The question of earmarks

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2007
The question of earmarks
7
Mon, 09-15-2008 - 7:34pm
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-31-2001
Tue, 09-16-2008 - 12:58pm

Ok, I'll see if I can tackle a few of these. First, comparing the amount of earmarks as a per person spending will always put Alaska in a bad light, because we have so few Alaskans and such a huge state. All that additional land mass brings with it increased costs and increased needs. Many areas in Alaska still have no running water and the use of outhouses, even close by my home is not uncommon. There has been a push up here to help provide water and sanitation services to rural villages, but obviously that is complicated when there are no roads that lead to these villages, etc. We have a huge amount of natural resources, but there are costs to manage these resources appropriately, from fish to caribou to mining and drilling, research, management, etc all take money. Does Alaska ask for too much, yeah, definitely... but I think that we will always be toward the top of earmarks if they keep being compared in a per person category. (and part of this problem now is that the programs have been started and we either continue to fund them to their conclusion or discontinue the programs and basically waste money already spent, so I hope that our amount of earmark money will continue to fall and I trust it will when Stevens is no longer our senator.)

Now, the rebates. I think I've posted before about the energy crisis we are facing in Alaska. Our gas prices here haven't gone under $4.00 per gallon yet, even worse, home heating fuel is still over $4.00 a gallon where I live (most households will use in excess of 1000 gallons for the winter). We are currently paying about $.30 per kilowatt hour for electricity when you figure in our fuel surcharge. But, as bad as this is, my community would probably have been ok for the winter, but the lawmakers here had to look at the little towns and villages as well as the larger metropolitan areas. In rural AK, communities were facing a winter of $8.00 per gallon heating fuel and gasoline. There was a very real fear that some native villages would have deaths resulting from a lack of heating oil, and this is why energy relief was first proposed. The actual form of relief was wildly debated here, but what we ended up with was a $1200 per person rebate. It's a little unfair because the folks down by Anchorage have lower energy costs, and the people in the rural parts of the state have much higher costs and yet they all get the same, but I'm sure the state representatives from each area of the state were fighting for their own constituents. Unfortunately, what that means is that the rural areas only got a portion to offset their hardships this coming winter and by taking off a chunk of the rebates straight off the top, you'd be taking from them as well.

The question of Alaskan finances is a complicated one. On the one hand we are a rich state with a lot of resources, but many of those resources are protected in such a way that we can't really access them for state expenses. A lot of people look at our permanent fund and see a $37 billion dollar account of state money and think OMG, they can spend that first. Unfortunately, that fund was set up a long time ago and protected from the state government touching it without voter's approval. That means that you'd have to convince a majority of the population to give up the "free checks" they've gotten accustomed to having. I agree it would make more sense, but try to convince the voters to vote that way.. not very likely. In fact, until the recent rise in oil prices, our state was facing a big budget crisis and having to cut a lot of state programs, even while sitting on a huge bank account that they couldn't touch.. it's very frustrating. Hope I made a little bit of sense with my ramblings on this post, LOL.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2007
Tue, 09-16-2008 - 1:45pm

You made a lot of sense.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 3:32pm

((Is the McCain's camp really so cynical as to give us a politician who's biggest "credentials" are "she's not wildly corrupt"?))

The fact that John McCain meddled in the troopergate investigation shows how the "not wildly corrupt" crowd watch each other's backs. lol.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2007
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 3:40pm

No kidding.


Apparently, the difference between the Bush Administration and the Palin administration?


(C'mon, say it with me....)


Lipstick!


iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 6:54pm

(((C'mon, say it with me....)

Lipstick!))

lol.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2007
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 6:57pm

This is interesting reading from an Anchorage paper today.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 9:36pm

Would there be a question about earmarks if John McCain had properly "vetted" Sarah?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200808u/mccain-palin

What McCain Didn't Know About Sarah Palin

A few days before John Kerry introduced John Edwards as his running mate, a select few members of Kerry's research staff were given five names, told to adopt the mindset of Republican opposition research, and to prepare a political dossier. What were the likeliest lines of attack that Republicans would use? What political pitfalls might the professional attorneys who conducted the vetting process have missed?

By the day of the announcement, Kerry's research team had a comprehensive folder prepared about Edwards that included suggested responses for dozens of potential attacks against Edwards's resume, character, and positions.

This year, the intense secrecy with which McCain advisor A.B. Culvahouse completed his vetting of Sarah Palin preserved the surprise. And ultimately, McCain aides say they're sure that the rewards will be worth the risks. But as the Palin pick turns 72 hours old, McCain's campaign is learning as much about her from the media and from Democrats as they are from what minimal political preparation they had.

