Corporate Greed vs. Bedsheets
We’ve been and will be advocating really hard through today for what is a very Alaska specific issue, albeit one which illustrates the larger, nationwide problem of unrestrained corporate power exerting itself at the expense of school children, retirees, a decent infrastructure, and the basic services on which people in a civilized society depend.
We‘ve been heavily outspent, with Exxon, BP, Conoco and their lobbyists dropping $15mil on a very small population. The two deciding votes in our legislature for the corporate welfare bill known as SB21 are both on the payroll of—as in employed by—Conoco Phillips. Our governor is an oil industry attorney who on Exxon’s behalf worked to screw Alaskan fishermen out of their compensation after the Valdez Spill. This is only a few years after a good portion of our legislature was convicted by the feds and sent to prison for blatantly selling their votes to oil interests.
There’s nothing about SB21 that doesn’t reek of corruption. Today we have a chance to repeal it. Watching high school kids, grandmothers, first responders, and Alaskans from all walks of life dropping off the more than 50,000 signatures at the clerk’s office to get repeal on the ballot, while singing the Alaska Flag Song, was one of the most moving thing I’ve ever seen in Alaska politics.
This is David vs. Goliath. A landscape of hand painted signs—and a grassroots social media campaign of homemade YouTube videos and the like—are going up against the slick, professional messaging of an industry with mountains of money. There are legislators who’ve voted to divert billions out of Alaska’s treasury toward shiny corporate towers in Houston and London, while blocking a 15-cent-per-child subsidized school lunch for destitute kids to whom that represents the only decent meal of the day. And yet there are Alaskans out there fighting multinational corporate greed with pink bed sheets. I love you, Alaska and I hope you win.
Turning out the vote means victory. Let’s repeal this monstrosity. Vote YES on 1 today.
Looks to me like the oil companies won this round. Not at all surprising. People can be easily bought with
enough money and enough lies and the $15 million they spent on this little exercise is as noted, chump change.
The problems here are very complex and opaque to the average person who not only is not paying any attention, but even if they were would probably not be able to understand the consequences of what we collectively are doing now, let alone what we might be doing in another decade or half century if we do not change course and try to think in terms of our choices.
You have to give them credit, they know how to get bang for their bucks.
Though it is tempting to take Alaskans to task over the fact that they turned out in low numbers to vote and
that a significant percentage of those who did vote seem to believe that massively rich multinational corporations with the singular goal of increasing their profits have their best interests in mind don’t or can’t
think beyond tomorrow’s television schedule. They seem to resent the fact that if they don’t take care of their own interests, no one else will.So like petulant children they defy their own interests by either not participating, or worse by siding with those who so obviously are exploiting them. What for example is the price for a gallon of gasoline in Anchorage? Low octane. If it is under $4.00 I’d be quite surprised.
What is said on this little blog will not have much effect on anything else. It takes mass media to sway ideas these days and the swing is temporally very short. The attention span is a few days at most and often only a few hours. But the vast machine we humans have made churns on whether we pay attention or not.
Since it may already be too late to arrest let alone reverse the trends we have set in motion I can suppose I am simply howling at the moon. That is probably so. But though complaints sewn here are but a whisper, no one can say they weren’t able to be warned. If only they had wondered. And if they had wondered, they would have been warned.
Of course it is not just Alaskans, it is all of us.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Ciao,
Kurubozomo Nyankoye my friend, cheapest gas in Anchorage over the past 84 hours was $3.84/gallon. The highest I could find was $5.12/gallon at Shoreside Petroleum in Cordova,Ak. according to alaskagasprices.com.Locals could probably give a better idea. I just found your post today. Keep well.
No nues at this late hour?
Here in Brasil there are vast offshore oil resources but for the most part, the country , because they own those resources, gets a substantial cut of their ultimate market value. You might think that in a third world
country we would be getting royally screwed over by the oligarchs, and to some extent we are, but not to the extent that you poor devils in AK are being taken to the cleaners. Guess what? The Government is the
overseeer of the oil business and no one in government is allowed to take money from oil companies.
What a concept! We also stretch out oil wealth by mixing it with sugar cane ethanol. That is a whole different can of worms of course because the cane farmers (corporations of course) want to be able to cut down even more rain forest. So the fight never ends. Like in the US, most people here don’t seem to ‘get it’. They don’t realize what kind of future they are forming by their short sighted choices. When they do it will
probably be too late to correct. It may well be too late to correct now. All I can do is make speeches against
the greed. Unfortunately only those who have no say will listen.
I am an enemy of my class, I am rich and I speak for the poor. I am not a politician, but I have to employ a half dozen body guards or I would be shot down in the streets. I am not afraid, I am just disqusted with my
fellow humans. Ironically, I am between both worlds.
Perhaps I should write a book about it all. I doubt that anyone would read it.
Fingerss crossed that Alaska will wake up and realize what they are selling.
Ciao,
http://kxan.com/2014/08/19/rick-perry-mug-shot/
For your personal enjoyment-indicted dickhead Rick Perry’s SMUGSHOT. 🙂
Polls will close at 8pm today. And then we will see. $15million is a lot of money. A LOT of money by Alaska standards. And a drop in the oil barrel for big moneyed corporations. We wait and we hope. I’ll be at election central this evening reporting as numbers come in.
Thanks-!
Will wait and watch.
Voted at 7:05 AM. Booths in my precinct were already full at 7:01- which never happens in primaries.
We’ll see.
And whoever did the pink bed sheet ?
You are my Alaskan(s) of the year! Thank you!!!
I just voted Yes!
Quackers is proudly wearing his “I Voted Today” sticker. Quackers loves stickers.
I have been up and patiently waiting for good news from Alaska since around one o’clock Alaska Time. 14 hours later I’m still waiting good news. Please don’t let me and yourselves down. If korporations are in favor,then you know it is not in your best interests. It is your oil,make them pay for the privilege of extracting your resources.