…speaking of the Optimistic Conservative, JE Dyer’s latest on “Sarahnoia” (truly a “natural” as political coinages go, I hadn’t seen it previously from anyone else – kudos to JED) delivers an exemplary takedown on Peggy Noonan’s Friday WSJ column.
I hope and expect that in the near future anyone who starts off with the familiar anti-Palin oppo stuff will be immediately identified as a “Sarahnoid.” That doesn’t mean that I deem Gov. Palin uncriticizeable, or consider all those with hesitations about her to be deranged, just that I yearn for a discussion of Palin and Palinism, and likewise Obama and Obamaism and for that matter Romney and Romneyism or Huckabee and Huckabeeism, etc., that’s primarily political rather than crudely personal.
Comments 84
opticon lauds Palin as offering ample common sense.
Are there examples of commonsensical actions from Palin?
July 12th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
How about putting on waders before you enter the frigid Pacific? Strikes me as commonsensical. How about this: What’s Palin done that’s non-commonsensical – not the same as unconventional, btw: In our times, there’s much that’s conventional that’s also quite completely bonkers, IMO.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
CK, I’m not attacking, only asking. Not many of us outside your circle actually know spit about Palin.
I’m looking for some things from her public service rather than her personal life (if she’s still allowed a personal life).
July 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
She’s an entertainer;I think she’d do very well in Branson,Mo.
July 12th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Didn’t really take it as an attack, fuster – but here we have a perfect example of a Sarahnoid turn of discussion. The mass social ritual of mutilating Palin while upraising Obama – not enough social psychological space for two Messiahs at once, one suspects – puts everyone on guard, makes everyone ready to pounce.
Really though, there’s lots of stuff available on, like, what the Gov actually has done – campaign ’08 bios, etc. Probably the leading site for tracking and defending her is Conservatives4Palin.com, though there’s plenty more where that came from.
July 12th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Count me among those who believe Palin is intellectually and temperamentally unfit for elected office.
However, if we take her out of the equation and focus only on the narrow question of government philosophy, we still find Palinism to be radical and problematic.
George Bush showed what happens when one with hostility to government is put in charge of it. Since such people don’t believe federal government either a) can be effective or b) should be involved, our inefficient bureaucracies become truly ineffective. Because these leaders don’t want government to do anything, they stack it with people who won’t do anything. They fill positions with friends and contributors, because the only value such people see in these government positions is political. That’s how you end up with a Mike Brown as director of FEMA. That’s why Sarah Palin hired inexperienced high school friends to serve in key positions in Alaskan government.
Now, this is not an endorsement of so-called big government. People want value from their government. They want it to be the smallest it can be and still deliver. But centrist Americans do believe in a fairly generous mandate for federal government. They want safe food and drugs. They want safety nets. They want oversight of banks and business.
It’s debatable how much of Sarah Palin’s ineffectiveness in Alaska was due to personal shortcomings and how much was caused by philosophical disconnects. I have my opinion. But if Palinism failed in Alaska, why would anyone believe that it would succeed in a country that sees value in things like building codes?
As CKM notes, William F Buckley said he would rather be ruled by the first 2000 names in the Boston phonebook than the faculty at Harvard. I think he would see either choice as preferable to a Sarah Palin presidency. After all, she has already proved that she cannot operate effectively in a highly partisan environment and that she cannot navigate the mainstream media. I would think those would be core competencies for a successful president.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Quill – “It’s debatable how much of Sarah Palin’s ineffectiveness in Alaska was due to . . . ”
What ineffectiveness? By all that I’ve read (admittedly not a lot) she was effective in rooting out the old crony atmosphere in Anchorage, plus she maintained a very high approval rating among Alaskans after a couple of years in office, which would tend to indicate that they didn’t consider her ineffective.
On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of personal attacks on her; but I’ve seen no credible attacks on her performance actually governing.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Sully,
Re: effectiveness of Palin
All you have to do is listen to Palin’s words. She says she is stepping down, in part, because her agenda has been stymied and is going nowhere with her at the helm. And her poll numbers have been plunging. Every post-mortem on her resignation has documented her detachment and ineffectiveness as governor since her VP run.
Here’s Time, which referred to her as a “Do-Nothing Governor,” but this is hardly the only source:
“Palin knew that coming back to Alaska wasn’t going to be fun and that she’d face a lot of criticism. Her response has been to withdraw. Excluding the budget and appropriations bills, which are mandatory, she has introduced next to very little legislation. In his third legislative session in office, Murkowski introduced 32 bills and saw 19 made into law. In her third session, Palin has introduced 12 bills — none that could be considered sweeping measures — and only one has made it into law.
