Every one of us in this forum needs to take this story and pass it on to every local and national media outlet we can send it to, as well as people like Dennis Kucinich and even to Joe Biden's office.

We can not sit idly by and let the McCain campaign pull this off........NEM

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Sarah Palin was had political experience only as a small town mayor until less than two years ago. What we don't know about her could fill a book. Here are a few things we're learning about Palin.


Sarah Palin left the finances of her town Wasilla in tatters when she moved on in 2002 . She wanted a legacy as mayor, it seems, and pushed hard for the town to build a hyper-expensive sports complex...

But Palin screwed the process up badly. Instead of buying the land for the complex when it was offered, her administration allowed a developer named Gary Lundgren to snap it up. Then Wasilla tried to seize the land from Lundgren through eminent domain. In the end, what with court costs Wasilla paid at least $ 1.7 million for land it could have bought for less than one tenth that sum -if the purchase had been handled properly...

For this incompetence, Wasilla is still paying a steep price: higher taxes and cutbacks in services. In other words Palin is about as efficient as Michael Brown, onetime head of FEMA...

Diarist loyalson, a resident of Wasilla, has more to say about the damage Palin did to his town while she was mayor.

On the single most debated issue of our times, the Iraq war, Sarah Palin similarly was out to lunch until as recently as last spring. Shortly after becoming governor, she was asked her views on the surge
Alaska Business Monthly: We've lost a lot of Alaska's military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy.

John McCain would have us believe that Iraq is the central battle in the war on terror, and yet he selects as his running mate somebody who was paying almost no attention to the Iraq war for 4 long years after the invasion.

So what was Palin focused on?

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Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002. Her record during that time can tell us a lot about her. The biggest deal during her tenure is perhaps the construction of the sports complex that was built on someone else's land. She had to raise sales taxes to pay for it. The whole episode of incompetence, arrogance, and lack of respect for the law is exactly the style of governance that we've seen from Bush and co in the past seven years..

The $15 million multi-use indoor ice arena was supposed to be her legacy as the mayor. This was a very big deal for a city that had a budget of $3.9 million in 96 (increased to $5.8 million in 2002). Although the city subsidy has gone down from the initial $600k per year to about $125k per year, the sports complex still does not break even.

The biggest problem, however, was the process of how the land was acquired. The whole thing was handled with exceptional incompetence and arrogance, ultimately costing the city an extra $1.7 million in settlement and court cost for a piece of land that would have costed only $125k if they had handled it right from the beginning in 1998.

This involved a developer by the name of Gary Lundgren. Here is the whole scoop

Lundgren negotiated with the national office of The Nature Conservancy to buy the land. Meanwhile, Wasilla city officials decided they wanted the land too, and began negotiating with the Alaska office of The Nature Conservancy. Offers were extended to both parties. Lundgren closed the deal.

Without the title in their hands, the city went ahead with the sales tax increase and started the construction. Then in typical Bush fashion, as Palin was leaving office in 2002,

Wasilla sued both Lundgren and The Nature Conservancy for title to the land. The case went to a federal appeals court, where Lundgren won rights to the property.

The court case was finally settled several years after Palin left.

The real legacy is, that the city is still paying for this today, while having to cut budget in library service, postponing capital improvement projects, and raising fees.
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Can we afford this kind of incompetence on the national level?


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Every one of us in this forum needs to take this story and pass it on to every local and national media outlet we can send it to, as well as people like Dennis Kucinich and even to Joe Biden's office.


We can not sit idly by and let the McCain campaign pull this off........NEM

So, Palin does leave a trail of slime in her wake. Maybe it isn't as lengthy as GWB's yet, but, hey she's still young yet.

Hey NEM you need to post the links where you found this information. It's posted as Pinned: New Rule, found at the top of the message board.

How can we pass on information if we don't have the link?

Thanks

If one of the mods could edit the first post to get rid of, or shorten" the long "======" and "-------" lines that too would be appreciated. The sidescroll makes the post nearly unreadable.

Nem, please provide links.

So in a town with a $3.9 million dollar budget, Miss Thang decides it needs a $15 million dollar ice rink?

There's Republican "fiscal conservatism" in action....

And then she fucks up the land deal on top of it, making it even more expensive through her incompetence. Nice.

Brownie in a skirt.

My favorite liberal friend sent this to me this morning:

Do you know what the first two "powers and duties" are for the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska? Check their municipal code:

1. Preside at council meetings. The mayor may take part in the discussion of matters before the council, but may not vote, except that the mayor may vote in the case of a tie;
2. Act as ceremonial head of the city;

Swell.

If you live in small town America (and I mean really, really small), look around you and be honest - do you see your mayor (or village manager) as a heartbeat from the presidency in 18 months?

http://www.codepublishing.com/AK/Wasilla/W...a0216.html#2.16

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-eli...i_b_122491.html

Was thinking the same thing.