Fool’s Gold Pipeline - Lessons From LNG Failures

Energy Intelligence Review Est. 2009  ·  Volume XIV  ·  Analysis & Commentary

Special Report  ·  LNG Policy Failures

Fool's Gold Pipeline

Lessons the LNG industry keeps forgetting — and keeps paying for.

By Thomas A. Lamb  ·  Originally 2009  ·  Expanded Analysis 2024

When former Alaska Governor Wally Hickel compared a natural gas pipeline to Valdez to a gold mine, he forgot one crucial lesson of history: the richest-looking veins have a way of turning to fool's gold. Geopolitics, market saturation, cost overruns, and safety catastrophes have derailed LNG projects for eight decades. The pattern is always the same — and the warnings are always ignored.

By the Numbers

$400→$1,000 Cost per ton/year of LNG capacity — 2000 to 2008 alone

128 People killed in the 1944 Cleveland LNG tank failure

AUS$200B Australia's first LNG wave capex — beset by cost overruns & labour crises

3–4 mo. Average time to fill a single skilled LNG role during project peaks

A History of Hard Lessons

October 1944 — Cleveland, Ohio

The Tank That Started It All

East Ohio Gas Company's LNG storage tank ruptured, spilling liquefied gas into the city's sewer system. With no dike retaining wall and metal rationing producing brittle, low-nickel steel, 128 people perished when the gas vaporized and exploded. The industry's first great lesson — materials and containment standards matter — would take decades to fully absorb.

February 1973 — Staten Island, New York

The "Empty" Tank

During a cleaning operation, 42 workers were inside a TETCo LNG tank supposedly drained ten months earlier. Residual gas ignited, sending a plume of combusting fuel through the tank. The lesson — never assume an LNG vessel is inert — had to be learned in blood.

2004–2008 — Global LNG Markets

The Cost Explosion Nobody Predicted

As late as 2003, the LNG industry confidently assumed costs would keep falling along a learning curve. Instead, greenfield construction costs rocketed from roughly $400 per ton of annual capacity to over $1,000 — driven by a simultaneous global scramble for EPC contractors, surging raw material prices, a weakening dollar, and a chronic skills shortage. The optimists were wrong, and investors bore the bill.

2006–2009 — Alaska & the Sempra Play

The Valdez Mirage

Proponents of an Alaska North Slope-to-Valdez LNG pipeline — including former Governor Wally Hickel and attorney Bill Walker — promoted the scheme partly on the viability of selling gas to California's Sempra LNG terminal in Baja Mexico. What they missed: Shell Oil had already locked up 50% of Sempra's expansion capacity, and Russia's Gazprom was quietly claiming the rest. The market was foreclosed before a single pipe was laid.

2009 — Russia Enters the U.S. Market

Gazprom's Quiet Conquest

While Alaskans debated pipelines, Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA quietly signed deals for over 350 million cubic feet per day of U.S. physical supply — entering the American market from both coasts simultaneously. A state-controlled company using energy as geopolitical leverage had outmaneuvered years of Alaskan planning. The warning signs had been visible since at least 2006; they were simply ignored.

2006–2016 — Australia's $200B Lesson

The People Problem

Australia's first major LNG wave attracted over AUS$200 billion in capital expenditure. It also exposed a crippling structural weakness: a small domestic workforce with almost no LNG experience. Roles took three to four months to fill. Cost overruns became endemic. Several projects faced delays or outright cancellation. The lesson — project management is fundamentally a people challenge — has still not been fully institutionalized.

2014 — Hawaii's Spreadsheet Disaster

The $1.2 Billion That Went "Poof"

The Hawaii State Energy Office spent over a year presenting a study projecting $1.2 billion in benefits from embracing LNG as a "bridge fuel." When an independent researcher corrected a single spreadsheet error — the exclusion of the actual cost of LNG — the entire projected benefit evaporated. The Energy Office initially refused to acknowledge the error. Lawmakers and the public disagreed.

✦ ✦ ✦

"If that was a gold mine, which it is, and it required a road, we would build a road. We build roads all the time."

