The State of Palanio is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by The Governor with an iron fist, and renowned for its strictly enforced bedtime, suspicion of poets, and spontaneously combusting cars. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 40.954 billion Palanioans enjoy great individual freedoms in everything except elections, which, where they exist at all, are populist shams for a dictatorship government that has no intention of ever giving up power.

The enormous, pro-business, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Welfare, Healthcare, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Westminster. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 69.5%.

The thriving Palanioan economy, worth a remarkable 2,881 trillion betales a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Pizza Delivery industry, with major contributions from Trout Farming, Information Technology, and Soda Sales. Average income is 70,352 betales, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 291,609 per year while the poor average 11,130, a ratio of 26.2 to 1.

Teenagers often ask adults to buy them Maxtopian Grass from government-run recreational drug stores, women who walk into the ladies' changing room are accused of being Peeping Toms, morale within the seismologist community has hit rock bottom, and printing out government documents requires the approval of at least three admins. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Palanio's national animal is the deer, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Palanio is ranked 220,760^th in the world and 633^rd in Ancient Lands for Nicest Citizens, with 6.84 average smiles per day.