Sarah Palin’s Canceled Reality Show Gets Millions In Government Subsidies

Sarah PalinSarah Palin, the Alaskan governor most famous for sinking the GOP’s presidential campaign and quitting half way through her term, is in the midst of yet another controversy. This one pits her against Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller in a Fox News contributor’s cat fight.

It seems that the company that produced “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” was the beneficiary of over a million dollars in tax credits that were made possible by a law that Palin signed while still governor. When news of this got out, many conservatives took Palin to task for the apparent hypocrisy. As a Tea Party leader, and possible Republican candidate for president, Palin has been a vocal advocate of small government, so this legislation should be as repugnant to her as say…funding for NPR.

Chris Moody of the Daily Caller posted an article on the swirling debate amongst conservatives who found Palin’s position to be inconsistent with her public stance. Palin called the article “ludicrous” and accused Moody of “spinning” the story to give a false impression.

Palin: The accusation hinges on the notion that I signed the legislation into law knowing that it would personally benefit me. That’s absurd.

That is absurd. Because that is clearly not what that accusation hinges upon. The accusation addresses the hypocrisy of opposing big government intrusions on the free market except when they are used to advance her television career. And Despite recently declaring that she was through whining about the media, she opens her Facebook defense by saying…

“Goodness, cleaning up the sloppiness of reporters could be a full time job. In response to The Daily Caller’s online inquiry, I gave them a statement that the writer buried on his story’s second page (which most people won’t even notice – I didn’t even notice it)…”

First of all, what does it say about Palin that she didn’t notice the bright red text immediately following the article that said “NEXT PAGE: Read Palin’s full statements on the tax credit.” Is that her idea of “buried?” Is she really so lazy that, in an article about herself, she fails to observe such an obvious link? Secondly, the statement she gave was a lengthy 671 word defense that was 35% longer than the article to which she was responding.

Ironically, I agree with Palin that the state is justified in providing incentives to boost business. Many states offer tax credits for production companies in order to persuade them to bring their projects and checkbooks. The problem here is that Palin doesn’t agree with Palin. She is an adamant evangelist for small government and regards these sort of initiatives as outside the role of the state.

What’s more, the Alaska measure takes into account the likelihood that an out-of-state film production company may not have significant tax liabilities in Alaska, making the tax credits of little value. So they permit the producer to profit by selling his tax credits to other Alaska-based firms. That means that local oil companies or foresters or fisheries can acquire the deductions at a discount and reduce their contributions to Alaska’s treasury. So the visiting producer and some big corporations are benefiting at the expense of Alaska’s citizens.

Nice work, Sarah.

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6 thoughts on “Sarah Palin’s Canceled Reality Show Gets Millions In Government Subsidies

  1. You have to admit only Sarah would disagree with Sarah. Her voice is like a kid running their fingernails down on a chalk board. It hurts to listen.

  2. Mark, I’m not saying I disagree with this and other articles about Palin you’ve written, but I feel the need to say the following: These articles are no longer necessary. She makes an epic ass out of herself far too often for anybody other than other epic asses to even care what she did THIS time. It’s over for her, has been for a very long time. There is absolutely no chance for recovery in respect to anything important (actually important) that she wants or will attempt to do. I feel she, as a topic, is above you. Don’t be discouraged from satirizing this retard however, just don’t feel it necessary to counter anything she says, it would be far too easy anyway. That said, it may be better to replace her with Newt or Huckabee or Pawlenty. Actually, now that I think about that it would be easy to do them too, especially when they’re about (starting) to rip each other apart for the nomination. But, of course it’s your website and I’ll probably read the Palin articles anyway.

    • I agree with you in principle, but I continue to cover Palin because she is technically a media personality (Fox News contributor/reality TV star), not a politician. And this site is about media. Plus, I get tired sometimes and need an easy target just to relax a bit.

  3. She is becoming more irrelevant by the day. Her 15 minutes was up 30 minutes ago.

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