Girls Against Sarah Palin

Pork

IF YOU LOVE PORK YOU’LL LOVE MS. PALIN

Despite Sen. McCain’s ‘reformer’ claim, ‘‘I got an old ink pen, my friends, and the first pork barrel-laden earmark, big-spending bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. You will know their names. I will make them famous and we’ll stop this corruption,’’ Sen. John McCain said during a September 9, 2008 rally at a park in suburban Washington, D.C.  The first person on his ‘name and shame’ hit-list, then, must be…. his running mate (??).  Yes, that’s right.  Ms. Palin has sought $197 million worth of earmarks for 2009, down about 25 percent from the $256 million she sought in the 2008 budget year.   And as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, she hired a lobbyist to seek federal money for special projects.  According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, Ms. Palin and her band of lobbyists helped little Wasilla obtain 14 earmarks, totaling $27 million, between 2000-2003.  The idea of Ms. Palin as an anti-earmark reformer is yet another example of the dishonest, lie-about-anything nature of the McCain-Palin campaign.
[SOURCE:   “John McCain, Sarah Palin blast earmarks, but she requested nearly $200 million herself,” Chicago-Sun Times, September 10, 2008].
If you think we are making this stuff up, just ask ABC’s Charlie Gibson.  Ms. Palin admitted her involvement in securing earmarks for Alaska… she just referred to them by another name:  “infrastructure.”  “I was for infrastructure being built in the state,” she said, “and it’s not inappropriate for a mayor or for a governor to request and to work with their Congress, their congressmen, their congresswomen, to plug in to the federal budget along with every other state a share of the federal budget for infrastructure,” she told Mr. Gibson.  Earmark opponents dislike these practices, suggesting that the securing of funding by local officials channels money to the powerful and the well-connected.  These opponents prefer a process by which funds are allocated through federal and state agencies to projects that secure funding through a competitive process.
[SOURCE:  “Palin Admits Backing Earmarks,” Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2008, by Jonathan Weisman].