SPECIAL SAVE MENARD THE MARMOT EDITION

What? Propaganda doesn’t have to be the truth?

An oil industry propaganda group named the Alliance has launched a big-money public relations campaign to try to get us to cut oil taxes. The campaign contends that the state is taking so much money from the big-three oil companies – ConocoPhillips, BP and Exxon – that Alaskans are losing their jobs.

People gain and lose jobs all the time in the oil patch. A project starts and people get hired. They work until the project is done. Then they are out of work until the next project starts. Rep. Harry Crawford, who used to be an ironworker, says that he worked on 11 different oilfield jobs one year. It’s the nature of the business.

But the Alliance is taking the episodic nature of oil patch employment and trying to parlay it into an employment crisis caused by the state’s tax policy.

What are the facts? The facts are that, since the tax change, there are more jobs in the oil patch, more companies looking for oil and more money going to the state for things like roads, cops, and classrooms.  The companies are doing well enough that Conoco booked $1.54 billion in profits in Alaska last year.

So if you see one of the ads, just remember: For every person who got laid off, more than one person was hired. More companies are working, and more government goods and services are being bought, which means even more economic activity.

And, for all we know, the face in the ad belongs to somebody who has been rehired since the ad was made.

Odds & Ends

·    Larry Persily got his interview in Washington, D.C. this week for the job of federal gas pipeline czar. Persily, who like me used to be an ink-stained wretch, has had jobs all over state government. Right now, he works for one of the co-chairmen of the House Finance Committee, Rep. Mike Hawker.

If none of Persily’s skeletons escape from the closet, he could be confirmed in the federal post by the end of this month. Or, as he put it to me in the hall, “I think my nomination is likely to move faster than your bills.” Considering my lowly status as a member of the House minority, I reckon he’s right.

·    There’s a new caucus in the Capitol. Ten Republicans from out where the buses don’t run in Fairbanks and Anchorage have formed the Liberty Caucus. I’m not sure if they mean they think the rest of us support slavery, or that they mean they really, really, really support liberty and the rest of us are sort of wishy-washy on the subject. All I can say is that a famous right-wing Republican got in some hot water when he was running for President when he said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice … “ So I’m thinking I, personally, will continue to maintain a balance on the subject, as I try to do on most subjects.

·    I’m seeing the House Finance Committee in my dreams these days. Since I became a not-very-powerful member of that very powerful committee, I’ve been spending a lot of time in meetings there. On Thursday, for example, the committee met for two hours in the morning, which was just a lid lifter for the rest of the day, which was another meeting of the full committee, followed by a meeting of the fiscal policy subcommittee, followed by the Department of Administration subcommittee. Even though my chair in the committee room is very comfy, that’s a lot of sitting in one room for one day.

One false move and the marmot gets it

Alaska celebrated its first official Marmot Day this week. The day came about as a tribute of sorts to Curt Menard, a former legislator and Mat-Su mayor who died last year. He had long advocated replacing the groundhog with the marmot, which lives all over the place in Alaska, as the state’s official harbinger of spring. His widow, state Sen. Linda Menard, made that happen with a bill and – voila! – Marmot Day was born.

But, you know, there are some people who take advantage of anything. So it was no surprise that on the first official Marmot Day, a ransom note appeared: “$1,000 for the Fahrenkamp Classic or the marmot is mittens!”

The note was accompanied by a photo of the symbol of Marmot Day, a rodent named, aptly enough, Menard, posed in front of that day’s Juneau Empire, as proof that no evil had befallen the toothy little critter, which vanished without a trace that morning.

The Fahrenkamp Classic is a charity event in which contestants putt golf balls around the second floor of the Capitol, so even crime is being made to pay in a good cause. Everyone is hoping that the ransom will be raised, Menard will be returned to the bosom of his family, and that the second Marmot Day doesn’t have to feature a funeral.

And if you think things are already getting a little zooey, you wouldn’t be wrong.

Best wishes,