Mayor Palin - Trail of bad blood

One of the throng of journalists who are camping out in Alaska and interviewing everyone in sight to cover Sarah Palin, Alec McGillis writes in yesterday's Washington Post on her time as Mayor of Wasilla.

As Mayor of Wasilla, Palin Cut Own Duties,
Left Trail of Bad Blood

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 14, 2008; A01

WASILLA, Alaska -- On Sept. 24, 2001, Mayor Sarah Palin and the City Council held their first meeting after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The council condemned the attacks and approved a $5,000 gift to a disaster relief fund. Palin said she would try to obtain materials from both attack sites to include in the town's "Honor Garden."

And then the council and mayor returned to their normal business: approving funds to upgrade the public well, issuing a restaurant permit and taking up a measure forbidding residents from operating bed-and-breakfasts in their homes. After a lively debate, the bed-and-breakfast measure lost, 4 to 1.

Since joining the Republican ticket, Palin has faced questions about whether she is qualified to be vice president or, if necessary, president. In response, the first-term Alaska governor and Sen. John McCain point to the executive qualifications she acquired as Wasilla mayor, a six-year stint from 1996 to 2002 that represents the bulk of her political experience.

Palin says her time as mayor taught her how to be a leader and grounded her in the real needs of voters, and her tenure revealed some of the qualities she would later display as governor: a striving ambition, a willingness to cut loose those perceived as disloyal and a populist brand of social and pro-growth conservatism.

But a visit to this former mining supply post 40 miles north of Anchorage shows the extent to which Palin's mayoralty was also defined by what it did not include. The universe of the mayor of Wasilla is sharply circumscribed even by the standards of small towns, which limited Palin's exposure to issues such as health care, social services, the environment and education.

Firefighting and schools, two of the main elements of local governance, are handled by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the regional government for a huge swath of central Alaska. The state has jurisdiction over social services and environmental regulations such as stormwater management for building projects.

With so many government services in the state subsidized by oil revenue, and with no need to provide for local schools, Wasilla has also made do with a very low property tax rate -- cut altogether by Palin's successor -- sparing it from the tax battles that localities elsewhere must deal with. Instead, the city collects a 2 percent sales tax, the bulk of which is paid by people who live outside town and shop at its big-box stores.

The mayor oversees a police department created three years before Palin took office; the public works department; the parks and recreation department; a planning office; a library; and a small history museum. Council meetings are in the low-ceilinged basement of the town hall, a former school, and often the only residents who show up to testify are two gadflies. When Palin was mayor, the population was just 5,500.

Palin limited her duties further by hiring a deputy administrator to handle much of the town's day-to-day management. Her top achievement as mayor was the construction of an ice rink, a project that landed in the courts and cost the city more than expected.

Arriving in office, Palin herself played down the demands of the job in response to residents who worried that her move to oust veteran officials would leave the town in the lurch. "It's not rocket science," Palin said, according to the town newspaper, the Frontiersman. "It's $6 million and 53 employees."

Further constraining City Hall's role is the frontier philosophy that has prevailed in Wasilla, a town that was founded in 1917 as a stop along the new railroad from Anchorage to the gold mines further north. The light hand of government is evident in the town's commercial core, essentially a haphazard succession of big-box stores, fast-food restaurants and shopping plazas.

The only semblance of an original downtown is a small collection of historic cabins that have been gathered for display in a grassy area beside a shopping center. Most residents live in ranch houses scattered through the woods. Churches, offices, stores and most other buildings are made of corrugated metal or composite materials. Standing in contrast to the utilitarian architecture are the lakes and majestic peaks.

Many of those in town were astonished to learn that Palin had been named McCain's running mate six years after leaving City Hall.

"I was happy in a way, because it is a new beginning for the country, but also I am very worried due to her lack of experience," said Darlene Langill, a self-described arch-conservative who served on the City Council during Palin's first year in office.

Duane Dvorak, the city planner when Palin took office, said the mayor's ambition had been plain to see, but added: "My sense is that this opportunity maybe came along before she was ready for it or thought it would come along."

The McCain campaign declined to respond to questions about Palin's tenure as mayor, but the current mayor, Dianne Keller, said Palin's tenure has prepared her to be vice president.

"Executive experience is executive experience. Whether you are a mayor or a governor or an executive at a company, the duties and responsibilities are the same," said Keller, who served on the City Council under Palin.

* * *

As constrained as Palin's duties as mayor were, her rise to power in Wasilla allowed her to hone the sharp political instinct that has guided her since. When she ran for City Council in 1992, it was as a young PTA mother and daughter of a well-liked local family.

But in her four years on the council, she picked up on sentiment that was building against the three-term incumbent, John Stein, who pushed for the 2 percent sales tax to pay for road, sewer and water upgrades. These investments laid the way for the city's growth, but they also unnerved some residents.

"People said, 'What are you doing to my city? I liked it better when we didn't have government,' '' said Richard Deuser, the city attorney at the time. "And Sarah really pandered to that resentment, that resistance to change. Sarah became their person."

Running against Stein, Palin called for an end to his "tax-and-spend mentality" -- and introduced Wasilla to the kind of socially conservative campaigning that was taking hold across the nation. A national antiabortion-rights group sent cards to voters praising Palin, and her brochures said she was "endorsed by the NRA." After she won with 616 votes -- 58 percent of the total -- a local TV station referred to her as Wasilla's "first Christian mayor," even though Stein and his predecessors were also Christian.

Palin took office as mayor in October 1996 with a show of force. She fired the museum director and demanded that the other department heads submit resignation letters, saying she would decide whether to accept them based on their loyalty, according to news reports at the time. She clashed with Police Chief Irl Stambaugh over his push for moving bar closing time from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. and for his opposition to state legislation to allow people to carry guns in banks and bars.

In notes that he took during a meeting in Palin's first week on the job, Stambaugh wrote that the new mayor told him "that the NRA didn't like me and that they wanted change," according to the Seattle Times, which reviewed the notes at a federal archive in Seattle. Stambaugh was fired on Jan. 30, 1997, partly, the mayor said, because he had not taken seriously her request for a weekly progress report "on at least two positive examples of work that was started, how we helped the public, how we saved the City money, how we helped the state, how we helped Uncle Sam." Stambaugh filed a wrongful-termination suit, which he lost.

Palin also differed with the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons. The Frontiersman reported at the time that Palin asked Emmons three times in her first weeks in office whether she would agree to remove controversial books. The librarian said she would not. The McCain campaign has confirmed Palin's questions but said that she never demanded removal of any specific books. Palin also fired Emmons on Jan. 30 but reinstated her after an uproar.

Although the town had a $4 million surplus, Palin cut the museum budget by $32,000, and the three older women who worked there quit instead of deciding which would have to go. But Palin dipped into the budget to create the deputy administrator slot, which some council members complained was at odds with her small-government stance. She told city officials not to talk to reporters.

A recall effort in early 1997 fizzled out, but hard feelings lingered. "Working in small towns, I had never seen someone come in and clean house like that in such a precipitous manner. It was pretty scary and emotional," said Dvorak, the city planner, who left after eight months.