But Palin has spent a lot of time saying no. She fought to reject federal stimulus money, even though Alaska’s legislature is expected to override her final veto of 3% of the funds intended for Alaska. She also spent a great deal of effort trying to keep a Democratic representative from taking a vacant state senate seat. Juneau representative Beth Kerttula, a former Palin ally on energy issues, made the mistake of going on national TV and saying that Palin wasn’t ready for higher office. Over the space of six weeks, Palin not only rejected Kerttula but every Democrat put forth by the Juneau Democratic Party for the vacant seat, bringing the state senate to a near standstill. On the last day of session, Palin finally accepted a neutral candidate, former Juneau mayor Dennis Egan. “The governor was on the brink of being taken to court in violation of appointment statutes,” says senator Hollis French, an Anchorage Democrat. “All because she was trying to rebuke Beth, who during the campaign said one or two things that weren’t ingratiating to the governor.”
Alaska Daily News:
“Alaska observers say Palin had gone fishin’ on job”
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/ap_alaska/story/854416.html
“But to many Alaskans, Palin has been off the job for awhile already, acting as a disengaged presence around the state Capitol since she returned from the presidential campaign trail last year.”
Now, you can say what you like about the press and media bias. But the facts really aren’t in dispute. Palin has achieved nothing in Alaska since her VP run. Even her attempt to reject a tiny portion of the federal stimulus faces a veto override. And if she thinks DC will be less partisan and less liberal than Alaska, she’s in for a rude awakening.
Palin was popular and effective when oil prices were high, when she was writing checks to Alaskans and when her ambitions were local. Now that things have gotten tough, teh coffers are dry, and Alaskans really need a leader, she is checking out. It’s baffling to me why anyone of any party would find this laudable.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
When did George Bush (either one!) ever evince hostility toward government? If that charge fits anyone, it’s Reagan, who actually did say “government is the problem (even if he qualified it with “in this crisis”).
What if the federal government has taken far too much upon itself, represents too many contradicotry interests, and is far to open to scrutiny, fair and unfair, to be “competent” in any meaningful sense anymore, ar least outside of its basic functions of providing security, at home and in the world?
And what if the American people want many things from government, some of which contradict each other and some of which are simply impossible?
In that case, something has to break–and I assumed that that was the kind of thing J.E. Dyer had in mind in her post suggesting that Palin is playing outside of a set of rules that don’t work anymore, and CK’s initial post here arguing that we may see a massive shift in public atittudes towards government, given the right events and leadership. Indeed, Sarah Palin as part of the leadership of whatever the “Tea Parties” end up turning into might initiate a nationwide conversation on what, exactly, we can rerasonable expect from our government; and, if the discussion is wide open, at least part of the answer might be: something very different from what we are getting now. Or, you think we can keep on going the way we have.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I believe that the main achievement post-VP is the advancement of the AGIA pipeline deal past a critical juncture. She described completion of another energy deal in her resignation speech.
I’ve written on Palin’s decision elsewhere at some length – http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/07/04/what-else-was-she-supposed-to-do/ – but I can summarize it here: Her persona had gotten too big for the job, just as the forces aligned against her were boosted and expanded as a result of her national prominence, and in many different ways. Even so, her approval rating was last measured in the mid 50s prior to her resignation, and she and her defenders will claim, with some justification (and as testified to in part by her pre-VP sky-high approval #s), that she had already accomplished her main goals.
Merely injecting Palin into DC-as-we-know-it would hardly be worth the gargantuan effort involved – though many of us would take it if it was on offer. The real calculation has to be about something much different: What would have to change for Palin or some other Palinist to become president, even to have a chance. You have to presume a great deal of desire, even a furious and revolutionary determination, to change DC and thefore the country into something very different, along the lines of what Obama seemed to be promising, but much more so, drawing it’s power from a truly mobilized mad-as-Hell citizenry, and for all intents and purposes unstoppable.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
BTW – and I mean this sincerely and hope I speak for others – thank you, Quill, for providing an articulate and thoughtful opposing viewpoint. I know you’ve expressed elsewhere a willingness to play the troll, but I get the impression that – barring, God forbid, injury or other impairment – the standards for foulness, imbecility, and foul imbecility established at Contentions may remain permanently out of reach for you.
OK – now that I see the typos in my prior post, I’m going to see what I have to do install the comment plug-in with preview functionality. First, got to back up everything. Fingers crossed it won’t cause too much instability…
July 12th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Quill,
W’re clearly on different wavelengths. Although I scarcely trust Time as a source the quote you provided makes me see Palin as more rather than less effective.
