So we’ve gone through a weekend of hearing about Sarah Palin as the new Republican VP nominee. And, to no one’s surprise, it was all about personal characteristics and almost nothing on policy.
There were thousands of stories on Palin’s children, both newborn and almost adult. But that’s the essence of the game as the liberal media and the blogosphere tried to find something against Palin that would stick in terms of criticism. I know it’s hard to find some actual information on three day’s notice, but I was somehow able to find information on her in five hours on Friday afternoon. You’d think the media could do that, since they’re getting paid for it after all. But instead, we get innuendo and slander, going after her personality, but not her policies. And it’s not like she’s a blank slate, as she’s got two years as governor and a couple of years as mayor to find information on. So, as usual, the ancien media fails at their job of investigation and reporting.
Meanwhile, the GOP side of the media is just ecstatic about the pick, as if this is all the people needed to warm up to McCain. To his credit, he did reinforce his social conservatism at the Rick Warren forum, and it appears that this is another pick along those lines. Which is why the anciens wanted to go after her personal life as to make the hypocrite tag stick. But there’s nothing to those attacks, which is why the GOP side is going after them on this issue. So instead of introducing their candidate and filling in the gaping holes on her policy ideas and where she stands on the issues, they’re, once again, playing on the other team’s field. But as this weekend has shown, there’s nothing to this issue, which is why the GOPers are attacking this hard.
But it doesn’t help us in the minority who actually, you know, still care about the issues and policies that government puts in place. And more to the point, both sides have been strangely silent on Palin’s energy policy while in Alaska. It’s supposed to be her strong point, and she even mentioned it in her introductory speech. But as I outlined in my Palin on Energy post, it’s at best a political pander, and at worst, a contradiction of the national Republican policy on taxation and a gold mine for the Democrats, if they’re going to take the bait.
In case you don’t know, Palin instituted a new severance tax on oil pumped from state-leased lands. And contrary to usual Republican policy, this tax was higher than the previous level. In fact, it became a windfall profits tax, as the structure of the tax was that it increased as the price of oil increased, the very definition of a windfall profits tax.
But people aren’t interested in the fact that it’s a tax increase out of the Obama handbook, they’re more interested in covering it up as “giving a tax rebate back to the people”, as epitomized by the Rush Limbaugh show this afternoon:
CALLER: And you asked him a specific question, and what he picked out was so mundane, I mean it was on everyone’s mind. You asked him what were Sarah’s accomplishments here, and he had an ability to tell you a whole litany of things. And he picked out oh, you know, “She’s going to send us some money.” Well, yeah. It’s a small part of a much larger plan by the state —
RUSH: Well, but wait a minute.
CALLER: — to help us out.
RUSH: No, I knew what he was talking about at the time. Alaskans — she gave them a rebate on rising gasoline prices added to whatever it is you guys already get for allowing the Alaska pipeline and other things up there, but she was simply saying, she made it a point in her announcement to say that she didn’t keep the money as a governor and put it in government coffers; she sent it back to the people who were experiencing this rapid increase in gasoline prices. Remember, Obama at the time the gasoline prices were skyrocketing up, said, (paraphrasing) “I’m not really worried about the price but I am concerned about how rapidly it went up.”
CALLER: Yeah, it was disgusting.
RUSH: She turned it back to the people, that’s all. No different than a tax rebate.
CALLER: Right, which was the original idea of the original permanent fund in the first place, because the oil revenue of the state, according to Hammond, our governor at the time, belonged to the people. And so the people get a tiny little portion of the interest, and that’s what that dividend is about, but I wouldn’t have chosen that as her most important accomplishment. Frank Murkowski was expected to be a really good governor, and he was just a bust. She beat him in the primary, and she filed his deal that he had made with the gas companies — or the oil companies, she filed that right in the trash. (Emphasis added)
First of all, it’s not a tax rebate, as the $1200 doled out by each citizen was never collected from the citizenry. It was collected from the oil companies and redistributed to taxpayers. That’s NOT a tax rebate. It’s the same problem that the Bush tax rebates/stimulus payments have, the rebates are uncorrelated with tax payments. So it can’t be a rebate if you don’t pay the tax in the first place.
But the bigger problem is that there is this entitlement to the oil company revenue because the oil came out of state-owned land. The fact that the state owns any land is something entirely different, but that’s different from a federally owned parcel (which was in most circumstances expropriated and definitely unconstitutional). Under the Alaska Constitution, the state can own land, and lease mineral rights, but it doesn’t own the oil. Well, they can own the oil, but they allow private entities to explore and produce the oil, at least until politicians decide to take over the production as a whole (or just go ahead and tax it 100%).
In the grander scheme of things, this should sound at least some concern for conservatives, but I haven’t heard a peep from either side of the aisle, but it’s actually pretty obvious once you think about it.
Republicans don’t want to dirty up the image of Palin, especially when she says that it’s not a tax increase, but it’s getting a fair valuation on the resources. If a Democrat tried doing that on a tax on… anything, Republicans would skin that Democrat alive.
Democrats are either waiting for a “gotcha” moment, possibly during the debate or closer to the election. The question will be obvious: “During your time as governor of Alaska, you passed a tax increase on oil companies that were then sent taxpayers as an energy rebate. Barack Obama has proposed the same thing, but John McCain and the Republicans have attacked this proposal. Do you support Obama’s plan that is very similar to your policy in Alaska?” And then she’s going to have to square the circle, saying that it’s ok to do it on the state level, but not on the national level, or backtrack on her record in Alaska. Either way, the Republicans are going to have to figure that one out quickly, because either she’s going to piss off fiscal conservatives or be attacked (rightly so) as a flip-flopper.
Right now, there’s no sign of what she’ll do, even if she highlighted the policy (in a limited way) in her speech in Dayton. But unlike the pregnancy/child issues, this is a serious issue that could very well put her in a bad position.
(UPDATE: The Cato Institute has done some research into her tax policies: Gov. Sarah Palin’s Record on Taxes and Spending and Palin: Uninspiring Tax Policy Record. Leave it to the libertarians to do the political work of the partisans. There’s a thesis to be had there, do non-mainstream party outlets cover the issues that the Big Two parties do not want to have discussed? I’m also thinking Obama/climate change and environmental parties.)
The Highwayman 