Deuser, the former city attorney, said it was upsetting to hear the McCain campaign refer to Palin's takeover as a matter of getting rid of the "good ol' boy network."

"They were just good public servants who did a really admirable job and deserved better," said Deuser, who was replaced in 1997.

Jeff Carney, another local attorney, said Palin was just trying to assert herself against skeptics. Members of the town's old guard "thought they could run over her and were bothered that she could think for herself and make up her own mind up and not do what someone older and wiser told her to do," he said.

In 2006, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News she learned from it all. "At the time, it seemed perplexing that people would object. I was very bold about what needed to be done," she said. "It was rough with a staff who didn't want to be there working with a new boss. I learned you've got to be very discerning early on and decide if you can win them over or not. If you can't, you replace them early on."

Palin's replacements included a public works director who lacked engineering experience but was married to a top aide to a former Republican governor, and she made a former state GOP lawyer city attorney, according to the Daily News. Langill, the former councilwoman, said the new hires fit Palin's management style.

"Sarah always did and still does surround herself with people she gets along well with," she said. "They protect her, and that's what she needs. She has surrounded herself with people who would not allow others to disagree with Sarah. Either you were in favor of everything Sarah was doing or had a black mark by your name."

But things did run more smoothly from then on, and department directors whom Palin hired said she was good at delegating authority and letting them do their job. "She's a quick study," said Don Shiesl, who took over public works in 1998. "She's a heck of a public speaker and she works her magic on people. Give her four years, with some training, and she'll be up to snuff. She's not dumb, she'll be able to catch on to stuff real quick."

* * *

The town's coffers swelled as more stores moved in, letting Palin reap the political benefits of Stein's sales tax and infrastructure upgrades. With her natural charisma putting voters at ease after the initial turbulence, she was reelected in 1999 to the $68,000-a-year job. The budget expanded by nearly half during Palin's tenure as she increased spending on police and public works but kept a lid on city planning and the library, and further reduced the property tax.

Further buttressing the budget were the earmarks Palin sought for the town after hiring a Washington lobbyist for $38,000 a year. The town secured $27 million in all, including $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs and $15 million for a rail project.

Despite the city's flush accounts, the police department under the chief Palin hired to replace Stambaugh required women who said they had been raped to pay for examination kits themselves, a policy Palin now says she rejects. State legislation passed a year later required the town to pay for the kits.

The social-issues platform of Palin's first campaign found little outlet in town, beyond some symbolic moves such as declaring Wasilla a "City of Good Character" and a resolution opposing the legalization of marijuana. Instead, she focused on continuing the city's growth and development. Her second city planner, Tim Krug, said last week that the city would sometimes "lighten" regulations, to "make things more welcoming."

Some in town had for years pressed the city for a new space for the cramped library. Palin, who calls herself a "typical hockey mom," instead focused on building a sports complex with an NHL-size rink. In 2002, by a 20-vote margin, voters approved a $14.7 million bond to be financed by a half-cent sales tax hike.

Palin had forged ahead with the project despite a lingering legal dispute over whether the city had ownership of the land. A judge had initially ruled in the city's favor, but it later lost on appeal and had to pay $1.3 million more for the land.

"The only accomplishment of note was the building of the sports complex . . . and it was bungled," said Deuser, the former city attorney. Keller, the new mayor, defended Palin, saying she had relied on legal advice in proceeding with the project.

Bound by term limits, Palin ran for lieutenant governor in 2002, came in a strong second and was later rewarded with a high-paying spot on the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

In September 2002, she presided over her last City Council meeting. The council took up an ordinance to ban sex shops. The police chief announced that Raymond Chiemlowski was promoted to sergeant. Keller "reported that traffic lights on Knik-Goosebay Road will be turned on soon and encouraged everyone to use caution while adjusting to the new traffic pattern."

And with that, at 9:48 p.m., Sarah Palin's final meeting as mayor of Wasilla was adjourned.

Read the original HERE.

Carla Katz: Palin and good-old-boy rules

Writing in the Sunday Star-Ledger, Carla Katz, ex girl-friend of New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, has a go at analyzing Sarah Palin and concludes she has mastered understanding the 'old boy network'.

Sarah Palin, good ol' boy

Sunday, September 14, 2008

BY CARLA KATZ

She is reported to be smart, tough and a politically savvy working mother.

She has become the subject of celebrity-style media interest and of an astonishing barrage of stories and photos about her and her family -- some real and some fabricated -- winging across the internet.

Her arrival on the scene has triggered endless kitchen table discussions about parenting, work, teenage pregnancy and feminism. Her name has outpaced Google hits for "Paris Hilton" and "Michael Phelps."

Her speech to the Republican convention met with such breath less excitement from the mostly male delegates that I wondered if she had appeared, as depicted in that now-famously faked photo, in a flag bikini with a rifle rakishly held aloft.

The McCain team has worked tirelessly to project its vice presidential choice, Sarah Palin, as a "reformer" and a tough, whistle- blowing politician who took on the "old boys" in Alaska and won. But the reality is that Palin is herself completely entrenched in the "old boys network" it claims she fought.

Worse, Palin's policies, which are far to the right of the majority in this country, would not help women but would roll feminism backward and the "old boys" for ward.

Facing Barack Obama's popularity with women and blue-collar voters, the demographic that could likely decide this election, the McCain team needed a way to lift its campaign from its narcoleptic stupor. The surprising and risky choice of a nearly unknown Alaskan governor as McCain's running mate seemed like an ill-advised, ob vious attempt to capitalize on and lure discontented Hillary Clinton supporters who had fervently hoped to see a woman on the presidential ticket.

The notion that women who might have voted for Clinton would now vote for Palin (and McCain) simply because they share a gender seems preposterous. Yet one re cent ABC News-Washington Post poll suggests that on the heels of the Palin pick, white women have moved from backing Obama by eight points to supporting McCain by 12 points.

It's still unknown whether those poll numbers reflect a shift among women voters or whether they are a wild swing. What is becoming clearer, as Palin's past slowly surfaces, is that she is perfectly comfortable exchanging favors and playing by the "old boys club" rules -- seemingly with their playbook.

Palin has not been shy about accepting or giving political plums. In 2002, shortly after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, she was appointed by former Gov. Frank Murkowski to chair the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and given a six-figure salary despite the fact that she had no background in such issues.

After Palin unseated Murkowski as governor, she handed out the plums herself. One plum -- a paid position as director of the $35 billion Alaska Permanent Fund, which rebates oil royalties to residents -- went to Palin's close friend Debbie Richter, who also served as treasurer of Palin's gubernatorial campaign committee. Another went to Aryne Randall, branch manager of the Wells Fargo bank that gave the Palins and Richters loans for their properties. Palin's tendencies toward cronyism and a heavy-handed management style have pockmarked her political as cent, and she has left a string of questionable firings and resignations in her wake.

Once elected mayor of Wasilla in 1996, Palin fired the police chief, demanded the resignations of all other department heads, including the city planner and finance direc tor, and attempted to fire the city's librarian -- who refused to remove books from the town library -- re lenting only when the town op posed her action.

Local critics charge that Palin replaced the "old boys club" with a "new set of old boys," hiring inexperienced staff and a town administrator to do the work of running the small town while she still ac cepted her mayoral salary.