— Bill Walker, 2009, on the Alaska LNG pipeline to Valdez  ·  The project remains unbuilt.

Seven Lessons the Industry Keeps Forgetting

01

Geopolitics Is the First Variable, Not the Last

The Alaska pipeline advocates of 2006–2009 treated Russia as a distant abstraction. In reality, Gazprom had been methodically securing contracts, facilities, and influence in U.S. markets for years. By the time Alaskan planners noticed, the market was already partially foreclosed. Energy projects that treat geopolitical competition as someone else's problem invariably find that it isn't.

Russia's demonstrated willingness to weaponize natural gas — cutting off Ukraine, pressuring European nations — should have been a central variable in every LNG feasibility study of that era. It rarely was.

02

Market Assumptions Have a Short Shelf Life

The Valdez LNG project's viability rested on Sempra's Baja terminal absorbing Alaskan gas. That assumption was quietly invalidated before the proposal gained public momentum. Shell's contractual claim on 50% of the facility, combined with Gazprom's parallel maneuvering, left no market to serve.

Broad market projections made at a project's inception are routinely obsolete by the time construction begins. The LNG industry's cost estimates — which proved catastrophically wrong in the 2004–2008 cycle — underscore this: what seemed like a learning-curve trajectory was actually a precipice.

03

Safety Engineering Cannot Be Value-Engineered Away

The 1944 Cleveland disaster was a direct consequence of wartime metal rationing. Low-nickel steel — brittle at cryogenic temperatures — was used to build a tank storing a cryogenic fuel, with no retaining dike. The lesson is not merely technical; it is organizational: cost pressures that compromise materials integrity in LNG infrastructure will eventually extract a far higher cost.

The 1973 Staten Island tank incident underscores a second principle: in LNG operations, assumptions about inert systems kill people.

04

Cost Optimism Is the Industry's Original Sin

The belief that LNG project costs were on a steady downward learning curve was held almost universally in 2003. Within five years, costs had more than doubled per unit of capacity. The drivers — contractor scarcity, raw material spikes, skills shortages, remote construction — were not unforeseeable. They were simply inconvenient to factor into business cases that needed to look attractive to investors.

05

Workforce Strategy Is Not an HR Problem

Australia's LNG boom revealed that the majority of project failures trace back, at root, to people. Skills shortages cascaded into schedule overruns, which cascaded into cost penalties that could only be addressed by spending more on labor. Treating workforce planning as a procurement afterthought, rather than a strategic constraint, has cost the industry dearly.

06

Government Studies Are Not Neutral

Hawaii's LNG episode is a case study in regulatory capture disguised as policy analysis. The state Energy Office presented a billion-dollar benefit projection, anchored it with legislative testimony, and when the central spreadsheet error was exposed, initially defended the work rather than correcting the record. Independent peer review of energy feasibility studies should be standard practice, not a courtesy reserved for whistleblowers.

07

National Security and Energy Security Are the Same Question

The most enduring lesson from the Alaska LNG debates of the 2000s: domestic energy infrastructure is national security infrastructure. An energy supply chain that can be disrupted, displaced, or captured by a geopolitical adversary is not merely an economic liability — it is a strategic vulnerability. Any LNG development strategy that fails to account for this reality is not a strategy; it is a wish.

History Doesn't Repeat. But It Rhymes.

Every generation of LNG planners has inherited the lessons of the last and proceeded to learn them again at great cost. The warnings were in the contracts, in the maps, in the geopolitical signals — and in the spreadsheets. They were simply inconvenient. The projects that succeed are those built by people who take inconvenience seriously.

© Energy Intelligence Review  ·  Inspired by Thomas A. Lamb's 2009 analysis on Alaska LNG and national energy security  ·  All analysis for educational commentary

Alaska LNG Revisted - 20 Years Later

Energy Policy & Geopolitics

The Political Breakdown

March 26, 2026

Alaska LNG Revisited  ·  20 Years Later

The Sleeping Giant Woke Up: Gazprom Lost, Alaska LNG Is Finally Moving — But the Hard Part Isn't Over

In April 2006, this blog warned that Gazprom was a sleeping giant moving into markets Alaska should be dominating, and that Alaska's tax debates were handing Russia a competitive advantage. Twenty years later, Gazprom has collapsed under sanctions — and Alaska LNG is finally, genuinely moving forward. But the deal isn't done yet.

