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 lifestyle 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 two 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 six years as Mayor, she increased
general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same six 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, so 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. $1 million for a park. $15 million-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, and that was still in litigation seven years 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 $5.5 million for road projects
that could have been done in 5 to 7 years 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 two dozen contacts were made between her staff and=2 0family 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 councilperson 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 and gas issues.
Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/year, 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) had 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=2 0of 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 initiative 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 have to be literally millions of
Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.
However, there are a lot of people who
have underestimated her and are regretting it.
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.
Second, I've alwa ys 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 and taxation two 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=2
0official 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-90s.
Anne Kilkenny
email address removed by truthorfiction.com
August 31, 2008