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.
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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).