McCain's Earmark Lie

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
McCain's Earmark Lie
175
Mon, 09-15-2008 - 9:19pm
The full story:


Daily Kos

McCain's Earmark Lie: Palin actually grubs $1 mil/day as Gov. by Kagro X

Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 03:00:11 PM PDT

The Wall Street Journal:




Last week, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, hadn't sought earmarks or special-interest spending from Congress, presenting her as a fiscal conservative. But state records show Gov. Palin has asked U.S. taxpayers to fund $453 million in specific Alaska projects over the past two years.



It's been 652 days since Earmark Queen Sarah Palin took office as Governor of Alaska.



In that time, she's hustled for $453,000,000 in federal lipstick pork.



That's $694,785.28 a day. Six hundred ninetey-four thousand, seven hundred and eight five dollars and twenty-eight cents. Every day. Even Sundays!



Palin was grubbing six hundred ninetey-four thousand, seven hundred and eight five dollars and twenty-eight cents out of the federal trough on the very day when John McCain looked America in the eye and said she was taking zero.



And she took it again today, too.



And she took it on every one of the 312 nights she spent at home and billed the Alaskan taxpayers for it.



So why say it's a million dollars a day? Well, first, let me show you what Slick Sarah Palin is telling people:




On the campaign trail, Gov. Palin has repeatedly attacked Sen. Obama on earmarks. "Our opponent has requested nearly one billion dollars in earmarks in three years. That's about a million for every working day," she said at a rally in Albuquerque, N.M.



Ohhhh, this feels like it's going to get embarrassing in a second....



And, behold! Look what "The Math" says!



It is difficult to compare Sen. Obama's earmark record with Gov. Palin's -- their states differ in size, for instance, and the two candidates play different roles in the process. But using the same calculation that the McCain campaign uses, the total amount of earmarked dollars divided by the number of working days while each held office (assuming a five-day workweek, every week, for both), Gov. Palin sought $980,000 per workday, compared with roughly $893,000 for Sen. Obama.



Not only is Palin taking much more, but oh my word if the million dollar figure doesn't actually fit her sooooo much better than the person she's trying to use it against! What a surprise!



So that's almost a million dollars a day, whether she showed up at the office or not. A million bucks, plus $60 in her pocket for defrosting one of her own mooseburgers for lunch.



And really, Palin must be asking herself, why not chisel the Alaska state government a little bit? After all:




The state's earmark requests stand out in part because its state government is among the wealthiest in the U.S. Flush with oil and gas royalties, it doesn't impose income or sales taxes. In fact, money flows the other way: Every man, woman and child this year got a check for $3,200.



Gosh, but they're such rugged individualists up there! They're gonna launch themselves into orbit with those bootstraps, don'tcha know?



A million dollars a day. From you and me. Plus $3,200 in the bank for each one of 'em. And $60 in Sarah's pocket for every lunch at home. (Like every working mom, of course!)



It's the new fiscal responsibility, in John McCain's seven house-owning, $5 million middle class living world!





But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-19-2008
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 3:32am

*** Too bad McCain isn't in any way ready to be president.

Well, it's true he was never a community organizer, but he does have extensive military experience, several decades of legislative experience and has chaired many committees with economic oversight.

*** He is well known for his temper, as reported by those who have worked with him.

I hear Teddy Roosevelt was a complete pu$$y. Washington and Kennedy were weenies too. Slick Williy, however...now there's a temper. LOL!

*** Obama is much more prepared to take over, and take us away from the Republican debacle.

ROFL! Sorry for laughing...but...uh...prepared...uh...how? Oh, that's right...he's run a "campaign." LOL!

*** McCain is an extention of Bush.

Only if you subscribe to propaganda. Unlike Obama, McCain actually has a career running decades before Bush ever took office.

*** Obama did not lie about his experience.

How can you lie about nothing?

*** It's a shame conservatives continually have to tell unfounded lies about him.

Like that he's inexperienced or that he didn't actually even run his own campaign?

*** You're right, McCain has a country to run.

Come January.

*** The only problem is, he'll finish running it into the ground.

Or do the people justice by cutting taxes and protecting us against our enemies...all things that Obama WON'T do.

*** We need Obama. He understands the middle income people. He worked his way up from poverty, to being a multi-millionaire.

I guess people in "poverty" can go to the best schools. LOL! Thank God for affirmative action. Sorry, but he's a "racist, Harvard educated, elitist" who doesn't give a hoot about "middle income people" except how they can serve to help his ambition. His "legislative record" proves that.

*** McCain worked his way up from being a multi-millionaire, to mattying a multi-billionaire, with his seven homes to Obama's one. Not that anyone should care how many homes any of them have.

McCain was the son of a US Admiral...and, hate to break it to you, but even Admirals aren't millionaires. McCain served is country with extraordinary distinction and bravery (something Obama never did) and then served his country as a Senator with a varied, and distinguished career...and a legislative record that casts a HUGE and WIDE shadow over the paltry offerings of the over-blown community organizer with big Marxist ideas and little experience.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2007
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 3:39am

Rose, are you a Socialist?


If you are, that's cool; I'm just trying to figure out your standpoint.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-08-2003
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 5:10am

Interesting question. I've never tried to pigeon hole myself into any particular category. I've certainly been called worse things! I have my own ideas and sets of value. My "standpoint" varies, depending on what's being discussed.


