by Damozel | Even as she boasts about earmark reform in Alaska under her stern tutelage, reporters are digging all sorts of evidence of her extreme fondness for getting federal money for Alaskan projects, even senseless ones. In other words---I'll parse it out for you---she's (1) flip-flopped on the issue of whether earmarks are tasty goodness or vile poison; and (2) lying about her own record of so-called "reform" and fiscal responsibility.
At NBC News' "Deep Background," Jim Popkin writes:
[M]usty records culled from the archives of the Wasilla, Alaska, city government reveal that Palin was directly involved in soliciting millions of dollars in earmarks for Wasilla when she was mayor. And she got help from a well-connected Washington lobbyist.
In a monthly status report to the city on March 7, 2000, newly hired "City Lobbyist" Steve Silver describes how the Palin administration had requested...federal earmarks... Mayor Palin reviewed and signed the lobbyist's report, dated April 5, 2000.
Those earmark requests have not previously been disclosed, said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator for the non-profit Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Ashdown said the lobbyist's report offers a rare window into a normally closed-door process. "The document you've found is a peek behind the curtain of how earmarks get approved in Washington," he said. (NBC News)
PS. The "well-connected Washington lobbyist" who helped Palin and her town to a load of free taxpayer dollars was " a former top staffer for Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska." (NBC)
Yes---that Ted Stevens, the Ted Stevens who was formerly chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee who was recently indicted for "seven counts of making false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms."
This Ted Stevens:
In 2000, Sen. Stevens' house underwent major remodeling, turning the one-story structure into a two-story structure and roughly doubling its size. The building contractor reportedly was paid by a Veco executive (Anchorage Daily News). Perhaps coincidentally, Veco has received $30 million in federal contracts since 2000 (WaPo citing FedSpending.org).
In May, two Veco executives pled guilty to bribery and other charges (Justice Dept.). One Veco exec admitted to laundering campaign donations by illegally reimbursing the employees who actually gave them (WaPo). (BN-Politics)
Of course it could just be a coincidence. I wouldn't like to say or imply otherwise.
On the other hand, maybe not.
In Silver's April 2000 memo to Palin, he writes that he had spent the month of February making appropriations requests to Sen. Stevens, a proud distributor of earmarks to his homestate of Alaska. "I am very hopeful that a good funding package will be approved later in the year," Silver writes.
Silver also attaches the five-page letter he sent directly to Senator Stevens and his staff, requesting the federal earmarks. Silver breaks down why Wasilla, "one of the fastest growing communities in Alaska," needs federal help, and says the small town "has tremendous needs which the State of Alaska cannot meet."...
Ashdown said that his research shows that as Mayor of Wasilla, between 1996-2002, Palin helped get nearly $27 million in earmarked federal funding.... (Jim Popkin)
[W]hile the mayor was asking the federal government to pay for Wasilla's basic needs, she was using the towns money (in the form of increased taxes) to build a playground for her kids.
She's the best hockey mom evah.
You know, that's what mayors, governors, and members of Congress do: try to get federal taxpayer dollars---the money you and I pay to the government--- filtered to their states to make their constituents do the happy dance. But earmarks are in a special category of "highly suspect."
Earmarks, it is argued, bypass the assessment of such programs based on merit and instead are dependent on the influence and power of the advocate. Here's the official definition from the Office of Management and Budget:
Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds.
As Congresspedia explains, "Many individuals and groups consider earmarks to be inherently unfair. Rather than directing funds to the most-deserving projects, many believe the ability of an earmark to make it onto a bill depends on the seniority and power of the member advocating it." Furthermore,
[E]armarks are rarely considered by the entire U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate during the construction of a bill....Given that most earmarks are inserted into massive pieces of legislation which fund the federal government, members of Congress are often reluctant to oppose them simply over an earmark. In addition, through the process of logrolling, members often agree to support a bill with another’s earmark in exchange for the same treatment. The result is bills with hundreds, if not thousands, of specifically-directed funding projects. Thomas A. Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, said that 98 percent of earmarks to appropriations bills in 2005 were added in the conference phase. (Congresspedia)
As governor also, Palin was apparently more than happy to ask for---and then receive and spend---all the taxpayer dollars she could get. She's flat-out lying when she says otherwise.