The campaign anticipated that the Obama campaign would attack Palin's experience, to which they responded by claiming that she has more experience than he does.

They anticipated that some would compare Palin's Alaska to Clinton's Little Rock, although Palin, in this comparison, is the anti-establishment figure.

They anticipated that some would compare the pick to Dan Quayle, although Quayle had much more experience and never got along with Bush and was consistently undermined by Bush advisers like James Baker. Apples and oranges.

Privately, one campaign official says they were aware of several of the more scurrilous rumors about Palin making the rounds of the blogosphere, although the official declined to "dignify" them with any comment.

They've bragged that Palin opposed the famous "Bridge to Nowhere," only to learn that Palin supported the project and even told residents of Ketchikan that they weren't "nowhere" to her. After the national outcry, she decided to spend the funds allocated to the bridge for something else. Actually, maybe it's more fair to say that coincident with the national outcry, she changed her mind. The story shows her political judgment, but it is not a reformer's credential.

Likewise, though she cut taxes as mayor of Wassila, she raised the sales tax, making her hardly a tax cutter.

She denied pressuring the state's chief of public safety to fire her sister-in-law's husband even though there's mounting evidence that the impetus did indeed come from her. Ostensibly to clear her name, Palin asked her attorney general to open an independent investigation—the legislature had already been investigating. (I am told that the campaign was aware of the ethics complaint filed against her but accepts Palin's account.)

McCain's campaign seemed unaware that she supported a windfalls profits tax on oil companies and that she is more skeptical about human contributions to global warming than McCain is.

They did not know that she took trips as the mayor of Wasilla to beg for earmarks.

They did not know that she told a television interviewer this summer that she did not fully understand what it is that a vice president does.

Had McCain had the time or inclination to think about all of this, he still might have picked her. Like him, she has a habit of kicking lobbyists out of her office. Like him, she has a reputation for being a blunt speaker. Like him, she has a rep for cutting spending, and unlike him, had the executive authority to do so, slashing more than 10 percent of the state's proposed budget in 2007. Like him, she did not seem to care if she offended Republicans. She was, as he told an interviewer, a soul-mate, one he recognized over the course of a single meeting with her last week. That reinforced the sense he took away from their first encounter just six months ago.

The official tick-tocks that McCain and his advisers have put out, as well as some interviews with participants, really do suggest that as of early last week, everyone but McCain assumed that he would pick Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, or Joe Lieberman.

On Tuesday, a senior campaign official who participated in the final discussions began to hint to reporters that the pick might be transformative in the sense that it would anger right-wing Republicans and bring McCain back to the center.

On Wednesday morning, another senior campaign official who was part of the vetting process said that McCain had not indicated who he had chosen. On Wednesday afternoon, the Politico reported that McCain had made up his mind, but it wasn't until that evening that McCain began to tell some of his friends. Until Thursday morning, he didn't even tell his best friend, Lindsey Graham, a staunch proponent of Joe Lieberman. (Graham has never met Palin, nor have most senior McCain campaign officials.)

Later on Thursday, a few senior officials, including senior communications adviser Matthew McDonald, were tasked with putting together a messaging operation. McDonald worked through the night crafting talking points and scheduling surrogate phone calls.

The news media was chasing its own rumor—that campaign manager Rick Davis had given Fox News's Carl Cameron word of the pick but had embargoed it until 6:00 p.m. ET. Reporters e-mailed Cameron to find out if this was true. "Not exactly," he wrote back. (Cameron would indeed be the first reporter to formally break the news, but he did so via his own shoe leather. No one leaked him the scoop. )

Late Thursday night, the campaign began to tell some of his surrogates that the pick would upend the "conventional wisdom." Speculation swung to Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman. Governor Tim Pawlenty usually spends the night at his private home in St. Paul. Expecting to be picked, he camped out in the more formal governors' mansion.

Late Thursday night, aviation buffs first noticed a curious series of out-of-the-ordinary airplane flight plans from Anchorage to Flagstaff to a small airport outside Dayton. (Why not Dayton itself? Campaigns routinely try to hide these flights by diverting them to tiny airstrips far enough away from cities and events, a practice that the Obama campaign used to good effect.)

The charter airplane was owned by a McCain donor.

Early Friday morning, most news organizations, acting based on those internet reports, scrambled to arrange feeds from their Alaska affiliates.

And Democrats began to book their researchers tickets to Alaska.

Also see:
The "Eagleton Scenario"
(September 2, 2008)
Could Sarah Palin become the first running mate since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 to be dropped from a major-party ticket? Joshua Green offers a look at how such a scenario would unfold.