Analysis  ·  Alaska LNG  ·  Energy Geopolitics  ·  Updated from April 2006

From This Blog — April 17, 2006 "As you begin to read more and more about American companies investing in Russia and Russia exporting more oil and gas into the U.S., the sleeping giant, Gazprom, will have taken hold in a market that Alaska should be dominating. It's too bad that politicians do not see the big picture."

Twenty years ago this blog watched Alaska's legislature debate tax policy while Gazprom was quietly positioning itself in LNG markets that Alaska's vast North Slope gas reserves were ideally suited to serve. The warning was blunt: Alaska was handing competitors a market advantage through political paralysis, endless tax debates, and an inability to cut through the noise and build the pipeline that the state's constitutional mandate — maximum benefit to the people — demanded.

In 2026, the geopolitical landscape has shifted dramatically. Gazprom — the sleeping giant this blog identified in 2006 — is now a diminished force, crippled by Western sanctions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The European market it dominated has been largely realigned away from Russian gas. And into that vacuum, Alaska LNG is finally, genuinely, advancing toward construction in a way that no previous iteration of this project ever achieved. But as any Alaskan who has watched this project for twenty years knows: announcements are not contracts, and contracts are not pipe in the ground.

What the 2006 Post Got Right

The 2006 post identified three things with unusual precision. First, that Gazprom's entry into LNG markets — including its first delivery to the UK in April 2006 — represented a strategic land grab in markets Alaska's North Slope gas could and should serve. Second, that Alaska's internal tax debates were creating investment climate uncertainty that would push capital elsewhere. Third, that politicians were failing to see the big picture: that energy is geopolitics, and that every year Alaska delayed its gas pipeline was a year Gazprom and competing LNG suppliers consolidated market positions.

All three proved accurate. Alaska spent the next fifteen years in political cycles of tax debates, project restarts, and developer changes that delayed the pipeline through multiple administrations. Gazprom indeed consolidated its dominant position in European gas markets — until Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered the sanctions that collapsed that position. The irony is profound: it took a war in Europe to create the geopolitical opening that Alaska's own political will could not.

“Alaska spent fifteen years in political paralysis while Gazprom built its market position. It took a war in Europe and a war in the Middle East to finally create the opening Alaska's own leaders couldn't manufacture.”

Where Alaska LNG Actually Stands in March 2026

Glenfarne Group — which became lead developer of Alaska LNG in March 2025 — has moved faster in twelve months than previous developers moved in a decade. The current status is genuinely more advanced than any prior iteration of this project, but the critical distinction between preliminary agreements and binding commitments must be understood clearly.

Alaska LNG Status — March 2026 Offtake agreements (preliminary): 13 of 16 MTPA needed — TotalEnergies, JERA, Tokyo Gas, CPC (Taiwan), PTT (Thailand), POSCO (Korea)

Gas supply: Precedent agreements with ExxonMobil, Hilcorp, Great Bear Pantheon; LOIs with ENSTAR Natural Gas and Donlin Gold

Engineering: Worley Limited completed primary FEED work end of 2025; provisionally named EPCM contractor

Construction: Conditional awards issued for pipeline construction across four simultaneous spreads

Strategic partners: Baker Hughes (compression equipment + equity investment), Danaos (LNG carriers)

Timeline target: Phase One FID 2026 · Mechanical completion 2028 · First gas 2029 · LNG exports 2031

What's missing: No binding offtake contracts yet. No financing commitments. 3 MTPA still needed to hit 80% threshold.