While governor, she fired the state's public safety commissioner, allegedly because he refused to dismiss her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper engaged in a custody battle with Palin's sister. An investiga tion into "troopergate" continues. Last year, Palin abruptly fired her longtime aide and legislative direc tor, John Bitney, just weeks after her friend Scott Richter told her that Bitney was having an affair with Richter's now ex-wife, Debbie.

While there is still little known about Palin, we do know that McCain has selected a running mate who, as a potential leader of the Free World, holds positions on women's issues that are out of touch with the majority of voters. That's especially true of her pro-life stance, which would deny women abortions even in cases of rape and incest.

We know that the swirling accusations of abuse of power, cronyism and a legacy of firings have infected her political life. We also know that the "old boys' network" lets women play if they play by the rules, and Palin seems to have mastered them.

Carla Katz is a labor leader who also writes and lectures on politics, power and issues affecting women and working families.

Read the original HERE.

Mayor: Under Palin, rape victims charged for exams

Under Sarah Palin's leadership as mayor, Wasilla was the only community in Alaska to charge rape victims for forensic examinations, a former governor disclosed. The policy provoked the Legislature to pass a law requiring communities to pay for such exams, reports George Bryson, writing in McClatchy's Anchorage Daily News.

Posted on Thu, Sep. 11, 2008

Critics: Under Palin, Wasilla charged rape victims for exam

George Bryson | Anchorage Daily News

Two state leaders lashed out at the public record of Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday as witnesses in a new "Alaska Mythbusters" forum coordinated by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Speaking to a teleconference audience of reporters around the nation, former Gov. Tony Knowles and current Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein -- both Democrats -- accused Palin of misleading the public in her new role as the vice presidential running mate of Arizona Sen. John McCain.

While some of their complaints have already been aired, Knowles broke new ground while answering a reporter's question on whether Wasilla forced rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests when Palin was mayor.

True, Knowles said.

Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill -- signed into law by Knowles -- that banned the practice statewide.

"There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla," Knowles said

A May 23, 2000, article in Wasilla's newspaper, The Frontiersman, noted that Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies regularly pay for such exams, which cost between $300 and $1,200 apiece.

"(But) the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests," the newspaper reported.

It also quoted Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon objecting to the law. Fannon was appointed to his position by Palin after her dismissal of the previous police chief. He said it would cost Wasilla $5,000 to $14,000 a year if the city had to foot the bill for rape exams.

"In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims' insurance company when possible," Fannon told the newspaper. "I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer."

An effort to reach Fannon by phone Wednesday was not successful.

Knowles and Weinstein also went after the Republican ticket on several statements now airing in campaign ads around the nation, including Palin's claim that she opposed federal money for the "bridge to nowhere."

The governor has refused to acknowledge her explicit support for the $230 million Gravina Island Access Project in her effort to sound more like an anti-earmark reformer to a national audience, Weinstein said.

And she still supports spending $400 million to $600 million on "the other Bridge to Nowhere," the Knik Arm Crossing, which would provide residents in Palin's hometown of Wasilla faster access to Anchorage, Knowles added.

"That project is moving right ahead," said Knowles, who served as governor of Alaska from 1994 to 2002. "The money for that project was not diverted anywhere else. ... So (for her) to say she said, 'Thanks, but no thanks....' I would say she said, 'Thanks!'"

A phone call to Meg Stapleton, a spokeswoman for the Alaska office of the McCain-Palin campaign, was not returned Wednesday.

However, the Republican side lost little time in organizing a national truth squad of its own to battle what it considers "smears" of Palin by Democrats. A list of the names of more than 50 members of a Palin truth team, posted Monday on the Atlantic Monthly magazine Web site, included three Alaskans: Stapleton (a former Palin aide); Kristan Cole, a longtime friend; and Republican Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

As a former governor, Knowles said, he's reluctant to criticize an active governor. But he decided to make an exception with Palin.

"In this situation it's not just a sitting governor," he said. "Our current governor is a candidate for the vice presidency and a heartbeat away from the presidency."

Read the original HERE.

Troopergate: Adviser warned her situation was 'grave'

Seems that a Palin adviser was so concerned about 'Troopergate' he bothered to advise her -- before McCain tapped her as his VP candidate -- that the matter could snowball into a bigger scandal. Jim Carlton writes in the Wall Street Journal --

Ethics Adviser Warned Palin
About Trooper Issue
Letter Described Situation as 'Grave,'
Called for Apology

By JIM CARLTON

September 11, 2008; Page A8

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An informal adviser who has counseled Gov. Sarah Palin on ethics issues urged her in July to apologize for her handling of the dismissal of the state's public safety commissioner and warned that the matter could snowball into a bigger scandal.

He also said, in a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal (see here), that she should fire any aides who had raised concerns with the chief over a state trooper who was involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister.

In the letter, written before Sen. John McCain picked the Alaska governor as his running mate, former U.S. Attorney Wevley Shea warned Gov. Palin that "the situation is now grave" and recommended that she and her husband, Todd Palin, apologize for "overreaching or perceived overreaching" for using her position to try to get Trooper Mike Wooten fired from the force.

Mr. Shea was acting on his own in writing the letter, with no official capacity. In late 2006, Gov. Palin asked him to co-write an ethics report for Gov. Palin with then-House Democratic leader Ethan Berkowitz that recommended new financial-disclosure rules for elected and appointed officials in the statehouse. That report served as a key document for the ethics bill she later signed into law.

After his initial letter in July, Mr. Shea followed up with another letter, dated Aug. 4, in which he told Gov. Palin that she probably couldn't legally shun a legislative investigation into the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

Gov. Palin has taken the opposite tack, hiring a private attorney to advise in a matter that has become known as "Troopergate." Seven Palin administration employees have refused to meet with the independent investigator. The McCain-Palin campaign has argued that the state legislature has no right to look into the matter. Palin spokesmen say the state personnel board is the appropriate investigative body, setting up a showdown between the state's legislative and executive branches.

The McCain-Palin campaign referred comment on the letters to the governor's office, which confirmed receipt of them. "While we can't always act on every idea, Gov. Palin thanks Mr. Shea for his counsel," Sharon Leighow, the governor's deputy press secretary, said in a statement.

Members of the House and Judiciary committees overseeing the probe -- which lawmakers want wrapped up by early October -- meet Friday to consider issuing subpoenas to the governor's staff.

Mr. Shea, in his Aug. 4 letter, warned Gov. Palin against taking her current approach. "My feeling is this is not a personnel matter. It doesn't have anything to do with the governing of the state of Alaska," he said in an interview this week.

The governor has denied any wrongdoing in the matter and said the commissioner was removed over an unrelated budget dispute. After bipartisan committees of the state legislature in late July approved $100,000 to hire an independent investigator to see if any laws were broken, Gov. Palin pledged the full cooperation of herself and her staff.

Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com.

Read the original story HERE.

Wall Street Journal: Record contradicts Palin on bridge

No less than the Wall Street Journal lights into Palin over the matter of her support of the infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere' -- before she stopped supporting it.

