$2.07

Numbers can be mind-boggling, especially when the almighty "$" sign appears. If it is associated with a "bailout" program, it means creative accounting with the beginning and end result a free-for-all spending spree for the rich who believe they are owed something from the U.S. Taxpayers’ rainy day revolving door safe. "Bailout" is becoming a bonafide demon word in concert with other horrible words that made history horrible, like "Hitler" or "Bush" and what was the name of that terrorist that had a $25-million dollar bounty? Bin Laden! Bottom-line, bailouts suck and are un-Constitutional. It is pure unadulterated thievery upon my wellbeing! But the significance of the headline, "$2.07", is the amount that Alaska North Slope crude oil decreased on this year’s winter’s Solstice, right before Christmas Eve! Now if crude oil was trading today at this year’s summer’s Solstice, this marginal discount would not be that big of a deal, as oil back then was trading at close to $150.00 dollars per barrel. Wow! Anyway, when oil is trading at $27.88, such a decrease can cause rich people to become even richer, so maybe they can give us back some of that bailout. See, supply and demand dictates things. Now that only applies if the end product, being motor gasoline, follows suit. But once again, and maybe it is "Big Oil’s" bright idea of a Merry Christmas, gasoline prices in Alaska continue to suck my wallet empty. In a nutshell, crude oil decreases some 7% and gasoline finds a pitiful 1% percent change. Basically, it doesn’t follow the supply and demand theory. And nation wide in comparison, as motor gasoline has enjoyed a 49% decrease everywhere else, up here it only amounts to half that, about a 20% decrease at the pump. It just doesn’t jive my friends. Learned that "My Friends" crap from John McCain. What ever happened to his pathetic running mate, Palin? I am glad she never came back to Alaska, good riddance is my sentiment. And finally, the culprit of price fixing malfeasance has been discovered, with that an understanding as to why Alaskans pay more cashola for motor fuel. It points a middle finger to this state’s regulators! I could go into great detail, as I have followed the boring subject of "Big Oil Crybabyism" for at least 30-years by now. It is really crap reading material, but somebody has to do it. But I am just a writer, so nobody really listens to my dissecting dissertation. Basically, they keep changing the rules! And when they change the rules, the crybabies go running to their lawyers. And with that, the state finds itself in litigation which amounts to some pitiful "pennies on a dollar" settlement as "Big Oil" has deep pockets and time on their side. Anyway, the litigation from regulatory uneven-sight has allowed more money to be wastefully spent then any other corporate legal action, even more money then what the tobacco industry shelled out for black lungs. For Alaska’s black gold, over the years there has come tireless interaction between the Federal courts that was and is used to trump state court decisions and vise versa, so it is yo-yo type legislation that never finds a happy medium. It almost happened, wherein everybody was in agreement and on the same page with respect to "Oil" here in the 49’er. It was called the "Tax Settlement Methodology". Over two-hundred pages of this fact and that fact along with this factor and that factor, in efforts to come up with a ways and means to determine what is a plausible "Tariff". That is the cost for shipping oil down the 800-mile long dipstick. It all started way back then when the pipeline was built, when "cost overruns" were discovered. See, the TAPS is the only pipeline in the world that was allowed to operate under what is called a decreasing "Tariff" structure. It allowed the oil companies, the Seven-Sisters, to capture upfront the expenditures for building the one and only North Slope crude oil pipeline infrastructure. Now a decreasing "Tariff" is just that. Over time, the costs for maintenance and operations should increase, as the time factor causes things to break down. This is the norm. But "Big Oil", the sisters, wanted it their way and chose just the opposite. But not too long after enjoying the upfront profits, they decided that this "decreasing tariff" was not a very good idea, for the future. Remember, the entire infrastructure was designed to last only 10-years! They knew early on that Prudhoe Bay was a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that was untouchable by any regulatory agency. So the litigation started. It goes on today. And we are talking billions of dollars in settlement awards for the prevailing party, fines for the losers! So one now asks, why does Anchorage still have outrageous motor gasoline price fixing? Well the regulators have failed again and recently opinionated that the "settlement methodology" language was confusing. And what happens with that? Well "Big Oil" takes that to the bank and has filed for "Tariff" increases, somewhere up to a 50% increase. And these crybabies get what they don’t deserve. This hurts the state’s bottom-line and makes it more expensive to deliver crude oil to refineries, to refine into motor gasoline. The Regulatory Commission is not your friend! They seem not on their countrymen’s side at this time in history wherein we need such friendship. So we wonder and ask, but we never get the true reason behind the "Great Alaskan Gasoline Rip-off" as incompetence is rabid and a conscionable trait of broken government. The incompetence to understand and make rational decisions is a preference and fails our needs and amounts to nothing short the form of another type of bailout, state government style! Merry Christmas and bar-humbug. We continue to allow such abuse and do nothing about it so maybe we deserve it, no different then the abuse we have allowed upon ourselves by bailing out even more incompetence. With the latter, there seems enough to go around. But the "Pansies" continue to win and we loose, time and time again! Thanks Regulatory Commission of Alaska, for getting paid to do a job and failing us at that. Hey, didn’t Sarah Palin start her career off as a "Regulator"?

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