While I don't condone what Clinton's affair, or the sexual

 Rose

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-08-2003
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 5:23am
Can you tell me how and/or why Obama scares you? I believe McCain would put us in harm's way before Obama would. McCain has said he wants to attack Iran. Palin says she'd attack anyone who threatened us, or one of our allies. Now that really scares me! We have much better intelligence today, which is why we haven't been attacked here, which has nothing to do with continued fighting in Iraq. We ALL

 Rose

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-16-2008
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 5:34am
Well he might have a country to run but it doesn't have to be America - maybe if Alaska succeeds he and Palin can go rule Alaska.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 7:19am

You know, our conservative friends have blown over a billion dollars on abstinence only education for which there is no proof that it works. It's the typical Republican approach. If it doesn't work keep throwing more money at it, keep trying something that fails expecting a different result instead of taking a step back and coming up with some new approaches. Reminds me of all the effort Republicans expend on gay cure camps - in one expose a reporter could not find a single "cured" gay person who wasn't on the payroll of these camps. Republicans place the priority on forcing their ideology or religion on others. America has a lot of real problems now, and we can't afford to keep living in la la land.

"Two major studies by the U.S. Congress have increased the volume of criticism surrounding abstinence-only education.
In 2004, U.S. Congressman Henry A. Waxman of California released a report that provides several examples of inaccurate information being included in federally funded abstinence-only sex education programs. This report bolstered the claims of those arguing that abstinence-only programs deprive teenagers of critical information about sexuality. The claimed errors included:
misrepresenting the failure rates of contraceptives
misrepresenting the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission, including the citation of a discredited 1993 study by Dr. Susan Weller, when the federal government had acknowledged it was inaccurate in 1997 and larger and more recent studies that did not have the problems of Weller's study were available
false claims that abortion increases the risk of infertility, premature birth for subsequent pregnancies, and ectopic pregnancy
treating stereotypes about gender roles as scientific fact
other scientific errors, e.g. stating that "twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty-four chromosomes from the father join to create this new individual" (the actual number is 23).
Out of the 13 grant-receiving programs examined in the 2004 study, the only two not containing "major errors and distortions" were Sex Can Wait and Managing Pressures before Marriage, each of which was used by five grantees, making them two of the least widely used programs in the study. With the exception of the FACTS program, also used by 5 grantees, the programs found to contain serious errors were more widely used, ranging in usage level from 7 grantees (the Navigator and Why kNOw programs) to 32 grantees (the Choosing the Best Life program). Three of the top five most widely used programs, including the top two, used versions of the same textbook, Choosing the Best, from either 2003 (Choosing the Best Life) or 2001 (Choosing the Best Path — the second most widely used program with 28 grantees — and Choosing the Best Way, the fifth most widely used program with 11 grantees).
In 2007, a study ordered by Congress found that middle school students who took part in abstinence-only sex education programs were just as likely to have sex in their teenage years as those who did not. From 1999 to 2006, the study tracked more than 2,000 students from age 11 or 12 to age 16; the study included students who had participated in one of four abstinence education programs, as well as a control group who had not participated in such a program. By age 16, about half of each group — students in the abstinence-only program as well as students in the control group — were still abstinent. Abstinence program participants who became sexually active during the 7-year study period reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as their peers of the same age; moreover, they had sex for the first time at about the same age as other students. The study also found that students who took part in the abstinence-only programs were just as likely to use contraception when they did have sex as those who did not participate. Abstinence-only education advocates claim the study was too narrow, began when abstinence-only curricula were in their infancy, and ignored other studies that have shown positive effects.
Scientific and medical
Abstinence-only education has been criticized in official statements by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American College Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Public Health Association, which all maintain that sex education needs to be comprehensive to be effective.
The AMA "urges schools to implement comprehensive... sexuality education programs that... include an integrated strategy for making condoms available to students and for providing both factual information and skill-building related to reproductive biology, sexual abstinence, sexual responsibility, contraceptives including condoms, alternatives in birth control, and other issues aimed at prevention of pregnancy and sexual transmission of diseases... opposes the sole use of abstinence-only education..."
The American Academy of Pediatrics states that "Abstinence-only programs have not demonstrated successful outcomes with regard to delayed initiation of sexual activity or use of safer sex practices... Programs that encourage abstinence as the best option for adolescents, but offer a discussion of HIV prevention and contraception as the best approach for adolescents who are sexually active, have been shown to delay the initiation of sexual activity and increase the proportion of sexually active adolescents who reported using birth control."
On August 4, 2007, the British Medical Journal published an editorial concluding that there is "no evidence" that abstinence-only sex education programs "reduce risky sexual behaviours, incidence of sexually transmitted infections, or pregnancy" in "high income countries".
A comprehensive review of 115 program evaluations published in November 2007 by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that two-thirds of sex education programs focusing on both abstinence and contraception had a positive effect on teen sexual behavior. The same study found no strong evidence that abstinence-only programs delayed the initiation of sex, hastened the return to abstinence, or reduced the number of sexual partners. According to the study author:
"Even though there does not exist strong evidence that any particular abstinence program is effective at delaying sex or reducing sexual behavior, one should not conclude that all abstinence programs are ineffective. After all, programs are diverse, fewer than 10 rigorous studies of these programs have been carried out, and studies of two programs have provided modestly encouraging results. In sum, studies of abstinence programs have not produced sufficient evidence to justify their widespread dissemination."
Joycelyn Elders, former Surgeon General of the United States, is a notable critic of abstinence-only sex education. She was among the interviewees Penn & Teller included in their Bull*! episode on the subject.
Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that abstinence-only sex education leads to the opposite of the intended results by spreading ignorance regarding sexually transmitted diseases and the proper use of contraceptives to prevent both infections and pregnancy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstinence-only_sex_education

http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/PUBLICATIONS/policybrief/pbabonly.htm

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