#alaska

In what has been described as an evil hoax, the town of Bethel, Alaska, has learned it is not getting a Taco Bell. Not now. Not ever.

There is broadband internet, though. "It has no running water or working toilet, but this Mongolian-style tent, called a yurt, in the remote town of Seldovia, Alaska, is home to Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman, and their son, 11-month-old Katmai."

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.”

"Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin’s rally that got all the national media coverage!"

"Palin says Alaska supplies 20 percent of U.S. energy. Not true. Not even close."