Contributed by Lawrence D. Wood
I sent an e-mail to the entire legislature awarding the Noble Order of the Blue Falcon with a left-handed salute to those legislators who voted to remove the emergency multiple PFD payments contained in the governor’s COVID-19 aid package.
The emergency declarations and the fall-out from the COVID-19 emergency are now hitting Alaskans hard. Businesses are being destroyed, employees laid-off, the misery and deprivation from this emergency are having a draconian effect upon Alaskans. A family member was laid-off in Conoco’s cessation of its drilling operations on the North Slope. Friends have been laid-off from their jobs, because of businesses having to shut their doors by edict.
If Conoco has stood down, there will be worse news to come. The recovery we were enjoying from the 2014 oil price crash is shattered.
The recent oil price crash is part politics, but also, very much so, a matter of declining demand due to economic inactivity. The price crash was about OPEC and the Russians halting the U.S. oil production and regaining market share in a failing global economy.
There are those in the Legislature who believed the PFD money would be squandered by those in the Bush for drugs and booze. In their infinite wisdom, they chose to allegedly save a percentage of the 15% of Alaska’s population that is Native from themselves by penalizing all 730,000 of us and insuring the destruction of the economy. That was painting with a rather broad brush with respect to penalizing the many for the sins of a few.
I understand that there was some confusion by some of those legislators regarding what was meant by the COVID-19 aid in the justification for Noble Order of the Blue Falcon citation issued. I was referring to the multi-payment proposed from the PFD amounts still owed and the current PFD. These are the only monies that would have given a direct benefit to a shattered economy and allowed Alaskans some degree of solace and hope in what is a very confusing, fearful and draconian response by government to this emergency. That money would have gone directly to the people to pay business for needed goods and services.
In this emergency, no one is in a position to squander a dime.
Further, it is believed that money, issued under the governor’s emergency declaration would have been subject to federal repayment for all or a percentage thereof as part of the federal response, given the existing federal declaration of emergency. Senator Cathy Giessel and Speaker Edgmon and the rest of the elitist snobs may have played the Grinch without cause
I was dumbfounded that both former Governor Sean Parnell and former U.S. Senator Mark Begich could possibly agree on anything, but they did in proposing a multiple payment plan, and that plan, or the governor’s or one proposed by Sen. Costello, or even this peasant, should have gone forward. No. Can’t be done. Yes, it could have.
Senator Giessel and Speaker Edgmon and others chose to destroy the economy of the state and cast great misery and consternation upon all, because these elitist snobs thought someone would squander a dime?
How arrogant of you Giessel, Edgmon, etc. You penalize the many for what a few might do? You would let people, families, kids suffer deprivation, because you think someone might squander a dime? Incredible!
Further, what joke that attitude is! Alaska is in 51st place in 4th grade literacy amongst the states in education, and 50th in public safety, jobs and opportunity.
How many billions have we spent to achieve those lackluster achievements? Many of you were responsible for those failures. You just kept shoveling the money into a hole, without demanding accountability.
