Okay this is damn funny. Pathetic and tragic for our country, but funny:
As we all know, John McCain has recently made earmark reform the center of his campaign and tried to spin his VP/Sidekick as a fellow traveler and reformer extraordinaire. Of course her Bridge to nowhere lie render all this complete BS. However the Poltico today unearths another absolute GEM that needs to be on all out lips tomorrow
As part of his standard stump speech John McCain frequently trots out this Line:
We’re not going to spend $3 million of your tax dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana,"
You'll never guess what Palin asked congress for this year:
Palin, meanwhile, has requested $3.2 million to be spent in part researching the "genetics of harbor seals," in one of the state’s many requests for federal funding of research into Alaska’s fauna.
Ouch. That's gotta make for some awkward moments on the Straight Talk Express and that's just the tip of the (appropriately for Alaska) Iceberg:
She’s seeking $1 million, for instance, for a project to investigate rockfish fisheries, a request that, according to the Alaska document, was presented to and refused by Congress last year.
"Our state's economy depends a certain amount on tourism...and there are a lot of charter fishermen who have clients that want to come up fish for halibut, and likewise when they're fishing for halibut they're catching ... rockfish as a by-catch in that fishery," said Cleo Brylinsky, who heads up the rockfish project at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. "So it's important to our tourism economy that we have sustainable fisheries and well-managed fisheries," she said.
In other words, she's asking for a cool million in federal dollars to make sure sport fishermen have a good time and catch what they intend to catch when they come to Alaska. (which is a touch puzzling to those of us who've grown up on the Chesapeake Bay and know that Rockfish (or as we call em "striped bass")is a damn tasty fish and a hell of a lot better than halibut but to each his own I s'spose)
But looking out for the interests of the weekend warrior fisherman isn't the only thing Gov Palin thinks the feds should pony up for
:
The rockfish research is one of several requests for federal help studying marine wildlife, which, coming from another candidate, might have drawn McCain’s mockery.
Here are a few, with the state’s description of the project:
• $400,000: Alaska Invasive Species Program: Continues to comprehensively prevent, identify, and respond to the threat of invasive species on the Alaska environment.
• $494,900: Assessment of Recreational Halibut Harvest in Alaska: This is an ongoing effort to collect data on the recreational halibut fishery that is conducted by federal agencies though relying on the state for data.
• $2 million: Bering Sea Crab Research and Management: Researches Bering Sea crab productivity and sustainability as necessary to restore crab stocks.
• $3.2 million: Seal and Steller Sea Lion Biological Research: Funds monitoring of ice seal populations in Native villages, research on the species delineation and genetics of harbor seals to understand the declines in population and provide for population restoration, and continues research into Steller Sea Lion population decline.
All of which would be nearly par for the course for an Alaskan governor, but, this particular governor has recently trying to cast herself as St. Sarah the Pork Fighter. Or as she herself said recently from the stump:
In just three years our opponent has requested nearly one billion dollars in earmarks. That’s nearly a million dollars for every working day," Palin told a crowd in Lebanon, Ohio, Tuesday. "So as we reform the abusive earmarks in our state our opponent was requesting nearly a billion dollars in earmarks as a senatorial privilege as I was vetoing half a billion as an executive responsibility."
Well aside from the glaring factual error, to wit: governors don't have the power to veto federal legislation or control how federal funds are spent, (hey cut her a break she hasn't been in government all that long) The entire spirit of that statement is, to put it delicately, A bald faced lie.
"Senator McCain said Governor Palin ‘learned that earmarks are bad’, but in 2008 alone Gov. Palin requested $256 million in earmarks for Alaska, and her state received more earmarks per person that any other state," said spokesman Tommy Vietor. "The fact is that Governor Palin isn’t just good at getting pork projects, she’s one of the most successful pork barrel politicians in history."
Alaska has indeed been spectacularly successful in getting earmarks, ... And Palin’s office has actively backed some of its legislators’ requests, according to the document, which covers requests for the fiscal years of 2008 and 2009.
In fact BEFORE he was put on the ticket, She had a VERY different view than the "earmark are BAD mmmkay?" line she tried to push on the stump:
the document summarizing Palin’s earmark requests was created the next month, and it suggested a still-healthy appetite for earmarks. Soon afterward, Palin wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper outlining her not-so-reticent posture on earmarks.
"My role at the federal level is simply to submit the most well-conceived earmark requests we can," she wrote.
So if, as, McCain claimed recently (sounding eerily like Ike Turner)
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has "learned that earmarks are bad."
she's come by that learning VERY recently. Which lead reporters to ask whether in light of this new found epiphany, the Gov still wanted her earmarks. You'll be utterly SHOCKED at how the campaign answered that question:
The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t respond to the questions of whether Palin still backs those specific requests, or how she would defend them in light of her opposition to earmarks.
In response to those questions, McCain-Palin spokesman Ben Porritt said the governor believes in "open, transparent, and efficient government" and criticized Obama for making extensive earmark requests.