Record Contradicts Palin's 'Bridge' Claims

By ELIZABETH HOLMES and LAURA MECKLER

September 9, 2008

The Bridge to Nowhere argument isn't going much of anywhere.

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government "thanks but no thanks" to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.

The McCain campaign released a television advertisement Monday morning titled "Original Mavericks." The narrator of the 30-second spot boasts about the pair: "He fights pork-barrel spending. She stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."

Gov. Palin, who John McCain named as his running mate less than two weeks ago, quickly adopted a stump line bragging about her opposition to the pork-barrel project Sen. McCain routinely decries.
[Republican presidential candidate John McCain (right) and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, at a campaign rally in Lee's Summit, Mo.]
Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate John McCain (right) and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, at a campaign rally in Lee's Summit, Mo.

But Gov. Palin's claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.

"We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge," Gov. Palin said in August 2006, according to the local newspaper, "and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative." The bridge would have linked Ketchikan to the airport on Gravina Island. Travelers from Ketchikan (pop. 7,500) now rely on ferries.

A year ago, the governor issued a press release that the money for the project was being "redirected."

"Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer," she said. "Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Much of the public's attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened."

On Monday in Missouri, Gov. Palin put it this way: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere. If the state wanted to build a bridge we would built it ourselves."

Senior adviser Mark Salter pointed to her role in killing the project while in office and allocating the money elsewhere. When pressed further that it was actually Congress that stopped the earmark, Mr. Salter said: "She stopped it, too. She did her part." Mr. Salter added that he welcomed a fight over earmarks with the Obama campaign.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama used a town-hall style event in Flint, Mich., to attack Gov. Palin over the "Bridge to Nowhere" debate. He accused the vice presidential nominee of lobbying for the bridge and then hiding her initial position when she ran for governor and the project became unpopular.

"You can't just make stuff up. You can't just recreate yourself. The American people aren't stupid," he said. It's like "being for it before you were against it," Sen. Obama said, a reference to a damaging statement John Kerry made in 2004.

Why is this one issue such a big deal? Sen. McCain's anti-earmarks stance has been paramount to his campaign. The Arizona senator has blamed everything from the Minneapolis bridge collapse to Hurricane Katrina on Congress's willingness to stuff bills full of pork barrel spending.

As such, Gov. Palin's image as a "reformer" is part of the storyline the McCain campaign needs to complement the top of its ticket. Her quip about passing on the bridge and "building it ourselves" has been a staple of her stump.

But she's drawn considerable fire as result. Sen. Obama's campaign released an advertisement pointing out her original support of the bridge. And on Monday, an Obama staffer emailed a photo of Gov. Palin holding up a T-shirt that was made shortly after the bridge caught national attention. It reads "NOWHERE ALASKA" and "99901," the zip code of Ketchikan.

The McCain campaign jumped back with spokesman Brian Rogers calling the attacks "hysterical."

"The only people 'lying' about spending are the Obama campaign. The only explanation for their hysterical attacks is that they're afraid that when John McCain and Sarah Palin are in the White House, Barack Obama's nearly $1 billion in earmark spending will stop dead in its tracks," Mr. Rogers said.

At a rally today, Sen. McCain again asserted that Sen. Obama has requested nearly a billion in earmarks. In fact, the Illinois senator requested $311 million last year, according to the Associated Press, and none this year. In comparison, Gov. Palin has requested $750 million in her two years as governor -- which the AP says is the largest per-capita request in the nation.

--Amy Chozick contributed to this story.

Write to Elizabeth Holmes at elizabeth.holmes@wsj.com
and Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com

Read the original story HERE.

List of books Palin supposedly banned is an urban legend

Over at OpEd News, Rob Kall, posts on the latest urban legend: the list of books Sarah Palin supposedly wanted Wasilla's librarian to ban. Problem is there is no such real list.

I hope you haven't embarrassed yourself by forwarding this or similar emails!

Here is a portion of Kall's post --

I must have received ten of these emails telling me that this was THE list of books Sarah banned or attempted to ban from the Wasilla library when she was mayor. Save yourself from having to apologize to the list of people you would have forwarded this to. It's a bogus list, probably one assembled by adlebooks, here. They say it's an incomplete list of books that others have attempted to ban over the years.

Here's one of the many emails I received that is providing bad information:

Palin's Banned Books

*The following is a partial list of books that Sarah Palin tried to get banned when she was mayor of Wasilla. For the complete list, please click on this article. *

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff

This list probably came from a list assembled by Adler Books, a bookseller, here where they state, "Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States,"making a qualifying remark that it's an incomplete list.

You can read the complete story HERE.

Gov. Palin: Billed state for nights spent at home

Gov. Palin billed the state for sleeping at home -- and other eyebrow-raising expenses -- according to a report in today's Washington Post.

Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home
Taxpayers Also Funded Family's Travel

By James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, September 9, 2008; A01

ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official "duty station" is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

The governor's daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.

Gubernatorial spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Monday that Palin's expenses are not unusual and that, under state policy, the first family could have claimed per diem expenses for each child taken on official business but has not done so.

Before she became the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee, Palin was little known outside Alaska. Now, with the campaign emphasizing her executive experience, her record as mayor of Wasilla, as a state oil-and-gas commissioner and as governor is receiving intense scrutiny.

During her speech at the Republican National Convention last week, Palin cast herself as a crusader for fiscal rectitude as Alaska's governor. She noted that she sold a state-owned plane used by the former governor. "While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for," she said to loud applause.

Speaking from Palin's Anchorage office, Leighow said Palin dealt with the plane and also trimmed other expenses, including forgoing a chef in the governor's mansion because she preferred to cook for her family. The first family's travel is an expected part of the job, she said.

"As a matter of protocol, the governor and the first family are expected to attend community events across the state," she said. "It's absolutely reasonable that the first family participates in community events."

The state finance director, Kim Garnero, said Alaska law exempts the governor's office from elaborate travel regulations. Said Leighow: "The governor is entitled to a per diem, and she claims it."

The popular governor collected the per diem allowance from April 22, four days after the birth of her fifth child, until June 3, when she flew to Juneau for two days. Palin moved her family to the capital during the legislative session last year, but prefers to stay in Wasilla and drive 45 miles to Anchorage to a state office building where she conducts most of her business, aides have said.

Palin rarely sought reimbursement for meals while staying in Anchorage or Wasilla, the reports show.

She wrote some form of "Lodging -- own residence" or "Lodging -- Wasilla residence" more than 30 times at the same time she took a per diem, according to the reports. In two dozen undated amendments to the reports, the governor deleted the reference to staying in her home but still charged the per diem.

Palin charged the state a per diem for working on Nov. 22, 2007 -- Thanksgiving Day. The reason given, according to the expense report, was the Great Alaska Shootout, an annual NCAA college basketball tournament held in Anchorage.

In separate filings, the state was billed about $25,000 for Palin's daughters' expenses and $19,000 for her husband's.

Flights topped the list for the most expensive items, and the daughter whose bill was the highest was Piper, 7, whose flights cost nearly $11,000, while Willow, 14, claimed about $6,000 and Bristol, 17, accounted for about $3,400.

