Wednesday, October 29, 2008

LIKE, SOCIALISM...

Interesting article:
"For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist."

Read the whole thing here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you've ever been to Alaska you've witnessed the abandon businesses and homes throughout. I was amazed at how many things were boarded up when I went there. Oil is their number one resource in that hard, rugged state. Makes sense to use the profits to benefit the people who live there to some degree. Would mean less Federal monies would have to go to them, which in the end means less of my money goes to them. I had friends from Alaska in College who got AMAZING scholarships just because they lived there. That chapped me a little, but also made me wish I lived there. :)
LeeElla

joey said...

homer even joked about the money every citizen of the state gets every year in the simpson's movie for the oil companies ravaging their land....
considering the alternative, she's still got my vote....

Todd Bacon said...

The money is coming from profits from the sale of one of the natural resources of the state in which they choose to live. That is different, in my opinion, than expecting to receive a kickback from some other guy's hard work and sweat off his brow. The government-mandated re-distribution of wealth of it's citizens, is socialism. The self-less giving to charity by those who've undergone a heart change and are sons and daughters of the King is a different story, and paints a much different picture in the eyes of those receiving said "gifts" altogether.

Unknown said...

Todd
The title of the post is "like...socialism"

Key word, like...I'm not saying it is exactly.
But I'm sure if it was my business I'm sure I would feel it's pretty close to it.

The point being that for the rep. To point out Obama as a sos. And yet the Gov. Is leading and saying similar things seems unfair.