PALIN IS LYING TO AMERICA
John McCain's doubletalk express is in store for a major public embarrassment as the record of his Vice Presidential running mate begins to surface. Let me be frank, Governor Sarah Palin has lied to the public about her position on pork barrel politics. Pork barrel spending, or earmarks, occurs when a politician obtains government money for local projects to earn favor with local voters.
John McCain has made damnation of pork one of the main themes of his campaign despite the fact that most earmarks greatly benefit local communities throughout the country by helping pay for hospitals and much needed infrastructure. Despite McCain not differentiating between good and bad earmarks, everyone agrees that some of these projects are outrageously wasteful. McCain has often pointed to the "bridge to nowhere" project in Alaska as one of these wasteful projects. The "bridge to nowhere" was a $400 million project designed to replace a ferry from Ketchikan, Alaska to the Ketchikan Airport, which only serves 200,000 passengers a year- the island itself only has 50 inhabitants. The bridge was to be as long as the Golden Gate Bridge but by comparison the Golden Gate has over 48 million passengers a year.
The obvious waste of money presented by this bridge was apparent to everyone. However, the corrupt and money hungry Alaskan Republican Party, which has made Alaska the nation's leader in federal earmarks per capita, refused to back off until it was obvious the bridge was a damaging political issue. Governor Palin was an avid early supporter of the project. In October 2006 Palin was asked whether she continued to support the bridge to which she replied, "Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now - while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." That differs a bit from Palin's recent speeches like the one at the GOP convention where she said, "I told the Congress thanks, but no thanks, for that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves."
We all know that many politicians lie but do they have to be so arrogant about it. There are actually pictures of Palin wearing a t-shirt in support of the bridge to nowhere and once the bridge project was scrapped she still spent that $400 million on other pork projects in Alaska. It was only a matter of time before these lies came to the public's attention and shame on McCain and Palin for thinking Americans were stupid enough to not investigate Palin's bogus claims.
I wish the lies stopped there but they do not. Palin's support of wasteful pork goes so much deeper and the more we find out about her record the more we realize McCain's decision to choose her as his running mate was driven by political ambition and not the desire to find someone best fit to be second in command of the greatest country on earth.
While Palin was mayor of Wasilla she got $27 million in pork for her town of less than ten thousand people. The question that must be asked is whether or not this money was spent on useful public projects or wasteful political pandering. Who should we ask? Let's ask the self-anointed pork buster himself? This according to CNN, "In a 2001 statement opposing a transportation spending bill McCain singled out for criticism about $3 million worth of those projects (for Wasilla). McCain's list of objectionable spending included a $2.5 million road project for the town that then had a population of 5,500, as well as a $450,000 appropriation for an agricultural processing plant." Ouch. McCain's folks probably should have checked the record before rushing to make their politically pandering pick.
Alaskan reporter and former Palin aide, Larry Persily, has recently stated Palin is not telling the whole truth about earmarks. He said of Palin, "She was hungry for funding from the federal government..." Also according to a recent CNN report, "Palin not only sought money from Alaska's congressional delegation, but she hired the former chief of staff to veteran Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens -- now under indictment in a wide-ranging corruption probe -- for help. The result was that Wasilla won $600,000 for a new bus facility, $1.75 million to upgrade its dispatch center and $2.4 million to improve water and sewer facilities."
The transition from mayor to governor did little to satisfy Palin's hunger for pork. In her brief two years in the Alaska Governor's Office, Palin has asked for $450 million dollars for a state with a population of just over 680,000 people. How this person has the nerve to go out and sell herself as a change agent is beyond me. Palin is the female version of Bush. She is a just another politician that says one thing and does another and neither her nor John McCain can be trusted to lead this great country out of the corrupt mess we have suffered through for the past eight Republican-led years. Let's change things on November 4th by returning our country to the people with a vote cast for Democrat Barack Obama. |
