Contributed by Jessica Wright
Yesterday our family went to Anchorage to stay for a couple days and as we drove by a huge building, we noticed it was an empty commercial building that belongs to Johnson Tire Store. It was perhaps the biggest and fanciest tire store building I’ve ever seen and yet it was empty. It sadly reminded me how Governor Walker and AKLEG’s PFD theft doomed Alaska’s economy. During the Walker Administration, Alaska experienced economic recession not because of the oil price declined in 2015 but the decision that Governor Walker and AKLEG made. Instead of cutting government spending to encounter the budget deficit they increased the government spending and took people’s PFD to subside the budget deficit for 3 years in a row (2016, 2017 & 2018). They took 1/2 to 2/3 of people’s PFD each year. The result was like a 8.0 earthquake shook Alaska’s economy. It was estimated 12,000-15,000 jobs loss according to AP, ADN. We have seen so many stores, malls, shops, and restaurants closed during that period. Meanwhile, our state government funded hundreds nonprofits/ government agencies which created a great financial burden for our state. In March 2018, Businessinsider revealed Alaska was ranked the last place in the nation in economy and highest unemployment rate. Some might wonder why I bring it up. With new Governor, Governor Dunleavy, we now are slowly coming out of economic recession. I just want to remind everyone that we are not fully recovered yet. It’s a shame because we have so much natural resources and our tourism is booming but we have to fight with our own legislature who has the same ideology as Governor Walker, that is, big government spending and our PFD belongs to the government even though they already have their own resources funded by the PFD and yet they want our PFD as well. They preferred Governor’s Walker’s budget over Governor Dunleavy’s leaner budget. We have seen the show down last summer and they won the battle once again which enable them to take our PFD 4 years in a row. Recently we heard the same narrative once again by Giessel, Edgmon, Johnston, Von Imhof and many others. Something has never changed for they still want our PFD to continue their big government programs. My question for every Alaskan is, are we going to allow this happen if they tell us they need our PFD to fund the government services? What are we going to tell them? What action are we going to take? Do we compromise again and say take our PFD because we like all the government programs? What’s going to happen is Alaska is going to have a very difficult time down the road because we are heading the Socialism path. We can’t afford the ever increasing big government spending. Like Senator Ted Cruz said a few weeks ago, the Lobbyists are the ones bankrupt America with their 1.4 Trillion spending package submitted to Congress in December 2019. These state funded government programs are also going to bankrupt our state. First they want to spend our portion of PFD, then they are going to go for the PFD corpus and in the meantime, they are going to increase taxes. That’s how Democrats operate economy which is Socialism approach and we all know Socialism/Communism only creates poverty. We’ve seen Russia, China, Venezuela, Soviet Union who practiced Communism/Socialism. Are we going to go down the same road again? Haven’t these empty malls, stores, shops, restaurants already served as solid witnesses how the Socialism only deprive the Alaska economy? Do we need several more election cycles to finally learn our lesson like we finally learned Lisa Murkowski is corrupted? I’m afraid it might be too late by then because our legislature only speaks for the lobbyists not for the people and they plan to use up all our resources regardless how we protest it. My fellow Alaskans, this coming election is our only chance is to correct our course. Please don’t ruin it. Vote them out, vote all these corrupted politicians out before it’s too late.
