Free Republic

Moderator, can you please take this thread down. I’m a blogger with Conservatives4Palin.com. We’ve been asked not to report on this. The WSJ jumped the gun in posting this article. It was not supposed to be posted until 8:00 am ET tomorrow. Please remove this post. Thank you!

We have the drinking game rules up now folks.

Check it out.

-ramrocks

Only one company met the AGIA criteria. $500 million was part of the agreement. That’s what AGIA was all about. There are numerous reasons why it’s an excellent piece of legislation and why it’s a good idea to have a pipeline that is not owned by an oil producer.

Well, the Wall Street Journal seems to think that ACES was a brilliant idea. They wrote a very good article about it. Here is an excerpt:

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.

In 2006, then Gov. Frank Murkowski, a Republican, proposed changing the state's tax on oil from a gross-revenue to a net-revenue basis. Instead of creaming 10% off the top -- which was how the mature oil fields were taxed -- Mr. Murkowski pushed to tax oil companies on their profits only, at a rate of 22.5%. The change in tax regime was meant to encourage investment in and development of new fields.

In effect, the state would become the oil companies' development partner. It would participate in the upside of oil and gas exploration, but only after the companies had recovered the enormous upfront costs of drilling new wells.

These costs are considerable. In Alaska, the locations are remote, the climate is extreme, the infrastructure mostly nonexistent, the environmental rules the strictest in the world, and there is only a short work season of three or four months a year. The costs make any project very risky.

Mr. Murkowski's plan turned into a disaster. It depended much on trust, but it lacked the transparency and predictability needed to win public confidence. One year after it went into effect, the Petroleum Profits Tax brought in far less revenue than expected and the state suffered a revenue crunch.

Somehow, the legislature had never properly defined accounting procedures and permissible deductions -- and the deductions came in much higher than expected. Meanwhile, as the shortfall appeared, a number of state legislators were on trial, under indictment, or under investigation for bribery by the FBI. These included some who should have done due diligence for the taxpayer on the proposal they enacted.

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.

That's just the country's leading financial newspaper. I'm sure an anonymous blogger who joined Free Republic very recently (i.e., just in for the astroturfing election season) knows much more than they do.

These are the same Troopergate scumbags.

Now Sarah Palin is so powerful that she can delay investigations that she doesn't even know about.

Awesome post! Thanks, Josh. However, I must correct you on the Dan Fagan thing. He’s never been Palin’s friend. Perhaps they were briefly “frienemies” right after Palin won the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2006, but that was it.

Let me tell you all a little about Dan Fagan. This guy hated Palin from the moment she ran for governor.

Here’s an excerpt from Kaylene Johnson’s bio of Palin:

Meanwhile, the [Republican] old guard didn’t know what to make of the young populist candidate, especially when she began moving up in the polls despite their best efforts to either discredit her or support her opponents.

‘Anyone who was part of the establishment fought against her. [Talk show host] Dan Fagan clawed, fought, ridiculed, embarrassed, and deliberately misrepresented Sarah,’ Bailey said. Disparaging remarks on radio programs sometimes backfired. Fagan showed up at the Palin campaign headquarters one morning to clarify a point before his daily show. Waiting at the front desk was a man who took one look at Fagan and dug out his checkbook. ‘This is your fault,’ he said, waving his checkbook in the air. ‘Every time you bash this woman on the air, I’m down here writing another $500 check. Cut it out.’” [emphasis added]

He's always been out to destroy her and her credibility. Here's Palin ripping him a new one on his radio show. It's quite amusing. The guy is a gutless worm.

Oh, and he is also the one that Palin's Lt. Governor Sean Parnell mentioned in one of the private emails that was released after it was hacked. In that particular email, Parnell bemoaned the fact that Dan Fagan had targeted him and was slinging crap at him. Parnell had tried to change Alaska's lifelong Congressman Young in the Republican primaries. Idiots like Dan Fagan like keeping corrupt old pork politicians in place.

I'm sorry to say this, but the Alaska GOP establishment is everything that's wrong with the GOP. If they hate Palin, then she's fine by me.

Oops! The video I wanted you to take a look at is this one at 6:56-7:25 into the clip.

I'm confused by the writer's comments that he wouldn't vote for her in 2010. Does he mean that he wouldn't vote for her re-election as governor or as Senator if she decided to challenge Murkowski?

The premise of Palin's supposed 2010 problems if she were to seek re-election is Dan Fagan's assertion that Palin's AGIA plan will tank because TransCanada will not have a successful open season in 2010 because the big three oil producers will refuse to commit their gas.

Little problem with this scenario. The AGIA plan is committed to ensuring that it will be profitable for the oil producers to ship through TC's pipeline. If they can prove that the oil producers are refusing to ship despite the profitability of doing so, then the state can revoke their leases. The state has revoked Exxon's lease to drill for oil on Point Thompson. It's not the same deal as revoking the lease for natural gas, but it's the same principle. They either use it or lose it.

