Magazines and Oil Companies

The Washington Post has an article up about a Palin magazine:

Retailing for $8.99, the 100-page glossy magazine, titled "Sarah Palin: Faith, Family, Freedom," hit newsstands in mid-January and was jointly published by a fashion-publishing subsidiary of international marketing firm IMG and Imagine That Publishing. It will remain on sale through April 30.

"The genesis of it was really simple," said Steve LeGrice, the publisher and editor of Imagine That. "We're up here in New York, and there was clearly this huge enthusiasm for Sarah Palin, and at the same time all the people in the media world were sitting around scratching their heads" about how people could support her.

"What we decided to do is put out a magazine all in her own words," he said -- a magazine "without any opinion or anything added in. This is an independent project," said LeGrice, who has never met Palin but says he "would very much like" to. "We are not endorsed by her at all...."

The Palin issue contains what LeGrice said are family pictures of Palin not previously published by a magazine -- including her as a child with her siblings and a dead bear bleeding over a stump; picking through shot white birds; holding a cardboard box of fish freshly caught at an ice hole; and with moose antlers still attached to a fragment of bloody skull.

It also shows her as cute and chubby little girl with glasses, the lone brunette among three blond siblings...

LeGrice said the childhood and family photos were obtained from private sources by a photo editor. A spokeswoman for Palin declined to comment.

The volume's print run is "in the hundreds of thousands" and "a substantial number," LeGrice said -- and it has been selling well.

PatrickinOH is supposed to be shipping me one. I haven't seen them around here. Now I'm all excited. :)


Okay, now on to some more serious stuff. A report shows that although the oil companies are whining about their high tax rates, ConocoPhilips was more profitable in Alaska than anywhere else in the country under Palin's tax system. Excerpts from article in the Juneau Empire:
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The companies have said high taxes are driving away investment, but they may be doing better in Alaska than they're letting on, however.

ConocoPhillips Co. data for 2009 released last week revealed that the company was highly profitable in Alaska but lost money elsewhere in the country....The state's other two major oil producers, BP and ExxonMobil Corp. haven't filed details about their Alaska operations.

For 2009, ConocoPhillips reported profits of $1.54 billion for its Alaska exploration and production operations, compared to a loss of $37 million for those operations elsewhere in the nation.

Other company operations, including refining and marketing, corporate overhead, chemicals and emerging businesses combined with the Alaska operations for a total company profit of $5.3 billion.

"It sounds like they're doing pretty well in Alaska, compared to the rest of the country," said House Minority Leader Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau. "It is amazing how they try to tell us one thing, while their own reports show something else," she said.

Kerttula led House Democrats who allied in recent years with former Gov. Sarah Palin and some Republicans to revamp Alaska's oil taxes with the Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share act.

Brian Wenzel, ConocoPhillips' Vice-President of Finance for Alaska operations, said the profit disparity between Alaska and elsewhere in the United States were primarily due to the plunge in natural gas prices down south.....

Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage has introduced a bill for progressive taxing, where taxes increase along with oil prices.

It is that upside potential that oil companies bet on, spending money to drill new wells with the hope that they'll pay off big when oil prices rise, Helene Harding, ConocoPhillips' vice-president for Alaska North Slope Operations and Development said last fall.

Speaking to the Resource Development Council in Anchorage, Harding said that's the payday companies hope for when they decide where to invest their dollars. And that's what Alaska's tax reforms eliminated, she said.

"You take away the upside, (and) it is extremely hard to compete for dollars,' she said.

Department of Revenue Petroleum Economist Cherie Nienhaus said the state's tax law was intended to reduce oil taxes when prices decline to ensure Alaska remains a profitable place for business.

"I'm not surprised they are profitable despite the oil price decline, that's the way it was intended to work," she said.

Rep. David Guttenberg, D-Fairbanks, doubted reducing taxes would spur new development.

Under the old Economic Limit Factor tax system, many productive fields paid little or no tax regardless of development, he said.

"What economic development did they do when it was basically not taxed at all?" Guttenberg said.
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And the debate rages on.

LOTUS - Oil, Debt, and the Falling Dollar

The Laptop of the United States

The 'Cuda's on a roll today. A second Facebook post:

The British newspaper The Independent reported today that Gulf oil producers were negotiating with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar in pricing oil with a basket of currencies.[1]

According to the Wall Street Journal, Arab oil officials have denied the story, but even the possibility of such a talk weakens the dollar and renews fears about its continued viability as an international reserve currency.[2] In fact, today a United Nations official called for a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar and end our “privilege” to run up huge deficits.[3] We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar.[4]

All of this is a result of our out-of-control debt. This is why we need to rein in spending, and this is also why we need energy independence. A weakened dollar means higher commodity prices. This will make it more difficult to pay our bills – including the bill to import oil.