The war in the Middle East is now directly accelerating interest in Alaska LNG. Qatar — one of Asia's major LNG suppliers — has halted shipments as its export route through the Strait of Hormuz has been disrupted. Asian buyers who were cautiously interested in Alaska LNG are now urgently interested. This is the geopolitical moment this blog identified in 2006 as inevitable: when global supply disruptions make Alaska's Pacific-facing, politically stable LNG supply not just attractive but strategically essential.

The Tax Bill Debate — Same Song, Different Verse

And yet here we are in 2026, and the Alaska Legislature is once again debating the tax structure for the gas pipeline. Governor Dunleavy introduced SB 280/HB 381 on March 20, 2026 — replacing the existing 2% annual property tax on infrastructure with a volumetric tax of $0.06 per thousand cubic feet of throughput, rising 1% annually, with a full exemption during construction and ramp-up.

The argument in favor is exactly what this blog outlined in 2006: front-loaded property taxes on a project generating no revenue during construction create a structural barrier to investment that competing LNG projects in other jurisdictions do not face. Aligning taxes with production rather than assessed value is sound policy for attracting the capital this project needs.

But Alaska lawmakers are pushing back hard. Key legislators stress there are currently no binding gas sales or purchase agreements and no financing commitments. Senator Bert Stedman put it plainly: "You know you have a project when you have take-or-pay contracts and you have access to capital and people are willing to step in and lend the money and put in the equity position." That standard has not yet been met.

Former oil and gas attorney Brad Keithley framed the core legislative problem directly: "Tell us what the cost is, tell us what the rates are, tell us what the financing plan is, and then we can evaluate whether we need to give up a piece of the state's revenue." The bill is being considered without that information publicly disclosed — the same dynamic this blog criticized in 2006 when it warned that politicians were failing to see the big picture.

“In 2006, the danger was that Alaska would raise taxes and kill investment. In 2026, the danger is that Alaska will cut taxes based on numbers it hasn't been shown — and lock in a revenue structure it can never renegotiate.”

The Constitutional Mandate — Still the North Star

In 2006 this blog quoted Governor Wally Hickel explaining Alaska's constitutional framework to Russian businessmen: "The terms require that subsurface resources forever remain in the hands of state government, and our constitution mandates that those resources be used for the maximum benefit of its people." That constitutional mandate has not changed. What has changed is the urgency.

The Middle East conflict has pushed Fairbanks gas prices to $4.53 a gallon. Southcentral Alaska remains dependent on a Cook Inlet gas basin that geologists have long warned is in decline. Rural Alaskans are paying extraordinary prices for fuel that has to be flown in. The constitutional argument for getting this pipeline built is now also an immediate quality-of-life argument for hundreds of thousands of Alaska residents.

Glenfarne is targeting mechanical completion of the Phase One pipeline in 2028 and delivery of first gas to Alaskans in 2029. If that timeline holds, it would be the first new major gas infrastructure reaching Alaska communities in a generation. The benefits — lower energy costs, new industrial development, a foundation for the Donlin Gold mine connecting to the grid — would be transformational.

What Needs to Happen Next

The 3 MTPA gap in offtake agreements needs to close quickly. Glenfarne is in active talks with two potential buyers for that remaining volume, and CEO Brendan Duval has said those discussions are moving very quickly. The Middle East supply disruption has turned Alaska LNG from an attractive long-term option into an urgent near-term priority for Asian buyers — that urgency should close the gap.

The Legislature needs to pass the tax bill — but only with adequate financial disclosure from Glenfarne. The principle behind SB 280 is correct: volumetric taxes aligned with production are better for this project than front-loaded property taxes. But the Legislature should not finalize a revenue framework without knowing the actual project cost, financing structure, and rate base. That information exists. Glenfarne should provide it.

In 2006 this blog warned that bumper sticker slogans and political short-sightedness would leave Alaska with "memories that are short lived" while competitors took the markets Alaska should dominate. The sleeping giant of Gazprom has been largely neutralized by history. Alaska's own window is finally open. Whether this generation of Alaska leaders walks through it — or debates the door frame until the window closes again — is the question of the next twelve months.