One event was in New York City in October 2007, when Bristol accompanied the governor to Newsweek's third annual Women and Leadership Conference, toured the New York Stock Exchange and met local officials and business executives. The state paid for three nights in a $707-a-day hotel room. Garnero said the governor's office has the authority to approve hotel stays above $300.

Asked Monday about the official policy on charging for children's travel expenses, Garnero said: "We cover the expenses of anyone who's conducting state business. I can't imagine kids could be doing that."

But Leighow said many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of "state business" with the party extending the invitation.

One such invitation came in October 2007, when Willow flew to Juneau to join the Palin family on a tour of the Hub Juneau Christian Teen Center, where Palin and her family worship when they are in Juneau. The state gave the center $25,000, according to a May 2008 memo.

Leighow noted that under state policy, all of the governor's children are entitled to per diem expenses, even her infant son. "The first family declined the per diem [for] the children," Leighow said. "The amount that they had declined was $4,461, as of August 5."

The family also charged for flights around the state, including trips to Alaska events such as the start of the Iditarod dog-sled race and the Iron Dog snowmobile race, a contest that Todd Palin won.

Meanwhile, Todd Palin spent $725 to fly to Edmonton, Alberta, for "information gathering and planning meeting with Northern Alberta Institute of Technology," according to an expense report. During the three-day trip, he charged the state $291 for his per diem. A notation said "costs paid by Dept. of Labor." He also billed the state $1,371 for a flight to Washington to attend a National Governors Association meeting with his wife.

Gov. Palin has spent far less on her personal travel than her predecessor: $93,000 on airfare in 2007, compared with $463,000 spent the year before by her predecessor, Frank Murkowski. He traveled often in an executive jet that Palin called an extravagance during her campaign. She sold it after she was sworn into office.

"She flies coach and encourages her cabinet to fly coach as well," said Garnero, whose job is equivalent to state controller. "Some do, some don't."

Leighow said that the governor's staff has tallied the travel expenses charged by Murkowski's wife: $35,675 in 2006, $43,659 in 2005, $13,607 in 2004 and $29,608 in 2003. Associates of Murkowski said the former governor was moose hunting and could not be reached to comment.

In the past, per diem claims by Alaska state officials have carried political risks. In 1988, the head of the state Commerce Department was pilloried for collecting a per diem charge of $50 while staying in his Anchorage home, according to local news accounts. The commissioner, the late Tony Smith, resigned amid a series of controversies.

"It was quite the little scandal," said Tony Knowles, the Democratic governor from 1994 to 2000. "I gave a direction to all my commissioners if they were ever in their house, whether it was Juneau or elsewhere, they were not to get a per diem because, clearly, it is and it looks like a scam -- you pay yourself to live at home," he said.

Knowles, whose children were school-age at the start of his first term, said that his wife sometimes accompanied him to conferences overseas but that he could "count on one hand" the number of times his children accompanied him.

"And the policy was not to reimburse for family travel on commercial airlines, because there is no direct public benefit to schlepping kids around the state," he said. The rules were articulated by Mike Nizich, then director of administrative services in the governor's office, said Knowles and an aide to another former governor, Walter Hickel.

Nizich is now Palin's chief of staff. He did not return a phone call seeking comment. The rules governing family travel on state-owned aircraft appear less clear. Knowles said he operated under the understanding that immediate family could accompany the governor without charge.

But during the Murkowski years, that practice was questioned, and the state attorney general's office produced an opinion saying laws then in effect required reimbursement for spousal travel.

Research editor Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.

Read the original story HERE.

Palin and Religion: Third Wave connections

Though it is somewhat breathless and goes into the Wasilla Assembly of God Church (at which Palin no longer worships, though she still on good terms) in detail, but not her current church, Bruce Wilson's piece for the Huffington Post provides valuable background (and links for further reading) on a corner of extreme Christian belief and practice with anti-Catholic overtones that most religious people -- Christian and non-Christian -- are probably unaware of.

While segments of this [Third Wave] belief system have been a part of Pentecostalism and charismatic beliefs for decades, the excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000.

The beliefs and manifestations of the movement include the use of 'strategic level spiritual warfare' to expel territorial demons from American and world cities...

Read the full story HERE.

Palin: First Gaffe: Fannie and Freddie

Sarah Palin displayed her lack of understanding of the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the nation's economy and well-being over the weekend, as Sam Stein reports for the Huffington Post...

Palin Makes Her First Gaffe

Sam Stein

September 8, 2008 11:50 AM

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."

Economists and analysts pounced on the misstatement, which came before the government had spent funds bailing the two entities out, saying it demonstrated a lack of understanding about one of the key economic issues likely to face the next administration.

"You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country's mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn't speak well for her, I'd say...

Read the full story HERE.

Palin: Her Stand on Issues

Over at the Huffington Post, Seth Colter Walls has a look at where Palin stands on a variety of issues.

How To Understand Sarah Palin: The Issues, Not Biography

September 8, 2008 01:01 PM


Who is Sarah Palin?

The question itself is open-ended to such a degree that it primes the reader for a complex answer. But what if the explanation turned out to be less complicated than advertised? And is achieved by, say, looking at a record of statements and political behavior rather than psychoanalyzing the subject?

The initial coverage of the Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee favored the latter: think the circumstances of her son Trig's birth, or her daughter Bristol's pregnancy. But what do these (admittedly gripping) personal yarns tell us about the candidate as a political creature? That she's militantly pro-life? A defender of the family? Well, not quite. In her short term as governor, Newsweek has reported that Palin cut funds for at-risk young mothers and sometimes angered abortion foes by refusing to allow full debates on hot anti-abortion bills.

After selling herself as an advocate in line with various issue groups, Palin has been more than comfortable declaring her independence at politically expedient moments. In this way, she shares a common trait with many ambitious politicians. As independent Alaskan pollster Ivan Moore told the Huffington Post right after Palin was announced as McCain's running mate, Palin in action has not always matched the ideological campaigner. "People were worried [about her conservatism]," Moore said, "but it didn't pan out in the sense that after she took office...she has governed pragmatically." That pragmatism also extends to her political self-definition. Though Palin now derides the "Bridge to Nowhere" federal project that John McCain often cites as bad government in action, she had previously trumpted its virtues as a candidate on the road to statewide notoriety.

But a pragmatic "common politician" is not the role McCain had in mind when picking Palin. Instead, he sought a "maverick" who could dazzle the press with the trappings of an unlikely biography while inspiring the base by signing the old favorites. And though GOP operatives publicly lament the media's exhaustive coverage of the Alaska Republican's personal life, there's reason to believe the guarantee of such breathless reporting was part of the reason Palin was selected. (As David Brooks noted on a Sunday chat show, the Palin "sizzle" is what's keeping McCain's campaign from bottoming out into Dole-style torpor.)

So, as the tabloid press promotes the intrigue of motherhood, pregnancy and rumored infidelity -- and while the navel-gazing mainstream media covers its own role in the mix -- Palin is perfecting her projection of a more orthodox ideological line to conservatives than McCain can manage. Though she recently offered praise for portions of Barack Obama's energy plan and was decidedly more extreme than John McCain on environmental issues, she now toes the line of her party much more explicitly. On the issue of Iraq, for example, she has been a quick study of the McCain policy manual. And though she said in 2006 that her busy schedule as governor precluded her from forming an opinion on the surge or the Iraq war at all, in her convention speech, she assumed enough policy mastery to decry Obama's forfeiture of victory there.

