*From an economic standpoint, she left her little town steeped in debt.
*She still thinks that you can, in the words of Nancy Reagan, "just say no" and girls won't get pregnant. (And of course they've coddled Levi "I don't want no babies" Johnston into marrying her daughter, so that makes it all warm and snugly, doesn't it? I mean, as long as you are "saved", you can sin all you want and everything's still hunky-dory...is that right?)
*She's short on transparency in the troopergate scandal. (but has managed to fanagle her way out of that one, probably thanks to some serious party pressure)
*(Most importantly) Her handlers evidently KNOW that she's not up to snuff for an interview, because they have not allowed her to do any. (Could they be worried that she lacks the experience to give the correct "party line" answers, or are they trembling over what tom-cats she might let out of the bag?)
From this page:
During her term in office, Palin cut property taxes and other small taxes on business. But as the Anchorage Daily News points out, “She wasn’t doing this by shrinking government.” During her tenure, the budget of Wasilla (population 5,469 in 2000) “apart from capital projects and debt, rose from $3.9 million in fiscal 1996 to $5.8 million.”
Palin also successfully pushed through a sales tax increase in Wasilla, which went to fund a $15 million sports complex. However, a land dispute over the sight of the complex led to “years of legal wrangling” and cost Wasilla almost $1.7 million, “a lot more than the roughly $125,000 the city would have paid in 1998 if it had closed a deal to buy the property outright.” Wasilla is still facing budget shortfalls from the case today.
When Palin left office in 2002, Wasilla had “racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt,” or roughly $3,000 of debt per resident.
And from this page:
The religious mission is still front and centre of her politics. She opposes abortion in all cases other than those in which the mother would die if she were to give birth. She is a vocal opponent of gay marriage, and advocate of the teaching of anti-evolutionary creationism, or "intelligent design", in schools.
Her religious beliefs extend to a conviction that the Iraq war is God's will. When she returned to Wasilla in June to pray with her old congregation, she said of the troops being posted to Iraq, including her own son, Track: "Our national leaders are sending them out on a task from God. We have to pray there is a plan and that it's God's plan."
Most poignantly, she will not countenance sex education for teenagers, preferring instead to preach that abstinence is the only complete protection against pregnancy or venereal disease. It would be a cheap shot to suggest that this week's bombshell revelation that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is herself pregnant was Palin's comeuppance.
But it would not be unfair to point out that Alaska has the highest per capita incidence of chlamydia in the country, and that the rate of teenage pregnancies across the US, including within her state, has just risen for the first time in 14 years - a trend many blame on George Bush's preferment of abstinence-only education. "It's frustrating we aren't doing more to inform our children," said Brittany Goodnight of the Alaska branch of Planned Parenthood.
And from this page:
The largest paper in the state, the Anchorage Daily News, today opens an editorial, "Gov. Sarah Palin is taking the wrong approach to Troopergate. She should be practicing the open and transparent, ethical and accountable government she promised when running for governor and boasts about now that she's on the national stage.
"Instead, Gov. Palin has begun stonewalling the Legislature's attempt to get the bottom of allegations that she, her family or staff violated ethical or state personnel rules. As a result, the Troopergate allegations hang over Palin's future and cloud her candidacy for vice president."
And from this page:
Yesterday, McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace dismissed the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin has yet to take any questions from the press. “So what?” she scoffed. Today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, campaign strategist Rick Davis suggested Palin might never sit down for an interview if, he said, it’s “in our best interest” to keep her away from the media:
SCARBOROUGH: Yesterday Nicolle Wallace suggested that she was sitting right there and told Jay Carney of Time magazine ‘Sarah Palin doesn’t have to talk to you, she doesn’t’ have to talk to the press.’ … Can we expect Sarah Palin on Meet the Press and other one on one interviews throughout the course of this campaign?
DAVIS: We’re going to do whatever we think is the best to win. We have 60 days left and if we think it’s a good idea to go out there and do those shows, we’ll do them.
SCARBOROUGH: Can you avoid it? Meet the Press?
DAVIS: We can afford anything we want to do. … We’re going to do what we think is in our best interest. If that means access to the press, we’ll give it to you.
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