The ad is stark, somber—almost funereal. There’s no color, and hardly any motion. No video at all, just black and white portraits that pan in or out, and a couple of lines of simple text. The text declares, among other things, that the faces you’re seeing are “Real casualties of Alaska’s oil tax policies.”

The ad, a 30-second TV spot, is part of a campaign called “Faces of ACES” by an oil and gas trade association with the sci-fi dystopian name The Alliance (their full, less sexy name is the Alaska Support Industry Alliance).

The Alliance wants the state legislature to do something about the state’s oil tax system during the 90-day session that just started, and the group is spending $100,000 on the campaign. In case your knowledge of Alaska’s oil tax system isn’t up to date, let’s step back in time for a little refresher.

In 2007, the FBI’s investigation into the corruption scandal surrounding VECO CEO Bill Allen and a few members of the legislature was at its peak, as was the public furor surrounding it. There was a popular new governor in town who had worked her way into voters’ hearts by her sheer non-Frank-Murkowski-ness. Former Governor Frank Murkowski had supported a tax system that was favorable to petroleum producers. Indicted legislators had supported a tax system that was favorable to petroleum producers. Now those legislators were in the process of being convicted and hauled off to jail.

It was in this environment that then-Governor Palin, with the help of Democrats in the legislature, passed what they dubbed Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share. ACES, as it’s come to be known, bumped the base rate at which petroleum profits were taxed from 22.5 percent to 25 percent and tacked on percentage points as profits climbed.

Republican legislators and industry lobbyists, fresh off the embarrassments of Bill Allen and the Baranof Hotel, had little choice but to hold their tongues and bide their time.

Fast forward to today. It’s an election year, and Palin’s successor, Sean Parnell, faces two Republican challengers for his seat, and the corruption scandal—and its attending outrage—seems to have mostly run its course. The oil and gas industry and its allies are feeling emboldened to take on ACES now.

The “Faces of ACES” campaign blames job losses and a dip in oilfield investment in Alaska on the tax.

What makes the ad funereal is the one element I haven’t mentioned yet: sound. The audio that accompanies the ad is every bit as stark as the visuals—silence, broken only by the dull, mournful sound of a church bell tolling.

Coupled with the use of the word “casualties,” and the stark black and white images, the effect is evocative of a memorial for war dead, or victims of cancer. And it’s evocative—whether intentionally or otherwise—of one of the more familiar passages of the English Literature canon: John Donne’s 17th Meditation. This is the one from which we get the line “…therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

If The Alliance (or the clever creative types at MSI Communications who made the ad) didn’t mean to allude to Donne, nevertheless, they couldn’t help but be pleased with the connection. After all, those famous words pretty much sum up the industry’s pitch: Our pain hurts you, too.

But Donne’s meditation actually holds a slightly different, and more important application for Alaskans who don’t know what to make of ACES or its detractors. The message (it’s a sermon, actually) is one that dwells on the interconnected-ness of a community; it’s the source of the maxim “No man is an island.”

One of the biggest problems with the looming battle over ACES in the legislature this session is that it means so little to average Alaska citizens. Or more precisely why it means so little to us.

It means so little to us because so few of us have a deeply felt stake in our own government.

In most states, the government works more or less the way it’s described by political philosophers: as a social contract. Citizens band together to create public services. And because public goods still come at a cost, they all chip in to pay them. Elected delegates hammer out the details, and we call those payments taxes, but essentially it’s a transaction like any other; it’s just brokered, more clunkily, between a large community and itself. That takes enough collective maturity to recognize that life in a community requires sacrifice.

Alaska has yet to grow beyond adolescence in this regard. Like a surly teenager, we want more of everything money can buy, but we feel the equivalent of a part-time after school job is an unreasonable infringement on our freedom. And fortunately for us, we’ve had the equivalent of an indulgent uncle in the oil companies.

The analogy deteriorates at this point (unless you happened to have a co-dependent uncle) because the oil companies need us, too. But their hue and cry over ACES ought to serve as a reminder that more than 80 percent of our state budget comes from petroleum profits taxes. And the oil won’t last forever.

It may be political poison for anyone to propose a state income tax just yet—instead some Democratic lawmakers are seeking to constitutionalize our dividend checks—but let me point out one small easy step lawmakers could take in the right direction, suggested to me by a keen political observer. Along with those oil and gas royalty checks we receive—which are, after all, one of the only reliable contacts with their state government many Alaskans might have in a given year—include documentation of the per capita cost of state government.

Here’s your share of what Alaska as a community does, the message would be. Somebody else is footing that bill for you. You don’t have to pay it. Yet.

krestia.degeorge@anchoragepress.com