Please allow me to comment on Sarah Palin, John McCain’s choice for VP. Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. I worked in Wasilla on and off staring in 1990. Back then there was one stoplight and one grocery store. There was Hoopies, the main bar where you could play midnight basketball. Last I visited in 2006, Hoopies was gone and Wasilla has been transformed from sleepy town to Anchorage bedroom community, which has meant miles of ugly suburban strip development. It is the definition of really out of control growth.
Thanks to Senator Don Young and uncle Ted Stevens, huge freeways now drop you at the end of a line of big box stores and fast food joints. Wal-Mart built one big box then abandoned it and built another on the other side of the highway. Fred Meyer built their super store right on Wasilla Lake, but oriented their big box with its ugly backside towards the lake. They overbuilt so much that the formerly semi-upscale Creekside shopping mall stands mostly derelict replaced by miles of crappy half empty mini-malls. Traffic can be hell in Wasilla, especially weekday morning because of all the commuters going to work in Anchorage or on a Friday night when the Kings are running. Yeah, think about being in Alaska and sitting in a 20-minute line of traffic. Wasilla and the surrounding area is nothing but sprawl. Wasilla is a town with no center and no soul. Sarah was city councilor then mayor for 10 years when all this development was going on.
Sarah is governor of Alaska. Alaska has a small population. More people live in the Portland area. Alaska is a state that operates mostly on oil money and Federal handouts. Now there’s an economic model. Apparently Sarah shares the propensity of most Alaskans to want to mine, drill, cut down, trap, catch, and shoot everything they can. The State of Alaska has put forward time and again its plan to shoot hundreds of wolves, including pups, each year. I imagine if McCain/Palin are elected there will be enormous pressure to exploit ANWR. I’ve driven the pipeline, I’ve been on the North Slope, and I’ve been in the oil complex at Prudhoe Bay. You don’t want to open ANWR now.
So if this is the type of background and results you want, vote for McCain/Palin.
Curtis Bradfish
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2008.
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As the conventioneers keep pushing Sarah Palin as a strong executive with a track record of fiscal conservatism, keep her actual record in mind.
รข Palin also raised taxes on oil companies after Murkowski’s previous tax regime produced falling revenues in 2007, despite skyrocketing oil prices. Alaska now has some of the highest resource taxes in the world. Alaska’s oil tax revenues are expected to be about $10 billion in 2008, twice those of previous year. BP says about half its oil revenues now go to taxes, when royalty payments to the state are included. Earlier this week, Palin approved gas tax relief for Alaskans, and paid every resident $1,200 to help ease their fuel-price burden.รข ยรข “Fortune, September 1, 2008
Of course, the oil companies arenรข โขt going to pay those taxes. Theyรข โขre going to pass them on to me and you. Thus, as Governor, Sarah Palinรข โขs policies of increased resource taxes have had the net effect of placing an indirect tax on every American who purchases gas or petroleum products, in order to subsidize the residents of Alaska. This is despite the fact that, at $51,571 per year, Alaska has the forth highest median household income in the United States, the Alaska permanent fund is already $40 billion dollars in the black, Alaskaรข โขs annual general fund expenditures are somewhat less than $1.2 billion per year, and each Alaskan had already received their annual oil revenue payment for 2007 ($1654).
Thatรข โขs right. As those of us down here in the lower 48 were paying $4+ per gallon at the pumps, Sarah Palin was busy giving every man, woman, and child in Alaska $2854 of our money.
In case you were wondering, there are around 674,000 people in Alaska, for a net outlay of $1,923,596,000 (nearly $2 billion).
No wonder Sarah Palin said no to the bridge to nowhere after she said yes to it. Sarah doesnรข โขt need anything as cumbersome as the US Senate to rape the American tax payer.
It is amazing to me that the Democrats bitch about the economy and jobs and then do everything in their power to stop growth and job creation.
