A Short Journey to Worthlessness

THIS DUDE on the strange political path Sarah Palin has taken from pragmatic, fiscal conservative willing to work with Democrats to....well, Sarah Palin:

It's no exaggeration to say that ACES has made the state one of the fiscally strongest in the union. Flush with cash, Alaska produced large capital budgets that blunted the effects of the recession. Moody's just upped the state's bond rating to AAA for the first time. While other states reel under staggering deficits, budget cuts, and protests, Alaska has built up a $12 billion surplus, most of it attributable to Palin's tax. Galvin estimates that it has raised $8 billion more than Murkowski's tax would have. But given the corruption that plagued the PPT, a better benchmark might be the tax it supplanted--the one put on the books after the Exxon Valdez spill. By that measure, Palin's major achievement has probably meant the difference between a $12 billion surplus and a deficit.

You'd think that this would be a very impressive thing to tout to voters, but unfortunately for Sarah Palin, her base is made up of stupid people who pretend to demand fiscal responsibility to impress even dumber people, and are convinced that the only track to prosperity is corporate welfare (you know, pulling one's self up by their double-gilded bootstraps!), since God forbid he or she wakes up one day the CEO of Exxon and has to hand over a nickel.  After all, it's a slippery slope from not being overly nice to super-rich people and people marrying their own pets, like they do in Europe.  If she runs for president, she'll hafta run away from giving her state a $12B surplus the same way Romney has to pretend he didn't enable people in Massachusetts to not have to sell their houses because of their back acne.