Palin - Little Known Facts
I don’t have much commentary on these but I think they’re really important points from someone far more knowledgeable about Wasilla politics.
Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative.” During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by more than 33 percent. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent. 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 benefitted large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
There’s a reason Oregon doesn’t have a sales tax, it’s not needed for most smaller communities. Sales tax always effects the poor greater, so you should really use it as a last resort, yet this ‘fiscal conservitive’ was willing to create a new tax almost as soon as she got into office. Now you’d probably be a bit curious as to what she spent all this money on.
She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through, on a piece of property that the city didn’t even have clear title to. 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 five to seven years without any borrowing.
She took money she didn’t even had an invested in a project that did nothing. Sound familiar? She’s just as good as any other Republican idea out there, look at Bush spending trillions in Iraq only to have our own intelligence say we’re at more risk because of our actions over there. Worthless investments using money we don’t have, this is the lasting trademark of any ‘fiscal conservitive’. While democrats do raise taxes overall by raising the top taxes their investments are priceless. Our water system, our electric system, our roads, our phones, all investments our government made that would be impossible to put a price on today because they’re so valuable. Many of our wars are questionable, of the most questionable Vietnam, we had no reason to be there and it’s a shame we’ve repeated the same mistakes with Iraq.
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.
Book banning, the only thing book banning has ever done was make those books more popular. With the invention of the internet we can all go search for all the information in those banned books, so why should a city waste it’s time trying to ban words? Will Sarah push to ban books from all our libraries? Will Sarah try to block out portions of the constitution she doesn’t like? Can we really take that risk again?
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.”
Slash and burn, she slashes any project over X amount until people complain enough to put them back on the budget. Things like help for single mothers, repairing roads, drug rehabilitation, you know all those ‘pork projects’ that try to help people live better lives because we’re all so ridiculously rich. Sarah would rather the roads go broken and the drug addicts fill the street rather than take the time to help anyone.
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.
The republicans always have a similar philosophy to libertarians, that government should stay the fuck out of everything, especially the market. Yet republicans seem to think it’s ok to interfere with the market only if it benefits them, what possible use could it be for the government to have their hand deep into the inner dealings of oil companies? Even a democrat knows better than this, politics and business shouldn’t mix. The only reason she wants drilling in ANWAR is because it’ll make her a profit, there’s no other motivation for her beyond her own greed. Pathetic, there’s more to the article too, it’s a good read.
Powered by FireStats