March 08, 2016
Tuesday AM

“We’re going to fight one battle at a time,” Dan Ortiz and Governor Walker told us in unison at this meeting held last Monday night, and this statement was the biggest news item that came out of that meeting despite the fact that every media outlet missed it. The battle our Governor and State Representative have chosen to fight is to turn your wallet, my wallet, and everybody else’s wallet inside out; that is everybody’s wallet except the oil companies.

Why are our Governor and all our state legislators enemies of the people? I just don’t get it. Since the beginning of 2014 the oil companies have extracted more than $25 billion worth of oil from Alaska oilfields on which they have made a net profit of about $12 billion, and they have paid nothing in the way of taxes. Since the beginning of 2014 oil profits by the oil companies have varied from $37 to $21 a barrel in net profit; the sales price on Alaska North Slope oil has varied from $67 to $51 a barrel approximately during this time. When British Petroleum competitively bid against 12 other international oil companies for the rights to develop the Iraqi oil fields they boasted to their shareholders about what a great deal it was for BP to be making $2 a barrel.

What is clear is that these people are not in any sense the solution. They need to be fired as quickly as possible. So what does that mean, we get Bob Sivertsen? No progress there, none at all.

It is fast getting to the point where relocation is the only rational solution. In the meantime vote ‘no’ on all tax proposals made by state and local governments. Until these elected officials face reality and start taxing the oil companies again, no one should allow these folks to rip them off for one single dime.

Get on the Ketchikan School Board about Agnes Moran’s identified $1.4 million slush fund. If they are not ready to spend that down, recall them. Stop the Ketchikan Borough Assembly from taxing cigarettes $2 a pack. If you are going to tax oral fixations around here, do not forget that gluttony is actually one of the seven cardinal sins. So let’s have a tax on everything that’s in the grocery store that has too much starch, sugar, or salt in it. Each Campbell’s soup can, a tax of $2. I don’t smoke, but just because you don’t smoke is not reason to tax someone who does. You drink, you eat, watch out!!! Your oral fixations will be next on the Borough Assembly’s list.

Our governments are crazed. They have made terrible decisions, and as consequence they have forfeited most of their funding sources. So they are looking to rip you and me off to the max to sustain their insolent regime. Do not let them do it. Compel them to properly tax this incredibly valuable depleting resource rather than letting it go for nothing. There is no economic or political expediency that justifies that conduct. Please stop supporting this and their filthy corruption. They do not deserve your money, your sympathy, or your respect.

David G Hanger
Ketchikan, Alaska

Received March 06, 2016 - Published March 07, 2016

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Ketchikan School District's Budget Slush Fund By Agnes Moran

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