Palin's Pallor

In my eyes, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been darn near the perfect woman - bold, strong, courageous, conservative, not to mention gorgeous and my age.  That, as well as the second X-chromosome and her pro-energy rhetoric, has made her a contender for the dubious honor of riding the "Straight Talk" Express straight into the ground in November.

Until I read this:

Over the opposition of oil companies, Republican Governor Sarah Palin and Alaska’s Legislature last year approved a major increase in taxes on the oil industry — a step that has generated stunning new wealth for the state as oil prices soared. …

BP Alaska, which runs Prudhoe Bay, said earlier this year that it had delayed the development in the western region of the North Slope as a result of the tax. ConocoPhillips cited the same reason for scrapping a $300 million refinery project.

“What the tax has done is take away all the upside,” said Doug Suttles, president of BP Alaska. The U.K.-based oil company paid more than $500 million in taxes to Alaska last quarter — far more than it earned in profits from Alaskan oil, according to Suttles.

Investment dollars are flowing instead to places that have a better return, like the massive deep-water projects offshore in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, where ConocoPhillips said the government take equals less than 50% of the barrel.

Ensign Ed casts the death knell for a Palin veepancy:

In fact, Palin’s plan looks similar in concept to Barack Obama’s plan.

Yeeouch.  There go my (political!) fantasies, right down the drain.

But it's true.  Not only did she mug "Big Oil," but she used at least part of the booty to (does this sound familiar?) send a blizzard of one-time $1,200 "rebate" checks to Alaskan voters to (does this sound familiar?) "help them offset the high cost of gasoline".  Which Palinomics helped make even more expensive by driving away energy exploration from the "last frontier" to...well, not friendlier environs, but at least ones slightly less fiscally hostile.  I guess things really are "tougher in Alaska".

How she squares this with championing drilling in ANWR is anybody's guess.  Maybe it's because ANWR isn't state-owned land.  But even that flimsy distinction is pure, undiluted incoherence.  Looks like she won't be journeying to Minneapolis in a few weeks as anything other than a tourist.

What's that old Jefferson Starship lyric?  "Sarah, Sarah, no time is a good time for goodbye...."