According to The L.A. Times, while campaigning for Governor, Palin residents of the communities that the $398-million-in- taxpayer-generated-dollars Gravina Island Bridge "to nowhere" that she was in favor of the bridge.
It's true that she later abandoned the project when it became clear to her as governor that "that the state's portion would be too costly." (LAT) In fact,
In September 2007, Palin canceled the bridge project, blaming a funding shortage and lack of congressional support: "Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the [Gravina Island] airport, but a $398-million bridge is not the answer," she said in a statement. (LAT)
In other words, if I am reasoning aright, she was all for the bridge till it became clear to her that taxpayers in her own state would have to defray more of the cost than she'd expected---which would NOT make them do the happy dance. (LAT) It wasn't that in a burst of indignation at the wastefulness of the project she indignantly turned down federal money that Congress was trying to force her to take, which is what she is trying to get people to believe.
Far from it.
After all, she didn't give back the $223 million in earmarked taxpayer dollars she'd received.(LAT) She found she had other uses for it.
Currently, the state is allegedly still busily engaged in building the "road to nowhere" which was supposed to connect to the "bridge to nowhere" at a cost to taxpayers of $26 million. (LAT)
Here's what some of the locals have had to say about this waste of taxpayer dollars:
Some residents of Ketchikan -- a city of 8,000 on a neighboring island where the bridge ["to Nowhere"] was to end -- see the road as a symbol of wasteful spending that Palin could have curtailed. Some of them even accuse her of deception.
"Surely we won't have to commute on the highway if there won't be a bridge," said Jill Jacob, who has been writing and calling the governor's office for the last two years to protest the road. "It's a dead-end highway, a dead-end road."...Jacob...says: "We begged her to stop."
An April 2007 letter to Palin read: "I am writing to encourage you to do away with the Gravina Access Highway. At about $8 million per mile of public money, this is a fiscal mistake." (LAT)
Yeah. They're possibly a little bit bitter. She promised them something she didn't deliver, and now she's making her failure to do that into a boast that she was a reformer.
"Here's my question," said Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein. "If Sarah Palin is not being truthful on an issue like the Gravina bridge project, what else is she not being truthful about?"...Weinstein, who backed the bridge project, said that Palin should have redirected the money. "If the bridge was canceled, give the money back, or get the earmark removed, or redesign the road so it's better for development," he said. "Especially if you're opposed to earmarks, and now you're telling the world you're opposed to earmarks."
Weinstein need only glance across the...waters separating his city from Gravina Island to see what he believes are millions of dollars being spent unnecessarily. Why, he asks, didn't she stop that?...
On a clear day recently, Mayor Weinstein flew over Gravina Island, looking down on the nearly completed road. "When Sarah Palin goes on national television and says: 'I told Congress, "Thanks but no thanks," ' it's not true," he said. "The implication is we didn't take the money. But we did."The mayor said he was considering posting a sign on the road for the rest of the world to see. He said it would read: "Built Under Gov. Sarah Palin, Paid for With Federal Earmarks." (LAT; emphasis added)
Lots more of this enthralling tale of government waste at The L.A. Times.
You'd think that the self-styled fiscal conservatives of the GOP would be more up in arms than anyone else about Palin having raked in taxpayer dollars for her various projects while claiming to have said, "No, thanks!" (as opposed to "Yes, please!")
After all, if we had back the money that Palin took from the government, it would help pay the cost of some of these corporate bail-outs.
But: no. Clearly they really don't have the fiscal welfare of ordinary taxpayers at heart if they are happy for McCain to sell Palin to us as a reformer of government waste.
Under all the rhetoric, it's increasingly clear that all they really care about is hanging on to power.
Memeorandum has more. See especially TalkLeft & Jesus' General
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