Welcome to the People’s Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the state’s Republican governor. That’s $22,400 for a family of seven, like Palin’s. Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests oil revenues from state lands, has paid out a dividend on invested oil loot to everyone who has been in the state for a year. But Palin upped the ante by joining with Democrats and some recalcitrant Republican state legislators to share in oil company windfall profits, further fattening state tax revenue and permitting an additional payout in tax funds to residents.

No wonder she is popular with voters in a state whose residents pay no income or sales taxes but are blessed with state coffers rolling in cash at a time when all other states are suffering. Indeed, when the oil companies pay more taxes to the state of Alaska, they get to write that off against their federal tax obligation, leaving the rest of us to make up the shortfall.

The state of Alaska owns most of the oil-producing land and has been getting upward of 85 percent of its budget from the oil companies that lease the fields, even before Palin helped increase the state’s cut.

But wait!  Obama has suggested a windfall profit tax on the oil companies and McCain has ridiculed him for suggesting it.  But yet, his running mate has it in place in her state.  Just how will McCain justify this to the base.  Will he now support the tax?  JUst how will this play in this election?