Comment:  Anchorage Daily Planet’s Tom Brennan (NGP Photo) has offered the Alaska Senate an important lesson on Alaska oil investment economics 101.    We have already commented at length on the importance of moderating Alaska’s predatory oil tax investment climate.  Senator Stevens’ approach (below) is obviously to sqeeze every drop of blood possible out of today’s turnip, leaving no incentive for investors that would sustain an economy for future generations of Alaskans.  Between Stevens’ anti-investment climate position and Obama’s job killing policies Alaska’s economy this week is much closer to the economic cliff.  That cliff is identified by mounting job losses, less investment of every kind in Alaska, lowering population, rural Alaska villages at risk (including Stevens’ Kodiak region), urban Alaska capital and operating funds diminishing, real estate throughout Alaska losing value, and non-oil businesses like fishing, mining and tourism threatened with higher taxes in the very near future.  This will be the Senate President’s legacy: as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Senate President Gary Stevens pontificated economic jibberish before a do-nothing Senate while Alaska’s economy accelerated its decline.  -dh

 Alaska Dispatch by Patti Epler.  … Senate President Gary Stevens (NGP Photo)  laid that notion to rest Monday in a special speech on the Senate floor.  The Kodiak Republican took the unusual step of turning the presiding gavel over to Sen. Kevin Meyer while he stepped down from the president’s chair and spoke at length about the Senate’s position on the tax bill.  (See ADN story by Becky Bohrer.)

AUDIO: Listen to Sen. Stevens’ speech

Stevens said the Senate would not be "bullied" into a premature decision on a measure that could cost the state $2 billion a year and, ultimately, educations, Medicaid, police services and other programs that citizens rely on.  ….