Since when does number of bills introduced automatically equate to effectiveness? Since when does negotiating hard til the last ditch in order to achieve what even Time calls a “neutral” candidate for appointment automatically equate to ineffectiveness? Since when does fighting to turn down short term Federal Funds that come with long run strings make someone a bad governor?
July 12th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
“In that case, something has to break” — adam
I’m not making a “size of government” argument so much as an “attitude toward government” argument. I don’t think you can have contempt for government and run it well. And GWB did seem to have contempt — for Congress, for the Judiciary, for most of the departments under him in the executive branch.
I think that’s where conservatives are wide right of the American people. It’s not only that government is not efficient — or “competent” as you say — at providing many functions and services beyond security — it is that you don’t want government to be competent at providing those services and functions, and indeed, have no incentive, when you are given leadership positions, to improve the efficiency of government in those areas because you don’t want the government operating in those areas. An analogy is Rush Limbaugh wanting Obama to fail because if he succeeds, his philosophy (Rush’s perception of it anyway) succeeds.
My sense is that the American people, including a good portion of Republicans, want social security, and an FDA and an EPA and an SEC. They don’t want to pay for big government, but they share neither the right’s contempt for government nor its conception of limited government. They want government to work without waste. But they have a different idea of which programs are wasteful than do most on the right.
At the end of the day, no single person can transform government. You need to be able to work the levers of power.
Strip away the ideology and opinions of Sarah Palin as a person: Let’s say you can pick any person to help you pass legislation in Washington (Let’s pretend that we are eliminating the Education Department). Do you pick Sarah Palin, with all her outsider maverickiness and charisma, or do you take Rahm Emanuel, with his sharp elbows and street smarts? I don’t think it’s a contest. Look at Obama. The honeymoon doesn’t last, and then you have to have the chops to govern. Nothing in Palin’s record says she’ll stay for the fight or be effective at working the levers.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
“You have to presume a great deal of desire, even a furious and revolutionary determination, to change DC and thefore the country into something very different, along the lines of what Obama seemed to be promising, but much more so, drawing it’s power from a truly mobilized mad-as-Hell citizenry, and for all intents and purposes unstoppable.”– CK MacLeod
I think this is right. And while I think you have a glimmer of hope in attacking the tax-and-spend record of Obama, I wouldn’t take it to the bank just yet. There’s a big difference between worried and mad as hell. He’s still pretty darned popular. And the economy may well rebound.
Then again, you need to get rid not only of Obama but of most of the Congress.
If I recall correctly, more people identify as Independents now than as either Democrats or Republicans, so clearly there is significant dissatisfaction with the status quo in Washington. I don’t know who might tap it.
But Sarah Palin hardly seems the answer. She is as polarizing and partisan as any figure on the national stage. I don’t think the Tea Parties will be too welcoming. And 55% of people think she is not fit to be president, according to Public Policy Polling. That’s a high hurdle to clear.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
“but I get the impression that – barring, God forbid, injury or other impairment – the standards for foulness, imbecility, and foul imbecility established at Contentions may remain permanently out of reach for you” — MacLeod
No guarantees on the imbecility, which, I believe, is in the eye of the beholder. If I cross any lines, I trust you all will give me a good swift kick.
Gotta run! Have fun blistering me.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Sully,
None of those things “automatically” mean that she is not effective. Taken as a whole, however, they are pretty darned good evidence.
Palin wasted an entire legislative session over an insignificant appointment. If you followed it, you know that her picks were rebuffed time and again. It was an ugly, petty pissing contest of the sort that makes the public lose confidence in their elected leaders.
As a result, she got just about nothing else accomplished. And, because she poisoned the well, it was clear she would not get anything done in the future.
It’s one thing to have principled hard-fought disagreements with your opponents. It’s quite another to let things devolve so far that your relationship becomes paralyzed by mistrust and dysfunction.
And those are words that seem to follow Gov. Palin. Note the acrimony from the McCain camp. Mistrust and dysfunction. It gives me the impression that Sarah is not strong on teamwork.
There, I talked myself out of voting for her!