With an eye to the issues, then, here is a brief scorecard of where Palin stands:

On Energy: Drill here, drill now. But has also has supported a windfall profits tax for oil companies, contra conservative free-market wisdom. (The policy helps grease the skids in her home state, where the tax allowed Palin to add another $1,200 to the money every Alaskan receives from the state's Permanent Dividend for residents.) In fact, her reputation for "taking on" the oil companies actually extends from her implementation at the state level of a policy that John McCain himself opposes on the national stage.

On Iraq: In 2006, Palin said, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe." Earlier this year, she said she hoped the Iraq war was "a task that is from God."

On Taxes: Echoes McCain campaign's misleading mantra that Obama will broadly raise Americans' taxes. But in addition to supporting a windfall profits tax for oil companies herself, Palin also raised a sales tax as the mayor of Wasilla. The revenues were dedicated to a new sports facility that plunged the town into long-term debt. Meanwhile, the land deal for the complex is still being litigated in court.

On Abortion: Publicly opposed in all instances, save for the life of the mother. No exceptions for rape (even if it were her own daughter), incest or the health of the woman -- including those who are trapped in a cycle of domestic violence. However, Palin has also passed up opportunities as governor to help her allies push for a partial-birth abortion ban.

On Education: A claim that Palin gutted special education funding by 62 percent in her first year as governor, spread mostly on liberal blogs, is untrue. (The flawed analysis stems from a misreading of budget lines.) However, in a 2006 debate during her race for governor, Palin said her preference would be to have creationism taught alongside evolution in public schools. "Teach both," Palin said during the live debate, according to the Anchorage Daily News. "You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both." In a follow-up interview, though, Palin appeared to back off of that statement. According to the paper, Palin said "she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum."

The former Wasilla PTA board member also courted controversy as mayor by asking the town's librarian about banning certain books. While the conversation was a non-starter with the librarian, and never got down to specifics, the revelation has nevertheless stirred concern among some education professionals.

Palin also answered a questionnaire while running for governor by saying she supports "abstinence-only" sex education.

On Earmarks/Lobbyist Influence: Palin identifies herself as an enemy of special interests. But, as noted above, that reputation stems from taxing big oil in a state where the politics of energy are unusually distinct and parochial. In other arenas, Palin has not opposed requesting earmarks, or objected to the work of lobbyists. As mayor of Wasilla, she hired a firm with connections to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff that secured $27 million in projects for the town's 6,700 residents.

On Environment: Denies climate-change is man-made. Supports drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. Supports aerial wolf hunting, and fought the Bush administration's measures to protect polar bears.

For more issues, see "The Sarah Palin Digest" over at Think Progress. Overall, the legislative portrait of Palin shows a hard-right conservative whose unorthodox positions appear either influenced by the uniqueness of the state she governs, or political expediency. But with the candidate presently sequestered from media scrutiny and unable to explain her political philosophy with greater precision, it is the mystery of her biography that entices many. As CNN's entertainment reporter opined to Howard Kurtz on his Sunday show: "It's something that is ripped from the script of a 'Desperate Housewives' plot line. And there you have it. Of course the tabloids are going to go hog wild over this story. And I expect more to come. They are not going to let this go at all." (Another conservative commentator chimed in as well, telling Kurtz that "many members of the media were blindsided by this choice.... so they said, what do we go with? Well, we know she's a mom, so let's ask questions about that.")

Still, there's no guarantee that the soft-focus lighting of network television interviews will expose the fine grain detail of Palin's record, either. At this point in the race, biography may have the lead over policy, according to none other than McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, who told the Washington Post "this election is not about issues."

If that prediction turns out to be true, it won't have been for a lack of them.

Read the original HERE.

Questions that can be asked...and shouldn't

In an opinion piece, Star-Ledger columnist Kathleen O'Brien has written about the questions that may be asked of Sarah Palin and those that she thinks should not be.

Sarah Palin: Questions we can ask...and ones we shouldn't

Posted by Kathleen O'Brien September 07, 2008 6:30AM

In the steamy soup that is the state of public opinion about Sarah Palin, we have beauty, brains, child care, sex, abortion, the glass ceiling and mooseburgers all brewing in a hot, ugly mess.

Oy.

Forget al Qaeda. Forget the housing bubble. Forget that looming winter heating bill.

It's all about Levi, Trig, Bristol and Todd.

It has been my experience that we're in trouble when nearly every sentence in a debate starts, "Well, if I gave birth to .¤.¤. blahblahblah" or "Well, if my daughter .¤.¤. blahblahblah." Everyone's an expert -- on someone else's life.

So grab a pot holder and a set of tongs. We're going to pluck out of that soup all the things that are none of our business:

-- Palin's teenager daughter's pregnancy -- what choices she made before getting pregnant and what choices she made after getting pregnant. It surely can't be a private choice -- not with John McCain greeting the young couple at the airport -- but it is theirs alone.

-- Palin's teenage daughter's wedding plans. Their family, their call.

-- Any of Palin's own pregnancies, from her first to her last. When we reach the state where the local newspaper is relying on third-hand accounts of comments her obstetrician made to other patients, we've really hit rock bottom.

-- How they raise her kids, how she and her husband manage their family affairs.

-- How they schedule time to pursue their (multiple) livelihoods. It appears they have so many jobs it's unclear when they sleep, but good for them. We should all have such energy and ambition.

That leaves only a few issues floating in the soup. Unfortunately for Palin, they are doozies that may not go away:

-- Numero Uno, front and center, top of the list: Will she be willing to change her current routine so she could carry out the duties of the vice president without too much distraction?

Thus far she has juggled all her jobs by often bringing her kids to the office. I'll come out and say it: I want a vice president who can concentrate on the job. It may be a dull job, full of obligatory appearances at state funerals of obscure national leaders, but it still deserves her full attention.

After the birth of her youngest, she actually announced that she intended to take no maternity leave and would bring the baby to work with her. That's a cozy and heart-warming scene -- but not if you're trying to be the actual vice president of the United States at the same time.

I can hear you saying, "But you'd never raise that issue if she were a man!" I submit that I would, if that man routinely brought a newborn to work.

Hire a nanny (or have hubby quit his job) and this issue goes away.

-- She's got 'em and she lives 'em. Her family twice came face to face with the abortion question and both times rejected it as an option. (And probably never even seriously considered it in either case.)

Those remain private decisions. But here's what remains a legitimate voter issue: Will she push for laws that order everyone else to make that same choice?

Read the original post HERE.

Palin: The Kilkenny email from Wasilla

Crosscut, an online news resource based in Seattle, has reprinted an email about Sarah Palin by Anne Kilkenny, which has been widely circulated on the Internet in recent days. Kilkenny has known and interacted with Palin for years, and was one of the residents of Wasilla who supported the librarian Palin tried to have fired after she refused to ban books from the library. Kilkenny appears to try being evenhanded and seems to give Palin credit where credit is due, but the overall picture is hardly flattering.