This post updates the April 17, 2006 analysis "Gazprom: The Sleeping Giant Waits" originally published on this blog. Sources include: Glenfarne Group press releases (January–February 2026), Anchorage Daily News Alaska LNG coverage (January 2026), Pipeline & Gas Journal (March 2026), Baker Hughes press release (November 2025), Governor Dunleavy SB 280/HB 381 press release (March 20, 2026), and Reuters Alaska LNG reporting (March 2026). Analysis assisted by Claude AI.

Election Law & Policy

The Political Breakdown

March 25, 2026

The SAVE Act & Voting Rights

The Hanging Chad Returns: Why Alaska Could Break the SAVE Act

A quarter century after Florida's punch cards upended American democracy, a new voting controversy is brewing — and the Last Frontier may be ground zero for the constitutional challenge that defines it.

Analysis  ·  #akleg  ·  #akgov

Remember the hanging chad? That tiny, partially punched piece of cardboard that paralyzed a presidential election and sent the country into five weeks of legal chaos? Most Americans filed it away as a quirky footnote to the year 2000. But the legal principle it forced the Supreme Court to confront — that similarly situated voters cannot be treated differently in the electoral process — never went away. And right now, it may be the most important precedent in American election law that nobody is talking about.

The SAVE Act, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Supporters argue it closes a loophole that allows non-citizens to slip onto voter rolls. Critics argue it creates massive new barriers to legitimate voting. Both sides are probably right about something. But the constitutional fight that could ultimately decide the law's fate may not be about citizenship at all. It may be about Alaska.

What the Hanging Chad Actually Decided

Before explaining why Alaska matters, it helps to understand what Bush v. Gore (2000) actually held — because it's widely misunderstood. The Supreme Court did not decide who won the election on the merits. It stopped the Florida recount on the grounds that different counties were applying different standards to evaluate ambiguous ballots. Some counties counted a dimpled chad — where the card was indented but not punched through — as a valid vote. Others required full perforation. The same physical ballot, evaluated by different humans in different counties, could produce opposite outcomes.

The Court found that this inconsistency violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The underlying principle: if the state undertakes to count votes, it must do so with uniform standards. Similarly situated voters must be treated the same way.

“The hanging chad was never really about a piece of cardboard. It was about whether a vote is complete when the voter acts — or only when the system processes it correctly.”

Courts have since treated Bush v. Gore as "limited to present circumstances" — meaning it cannot be cited as binding precedent demanding the same outcome in a different case. But that limitation applies to its use as mandatory authority. It says nothing about its power as a legal analogy — a vivid illustration of a principle the Court itself has already recognized. And that principle maps onto the SAVE Act with uncomfortable precision.

Alaska: Where the Law Meets Reality

Alaska is not a typical American state. It has over 200 rural communities, most of them Alaska Native villages, that are not connected to the road system. You cannot drive to them. You reach them by small plane or boat, weather permitting. Mail service can be suspended for days when a storm grounds the planes or a worker gets sick. The nearest election office might be a 40-minute bush plane flight away — assuming there is a flight that day.

This is not a hypothetical problem. In the 2022 general election, between 55% and 78% of absentee ballots from House districts spanning the Aleutian Islands up the western coast to the North Slope arrived at election offices after Election Day. Rural Alaska districts have had ballot rejection rates around 17% — far higher than urban areas — for reasons entirely outside voters' control. In the 2024 presidential election, poll workers in Atqasuk, a village in northern Alaska, tallied votes on Election Day but could not reach the elections division by phone. They secured the ballots and mailed them. Those ballots arrived nine days later.

Case to Watch Watson v. Republican National Committee is currently before the Supreme Court, with a decision expected by June 2026. Alaska's Attorney General filed an amicus brief in support of neither party, asking the Court to clarify what "received by Election Day" means for a state where ballots can take nine days to arrive through no fault of the voter. The Trump DOJ filed a brief on the opposite side.

