Come ye all with simple hearts…
Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones reports that Sarah Palin may need to kiss the blarney stone to have any hope of challenging for the presidency in 2012. And it’s all thanks to earmarks.
Remember when Palin was the candidate opposed to wasteful government spending and earmarks? Apparently the upcoming economic stimulus pork bill will set aside $140 million in cash advance earmarks for Alaska, as requested by Governor Palin. For those of you doing the math at home, this will make Alaska number one in earmark spending per capita.
Oink goes the pig with luscious lips
According to Stein, just hours after they first published a story about Palin’s earmark Watusi, her office issued a press release headlined, “Governor Palin Continues Earmark Reform.” The main point, per Stein:
Since she took office in 2006, Palin has each year requested fewer earmarks and has recently only put in requests for a handful of projects. In other words, it’s okay to make some earmark requests, just not a lot.
Jake Tapper of ABC News noted during the presidential campaign that Palin went on with Charlie Gibson and said that “The abuse of earmarks (is) un-American, undemocratic, and (is) not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop.” Palin even added that John McCain was “a crusader against earmark abuse, and that’s what I joined him in fighting.” McCain, for the record, is supposedly anti-earmark.
Palin remains trapped between her campaign rhetoric and her governing reality. She denounced earmarks as a candidate; she continues to request and accept them as a governor.
I have to birdwalk a bit here. When I was a college student, I once took a creative writing class. One of my classmates, whom I’ll call Ron T., wrote a poem about the blarney stone. Ron always looked like he’d had a few. His poem was called “When You Wish Upon the Barley Stone.”
Bartender, pour me some of what Sarah and Ron are having…
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Palin and McCain against earmarks? Ha! Ron Paul is probably the only Republican that can lay claim to that mantle. I don’t really think that they can say they’re against earmarks handing out enormous unbid defense contracts, and also the many many tax breaks they gave to Wall Street firms that are now getting billions at the expense of taxpayers like myself and others.
In a perfect world…Ron Paul would have been elected. He was not. We need to make due without.
It is important to differentiate between earmarks that fund useful projects and wasteful Pork spending. Earmarks are funding inserted in legislation by individual lawmakers for specific programs and projects.
Ted Stevens-R requested apx. $183 Million in 2008 in earmarks for Alaska. Most of the money went to projects on Alaska military bases. This ranked Alaska as the 2nd highest in Congress.
Sarah Palin however, cut the requests to half under her administration. She also intends to continue only making requests for the most compelling needs.
Give her a little credit. Same as Obama inherited a mess, Palin is cleaning up a mess created by her predecessors too.