Palin's Alaska is OPEC?

Is Michael Kinsley a liar or just an idiot. That's the question I asked myself after reading this Gem:


Back to reality. Of the 50 states, Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 2 1/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska's government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it. Although Palin, like McCain, talks about liberating ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, there is no evidence that being dependent on Alaskan oil would be any more pleasant to the pocketbook.
Alaska is, in essence, an adjunct member of OPEC.

Alaska has a population of just under 700,000 but is by far the largest geographically, which means it's infrastructure is stretched tremendously. This is what's known as Economy of Scale, which is something Kinsley either doesn't understand or dishonestly ignores. In this context it means that every state will have certain fixed costs that can be measured across the population. Since Alaska's population is so small relative to its size, taxes and spending and taxes per capita will always be very high.

Alaska is an adjunct member of OPEC? WTF is this clown talking about? Again, Alaska has to tax that oil because it doesn't have enough residents to support the infrastructure required to get that oil to the lower 48 states. And to compare one of our states to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela is not only slanderous, it's just plain stupid.

Even more stupid is Kinsley's suggestion that dependence on Alaskan oil would no more preferable than dependence on OPEC.