The SAVE Act makes this worse. By requiring documentary proof of citizenship to be presented in person at an election office for mail registrations, it effectively eliminates the practical ability of many rural Alaskans to register to vote at all. You cannot mail in a registration form without first flying to a government office. For a resident of Beaver, Alaska, that is a 40-minute plane ride just to get started.

The Chad Analogy Comes Full Circle

Here is where the legal argument gets genuinely interesting. Watson v. RNC asks the Supreme Court to decide when a mail-in ballot is legally complete — when the voter drops it in the mailbox, or when an election office receives it. That is, structurally, the exact same question the hanging chad raised in 2000. Is a vote cast when the voter acts, or only when the system successfully processes it?

In Florida, the answer mattered because machines failed to fully punch through some cards. In Alaska, it matters because mail service and geography fail to deliver some ballots on time. In both cases, the voter did everything right. The system failed to complete the process. And in both cases, the question of how to handle that ambiguity — count it or reject it — is being answered differently depending on where you live.

An urban voter in Anchorage who drops a ballot in a mailbox the day before the election and has it received the next morning faces a completely different reality than a voter in Atqasuk who does the same thing and waits nine days. If the law treats those two situations identically — rejecting any ballot received after Election Day — it is producing unequal outcomes from equal behavior. That is the Bush v. Gore problem, restated for the twenty-first century.

“Alaska is not asking for special treatment. It is asking for equal treatment — which is a much harder argument to dismiss.”

A Layered Constitutional Challenge

The Bush v. Gore analogy is not the only arrow in the quiver of a potential SAVE Act challenge. The affected population in rural Alaska is disproportionately Alaska Native, which adds a Voting Rights Act dimension — Section 2 prohibits voting practices that result in the denial of the right to vote on account of race. Statistical evidence of disparate rejection rates already exists. Adding SAVE Act documentation requirements on top of existing barriers would likely accelerate that disparity in ways that are cleanly documentable.

There is also a poll tax analog worth examining. The requirement to travel hundreds of miles by bush plane to present documents in person before registering to vote bears a structural resemblance to the kinds of facially neutral requirements that courts have struck down historically as undue burdens on the right to vote. The cost is not a dollar amount. It is an airfare, a day of travel, and the grace of good weather.

Alaska's Attorney General has already laid much of the factual record by filing in Watson v. RNC. Senator Lisa Murkowski has said publicly that no state would be more harmed by a ruling requiring ballots to be received by Election Day than Alaska. The political cover, the legal record, and the factual foundation are all already in place. If the SAVE Act passes in its current form, Alaska may find itself at the center of the most significant voting rights litigation since the Voting Rights Act itself.

What It Means for the Rest of the Country

Alaska's situation is extreme, but it is not unique in kind — only in degree. Rural voters across the Mountain West, tribal communities in the Southwest, and remote areas throughout the country face versions of the same geographic and logistical barriers. Alaska simply makes the problem impossible to ignore or dismiss as marginal. The nine-day ballot from Atqasuk is the hanging chad of this era: a concrete, specific, undeniable instance of the system failing a voter who did nothing wrong.

The hanging chad changed American election law. It produced the Help America Vote Act, eliminated punch card machines, and established provisional balloting as a federal right. It forced the country to confront the gap between how elections are supposed to work and how they actually work on the ground.

The SAVE Act, if it passes and if it is challenged in court with Alaska at the center, may do the same thing again. The question the courts will ultimately have to answer is the same one Florida forced on us in 2000: when a voter does everything right, and the system fails to complete the process, whose problem is that — and what does equal protection require us to do about it?

The chad was ambiguous. The Atqasuk ballot was not. That may make the argument stronger, not weaker.

This analysis is based on publicly available legal filings, congressional legislation, and court records. It represents the author's legal reasoning and does not constitute legal advice. Watson v. Republican National Committee (No. 24-1260) is currently pending before the Supreme Court with a decision expected June 2026.

The Russians Are Coming to Alaska: Maybe

Remember all of the talk about a tunnel from Russia to Alaska - one Leftist blogger who lacks an intelligent design, thought Oh Boy that's a great idea for Alaska's economy.