About Sarah Palin: an e-mail from Wasilla
A suburban Anchorage homemaker and activist — who once did battle with the Alaska governor when Palin was mayor — recounts what she knows of Palin's history.

By Anne Kilkenny

Posted on September 2, 2008.

Editor's note: The writer is a homemaker and education advocate in Wasilla, Alaska. Late last week, Anne Kilkenny penned an e-mail for her friends about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whom she personally knows, that has since circulated across comment forums and blogs nationwide. Here is her e-mail in its entirety, posted with her permission.

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Gov. Sarah Palin since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first-name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99 percent of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice for vice president and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe."

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life." She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her lifestyle ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time) and less than two years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration, most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by more than 33 percent. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefitted large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenue during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list, though — borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through, on a piece of property that the city didn't even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in five to seven years without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as governor Sarah proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenue: Spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys." Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the city and as governor, she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal — loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the state's top cop.

As mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's police chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a state trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than two dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town, introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal city administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Gov. Frank Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil and gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job, which paid $122,400 a year, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this commission (who was also the state chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club," when she dramatically quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Sen. Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects — which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance — but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork."

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The state party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla, there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiaitive that would have either protected salmon streams from pollution from mines or tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on whom you listen to). She has pushed the state's lawsuit against the Department of the Interior's decision to list polar bears as a threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for president; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being president.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there are a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

Claim vs. Fact

* "Hockey mom": True for a few years
* "PTA mom": True years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
* "NRA supporter": Absolutely true
* Social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, but vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).
* Pro-creationism: Mixed. Supports it, but did nothing as governor to promote it.
* "Pro-life": Mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby but declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation.
* "Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.
* Political maverick: Not at all.
* Gutsy: Absolutely!
* Open and transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
* Has a developed philosophy of public policy: No.
* "A Greenie": No. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.
* Fiscal conservative: Not by my definition!
* Pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.
* Pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents
* Pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.
* Pro-labor/pro-union: No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

Why am I writing this?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name, you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "bad things happen when good people stay silent." Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that's life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the city librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

Caveats: I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending and taxation two years ago (when Palin was running for governor) from information supplied to me by the finance director of the City of Wasilla, and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: Did I adjust for inflation? For population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall — they are swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000" up to 9,000. The day Palin's selection was announced, a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-1990s.

Anne Kilkenny is a homemaker and education advocate in Wasilla, Alaska.
© 2008 Crosscut LLC. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.crosscut.com/2008-election/17341/

Read the original HERE.

Paul Mulshine: Another reason to dislike the pick

Paul Mulshine, the Star-Ledger's curmudgeonly conservative columnist, finds another reason he doesn't care for the Palin pick.

Yet another reason to dislike the Palin pick

Posted by Paul Mulshine September 06, 2008 2:41PM

As readers know, I am not the biggest fan of the Sarah Palin nomination for a number of reasons I articulated earlier.

Here's another one: John McCain's choice of her for the Republican vice-presidential nomination was an obvious attempt to pander to what many people mistakenly call "the base" of the Republican Party, evangelical and fundamental Protestants.

In fact, Catholics outnumber any other religious groups among GOP voters by an overwhelming margin. And the base of the party has a lot more Catholics in it than evangelical Protestants.

Yet the GOP has a nasty habit of not just ignoring Catholic voters but openly antagonizing us, as you can see in the column from 2000 that I am reprinting below.

McCain didn't help matters.

By the end of his selection process, the three leading contenders were a Mormon, a Jew and an evangelical. Even though the Democrats had put a Catholic in the No. 2 spot - and the Catholic vote will be pivotal in the key battlegound states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania - McCain barely gave lip service to the notion of putting a Catholic on the ticket after a minor flirtation with Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania early in the process. He seemed to think it perfectly natural to put a fellow Protestant on a ticket that has been packed with Protestants since the founding.


But there was in fact one Catholic on the Republican national ticket. Here's a little quiz. Can you name him?

Read the original story HERE (including the answer to the final question).

Religion: Her goal to follow God's will

New York Times reporters Kirk Johnson and Kim Severson put together a longish piece on Gov. Palin's religious background. Certainly not out of bounds, since she makes a direct appeal to religious conservatives (and Sen. Obama's religious background has been rather thoroughly raked over the coals).

September 6, 2008

In Palin’s Life and Politics,
Goal to Follow God’s Will

By KIRK JOHNSON and KIM SEVERSON
The New York Times

WASILLA, Alaska — Shortly after taking office as governor in 2006, Sarah Palin sent an e-mail message to Paul E. Riley, her former pastor in the Assembly of God Church, which her family began attending when she was a youth. She needed spiritual advice in how to do her new job, said Mr. Riley, who is 78 and retired from the church.

“She asked for a biblical example of people who were great leaders and what was the secret of their leadership,” Mr. Riley said.

He wrote back that she should read again from the Old Testament the story of Esther, a beauty queen who became a real one, gaining the king’s ear to avert the slaughter of the Jews and vanquish their enemies. When Esther is called to serve, God grants her a strength she never knew she had.

Mr. Riley said he thought Ms. Palin had lived out the advice as governor, and would now do so again as the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

“God has given her the opportunity to serve,” he said. “And God has given her the strength to carry out her goals.”

Ms. Palin’s religious life — what she believes and how her beliefs intersect or not with her life in public office in Alaska — has become a topic of intense interest and scrutiny across the political spectrum as she has risen from relative obscurity to become Senator John McCain’s running mate.

Interviews with the two pastors she has been most closely associated with here in her hometown — she now attends the Wasilla Bible Church, though she keeps in touch with Mr. Riley and recently spoke at an event at his former church — and with friends and acquaintances who have worshipped with her point to a firm conclusion: her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God’s servant.

“Just be amazed at the umbrella of this church here, where God is going to send you from this church,” Ms. Palin told the gathering in June of young graduates of a ministry program at the Assembly of God Church, a video of which has been posted on YouTube.

“Believe me,” she said, “I know what I am saying — where God has sent me, from underneath the umbrella of this church, throughout the state.”

Janet Kincaid, who has known Ms. Palin for about 15 years and worked with her on some Wasilla town boards and commissions when Ms. Palin was mayor here, said Ms. Palin’s spiritual path, from the Assembly of God to Wasilla Bible, has had a consistent theme.

“The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible,” Ms. Kincaid said. “Her principal ethical and moral beliefs stem from this.”

Prayer, and belief in its power, is another constant theme, Ms. Kincaid said, in what she has witnessed in Ms. Palin. “Her beliefs are firm in the power of prayer — let’s put it that way,” she said.

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Ms. Palin had been baptized Roman Catholic as an infant, but declined to comment further.

“We’re not going to get into discussing her religion,” she said.

In the address at the Assembly of God Church here, Ms. Palin’s ease in talking about the intersection of faith and public life was clear. Among other things, she encouraged the group of young church leaders to pray that “God’s will” be done in bringing about the construction of a big pipeline in the state, and suggested her work as governor would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God.”

She also told the group that her eldest child, Track, would soon be deployed by the Army to Iraq, and that they should pray “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”

Larry Kroon, who has been the presiding pastor at Wasilla Bible for the last 30 years, declined to describe Ms. Palin’s beliefs or the role she plays in the church, but suggested that she is more of a back-bencher than a leading light.

