Word: oiling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Overnight, it seems. Back in the early '80s, the state had so much oil money that State Representative Hoyt ("Pappy") Moss proposed to bail out Chrysler, Cleveland and a couple of other basket cases in the Lower 48. A few years before that, the legislators, in a gesture of unprecedented largesse, did away with the state income tax. In its place, they substituted a state- sponsored giveaway. Each and every resident was paid an annual "dividend" of some $500 merely for living in the state. The big spenders in Juneau also voted to give residents 65 and older an additional...
When OPEC and oil prices went south, there were minicelebrations at gas pumps across the Lower 48. In Alaska, as in Kuwait and Dubai, there were rude awakenings. Alaska derives a higher percentage (86%) of its general fund from oil taxes than any other oil-producing state. As the price of a barrel of crude oil tumbled from the high 20s down through the teens to about $9, the state began to run on empty...
...include the Soviets, just a couple of hours away across the Bering Sea. "They'd be real good customers," she says, clearly thinking more of her occupancy rate than of the Drums' circulation. A sobering counterpoint to these schemes, however, is the rise in suicides and thefts of heating oil...
...news is no less bleak 750 miles to the northeast in Deadhorse, a town of prefabricated modules that hunkers next to the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay, north of the Arctic Circle. The Prudhoe Bay Trading Post recently held a sale. DON'T SNOOZE, YOU'LL LOSE, the sign trumpeted. Clerk Lisa Greenwood had trouble staying awake. "At 8:30, there wasn't a soul in here," she says. "Business has gone down 50% in the past year." The house she and her husband Perry bought outside Anchorage two years ago for $120,000 is now appraised...
...savings account, the Permanent Fund, continues to grow and now tops $8.1 billion. That is a healthy reserve, even if the principal cannot be tapped to help solve the current crisis. Harold Heinze, the president of Arco Alaska, looks at the modest rebound in the world price of oil and says, "It feels good to have a mild wind at your back after walking into a gale...