We all know that pot was legal in Alaska (and still is in the 1st judicial circuit) and that Sarah Palin admits to smoking it "when it was legal". Alaskans know that the state has many more bars than churches. We know that Alaska was admitted at the same time as Hawaii because it was assumed with the unions there Alaska would become Blue, while Hawaii would become Red. But we assume that Alaska is pro-free enterprise because of the Repug stranglehold there now. In fact Alaska is a state-corporate government much like China, ie the government is partners with the oil corporations. Through a "rebate" of taxes on those corporations each resident of Alaska is receiving $2000 next year in cash payments (that's $14,000 for Palin's family of 7!). (nice to live in a socialist state that sits on a sea of oil).
Alaska is not really a fiscally conservative state. All the subsurface resources belong to the State, so all the oil revenue goes directly to the State Treasury and is then distributed into the economy by political rather than market forces. Call it socialist, call it state capitalism, but the driving force in Alaska economics is not Main Street capitalism. Palin and the Legislature dramatically increased taxes on the oil industry last year and the right side of the GOP has been quite critical of the action. Those who sided with Palin dismissed that opposition by casting the opponents of the tax measure as being in thrall to the Oil Industry, an industry much tainted by corruption scandals over the last year or so. The governor signs checks to residents distributing the state's share of oil revenue
The government of Alaska is almost all-powerful, much of the State has little or no local government. Only the larger cities and towns have local government; the State does everything, pays for all the schools, provides much of the health care, paves and plows the roads, where there are roads, builds and maintains the airports throughout the state, operates a huge ferry system which it promotes for tourist dollars, and pays any state resident's tuition at any college they wish to attend anywhere. Until recently the State even operated a major dairy.
Leighton Woodhouse has a good column entitled "Red Alaska" in today's HuffPo:
But it's instructive to bear in mind, as conservative Republicans laud her record as governor, that much of Alaska's social welfare is based on what amounts to a socialist principle of taxing big corporations for their use of publicly owned resources and returning a portion of those profits back to regular working people trying to pay their heating bills.
Palin may run a quasi-socialist state government, but only because it's convenient in Alaska. No such easy solutions to budget shortfalls and rising energy prices will come in Washington DC, where the absence of an economic Everlasting Gobstopper like the Alaskan oil fields requires actual choices with actual political consequences, and where ideologies count in policy making.
When the Alaskan state government needs more money, legislators don't have to resort to jacking up taxes on working Alaskans, or scrapping social programs, or turning to 'market-based solutions.' They can just raise taxes on the profits of Big Oil, as Sarah Palin did last year (not as bold a move as one might assume, given that record profit-making oil companies in Alaska had just been exposed for bribing legislators) in an effort to attain for the Alaskan people "an equitable share for our resources," and like President Hugo Chavez did in his country a few months ago for much the same reason. In fact, just last week, Palin cut checks of $1,200 to every Alaska resident to offset the burden of rising fuel prices, paid for by taxes on the oil industry. That beats the hell out of McCain's 'gas tax holiday' for making a real difference in the pocketbooks of working Alaskans. No wonder she's so popular.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Gas tax holiday indeed.