Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, it seems that’s Sarah Palin’s decision to ditch the paltry-paying Alaska Governorship has reaped a whirlwind of financial riches – to the tune of $12 million thus far:

“When Sarah Palin decided to resign from office last summer, the decision came in no small part from the need to earn money to defend herself after a barrage of complaints and a highly biased media treatment in the 2008 presidential campaign,” writes Morrissey. “ABC News reports that Palin has succeeded perhaps beyond anyone’s imagining. Counting the book, the lecture circuit, and the media contracts, Palin has made more than $12 million in just nine months.”

Perhaps Palin will be willing to help out her state with a few greenbacks, especially after leaving Alaska with the largest debt burden in the U.S. Via Raw Story:

But when the former vice presidential candidate resigned as governor of Alaska in the summer of 2009, she left the state with a 70 percent debt-to-GDP ratio — the highest state debt burden in the United States.

That’s according to data compiled by the Washington Independent’s Megan Carpentier, who notes that Alaska has a debt burden similar to “that of Jordan and Palin’s favorite health care resource, Canada, and a higher ratio than Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, India, the Philippines or Uruguay.”

By comparison, crisis-stricken California has a debt ratio of less than 40 percent. All the more confounding about Alaska’s debt is the fact that it is an oil-producing region with a small population to share in that wealth. Oil-rich Alberta, Canada, for example, collects no sales tax and still managed to retire its debt entirely in 2004.

If only other lazy, don’t-want-to-work Alaskans would pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they too could score lucrative appearance fees, pundit jobs at Fox News and TV shows with The Learning Channel. Because, remember, fiscal conservatism starts with lining your own pockets.

–WKW

Crossposted at William K. Wolfrum Chronicles