So as not to disappoint people, I figured it was time someone contributed some decent hackery. Some Republicans are claiming that Governor Palin’s experience isn’t any less than Obama’s. She was after all mayor for a number of years.
As mayor of Wasilla, she had to manage a $12M budget (2007). To put it another way, she had to manage just a little more as 2 rich men, at least as defined by McCain. Perhaps I should offer more credit for her management of the State budget. The budget there is a much more impressive. She managed $7B in expenditures there. Balancing a budget would be more impressive if Alaskans were taxed $7B. They aren’t though. They are directly taxed for $352M. With licenses and fees, the total Alaskan tax burden is $800M. Alaska receives $2B from the Feds and $4.5B from Petroleum extraction. For comparison’s sake, let’s look at the City of Richmond, VA. For FY06, they taxed and spent about $580M. This prompted Karl Rove to say,
Will all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he’s been a governor for three years. He’s been able but undistinguished. I don’t think people could really name a big, important thing that he’s done. [Kaine] was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it’s smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa, or Gilbert, Arizona; North Las Vegas, or Henderson, Nevada. It’s not a big town
Those 3 years as governor of Virginia, by the way, were spent managing a $37B budget, five times Alaska’s budget. For comparison sake, that little budget item called the Iraq War is costing us $12B a month.
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