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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (21973)	9/7/2008 6:41:29 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

I still think Ms. Palin will be the undoing of the McCain candidacy. We just don't know enough about her management abilities and skills. The high point is right now, with the triumph of her speech last week. But even the Wall Stree Journal is asking legitimate questions...and many more will follow in the weeks ahead. ________________________________ A Disastrous Mayor 07 Sep 2008 05:52 pm Are we allowed to ask questions about her tenure as mayor of Wasilla? Here's a story from the Wall Street Journal, exposing just how fiscally and operationally reckless Palin's mayorship of Wasilla was: The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters. The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla... "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," Ms. Palin said Wednesday in her acceptance speech at the Republican convention. Litigation resulting from the dispute over Ms. Palin's sports-complex project is still in the courts, with the land's former owner seeking hundreds of thousands of additional dollars from the city. When Palin took over Wasilla, the town had no long-term debt. By the time she was done, debt service had increased by 69 percent, the town had close to $19 million in long-term debt, making the debt around $3000 per capita. And the Mccain campaign is asking us - seriously - to consider her a fiscal conservative. She is a Bush-Cheney fiscal conservative: low taxes, unprecedented new spending, utter incompetence, endemic cronyism and massive debt. andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com online.wsj.com ___________________ So what do we know for certain at this point: 1) She says she opposed earmarks but the facts say she actively pursued them and hired lobbyists to get them 2) She says (again and again) that she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere, but in fact she ran for governor in favor of the bridge. All documented. 3) She was hardly a fiscal conservative as mayor and led the city into some still smoldering legal problems. She promoted an increase in the sales tax and raised taxes on oil companies as well. 4) She encouraged the banning certain books from the library and wrangled with the libraraian over the issue, threatening termination if the librarian did not agree...(threatening termination or actually doing it seems to be a common management tool for the Governor. Look, I know she is the idol of many on this thread, but I stand by my earliest comments that she is too unknown to skate easily into November. all the good news is out there. She gives a heck of a speech. The bad news will be leaking out, again and again for the weeks to come...with Troopergate at the end of it all. Maybe McCain just had to pick her to have any chance, and as happy as I might be if McCain wins (in the interests of divided government), this VP pick makes me very, very nervous.