You can smear, you can lie, you can invent, you can run scared, but your lame leftist elitist ass just lost the race. Palin is an actual person, not an out of touch elitist megalomaniac, cardboard cutout, tarted up invention of the anti-American Harvard radical dingbat left, like both your candidates. Her continued 85% popularity rating means you are full of shit. Ordinary everyday people like and admire her, they voted for her, they would and will vote for her again while practicing their religion and shooting their guns. Don’t you just hate that?
No wonder you also rans are spinning like a broken top with a left wing turd glued to one side. Your dumbass Obama chose one of the six longest term insider, egotistical political hacks in American history to affect his bullshit “new change.” Pathetic is as pathetic earns. McCain trumped Obama bigtime and you are going to have to learn to live with it. Stay tuned…This was a race changer and you know it. Go Sarah!!! Go Sarah!!! Vote McCain/Palin and get something real done…by honest, actual, real life accomplished human beings…
‘Country First!’ when put into practice, means ‘Obama last!’
Hmmm…
C.T., what in the original Letter to the Editor or my comments constitutes a smear, lie, invention, or sign of fear?
For the record, I’m not a leftist, elitist ass. I’m an intellectual, elitist ass. As such, I don’t give one whit about you’re guns or you’re religion. Iรข โขm only worried about my own. And I certainly will not be brainwashed by Hannity, O’Reilly, Fox and Friends or Micheal Moore, Thom Hartman, and ex-SNL actors.
If I were a huge Obama supporter, Iรข โขd be overjoyed at the selection of Sarah Palin. You can mark August 29th, 2008 on your calendar as the day that John McCain lost the election. Your irate, ranting response to our comments is the perfect indicator of whyรข “all anger, no substance.
The rest of us are tired of the mindlessness of empty partisan rhetoric. I know it gets you guys in the neo-Republican base all fired up, but most Americans want real answers to real questions. On a day that the DOW lost 340 points and joblessness in America hit a 30 year high, from the Republican convention we heardรข ยฆnothing.
You are right about one thing. Sarah Palin IS a game changer. Sheรข โขll guarantee a victory for Barack Obama. Right now youรข โขve been sold on the lipstick on a pit bull. Eight weeks from now youรข โขll see that it was really just lipstick on a pig.
McCain didn’t even want Palin even up to that last day. He was forced to go with her. They want to drill for oil off the coast and dig deeper in Alaska destorying the wildlife reservation (ANWR) that was established in 1960, under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to keep us out in the first place. I do not want to be dependant on foriegn oil either. I want the next president to push for cleaner solution not more drilling. It is possible to have our economy running green. Anything is possible. Stop the drilling, start inventing. Here is a question: Say McCain/Palin do get into office and eventually get there hands on ANWR, passing some bill that allows them to tap into that oil reserve, How long would it last? At the cost of how many different wildlife species? And what detrimental effects would it have on our planet? Come on people think about something other than your next pension plan for a change!
I think she’s hot!
Alaska is an interesting ‘Republican’ model. It receives $1.67 in Federal taxes for projects for every dollar its citizens pay in taxes. That has not changed under Palin’s watch.
The investigation into potential abuse of power by the governor and the governor’s staff has been stalled by the recent refusal of Palin’s staff to testify at hearings–and their appearance will now be by subpoena. Allegations that the investigation is politically motivated are unwarranted because an independent counsel selected by a bi-partisan committee is handling the investigation. The process was only attacked as bipartisan by Republicans after the governor’s nomination for vice president.
The campaigns assertion that the state jet was sold on ebay at a profit is false–misleading at best. It was listed on ebay repeatedly–failed to sell. A broker sold the jet to a private party for less than the state paid and less than listed. The jet was primarily used to transport prisoners out of Alaska to Arizona for incarceration. Using the Federal Marshal system has cut the cost from $1600 to $850 per prisoner. Again, however, federal funds from the other 49 are subsidizing state expenses.