Palin financial disclosure may explain timing of her resignation

Sarah Palin's financial disclosure, which was publicly released this morning, may help explain the timing of her resignation as governor of Alaska. According to reporting by Sean Cockerham of McClatchy Newspapers, the former governor had to take out a loan to pay her attorneys for legal work in her defense from a series of bogus "ethics" complaints filed by her political enemies:

Palin is also reporting that she took out a home loan from Wells Fargo for "legal fees to fight false allegations while governor." She didn't give a date or amount.

One of the last of the complaints filed against Palin charges that the legal defense fund which was set up to pay Palin's legal bills is itself not legal under Alaska law. That complaint was filed with the knowledge that the fund would be frozen while it was being investigated, therefore forcing her to pay her lawyers out of her own pocket. The aim of her political opponents has always been to destroy Sarah Palin any way they can. So they staged an all-out assault not only on her character and her family, but on her personal finances as well. 

According to reports, the twenty or so complaints had driven Palin's legal bill over the $600,000 mark. That's a considerable sum of cash for a governor with an annual salary of $125,000 to lay her hands on, so she was forced to borrow the money. Wizbang's Jay Tea (h/t: C4P) explains:

"...she had run up about half a million dollars in legal bills, and pretty much every single complaint had been tossed. In other words, she had incurred debts equal to twice her family's net income and 40% of their net worth for absolutely nothing. And with the latest complaint going after her legal defense fund, it was shaping up to get more and more and more expensive, with no relief in sight. The agenda of her opponents was clear: to use Alaska's flawed ethics laws (the 'flaw' being that no one foresaw a cabal filing an endless chain of worthless complaints purely to drive up the target's legal bills) to bankrupt her and her family." 

"So she took what she saw as the only solution: she resigned. And once she decided that, she saw no reason to drag matters out."

The legal fees and the loan might also explain why Sarah Palin went to work immediately after resigning to write her book and get it finished in as short a period of time as possible. According to her financial disclosure,  she received $1.25 million from her publisher as a retainer for her memoir, which is due out next month. Book advances are usually paid half on signing and half on acceptance of the finished manuscript, with the agent usually taking at least 15% right off the top. If these were the terms of Sarah Palin's deal with HarperCollins, then after her agent --  Washington D.C. lawyer Bob Barnett -- took his cut, she received approximately $500,000 of her advance, which would not have been enough to pay her attorneys in full.

The former governor most certainly was feeling the pressure to complete her manuscript in order to receive the rest of the retainer from HarperCollins. Just speculation on our part, but Sarah Palin doesn't strike us as the type of person who wants to be beholden to anyone, so her goal was apparently to repay ASAP the loan she had to take out to pay her lawyers.

Some other details from her financial disclosure:

Palin reported that she received $73,000 in salary and $6,370 in per diem during those final months before resigning as governor.

Todd Palin reported receiving $34,086 during that time as a BP production operator. He also reported $32,260 from his commercial setnet fishing operation in Bristol Bay, under the business name "Toad's Fisheries."

Todd Palin also reported $3,500 in winnings from the Iron Dog snow machine race.

Now that she is no longer the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin will not be required to file any more financial disclosure reports with that state's Public Offices Commission.

- JP

Despite bad economy, Alaskans will be paid dividends

While most other states are cutting services and laying off workers, Alaska is preparing to send dividend checks to about 657,000 of its citizens, who have their former governor and the state constitution to thank. United Press International reports:

ANCHORAGE, Ala., Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Citizens qualified to receive dividends from Alaska's Permanent Fund will receive dividends of more than $1,300 this autumn, state officials said.

The Anchorage Daily News reported that even though the $32 billion oil profits savings account lost $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year, the five-year dividend program will temper the effect of the losses for Alaskans.

[...]

Last year, Alaskans received the largest dividend checks since the state began its program in 1982. The amount was supplemented by a $1,200 resource rebate, based on the state's oil-tax surplus and initiated by former Gov. Sarah Palin.

