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.

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).

Paul Mulshine: Two questions for Palin worshippers

Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine, a card-carrying conservative, has plenty of questions about Palin and her nomination. Here is his most recent sally.

Two questions for Palin worshippers

Star-Ledger blogs

Posted by Paul Mulshine September 04, 2008 8:49PM

As you might have guessed, I am not the sort of person to go into ecstasy over something a politician says. Thus I was perhaps the only conservative in America not overly impressed by the Sarah Palin appearance at the Republican National Convention.

Sure, she did a good job of reading a speech before an audience of supporters. But I didn't hear a lot in there on some of the key questions of this campaign. So I invite you to weigh in with predictions on how Palin will handle the following questions.

ONE: What are the chance she will oppose the neoconservatives on their immigration amnesty? Both George W. Bush and John McCain are ardent advocates of an amnesty that would permit as many as 12 million illegal immigrants to stay in the country. Here's my prediction of the chance that Palin will come out against the McCain-Kennedy bill between now and Election Day: Zero.

What's your prediction?

TWO: What are the chances she will oppose the neoconservatives on their liberal internationalist foreign policy?

Both the traditional conservatives such as Pat Buchanan and the libertarians who post on the Lew Rockwell blog have expressed worries that Palin will fall into the nutty neocon policies that led George W. Bush into his nation-building exercise in Iraq.

Buchanan recently wrote: "Look for the neocons to move with all deliberate speed to take her into their camp by pressing upon her advisers and staff, and steering her into the AEI-Weekly Standard-War Party orbit."

As for the libertarians, they worry that Palin will endorse the Bush/McCain policy of endless wars fought for the benefit of foreigners rather than Americans.

Again I put the chances Palin will stand up to the neocons in favor of traditional conservative values at zero. But if you've got any evidence she is truly willing to stand up against the open-borders/endless-nation-building crowd, please feel free to post it.

Read the original HERE.