[Vision2020] Timothy Egan article

[Carl Westberg]

Posted with the complete understanding that John McCain and Tina Fey, er, Sarah Palin will win Idaho's 4 electoral votes.  From the NY Times, Sept. 17, written by Timothy Egan.          Carl Westberg Jr.       

	
	
	
			September 17, 2008,  9:06 pm
	
	
		Moo
	
			

	
	People
should stop picking on vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin because
she hired a high school classmate to oversee the state agriculture
division, a woman who said she was qualified for the job because she
liked cows when she was a kid. And they should lay off the governor for
choosing another childhood friend to oversee a failing state-run dairy,
allowing the Soviet-style business to ding taxpayers for $800,000 in
additional losses. 

What these critics don’t understand is that crony capitalism is how
things are done in Alaska. They reward failure in the Last Frontier
state. In that sense, it’s not unlike like Wall Street’s treatment of
C.E.O.’s who run companies into the ground. 

Look at Carly Fiorina, John McCain’s top economic surrogate — if you
can find her this week, after the news and her narrative fused in a
negative way. Dismissed as head of Hewlett-Packard after the company’s
stock plunged and nearly 20,000 workers were let go, she was rewarded
with $44 million in compensation. Sweet! 

Thank God McCain wants to appoint a commission to study the practice
that enriched his chief economic adviser. On the campaign trail this
week, McCain and Palin pledged to “stop multimillion dollar payouts to
C.E.O.’s” of failed companies. Good. Go talk to Fiorina at your next
strategy session. 

Palin’s Alaska is a cultural cousin to this kind of capitalism. The
state may seem like a rugged arena for risky free-marketers. In truth,
it’s a strange mix of socialized projects and who-you-know hiring
practices. 

Let’s start with those cows. A few years ago, I met Harvey Baskin,
one of the last of Alaska’s taxpayer-subsidized dairy farmers, at his
farm outside Anchorage. The state had spent more than $120 million to
create farms where none existed before. The epic project was a
miserable failure.

“You want to know how to lose money in a hurry?” Harvey told me,
while kicking rock-hard clumps of frozen manure. “Become a farmer with
the state of Alaska as your partner. This is what you call negative
farming.” 

That lesson was lost on Palin. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, Governor Palin  overturned a decision to shutter a money-losing, state-run  creamery
— Matanuska Maid — when her friends in Wasilla complained about losing
their subsidies. She fired the board that recommended closure, and
replaced it with one run by a childhood friend. After six months, and
nearly $1 million in fresh losses, the board came to the same
conclusion as the earlier one: Matanuska Maid could not operate without
being a perpetual burden on the taxpayers. 

This is Heckuva-Job-Brownie government, Far North version.  

On a larger scale, consider the proposal to build a 1,715-mile
natural gas pipeline, which Palin touts as one of her most significant
achievements. Private companies complained they couldn’t build it
without government help. That’s where Palin came to the rescue,
ensuring that the state would back the project to the tune of $500
million. 

And let’s not talk about voodoo infrastructure without one more
mention of the bridge that Palin has yet to tell the truth about. The
plan was to get American taxpayers to pay for a span that would be 80
feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge, and about 20 feet short of the
Golden Gate — all to serve a tiny airport with a half-dozen or so
flights a day and a perfectly good five-minute ferry. Until it was
laughed out of Congress, Palin backed it — big time, as the current
vice president would say. 

Why build it? Because it’s Alaska, where people are used to paying
no state taxes and getting the rest of us to buck up for things they
can’t afford. Alaska, where the first thing a visitor sees upon landing
in Anchorage is the sign welcoming you to Ted Stevens International
Airport. Stevens, of course, is the 84-year-old Republican senator
indicted on multiple felony charges. He may still win re-election
thanks to Palin’s popularity at the top of the ballot. 

Alaskans will get $231 per person in federal earmarks — 10 times
more than people in Barack Obama’s home state. That’s this year, with
Palin as governor. 

If Palin were a true reformer, she would tell Congress thanks, but no thanks to that other bridge to nowhere.  

Yes, there is another one — a proposal to connect Anchorage to an
empty peninsula, speeding the commute to Palin’s hometown by a few
minutes. It could cost up to $2 billion. The official name is Don
Young’s Way, after the congressman who got the federal bridge earmarks.
Of late, he’s spent more $1 million in legal fees fending off
corruption investigations. Oh, and Young’s son-in-law has a stake in
the property at one end of the bridge. 

Some of these projects might be fully explained should Palin ever
open herself up to questions. This week she sat down for her second
interview — with Sean Hannity of Fox, who has shown sufficient
“deference” to Palin, as the campaign requested.

One question: When Palin says “government has got to get out of the
way” of the private sector, as she proclaimed this week, does that
apply to dairy farms, bridges and gas pipelines in her state? I didn’t
think so. 

	

		

		
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