Much of this material is already in related Palin posts but just now appearing in some major outlets. We’ll say major news services have required a few days to carry out due diligence and confirm facts and sources.
Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington points out false bravado and outright lies at the RNC Convention and steadies the truth:
Mitt Romney said, “throw out the big-government liberals”, but for most of the last eight years Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, a very poor eight years for America too.
Silly Huckabee said, “[Palin] got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States” but Biden collected 76,165 votes in 23 states before he quit the primaries – 10 times the entire population of Wasilla.
McCain said “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities” but the smallest state guard of 4,200 does not report to the governor.
McCain said “[she’s] in charge of 20 percent of America’s energy supply” but the ability to tax oil is the only task granted any Alaskan governor. Supported by merely half of Alaska’s Republicans, Palin brought a major tax increase on state oil production only by piggybacking on Democratic efforts underway for years.
“She has succeeded in her own limited policy agenda as a Republican governor by having the Democrat caucus in lock-step with her.” [LATimes]
McCain said “She’s fought oil companies and party bosses and do-nothing bureaucrats and anyone who puts their interests before the interests of the people she swore an oath to serve.” but ‘no one is closer to the oil industry’.
In February, she said she’d ‘like to support McCain but felt she couldn’t at this particular time because of his stand on ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.’ [Anchorage Daily News 2/3/08]
Oil and gas lobbyists substantially fund her primary and general campaigns. She enthusiastically promotes her ties with offshore oil development, oil drilling in Alaska’s ice-filled waters and allowing oil companies into the Alaska wildlife refuge. Plus Palin is closely allied with promoters of pipelines, nuclear and coal….
To distance herself from backlash, Palin’s campaign for ethics was initiated just minutes before Alaska’s state representative was to be finally convicted of corruption.
Todd Palin – oil worker, champion snowmobiler, hunter and commercial fisherman, and cook, babysitter, hockey dad, abstinence educator, and special needs nurse – joined state officials on the two trips with mining companies that want to dig for gold, zinc and lead in remote Alaska, as well as seek permission to mine new deposits at existing facilities. The costs of his travel were disclosed by his wife as gifts.
Are Rove’s Republicans taunting Catholics by using a fungelical smear? With desperate lies and personal attacks, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin mocked Barack Obama for his works as a community organizer more than two decades ago! Obama’s community organization was the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a project of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. What does the evangelical church that Palin belongs to think of Catholics?
“The GOP wants to talk about small town issues, well being a community organizer, addresses just that.”
Palin said Obama “plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars” but Obama’s plan raises the income of most Americans 5 percent, $2,200 annually.
McCain’s plan will add $200 billion or $300 billion per year to American debt, slightly less than George Bush but as much as $5 trillion. And McCain hopes to alter our ‘voluntary tax system’ but to date has hidden the announcement as flat tax, tax reform and other sly insider terms. [link]
Palin said Obama has not passed “a single major law or reform” but both during his career in Illinois and in Congress, Barrack Obama has introduced or co-sponsored laws to
- cut tax breaks for oil companies,
- intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction,
- destroy conventional weapons stockpiles,
- control racial profiling,
- require recorded interrogations,
- overhaul death penalty procedures,
- provide income tax breaks,
- reform health care,
- increase aid to veterans,
- strengthen public oversight of federal spending,
- and major ethics reform – “the most far-reaching since the Watergate-era campaign financial disclosure law”. [link]
Pointing to more lies,
Sarah Palin’s lies,
she said “I have protected the taxpayers…”
Waspzilla doesn’t protect taxpayers.
“As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist – the former Chief of Staff of indicted Senator Ted Stevens – and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million for a small town now encumbered in debt, local conflict, lost careers, and unfunded infrastructure.
Wasilla was debt free before Palin, and almost 20 million in debt when she left office! To raise revenue, she lifted Wasilla’s sales tax by winning an election with only a 20 vote margin.
She doesn’t protect taxpayers:
“In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita pork in the nation.
Sarah Palin had been on Senator McCain’s list of irresponsible governors. Criticizing Palin by name, McCain said, “Earmarking deprives federal agencies of scarce resources, at the whim of individual members of Congress.” [link]
She didn’t sell “the plane on eBay”. She hired a broker. The plane was sold to an Alaskan at a $300,000 loss.
Palin said “In these times of economic uncertainty, this is great news for the state…” while Alaska’s natural gas was sold to Japan
, triggering the closure of refineries in Alaska because of gas shortages!
She doesn’t protect taxpayers:
“While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, her opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a bridge to nowhere.” Palin promised locals she would complete the bridge. Later, she accepted this same amount of pork funding to build other projects!
In any case, Congress had canceled Ted Steven’s earmark thirteen months before she took office! She was never involved with sending the earmark back, and told Congress nothing. Earlier, the oil firm Veco, co-indicted with Stevens, had supplied 10 percent of her campaign fund.
The FBI possesses 100s of hours of wiretaps in the Veco case, there are rumors I won’t link to, that as the corruption indictments draw forward mud will appear to clear the air about Palin’s dealings in Alaska.
She doesn’t protect families either.
Sarah Palin failed to help pass a bill to raise the benefits for children and pregnant women from 175% of the poverty level to 200%. while other states already set them at 200% to 250%. [LATimes] “Her administration had the appearance of paying absolutely no attention to any of the rest of the unglamorous side of government, whether it be dealing with human services, public services, highways, all the routine aspects.”
Why don’t we insist on something much better?
You should know that since 1948, each Republican Administration has cost us more money than we would have had without them!
Oh woe, Rove and GOPAC have “got one of its own on the ticket, and you should expect her to deliver the goods every bit as much as they do.” Be curious. Find out what GOPAC is and why Republicans believe the same canned plank and say the same words.