Word: oiled
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...launch can be seen as all the more frustrating because the country appears to be missing out on an epic global commodities boom. The archipelago of 17,500 islands is rich in natural gas, copper, coal, gold and other sought-after resources. Yet while some sectors, like palm oil, have seen exports surge, others have stagnated despite soaring commodity prices. A dearth of investment combined with aging fields has reduced the country's once formidable oil industry to near insignificance. Production has plummeted by one third in the past eight years. There may be undiscovered oil still in the ground...
...fact is, even if Palin is not running the state, she's responsible for who does. That's because all the politicians who would succeed her - indeed, most of the new power structure of the state - are either made in her image (reformers sloughing off old ties to oil and the scandal-ridden state GOP) or were plucked from the valley where she grew up to serve important state positions after she became governor in 2006. If you want clues about Palin's leadership abilities, don't look to her perfectly rehearsed stump speech; look north to Alaska, where...
Parnell is one of those remade in Palin's image. Once an an oil lobbyist, Parnell latched onto Palin's reform agenda when he ran for lieutenant governor in 2006. Last year, with Palin's endorsement, he announced that he would take on the state's only delegate to the House of Representatives, Don Young, in a GOP primary race. Young, one of the most entrenched members of Alaska's political establishment, is currently under investigation for taking money from the oil services company VECO. (Alaskan Ted Stevens, the Senate's longest-serving Republican, is scheduled to stand trial later...
...wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Alaska State Fair (held in his hometown of Palmer, just down the road from Wasilla), and his legal experience is mainly in worker's compensation cases. It's not the heftiest resume for a state that faces extraordinarily complicated legal wrangling over big oil and other resource extraction issues...
...Americans like stories more than issues. Policy proposals are useful in the theater of presidential politics only inasmuch as they illuminate character: far more people are aware of the fact that Palin put the state jet on eBay than know that she imposed a windfall-profits tax on oil companies as governor and was a porkaholic as mayor of Wasilla...