Some poop on Sarah

Since I bill myself as a former Alaskan, a few of my blogging friends have written to get my take on Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, I left Alaska just as she was emerging on the public scene. Most of what I know comes from casual attention to news from the old country and gossip from my three sisters, all of whom still live in Alaska. This letter is floating around the internet this week. I do not know the writer Anne Kilkenny, but as far as I can tell, what she says is true. Except for formatting it to my blog, I have made no changes to the letter.

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah 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% 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 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 life-style 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 2 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 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. 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 benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues 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 over $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. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs 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 $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs 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 she 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 revenues: 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 (see below).

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 2 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-Governor 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 & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, 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 Senator 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. 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 a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as 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’s 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 & 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 (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), 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 & taxation 2 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-90’s.

Anne Kilkenny

Praying for McCain's death

Once again, the far Christian right demonstrates that they are overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

Antiabortion militant and all-round theocratic activist Jay Rogers of Florida, whose blog is called The Forerunner, writes:

Pray for John McCain's salvation and speedy death.

[...]

And then there is this guy, a self-described Christian Reconstructionist whose blog handle is Ixion, and is apparently from Tennessee:

May the LORD cause McCain/Palin to win the White House in 2008, and then smite the godless McCain in favor of Palin. Amen.

Based on the little bit that they know about Palin and her religious beliefs, these guys are ready to pray for the death of a president and all the risky disruption that would go with that. Their desire for a theocracy where they can dictate the moral lives of others completely trumps any rational or practical considerations. They live in dream-like bubble entirely defined by their hatred of other Americans.

So far, this is just the isolated rantings of two bloggers who do not officially speak for any major church or group. But how many others out there share their feelings? Last year Rev. Wiley Drake, then Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray to God to smite the staff of Americans United for Separation of Church and State because they filed a complaint against him with the IRS for violating his church's tax exempt status.

The most extreme elements of the religious right are not happy with McCain as their standard bearer. Many were disappointed by Huckabee's rise and fall. Now they see another chance to put one of their own in office with Palin. We can probably expect to see more of this kind of imprecatory prayer (literally calling on God to damn someone). The Secret Service should keep an eye on this and make sure they limit there actions to prayer. After all, many of these same people come from the wing of the anti-abortion movement that cheers on doctor killers.

Rare Mammoth Skull Found

Meanwhile in non-Palin news...

A very rare fossilized skull from a Steppe mammoth has been unearthed in the Auvergne region of southern France. The Steppe mammoth is the common ancestor of both the Woolly mammoth and the Colombian mammoth, the types known in North America. Steppe mammoth fossils are much less common that the later mammoths and complete skulls are practically unknown. The exact relationship of the various mammoths is disputed and a better understanding of the Steppe mammoth could clear up a lot of questions about the evolution and spread of the mammoths.

McCain / Eagleton

Once upon a time there was a presidential candidate who failed to vet his veep, was terribly embarrassed by it, and had to find a new veep for his ticket. They lost that election in one of the worst defeats in in living memory. Expect to hear the name Thomas Eagleton a lot over the next few days. Eagleton was on the 1972 Democratic ticket with George McGovern for 18 days and campaign paraphernalia with their names are now coveted collectors' items. Let's see if Palin lasts longer. Meanwhile, stock up on those campaign buttons and tee shirts, they might be valuable some day.

If English was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for me

When Sarah Palin was running for governor in 2006, Eagle Forum, the anti-abortion group run by Phyllis Schlafly, sent a questionnaire to the candidates. Most of her answers were those desired by the group. She would allow abortion only to save the life of the mother (that is, opposed it even for rape and incest). Thought parents should be able to pull their kids out of any school classes that used books or taught information they disagreed with. Favored abstinence-only sex education ,school vouchers, and guns. Opposed hate-crime laws, legalized gambling, benefits for same-sex spouses, and gay marriage. But one answer stands out for its sheer silliness.

Q: Are you offended by the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

A: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Let's take this one from the top. None of the founding fathers ever said the pledge. It was written long after they were all dead. The first version was written by the Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy (the brother of utopian novelist Edward Bellamy) in 1892. The words were tinkered with a few times during his lifetime, but never included "Under God." Those were added in 1954 by an act of Congress at the request of the Catholic fraternal organization, the Knights of Columbus. The KC wanted the change to get more God into our public life to highlight the difference between the US and the godless Soviet Union.

This is not a bit of historical trivia. The story of the evolution of the pledge has been told in the press countless times over the last half dozen years while various court cases have kept the pledge, and issues of religion in public schools, in the public eye. Anyone who is well informed on current events or politics--like the governor of a state--should have a passing familiarity with this story.