Palin is wildly popular in Alaska. this is a large part because she increased the annual stipends to residents from $500 to over $1600, and after raising taxes on the oil companies, used state revenues to give them another $1200 to assuage the pain of high fuel costs. The taxes will be passed along by the oil companies to the consumers in the rest of the country. This is the reason Republicans claim to be against taxes–but Alaska is a special case, I guess.
Stevens earmarked a quarter billion dollars for a bridge that Palin has been described as opposing–and saying ‘not thanks’ to the Feds for funding. She said no after the cost of the project rose to almost $400 billion and she told those involved that she was not able to get additional funds from the congress to cover that expense. Regardless, she and the state of Alaska took the earmarked funds and used them for other projects. Not exactly the ‘reformer’ or ‘anti-spender’ she paints herself to be.
Republicans have tied themselves in logical knots trying to add foreign policy gravitas to their VP pick. Alaska has a border with Canada and Russia? Then equally qualified are the governors of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Maine, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California? She commands the National Guard–although a single foreign policy decision cannot be provided by the campaign. The campaign stated she had traveled internationally to the Middle east, Germany and Ireland. She got a passport a year ago and went to visit the troops in the Middle East, with a stop over in Germany, and a fueling stop in Ireland. It was nothing more than an attempt to inflate her thin resume.
The most laughable resume inflation is her ‘executive experience’ that is continually touted by her party. The mayor of Prineville has governed a larger city than Palin. Alaska has a population 20% larger than Portland. Thanks to the influx of federal earmarks to cover state projects and the taxes on the oil companies, it is a state swimming in cash–estimated to have a surplus of $5 to $9 billion–estimates are all over the place. Palin does cut costs and personally peruses the budget for waste–she even cut $1.5 million from social programs that included assistance to unwed mothers. The difficult choices that face other governors do not face Alaska. In spite of this, she has had to hire an administrator to assist her in her duties. How does that experience prepare her for the VP job? She did not create the surplus. She has not had to make tough choices.
Let’s face it–she was chosen at a late date by a candidate in trouble, to consolidate a ideological base that really doesn’t care about anything than the so-called conservative agenda. She is rabidly anti-abortion. She wants to teach creationism in schools as science. She is willing to consider violating the First Amendment and then fire Librarians who don’t support her in those efforts. She is a hunter and a big supporter of the Second Amendment and an NRA member. She advocates Abstinence Only education, but looks at teen pregnancy and a shotgun marriage as a fine example of Republican Family Values when it involves her daughter. (I don’t even want to think about the Republican fallout if it was Obama’s teenage daughter getting pregnant!)
Except for the personal failings with the daughter, all of these are legitimate campaign issues that need to be questioned and explored. The Republican campaign now has painted Palin as a Victim of the Media, and off limits to such questioning. What? The party that has spent the last Thirty years decrying the victimology that minorities assert as unwarranted whining now is willing to claim that their VP is a victim of liberal, sexist media types only wanting to crucify their candidate?
Emerson wrote รข A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a weak mind.รข ย This inconsistency doesn’t appear to be a sign of strength, however. It is a desperate ploy by the Republicans to redefine their candidate and campaign–and it may work. But putting pearls on a pig doesn’t change its basic character–only the appearance.
Palin’s addition to the Republican ticket just shows how desperate the Republican party is. The Republicans are in disarray, nominating McCain who contradicts the party half the time, and now Palin, a charismatic, but totally unqualified VP candidate with a record of using the pork-barrel politics that she is now campaigning against. Trying capitalize on Hillary’s momentum and trying to get the “spite” vote is the most pathetic move I have ever seen. All I know is I saw a big pickup truck with a “NOBAMA” sticker parked in the fire lane, in front of Safeway with his engine idling, because obviously impeding traffic, fire engines, and pumping extra greenhouse gases into the air isn’t of his concern. Thanks, Mr. Pick Truck. You gave me just the incentive I needed to give money to the Obama campaign, not so much to make him a winner, but to make you a loser.