For increasing the size of the dividend, some of Palin's detractors have ironically branded her a socialist -- which is what many of them are, but the PDS-afflicted aren't shamed by their own hypocrisy. 

Truth is, the 49th state's constitution, which was written before Palin was even born, gives ownership of Alaska's natural resources to the people of the state to share. As governor, Palin was following the constitution.

- JP

Oh, by the way...

Politico's Andy Barr reports that another bogus "ethics" complaint filed by disgruntled job applicant Andree McLeod has been dismissed. The professional complainer had charged that Sarah Palin's former communications director Bill McAllister had used Alaska state resources for Palin's political benefit "before, during and after" she was chosen as Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential running mate.

According to an Associated Press wire story, McLeod's frivolous legal action, after investigation and consideration, was dismissed as "lacking merit":

"A report from the state Department of Law recommending dismissal of the complaint concluded that no evidence was found that state ethics law was violated."

Undeterred, McLeod branded the dismissal as "more whitewash":

"The evidence and common sense tells you that McAllister and others used state time and resources to work on Sarah Palin's personal political interests and not the state’s interests," she said.

Unfortunately for McLeod, she wouldn't recognize common sense if she tripped over it,  which she has done on at least five occasions:

The grievance was among six filed against Palin or her staff by Anchorage resident Andree McLeod. Five have been dismissed, and one is pending.

We can't imagine who angst-ridden Andree thinks she's fooling. Other than a small circle of drooling, Palin-hating Alaskan bloggers who take their orders from the Obamunist regime, most everyone can see right through her faux outrage.

At least 20 complaints were filed against the governor and/or her aides. At least 20 have been dismissed. Can you say "political harrassment" on the taxpayers' dime? We knew you could! It's the Wyle E. Coyote Effect.

- JP

Stacy McCain's focus turns to Anchorage fish wrapper

Robert Stacy McCain has a new area of investigative interest:

"I have temporarily lost interest in Griffin and have now taken a sudden and keen interest in Julia O'Malley and her editors at the Anchorage Daily News."

There's a lot of low-hanging rotten fruit on that tree, Stacy. Just go to any pro-Palin blog, search for ADN or Anchorage Daily News and hold your nose. It's a fish wrapper which really stinks, and the stench doesn't come from the fish. 

We also highly recommend that you perform the same search at the excellent McClatchy Watch blog.

Good hunting, sir!

- JP

Money for Nothing: AK Lawmakers Vote to Override

Meeting in a one-day special session, the Alaska Legislature acted Monday, without a vote to spare, to override former Governor Sarah Palin's veto of federal energy stimulus funds.

The legislators got an Obama offer they couldn't refuse -- "money for nothing, checks for free":



Our own lyrics to "Money for Nothing"
(with sincerest apologies to Mark Knopfler)

Now look at them yo-yos thats the way you do it
You take the money that comes from D.C.
That aint workin thats the way you do it
Money for nothin and checks for free
Now that aint workin thats the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys aint dumb
Maybe get a blister on their sorry backsides
Maybe get a blister on their bums

We gotta install brand new insulation
Custom building deliveries
We gotta meet fed'ral regulations
We gotta meet those IECCs

See the little maggot there in Obama's pocket
Don't matter if he's R or D
That little maggot works ninety days a year
That little maggot makes fifty Gs

We gotta install brand new insulation
Custom building deliveries
We gotta meet fed'ral regulations
We gotta meet those IECCs

I shoulda learned to be a legislator
I shoulda learned to play both sides
Look at Jay Ramras, deep in the tank for BP
Man we could take some bribes
Stay down in Juneau, for what? about 90 days?
All it's gonna cost you is your sovereignty
That aint workin thats the way you do it
Get your money for nothin get your checks for free

We gotta install brand new insulation
Custom building deliveries
We gotta meet fed'ral regulations
We gotta meet those IECCs, lord

Now that aint workin thats the way you do it
You take the money that comes from D.C.
That aint workin thats the way you do it
Money for nothin and your checks for free
Money for nothin and checks for free

I want my
I want my
I want my
authority

- JP