Preface: We have a historic opportunity to get Sarah Palin to renounce not just the last bridge to nowhere (which she formerly supported, and the money for which she kept), but all future bridges to nowhere. In the best tradition of fundamentalist Christians, let’s mobilize public pressure to help make an honest woman of her - at long last.
I think I’ve come to understand how an innocent girl like Bristol Palin, daughter of GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin, could have ended up pregnant out of wedlock.
She’s just another victim of the culture of welfare dependency.
How has Alaska become trapped in this desperate cycle? Please join below to explore this tragic tale of woe.
So how has Alaska become trapped in this desperate cycle? In a way, Sarah Palin’s own case is an exemplary (and cautionary) tale.
It all started out with a former Alaskan separatist mayor (reformed separatist, thank you) just wanting to do good and address her town’s high-priority hockey needs.
Now some people have said Sarah Palin is unqualified to be Vice President, but its clear enough that she knows how Washington works, and how to work Washington.
She went down to DC, made a good impression on (recently indicted) Senator Ted Stevens – "Uncle Ted" – and hired a lobbyist with good connections – part of Team Abramoff.
Sarah was a natural. Being a native Alaskan, she knows how to hunt, and she knows how to drill.
She’s now one of the Alaska officials in charge of drilling the taxpayers of the other 49 states.
As Palin put it herself (before she knew she would become Brent Maverick), "The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship." (from the LA Times article.)
The next thing you knew, little Wasilla had $27 million in Federal cash. The culture of dependency became a little more entrenched. But Sarah was on her way – she had learned how to work the baroque earmark-kleptocracy created after the Republican Revolution back in 1994.
You see, Alaska is usually #1 in federal expenditures per capita.
In an average year, Alaska receives almost twice as much in federal expenditures per capita as the state pays in taxes per capita -- in 2005 (the last year in the Tax Foundation tables) Alaska received $1.84 in federal spending for every $1 paid in taxes. (The linked spreadsheet at the bottom of the page also contains the expenditures-per-capita rankings supporting the Alaska #1 claim above.)
And while Alaska hauls in ~$9 billion a year in federal money, $4 billion more than they pay out in taxes, they take the revenues they earn from in-state oil production and send them out in annual welfare checks to every resident (almost $3,300 to every resident this year). The Alaska Oil Fund has $40 billion in assets at this point. (Psst: they could buy their own bridges to nowhere, no problem.)
One can only imagine the damage this system does to the small town values of Alaskans.
But its worse than this. Fully 27% of the workforce in Alaskais government workers. That’s more than twice the percentage in my liberal "coastal" state.
Now most of the states I’ve ever lived in, the "blue states" or "sucker states," end up paying much more in taxes than they get back in federal spending. And, in the GOP narrative, it is that freedom from corrupting welfare that allows those blue states to thrive as dynamic engines of innovation, productivity and economic growth. The correlation is undeniable, and Republicans have long championed the cause of liberating people from welfare to align incentives and promote liberty and independence.
Yet, after the Republican Revolution, Republicans increased red-state welfare by 11% between 1995 and 2005 (again see the tax foundation spreadsheets; it requires some extra calculations).
Strangely, federal spending for blue states -- already lagging far behind on a per-capita basis -- declined by an additional 1% over that same period.
All told, the tables at the tax foundation suggest that about $1 trillion in odious welfare was taken from blue states and dumped on those red states between 1995 and 2005, undermining all those small-town values.
A lot of that increase was achieved through an explosion in Congressional earmarks. (Note: the earmarks are probably only about 1/3 the drain on the federal budget of the targeted tax breaks Republicans arranged, but the tax breaks are harder to see and value.)
Over that time, most of America became more like Alaska. Now its time for Alaska to become more like America. To resume our cautionary tale:
Back in Wasilla, the federal subsidy poison led to big problems – the overall boom in local government spending meant that the city now had a large deficit. The critical hockey rink was costing more than it was supposed to. Sarah had raised taxes (shh! Her supporters don’t like to hear that), but that was not going to close the overall gap.
Hiring a city administrator as a possible fall guy for the budget mess was a partial solution – and it ensured lots of free time, besides (though, as we all know, idle hands are the devil’s workshop).
But there was only one real escape: run for higher office.
But to do that meant endorsing the Gravinas Island "bridge to nowhere" that would carry, over the course of a full year, about the same traffic that the recently collapsed I-35 bridge in Minneapolis carried in 2.5 days – and at about the same cost it is now costing to replace that Minnesota bridge.
(To be sure, leading Republican cronies had their real estate investments lined up to take advantage of the increased land value over in nowhere as soon as the bridge went in.)
She also worked to try and bring home cash for an expensive new bridge that would carry a few cars a year near Wasilla, itself, but lets not go into that one – one can only cope with so much craziness and tragedy.
Sarah endorsed the bridge to nowhere – telling the locals (I paraphrase) "let no one demean [that place on the far side] as ‘nowhere!’" In October 2006, she, in fact, stated that she favored building the bridges "sooner rather than later" because "...[t]he window is now - while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."
See for yourself, or watch below.
Unfortunately, the American public noticed on that occasion (even John McCain awoke from his nap to grouse) – partly because of that irksome Minneapolis bridge falling down – so it became essential to Republicans everywhere to kill the bridge to nowhere, as a matter of political survival.
Sarah said "Thanks, but no Thanks!"
Actually, the full quote: "Thanks, but no thanks! No thanks to the bridge, I mean, but, hey, we’ll still take the money!"
So they did take all that money, though we can be sure it will be spent much more wisely. (Maybe on home renovations of something.)
Sarah, its time to break this tragic cycle of dependency. You know it and I know it.
It is time to end federal welfare for Alaska as we know it.
Let us pledge that, from here on out, Alaska will not accept one single dime more in federal spending than Alaska’s citizens contribute in federal taxes.
Every trawler on its own bottom. Every Moose on its own hooves. Every bear on its own paws.
Now this might mean that Alaska would have to finance its infrastructure improvements out of that $40 billion pot of oil money, but – if they built it using their own resources – Alaskans could walk across those bridges to nowhere with their heads held high.
One tears up just thinking about it.
Come on Sarah: do it for the children.
(Lord knows (and Bill O’Reilly, too) that Bristol Palin's predicament had nothing, whatsoever, to do with the abstinence-only parenting she received from an upstanding fundamentalist Christian with small town family values. The corrosive force of welfare dependency could overcome even all of those advantages in corrupting Sarah's daughter.)
So what do you say, Sarah: are you ready to take the pledge to see that Alaska does not take a dime more in federal spending than it pays in taxes (which is likely within the prerogatives of your current elective office)?
Or are you just another Republican hypocrite?