Conoco is playing with their Denali plan, and it's very doubtful that it will even get off the ground.

BTW, the leading newspaper on the Alaskan oil industry, The Petroleum News, has a great article on the potential for a successful open season.

This is called "negotiation." The oil producers are trying to scare the state into giving them everything they want. The idea that the oil companies are "friendly" to free market capitalism is a friggin' joke. They regularly sit on leases and lower production in order to manipulate the price of their product. That's their prerogative. They're in this to make money. But the state doesn't need to roll over for them -- especially in the case of Alaska where the people own the resources and the oil producers must pay them for extracting it.

Take a look at this [see the section 6:56-7:25 of this video] for a succinct description for why corporations are "opportunists" not "free market capitalists".

Maybe she just doesn't like American late night talk shows. She recently appeared on a Canadian late night talk show. See here and here.

Take a look at this post and then come talk to me.

A boom in business means you need lots of people and are willing to hire and train them and cut them some slack when they don't meet all the criteria (by "cutting some slack" I mean allowing them to train while they complete their GED).

And here's a thought: why do you suppose Johnston decided to seek the apprenticeship right now and complete his GED by correspondence? Possibly because the apprenticeships were open due to the increased work following the AGIA contract and if he waited until he finished high school he would have to compete with all the other recent grads? Just a thought.

Please note that the apprenticeship has nothing to do with the government. It's not a government job. ASRC is a private company. If they gave Johnston preferential treatment, that's their business. But from the looks of it, they had a lot of positions open and were willing to train people.

As it was noted, the guy is completing his GED. The director of his apprenticeship program didn't even know if there was such a requirement.

I can't even believe I'm responding to this story. There is no story. There's innuendo.

She doesn’t have any $7 million book deal. And there is absolutely no evidence that she had anything to do with his job. And how the hell do you know so much about apprentice jobs in Alaska?

What the hell is so difficult about it? Go to the governor's website and there's a link at the side of the page to apprenticeship jobs just like this one! The state is ramping up for a building boom. They've got TransCanada and the Denali project people working on the infrastructure for the natural gas pipeline. The whole story started by Dan Fagan, a radio talk show host who has hated Palin from the moment she decided to run for governor in 2006.

Oh look! We have a newbie anti-Palin conspiracy theorist! Just joined FR in November. Who directed you here? Chairman Axelrod?

I'm sure now you'll go on to explain to us that you're a "life long conservative" but "Palin turned you off" because "she's not a real conservative" or "she's a sure loser" and is "divisive".

I see right through your bullsh*t, you miserable little leftist weasel. Go back to your Kos playground.

Maybe a shot gun would be more appropriate.

I discovered this drawing somewhere and thought it was great:

Love your sketch of Palin with the rifle. Is this the new “Palin Ping” logo? Awesome!

It’s frightening how many people actually believe that Sarah Palin uttered “I can see Russia from my house.”

That freaks me out too. People are so easily manipulated. They obey the media.

What an amazing story! That story needs to be written down and told. I hope that friend of your family has written a memoir.

I would like to remind people who want to judge a candidate by their success as a parent that the two greatest conservative politicians of the last century were wildly unsuccessful as parents. I'm speaking of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

One only has to look at the behavior of Patti Davis and Ron Jr. to see what I mean.

And when we get to dear Lady Thatcher the situation is even more embarrassing. Her son, Mark Thatcher, is perhaps the most disreputable son of a politician one could ever imagine. Just to give you an idea of what I mean -- the United States refused to give him a visa! You read that correctly. The U.S. refused to give the son of Margaret Thatcher, a woman who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a visa to live with his (now ex) wife and children in Dallas, TX. Why, you ask? Because he was charged and pleaded guilty to being involved in the 2004 military coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. And there was also the matter of his loan shark operations in South Africa. He's not welcome in a whole host of European countries either. He kind of reminds me of the character of Melmotte in the Anthony Trollope novel "The Way We Live Now." He travels from country to country, develops some outrageous business scheme, makes a whole pile of money exploiting some person or group in a manner which, if barely legal, is totally unethical, and then he zips out of town before he gets lynched by an angry mob. His behavior eventually caught up with him with the coup attempt. That was just too brazen even for him. The guy is a complete scumbag, and I feel genuinely sorry for his mother. She did her best by him, but this is how he turned out.

Bristol Palin's indiscretion pales in comparison. If we were to have held Reagan or Thatcher's parenting skills against them, we would have never been blessed with their leadership.

By the way, I'm sure there are a number of liberal politicians with nice kids. Should we vote for them on that basis alone? Nixon's daughters are model citizens. He never once had to be embarrassed by anything Trisha and Julie did. Was he a better president than Reagan whose wild daughter Patti was embarrassing her father and his administration constantly?