Kos diarist JLFinch was the first to notice this.

Parsing a joke

Lindsay Graham, McCain's constant traveling companion and the Tweedledum to Lieberman's Tweedledee, made light Sarah Palin's lack of foreign policy experience in an interview with Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: You have a lot of foreign policy experience. You’ve traveled all over the world and met with world leaders. Joe Biden has a lot of foreign policy experience. He’s done the same thing. He’s chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Does she have any actual foreign policy experience? Has she met with world leaders like you have, like Biden has? Has she really gone around the world and done any of those things?

GRAHAM: You know, I don’t know where she’s traveled to. And I know the people I’ve met. But it’s not meeting people that matters. President Bush met President Putin. And I don’t think it matters just meeting people.

You look at people’s judgment. You know, Governor Palin took on Ted Stevens . If she can take him on, she can take on the Russians.

Graham, of course, is trying to sidestep the issue with a joke, but it isn't an issue that can be made to go away that easily. Her limited experience is a valid concern. While some Democrats might feel hesitation in directly attacking her selection on that basis, they should have no qualms about calling the Republicans on their hypocrisy and double standard in criticizing Obama for lack of foreign policy experience while giving Palin a pass for the same.

Graham's lame attempt at humor caught my attention for two reasons other than its failure to avoid the subject. First, when did Sarah Palin "take on" Ted Stevens? He supported her in her 2006 run for the governor's mansion. He is supporting her now, despite the implicit insult of her scrubbing his earlier endorsements from her website. The agree on most issues and are in lockstep on the issues of economic exploitation of Alaska's resources.

Second, why is a prominent Republican using another prominent Republican as a boogey man? Stevens is under indictment for corruption and seriously facing defeat in a reelection bid for the first time since Palin was in grade school. Has he really become so radioactive that other republican congressmen use him as the but of a joke and paint him as someone who need to be stood up to? Is this a signal that the GOP has given up on their senior member in Congress and decided to throw him under the bus?

An unexpected side effect of Palin's moment in the spotlight might be that it sheds more unwanted light on Stevens' crumbling empire of cronyism and corruption. It also presents an opportunity for the Democrats. While we should be doing our best to hang Bush around McCain's neck, we should work equally as hard to make sure Stevens is firmly attached to Palin.

Why aren't we fighting

In one respect, the Sarah Palin pick is a big success for McCain. He has managed to completely banish the Democratic candidates from the news while everyone tries to find out who she is and debates whether the choice was a good one or not. Come Monday, the news will turn to the Republican convention and how they handle the issue of Hurricane Gustav as it moves on to the Gulf Coast. By the time the Democrats are next mentioned in the press, eight or nine days will have passed.

Some of that was predictable and inescapable, but not all of it. I have to ask why the Democrats didn't have a counter-stunt ready for yesterday. They knew McCain was going to make an announcement on Friday and try to seize the weekend news cycle. Even if the a Democratic stunt was bumped to the second or third ranked political story, it would still have waved the flag and said "we're still here" through the weekend. Instead the only sign that the part even exists is their reaction to McCain and Palin (which means the story is still Republican and not Democratic).

I have this sick feeling that some twisted sense of fair play made the Democratic strategy masters decide it McCain's "turn" to have the news on Friday--that they refrained from getting in his spotlight because it was his birthday or something. Democrats have a chronic inability to tell the difference between fighting fair and rolling over and playing dead. Too often the choose the latter thinking it is the former. The Republicans are not going to give up power nicely. We need to have fighters in charge of the Democratic Party. Otherwise, the next four years will give us the revolting spectacle of a Democratic Congress giving a Republican President everything he asks for without ever putting up an honest fight. In other words, more of the same.

Palin

John McCain has chosen first term Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. The McCain campaign is throwing out its strongest argument against Obama by picking someone with no foreign relations experience and less than two years in a statewide office. Prior to becoming governor a year and a half ago, she was mayor of Wasilla, a community of 6000, just northeast of Anchorage.

As I see it, this is the McCain campaign's thinking behind picking Palin: She's young, she's energetic, and she's attractive, which they hope will balance McCain's worst image problems as a tired, old man in bad health. She's very pro-life and visibly Christian (she supports the teaching of creationism in the public schools), which they hope will motivate the religious right not to sit the election out. She has a handicapped child, which is another plus with the pro-life crowd and will allow the campaign some compassionate conservatism points. She's from the not-insane wing of the party (which is very small in Alaska) that should appeal to moderates and independents. She's a girl, which is a transparent pander to the PUMAs.

On that last point, I'm reminded of the conservative pundits in 1988 who predicted women would flock to the Republican banner because Dane Quayle was cute. It was a condescending attitude then and its a condescending attitude now. Very few women are shallow enough to be fooled by such a transparent ploy.

Palin is mostly untouched by the slime surrounding Don Young, Ted Stevens, and the rest of the Alaskan Republican Party, but she does have her own mini-scandal involving an attempt to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the Alaska State Troopers. Naturally, she blames over zealous underlings. She is strongly pro-development, which in Alaska means favoring the resource extraction and construction industries, and favors drilling anywhere and everywhere.

Don't underestimate her. She could really change the tenor of the race.

Creative, but neglected, cartography

Bryan at Why Now? has a nice post on the gerrymandered borders of Central Asia which led me to reminisce about my own interest in lines on maps.

When I went to grad school in the eighties to study the multinational communist states of the USSR and Yugoslavia, nationalism was considered an old fashioned subject. The hip subjects of the day were social and economic questions. The professor who ran the dissertation writing seminar, and who taught intellectual history, actually cut me off one day when I was discussing my research into the Yugoslav national question with a brusque comment that he found nationalism boring and wanted to hear about someone else's work.

Nationalism, besides being denigrated as part of old school political/diplomatic history, was also in disgrace because of nationalist writing--that is historical narratives being produced as tools of nationalist propaganda. No seemed willing to acknowledge the difference between nationalist history and the intellectual history of nationalism, which was what interested me. Besides, the argument went, all of the national questions had already settled by WWII and decolonization. My peers and supervisors also seemed unaware of the irony of rejecting a topic for historical study because it had happened in the past.

Of course, as the nineties showed, they were completely wrong about national questions being settled. Just because you draw a line on a map and give the people within that line a common name and parliament, doesn't mean they think of themselves as one people. Americans have always combined and confused the two concepts of nation and state. Right up till 1991, historians and pundits were telling each other that people in the USSR thought of themselves as Soviets first and Georgians, Ukrainians, or Latvians second. The Kurds today most certainly do not think of themselves as Turkish, Iranian, or Iraqi first.

Borders, as a subtopic of nationalism, got even worse treatment than the intellectual history of nationalism. Once upon a time, external borders were a major topic of diplomatic history and boundary commissions were covered along with treaty negotiations. That went out of style after WWII, but at least it did get covered up to that point. Internal borders, on the other hand, have never been well studied. As administrative decisions, they don't leave a nice trail of diplomatic dispatches and memoirs by international statesmen. Good examples of this neglect are the volumes of the Hoover Press's Studies of Nationalities series published in the 80's and 90's. The volumes on the Uzbeks and Kazakhs barely mention the establishment of the soviet republics and don't mention changes in their borders at all.

There is a certain academic urban legend that all border decisions made by communist regimes were made with Machiavellian divide and conquer principles in mind. That's not entirely untrue, but it's only part of the story. The internal boundaries of the Soviet Union were drawn over a period of about thirty-five years. In some parts of the country, particularly the Russian heartland, old imperial provinces were left in place for convenience sake. Other borders, where there was no national question involved, were shifted about for practical economic and geographic reasons.

When national questions were involved, the decisions were certainly more cynical and got more attention from higher on the Party food chain, but they still involved a variety of criteria. In the twenties a cohort of genuinely idealistic anthropologists had a hand in drawing territories for the peoples of Arctic Russia and Siberia that gave them room to practice their traditional economies. Later these policies were abandoned and the "small nations" were forced to give up their nomadic ways and learn Russian while their territories were flooded with Russian settlers and political prisoners. I suspect--though I don't know for sure--that something similar happened in Central Asia with a mixture of idealistic anthropologists, cynical commissars, and changing state goals being reflected on different stretches of border.

The tragedy of treating internal divisions as administrative minutiae, beneath the attention of real scholarship, is that when empires break up, these administrative lines become national borders. The powers that be are deathly afraid to renegotiate borders for fear of opening the door to questioning hundreds of bad borders around the world. Meanwhile, numerous wars have already been fought in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe over the persistence of lines that were not meant to be borders.

Hurricane Gustav Heads for the Gulf

Hurricane Gustav hit the southern coast of Haiti today and is pointed at the oil and gas producing coasts of Louisiana and Texas. For the last few months Republicans and conservative talking heads have been falsely claiming that hurricanes Katrina and Rita didn't spill a drop of oil and that off shore oil rigs can ride out hurricanes unscathed. I wonder how many of them would like to demonstrate their confidence by watching Gustav from a rig. After all, Gustav is only about half the size of Katrina, so it should be, as they say, a breeze.