Why did Sarah Palin fire the entire Alaska state Board of Agriculture and Conservation in order to "save" a money-losing, state-run Dairy she closed three months later?
What would you say about the executive ability of a governor who, to keep a failing, state-owned dairy operating that buys from local farmers, fires the entire Board of Agriculture and Conservation just to reconstitute the Creamery Board that decided to shutter the money-wasting enterprise? (Wait - supporting money-losing state enterprises - was Alaska part of the former Soviet Union? Do Republicans know this??)
Now let's say that same gov then increased the price of milk the already unprofitable dairy paid to those local farmers. Ok, kind of counter-intuitive from a management standpoint, but good for the local farmers anyway, right?
Uh, wrong. Several months later, after a huge monthly loss, our Chief Exec decides to close the Dairy down anyway. So our good buddies the local farmers are screwed - except maybe not all of them, as we shall see in a moment.
The Gov (who is obviously just applying good business sense to government) insists on holding an auction for the whole operation as a going concern, instead of auctioning off the equipment and land, because "they'll get more for it that way". Because what prudent entrepreneur wouldn't want a Dairy in Alaska losing huge amounts of money every month?
And what should we start bids at, for this homogenized money pit? Why don't we set the price at, I don't know, $3.3 Mill? That way, the total bids made for the Dairy end up being - exactly none.
Ok, so now let's just auction everything off. Hey, we got $1.4 million for the equipment alone! I didn't think anyone needed that stuff - oh, yeah, except maybe dairy farmers. It's so sad, though - now there's no one to buy milk from the locals - oh, wait, except maybe there is...Senator Ted, what do you think, can we help this guy out?
It turns out, about a month before Matanuska Maid, the Dairy in question, shuts down, a new Dairy starts up, named, appropriately, Matanuska Creamery. Not the brightest business decision, you might think, given that the state-owned version is going out of business despite heavy subsidies, but the guy starting the new enterprise used to be the biggest dairy farmer in Alaska, so maybe he knows what he's doing.
Maybe he knows something we don't.
So what happens next?
The dairy farmer ends up leasing the best equipment from the now-shuttered Mat Maid, at very reasonable rates. (I guess not everything got auctioned off.) Hey, what a coincidence! I'm sure it's not like Kyle knows anyone.
Well, maybe a Senator. In addition to the sweet lease deal, Sen. Ted Stevens and state Senate President Lyda Green (representing Wasilla, Gov Palin's home turf) manage to get Kyle Beus - the preternaturally astute dairy farmer - a bunch of money from the USDA. $643,000, actually. Hey, better the Feds than us poor Alaskans! We're so frugal, we even sold our plane!
But it's all good: the farmers sell their milk now to Kyle Beus, who prospers with a lot of hard work (and cheap shiny equipment and fed gov, not ak gov, handouts - we all get to pay so that the Anchorage Fred Meyers carries fresh milk and cheese).
And the whole board-firing, "keep Mat Maid alive", "no, get rid of it" fiasco had nothing to do with allowing all this wonderfulness to happen, of course.
Somehow, in the magical kingdom of Alaska, things just always seem to work out.
On the other hand, if you're just a tad bit skeptical about how everything turned out so perfectly (for some people, anyway), go to adn.com and search for "Matanuska Maid" and connect the dots yourself.