Your statement about AK socialism is the inadvertent joke of the day. Let’s see, there’s at least CA, VT, NY, and RomneyCare MA way out front.

The point is, the tax increase discouraged additional oil production at a time when the other 49 states could least afford it. Go read about it at CATO.

The subsequent wealth redistribution merely highlights the fact that Alaska is our most socialist state. And this isn’t Palin’s only tax increase. Check out the sales tax in Wasilla. McCain has no idea, and you, Tom, are sounding more and more like a Republican, as opposed to a conservative.

“Like the PPT, the ACES tax is levied on the net value of oil and gas production. The base tax rate under ACES is 25% (it was 22.5% under PPT) and the progressive surcharge tax rate under ACES is 0.4% for every dollar the net profit per barrel exceeds $30 (it was 0.25% on profits exceeding $40 per barrel under PPT).”

source: Alaska Department of Revenue Fall 2007 Revenue Sources Book, p.13.

She’s now responsible for pork for the whole state when she wasn’t even in charge of it until 2007?

If that’s the best you’ve got, she’s a star.

She was so heavy handed the town’s folk forced her to hire an administrator to handle day to day operations or face a recall.

As governor she is borrowing from Alaska’s future while she wants to give away today’s Alaskan windfall oil tax bonanza and the huge surpluses they’ve generated in bread and circuses tax giveaways. Alaska gets 89% of it’s operating budget from taxing oil coming out of the ground just like Arab kingdoms and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. They have no state income or sales tax up there. Instead of using that windfall to pay for all the profligate spending her Republican legislature keep sending her she’s issuing bonds to pay for it all which Alaskans and US taxpayers will have to pay off in future years while she takes credit for tax “rebates” while she’s governor.

Her fiscal policy is a disaster in the making which won’t hit til she’s left the governor’s office. As it is Alaska has gotten far more federal pork per capita than any other state for decades.

The following organization is the offshoot of President Reagan’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control started in 1984, also known as the Grace Commission. Definitely not a Dem friendly group.

Citizens Against Government Waste
http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=homePage

Rank State Pork Population Pork/Capita

2000 1 Alaska $394,514,000 619,500 636.83
2001 1 Alaska $480,297,000 626,932 766.11
2002 1 Alaska $451,334,278 634,892 710.88
2003 1 Alaska $393,346,750 643,786 610.99
2004 1 Alaska $524,329,000 648,818 808.13
2005 1 Alaska $645,502,000 655,435 984.85
2006 1 Alaska $325,106,000 663,661 489.87
2007 not listed
2008 1 Alaska $379,699,715 683,478 555.54

She’d be a disaster as Vice President especially to a President who despite his grevious wounds and type A personality is already past the age his father and grandfather died of sudden heart attacks.

She can put on all the lipstick she wants but her political record is for the dogs.

It’s only an income tax if you think oil cos incur no costs beyond the $25 a barrel arbitrarily assumed. If that were the case, at $100 a barrel they’d be making pretax profits of at least 75% ($100-$25).

The truth is that they make less than 20% in pretax profits: XOM.

This is just another example of biz reporting ignorance that fooled you.

Seems to me that’s what an “ordinary” person might do. Or maybe not. Maybe it takes an extraordinary person to do that.

NED

One point I did not hear regarding the experience factor is that if the worst does happen Palin would always be able to select a running mate with 35 years of senate experience.

#4, THAT is the Point of the Day.

Interesting article, though. While it does repeat Palin’s exaggerated price for the still-mythical pipeline, it also trumpets Palin’s imposition of a windfall profit tax on Alaska’s oil producers. Balancing Alaska’s budget isn’t tough.