Sarah Palin: Marxism For Me, But Not For Thee

by matttbastard

Hendrik Hertzberg in this week’s New Yorker:

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.

Silly coastal elite–who cares about Palin, Alaska, and her hypocritical embrace of wealth redistribution sharing and collective ownership? When pro-Americans use the term ‘socialist’ in reference to Barack HOOSAYN Obama, what they really mean is ‘uppity Negro’. As noted recently by The Artist Formerly Known as dnA, that particular dog whistle is a longstanding trope among the backlash set. Shit, I’m sure even Joe the Plumber knows this (“a tap dance…almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.” — how cute.)

Related: For more on Palin, Alaska, and IOKIYAR socialism, check out the aforementioned profile of Palin by Philip Gourevitch, featuring Palin’s quote lauding the virtues of wealth redistribution sharing.

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