“Todd and Sarah come in as Todd and Sarah — they’re very discreet about it,” he said, referring to Ms. Palin’s husband.

One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.

“A lot of churches are about music and media and having a big profile,” Ms. Morgan said. “We are against that. That is why it is so attractive to politicians because they can just sit there and be safe.”

“We’ve gotten a lot of their people when the other churches get too extreme,” Ms. Morgan continued. However, she added, “If you lift your hands when we’re singing, we’re not going to shoot you down.”

Mr. Kroon (pronounced krone), a soft-spoken, bearded Alaska native, said he was convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning — including scrutiny, he said, for errors and mistranslations over the centuries that may have obscured the original intent.

It is that analysis, he believes, not anything he preaches, that makes most people in his church socially conservative, he said.

“I trust my people can go out with that and they can deal with an issue such as abortion — any issue out there — whether it’s in the public arena, or in the hospital room with their relative dying of cancer, because they will be equipped with a biblical perspective that will enable them to react in that situation,” said Mr. Kroon, who described himself as “pro-life.”

“Our congregation would tend to be conservative, and it’s not because I’ve told them to be,” he said.

Some Jewish groups have raised concerns since the announcement of Ms. Palin’s selection to the Republican ticket that discussions in the Wasilla Bible Church might go beyond conservatism. Last month, a leader in the group Jews for Jesus, which advocates converting Jews to Christianity — but which has been accused by some Jews of anti-Semitism — spoke at the church. The speaker, David Brickner, spoke enthusiastically about the “miracle” of conversions in Israel by the group’s missionaries.

The church has also come under fire among some gay advocacy groups for promoting an upcoming Focus on the Family conference in Anchorage dealing with the so-called curing of homosexuality.

The Wasilla Bible Church, which draws 800 to 1,000 people for Sunday service, itself is discreet to the point of self-effacement. Only a single small sign on the gravel road leading up to the property declares the name. On the three-year-old building itself, which looks more like a warehouse than a cathedral, a large cross over the rear entrance is the only declaration of purpose.

People who know the church and its parishioners say that the mix of simplicity and quirkiness is common in Alaska, where many people have moved over the years and left their pasts and old church lives behind.

Homegrown churches like Wasilla — started in the early 1970s by a handful of families, including Ms. Morgan’s, during the construction boom in building the Trans-Alaska pipeline — have become singularly Alaskan. Mr. Kroon still remembers the days of a single room with a wood-burning stove that he would have to fire up before services.

Mr. Kroon said the Alaskan spirit of go-it-alone individuality gives the church a mix of joiners and resolute nonjoiners. The church offers full-immersion water baptism, which some people want and others do not.

“I have people who’ve been here since I got here, and they still say, ‘Don’t put me on the membership roll,’ ” he said. “There’s definitely a cultural element.”

Read the original story HERE.

Gov. Palin: Path paved with luck

A backgrounder on Gov. Sarah Palin by reporters from the Anchorage Daily News, a McClatchy newspaper.

Palin's path to the top paved with good luck

Sean Cockerham | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: September 02, 2008 09:23:44 PM

St. PAUL, Minn. — A charmed political career launched Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin from small-town mayor to the Republican National Convention, where she's set to accept the nomination for vice president Wednesday night.

Call it luck, the hand of providence or perfect timing, but it has blessed Palin throughout her public life.

"There's no question that a sequence of opportunities has opened for her and everything fell beautifully in place," said Ivan Moore, an Anchorage pollster and political consultant. "That should not detract from the fact that she took perfect advantage of it."

She gained a reputation as an ethics reformer shortly before FBI raids on the state Capitol made corruption a huge issue for Alaska voters. Then high oil prices flooded the state government with money, saving her from having to make tough choices on taxes and budget cuts. More recently, the national mood turned to seeking change and fresh faces from outside Washington, and then John McCain discovered Palin. In short, she's enjoyed a sun-kissed political career.

"She's been in the right place at the right time," said state House speaker John Harris, a Republican from Valdez. "And she's taken advantage."

Like a local coffeehouse singer suddenly tapped to star at Madison Square Garden, Palin will take a stage Wednesday night that's far bigger than any she's ever faced.

Her career began in Wasilla, Alaska, population about 7,000, where she was the mayor in the late 1990s. The town was booming. Sales tax revenues poured in from big box stores, allowing Palin to gain a reputation as a fiscal conservative by cutting property taxes even as the town budget grew to include projects such as an ice rink complex.

Palin later leveled charges that the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party was doing party business on the state's dime. She also took a stand against the Republican state attorney general, who helped push a project for a company in which he had a business interest.

Those were risky moves for Palin at the time, said Gregg Erickson, the former publisher of an influential publication on state government who's watched Alaska politics for decades. Palin was an upstart challenging the state's political power structure. But when the FBI later discovered how bad the corruption was in Alaska politics, Palin already had established a reputation as a reformer.

Suddenly, there was no better position to have in Alaska politics than outsider.

"She was either incredibly lucky or incredibly prescient in that she turned out to be damn near the only Republican in the state who had stood up to corruption," Erickson said.

Next, Palin challenged incumbent Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski in 2006. Others in the race had more experience, and Palin was a dark horse. But Murkowski was unpopular, seen by many as an old-style politician who angered the public with actions such as buying a state jet for his travel despite voter and legislative opposition. He proved to be the perfect foil for Palin's campaign.

"He'd hurt himself badly," said Harris, the Republican state House speaker. "That opened the door for somebody like Sarah Palin, who ran on a sort of reform ticket. The time was right and the public absorbed it."

Palin beat Murkowski five to one in the Republican primary on Aug. 22, 2006. Nine days later, the FBI raided the offices of state legislators, which positioned her perfectly for the general election campaign.

Fortune smiled again when Palin became the governor. Well-timed indictments and convictions of state legislators for taking bribes to help the oil industry boosted her key proposals. Those included a big tax hike on the oil companies and a natural gas pipeline plan that the companies fought.

Palin was also fortunate in avoiding the budget problems that her predecessors struggled with. Oil prices have skyrocketed during her term as governor, leaving the state government swimming in cash from oil taxes. That let her avoid the backlash from raising taxes or cutting services that had dogged previous governors.

The state was so flush that she could even hand out money, a $1,200 check to every Alaskan to help with energy prices.

Palin was also in the right place at the right time when presidential candidate McCain needed a social conservative who was also a reformer, someone who'd fire up Republicans but also keep his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, from monopolizing the theme of change.

That leads her to Wednesday night's stage.

Even a lucky streak can suffer a stumble; Palin felt forced to reveal on the eve of accepting the vice-presidential nomination that her unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant. Republican convention delegates rallied behind her overwhelmingly, however, saying it was a private family matter that Palin was handling well.

Despite that unwelcome development, the character of her career remains clear to Erickson and other Alaskan political analysts: Her rise to the national stage was paved with good fortune.

"But it is hard to separate luck from foresight," Erickson added.

(Cockerham reports for the Anchorage Daily News. Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News contributed to this article from Anchorage, Alaska.)

Read the original story HERE.