Word: oiled
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...downside of that dependency is that it's sometimes hard to distinguish the state government in Juneau from the energy companies that it regulates. The state's elected officials have always worked closely with oil companies--at times, too closely. In the late 1950s, bureaucrats actually hired an oil-industry lawyer--with the big oil companies paying his expenses--to write the new state's oil and gas lease laws. Palin's populist approach was the perfect complement to rising public discontent with Big Oil, and it was the main engine of her remarkable rise from small-town mayor...
After Palin lost the race for lieutenant governor in 2002, then GOP governor Frank Murkowski rewarded her strong campaign by appointing her chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, an obscure but important board that regulates oil-field production. In her short tenure, she gained attention not for her grasp of technical detail but for making public ethics accusations against a fellow board member who happened to be chairman of the state Republican Party. She resigned in protest, leaving the $122,400 job after a year. (He was later fined for, among other things, sending confidential information...
...Irwin, Palin had found a model of resistance. She put an "all-Alaska" gas pipeline at the center of her campaign for governor. It was shorthand for putting Alaskan voters, not oil companies, at the forefront--and drawing a distinction between herself and the GOP Old Guard led by Murkowski. More dramatically, Palin joined the Magnificent Seven at a large downtown Anchorage rally and promised to rehire Irwin and his aides if she was elected...
Hardball with Big Oil...
Neither the plan nor its proponents were universally loved. Critics pointed out that gas-team member Rutherford had briefly been a lobbyist for a TransCanada subsidiary. And stiffer resistance came from economic conservatives. Representative Mike Hawker says that by cutting Big Oil out of the pipeline, Palin's team "endangered the state's economic future. It's a classic case of biting the hand that feeds...