In his book Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer points out that the Obama administration is focusing primarily on “green energy," while ignoring our need to develop our domestic conventional energy resources.[5] We’re ignoring the looming crisis caused by our dependence on foreign oil. Because we’re dependent on foreign nations for our oil, we’re also at their mercy if they decide to dump the dollar as their trade currency. We can’t allow ourselves to be so vulnerable to the whims of foreign nations. That’s why we must develop our own domestic supplies of oil and gas.

Though the chant of “Drill, baby, drill” was much derided, it expressed the need to confront this issue head-on before it reaches a crisis point.

Bottom line: let’s stop digging ourselves into debt and start drilling for energy independence.

- Sarah Palin

*Note: Schweizer’s book is a real eye-opener. The sections on ACORN are quite informative.

[1] See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

[2] See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125484066563367821.html

[3] See http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e272eaa74dccc30f21c6ff7638b0f37b.461&show_article=1

[4] See http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091006/ts_afp/commoditiesgoldmetalsprice_20091006144514

[5] See http://www.peterschweizer.com/

Here's Peter Schweizer's book on Amazon.

Hmm. And here I thought Palin couldn't read a book, let alone write one. Whaddya know.

The IBD Says "Drill, Baby, Drill!"

Investor's Business Daily has been a fan of Sarah Palin's energy policies for quite some time. They came out in defense of Palin's op-ed opposing Cap and Trade in an editorial yesterday. The article is here, along with an audio podcast version.

The whole editorial was great, so here it is in its entirety:


"John Kerry, replying to an op-ed Sarah Palin wrote on cap-and-trade, suggests the Alaska governor "check the view from her front porch." What she sees from there, senator, is energy wealth going to waste.

"The political death of Sarah Palin has been greatly exaggerated. In a devastating op-ed in the Washington Post, Alaska's governor exposes the cap-and-tax fraud that has nothing to do with earth's temperature and everything to do with government control of the economy.

"She also exposes the stealth socialism ambitions of the Democratic left and once again points out the availability of abundant "shovel-ready" resources under America's soil, off America's shores and even in America's rocks.

"Judging from the reaction from Sen. Kerry and the political arm of George Soros, one must ask: If Palin is spent as a political force, why is everyone on the left so worried and talking about her?

"Kerry took to the ultraliberal Web site Huffington Post to object to Palin's description of "the president's cap-and-trade energy tax" as "an enormous threat to our economy." In Alaska, she wrote, "we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, energy and security."

"Kerry, who opposed the Cape Wind project off breezy Cape Cod because a wind farm capturing energy from ocean breezes might spoil his view, went ballistic. In a thinly veiled reference to Tina Fey's "Saturday Night Live" skit, he repeated the warm-monger mantra that the "global climate change crisis threatens our economy and national security in profound ways" and that "Gov. Palin need look no further than the view from her front porch in Alaska to see how destructive this crisis can be."

"What Palin sees is a cap-and-tax plan that will result in a "dried-up energy sector" that even the sponsors of the Waxman-Markey bill anticipate, or they wouldn't have included a provision providing $4.2 billion over eight years for newly unemployed energy workers.

"It's not just the energy sector that will be devastated. Palin notes that "even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan." We have cited an analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation that found unemployment will increase by nearly 2 million in 2012, the first year of the program, and reach nearly 2.5 million in 2035. Total GDP loss by 2035 would be $9.4 trillion.

"Kerry responded that Palin failed to mention that "jobs in our emerging clean energy economy grew nearly 2 1/2 times faster than overall jobs since 1998." That's easy when you start from almost zero. Note that 1998 is also the year the earth started cooling, with not a warmer year since. There's even been snow in Malibu.

"From Palin's front porch, senator, she can see "the largest private-sector energy project in history" — her "3,000-mile natural gas pipeline (that) will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America."

"From Palin's front porch you can also see the 2,000-acre part of ANWR's frozen tundra that contains 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil (such estimates often underestimate actual yields) and that could supply all the oil needs of Kerry's Massachusetts for 75 years.

"And from her front porch, Palin can see the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska's landmass. Awaiting development there, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, are 1.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or 30% of the world's supply, and 83 billion barrels of oil, 4% of global conventional resources.

"MoveOn.org began e-mailing members Tuesday, asking them to fund a rapid response ad blasting Palin's op-ed. Soros' group said Palin was positioning herself as the face of conservative opposition to Obama's energy policy, telling supporters her op-ed was "a marvel of misinformation and outright lies."

"What really hurts is Palin's truth. Kerry and MoveOn.org say Sarah Palin must be stopped. We say, drill, baby, drill."