warnings, news and personal messages are all important information transmitted over FM radio that can reach areas with no cell or cable service. Loss of this important resource would be a disaster for small Alaska towns and villages.
That is just one example. Life in the last frontier is about to change drastically. It is not just about the loss of one cable/broadband service.
A few CEOs (corporations) control all the politicians (bribes) and keep the sheeple from Revolution with crumbs—freebies and lies and addictions: Total destruction of virtue of the masses (children) which always collapses culture (nihilism).
It is all unconstitutional in America—BUT lawyers are whores, nowadays, and removed Right Reason and Natural Law from our “Just Laws” LOL-—go figure how they got away with that??????? (Control of Words controls the “thinking” LOL).
Lawyers twist and destroy Language/words to be meaningless which makes “laws” meaningless and irrational. It is unconstitutional by the way to have arbitrary, irrational “Law” like those that kill babies or laws that promote sodomizing others. They should be declared “Null and Void” in a true Justice system. (Justice is the Queen of Virtue).
We got to go back to pre-1912 dictionaries and Rule of Law (Natural Law/God’s Design). Warping words, warps everyone’s worldview, esp. children, who are exposed to the twisted, irrational Neo-Marxism in skools (slavery). Common Core is complete Neo-Marxism/Neo-Freudism to corrupt the moral formation and sexual identity formation of children and remove children from their biological parents (Reality/Natural Family/Natural Law (Common Sense formation). Skools are designed to destroy virtue, self-reliance, sexual morality so that children are addicts, consumers and totally irrational (devoid of the Wisdom and Traditions of the Ages which created Modern Science and Free Will/Individuality (Christian Worldview only)
Greeks and Romans were VERY CAREFUL ABOUT LANGUAGE-—they KNEW how EASY it is to CONTROL EMOTIONS with rhetoric (just WORDS). If they can control your emotions (by total control of all your information/ideas/books), they control your Minds......most people “feel” the truth—they are too lazy to search for Truth since Truth will set you Free and Wisdom is only possible with extremely hard work (Virtue) and people are naturally lazy and take the easy road all of the time if they lack virtue (HABITS of GOOD). Christian Ethics created the most perfect “justice” system of all time.........and so that worldview is being eliminated off the face of the Earth. The elites/CEOs want compliant slaves for the state and that is what State skools are designed to produce (Socrates).
WAKE UP, America....we are being lied to and our legal “system” is now a complete JOKE and IRRATIONAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL. It is WHY crony “capitalism” is the status quo and corporations “rule” us now-——just a massive CARTEL SYSTEM which will make us into slaves—no possibility of Free Will at all—ALL ideas will be controlled and FORCED into the heads of children no matter how SICK and UNNAtURAL (to destroy Logic and Reason (Age of Reason/Western Civilization).
Here you have just one of thousands of “pictures” of our crony capiltalists working to line their own pockets. These are the people who fund the GOPe and the RATs. They have no “ideology” other than “obscene personal gain at the expense of the citizens.” Vote Trump!
Interesting reading this story and yet recalling how Alaska is cited with approval as an excellent example of how a society works with a guaranteed Government annual income payment (permanent fund). hmmm
Alaska has every resource imaginable but block development for what?
Feel good environment policies?
They shouldn't have elected that liberal slimeball as Governor. He wants an income tax.
so..... Alaska is now Venezuela but a lot less crowded.
So simple a... uh... politician can do it: