Hey,
At the Republican convention, John McCain's attack squad of negative, cynical politicians lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked us for being a part of this campaign.
A few things you probably don't know about Sarah Palin: she became mayor of her little town of Wasilla by running on hot button religious issues like abortion that had no place in what had always been a non partisan, small town mayoral election. She won a "landslide victory" by a margin of about 200 votes over her opponent Stein approximately 600 to 400. Her campaign slogan was "Wasilla's first Christian mayor". The incumbent Stein was raised as a Lutheran.
Once in office she fired all the town's dept. managers, even those who supported her candidacy, claiming she couldn't trust their loyalty to her. She tried to pressure the librarian into banning books she found "objectionable" and fired her too. Public outrage was so great she was forced to rehire the librarian and hire a town administrator to take over most of her duties.
When she came into office Wasilla (population about 5000 then) had $0 debt. When she left it was $22 million in debt mostly because of her pet project, the hockey rink/sports complex that never turned into the money generator she promised it would be. $22 million debt despite the fact that she hired one of Jack Abramoff's cronies to lobby Washington for $27 million in federal pork. At least three of those pork barrel projects made McCain's own list of wasteful spending. She raised the town sales tax, even on food and lowered the real estate tax benefiting mostly large corporate land holders. Town tax revenues rose 38% as Wasilla boomed in the 90s from the stable Clinton economy and the big box stores like Walmart she encouraged to move in. Spending rose 33%. Like I said In the end she left a town with no debt $22 million in the hole.
Alaska gets about 89% of it's taxes from oil (no state sales or income taxes). Needless to say it's reaped windfall tax revenues like the Arabs the last couple of years and has a huge surplus. But as governor she insists on passing bond issues to pay for the profligate spending her Republican legislature sends her. She wants to send rebate checks to Alaskan citizens with the surplus (which she'll take credit for) but force future generations of Alaskans to pay for today's wild spending with interest on the bonds to boot.
That's typical Republican governance. Blow today's surplus on tax giveaways, but borrow from future tax payers for today's needs. That's not change, that's what we've had for the last eight years.
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