Sarah Palin: Socialist

Golly. Looks like Sarah Palin is a socialist:

Welcome to the Peoples Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the states Republican governor. Thats $22,400 for a family of seven, like Palins. Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests oil revenues from state lands, has paid out a dividend on invested oil loot to everyone who has been in the state for a year. But Palin upped the ante by joining with Democrats and some recalcitrant Republican state legislators to share in oil company windfall profits, further fattening state tax revenue and permitting an additional payout in tax funds to residents.

Somebody care to explain why this isn’t socialism? Cao? Big Dog? Raven? Jim Hoft? Anybody?

(hat tip: John Cole)

More on this from John Amato.

UPDATE 10/22/08 9:08 AM EDT: From Matthew Yglesias:

[I]sn’t the closest thing to socialism on the American policy agenda the status quo situation in . . . Sarah Palin’s Alaska? You have collective ownership of valuable natural resources that generates lots of revenue for the state, and then the government makes “spreading the wealth around” through the Permanent Fund, etc. its main priority.

UPDATE 10/25/08 5:22 PM EDT: Raven’s fellow wingnut ‘Duncan’ has responded to this post, but lacks the courage to allow me to answer him in the comments to his post. Here’s the comment he refuses to allow:

I’ve made no claim that the Alaska Permanent Fund is funded by any windfall profits tax. That’s a red herring of Duncan’s making, and can immediately be dismissed as such.

The fact remains that the Alaska Permanent Fund takes money from those who develop the mineral resources of Alaska and gives it to citizens of Alaska who have done nothing to earn it. That’s the wingnut definition of socialism, and by that definition, Sarah Palin is guilty of supporting a socialist scheme for wealth redistribution.

That Duncan denies this is simply another example of the blatant dishonesty practiced by wingnuts.

UPDATE 10/25/08 7:33 PM EDT: And still more nonsense from Duncan:

One thing I forgot to mention above. This is not a “redistribution of wealth”. There is no tax on people or the profits of corporations that funds this program.

The Alaska Permanent Fund isn’t a “redistribution of wealth”? Really? Where does the money for the fund come from? Duncan tells us that it is derived from:

…mineral lease rentals, royalties, royalty sales proceeds, federal mineral revenue-sharing payments and bonuses received by the state…

This money represents some fraction of the wealth of the companies that have actually developed the mineral resources of the state of Alaska. If money is not “wealth”, then what would Duncan call it?

And what happens to this money? Duncan tells us that:

Most spending from the Fund has been for dividends to qualified Alaska residents…

Hmmmm. It seems this wealth is sent to other people. If this action is not a “redistribution”, then what is it?

I’d love to ask Duncan these questions directly. Unfortunately, he and his cohorts have arranged matters so as to make it impossible for me to post any comments on their site. Guess they simply aren’t up to an actual discussion of their most peculiar — and blatantly inconsistent — definition of “socialism”.

UPDATE 10/26/08 8:01 PM EDT: What happens when one tries to ask wingnuts a couple of simple, direct questions about their claims? They refuse to answer those questions, and then close the comments thread in which one dares to ask those questions.

I cannot think of a clearer demonstration of the intellectual cowardice that is the distinguishing trait of wingnuts.

UPDATE 11/03/08 7:20 PM EST: Not having made the point sufficiently the first time, the craven milquetoasts at And Rightly So felt it necessary to display their intellectual cowardice by opening a second discussion on Alaskan socialism and then closing it as soon as it became clear that the tough questions were not going to stop.