July 12th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
The attitude toward government is tied up with the size of government and its functions. But, anyway, I agree with Quill the American people are not ready to sign up to a small government agenda, which would put those who do quite a bit to the “right” of center. I think most Americans want contradictory things–they want the government to guarantee their personal health and security, they want it to ensure that economic ups and downs are minimal, etc., and they also want to minimize waste, keep taxes low, reduce corruption, and so on. Who wouldn’t want those things? My point is that the American people can’t have them, because no one can–the things government has to do to ensure an increasingly low level or risk will lead to higher taxes, more corruption and economic stagnation; and ensuring sustained economic growth and personal freedom makes it impossible to prevent economic dislocations. As long as the economy is growing and we’re pretty safe, we can live with these contradictions and swing back and forth between two not-so-different parties–but you can only live with contradictions until you can’t. I’m not predicting anything, but it seems to me that Sarah Palin’s political future will be significant in direct proportion to the public realization that we need to resolve some of the biggest of these contradictions. If the future is business as usual, the treatment of social and economic contradictions as problems for smart, competent managers to iron out, Palin will fade into obscurity; if a majority of American come to see the “smart ,”"competent” managers as a big part of the problem, she will be central.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I was going to say this earlier, but caught up among other things with getting us a comment preview function (not in its final form by any means, but don’t want to keep tweaking it every time we adjust other aspects of the blog). Maybe it helps support or illustrate Adam’s post:
As Quill says, look at Obama. Well, let’s: He hired Rahm Emanuel. When they had the public at their backs, they were able to get the beginnings of an extremely ambitious agenda passed without anyone hardly even bothering, even being allowed, to read – much less examine, debate, amend, and develop – the legislation. I don’t get the impression that RE’s unique services were very necessary in that context.
Now, I’m sure he’d be murderously effective if Obama tackled midnight basketball programs or getting the nation’s stop signs colored a different shade of red. He’d probably be just the guy if Obama finds his feet in year 2 or 3 amidst a general return to normalcy.
Without a return to normalcy (normalcy = Obama’s re-elected and we have a 1,000 year or anyway around 8 – 12-year left-liberal order), but instead amidst a sense of deepening crisis and the rejection of Obamaism, there will be an opportunity for the anti-Obama, and for a message that says Big Govt Republicanism is a failure, Big Govt Liberalism is a failure, let’s try small government conservatism, in the context of an American renewal agenda.
It won’t go anywhere unless an engaged populace backs it, and stays more engaged than we’ve expected it to be, or it’s really had much of a reason to be, for most of the last 60+ years. The charismatic executive is one model for achieving that kind of change. The other alternatives for saving a house disordered include variously benign and not so benign actual or virtual dictatorships. Or you could have a Palin-like rebel rabble rouser on the outside, a colder and crueler character on the inside. Depending on who Obama turns out to be (to have been all along, to have been pushed into becoming), you could even still imagine him pulling some supra-Clintonian super-triangulation, and actually implementing the agenda, I guess.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
One thing though, I wonder where Quill gets the idea that Palin wouldn’t be welcomed at the Tea Parties. Most of us, and most everyone I know of connected to the TPs in any way, have tended to see Palin as a natural fit for them. She also would immediately give them a much higher profile.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Quill’s flat wrong about the parties.
Palin showing up at these things is the best thing that could happen for them. You might have actual crowds there and people of the more-or-less middle in attendance.
CK, thanks for the ‘view.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Quill — your 7:19 post has a lot of features I see often, such as the argument that the conservative right is opposed to the FDA, EPA, and SEC; that it wants government to function ineffectively (with a kind of lurking implication that that has an impact on whether government is effective or not); and that it has “contempt” for government — again, with the implication that that contempt is a key factor in underperformance by government, or whatever we may call it when government doesn’t produce, with its programs, what it was intended to produce.
I don’t agree with these terms of the argument. Obviously you are at liberty to continue using them, but I don’t accept them. They don’t describe my position, nor do I think they describe the position of most in the conservative right.
The position of Americans on something like the EPA occurs on a continuum, I think. In the center of that continuum are people who expect the EPA to keep their environment clean. Many Republican voters, including conservatives, agree to this charter in principle. Rightists tend to identify, earlier than centrists, the potential for infringements by an agency like the EPA on people’s economic liberties. They will express concern about that potential before the more centrist even see it, and are very often correct in their predictions.
That doesn’t mean all conservatives are pushing for the abolition of the EPA. I think most are willing to continue living with it, but do not agree, for example, that there should be an executive agency with the authority to act on a judicial decision that the gas carbon is a pollutant — and act in ways that will have financial impacts on individuals, and economic impacts on communities, all without prior application to the legislature. Conservatives are concerned about mandates being imposed on the people by combinations of judicial and executive branch action, without affirmative involvement by the legislative branch.
They are also concerned about the extent of government activism, when branches of government have become empowered to rule that a naturally-occurring gas is a pollutant. Whether you agree that it is or isn’t one, it is a valid question whether this kind of ruling, which portends tremendous impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods, should be made by unelected and unaccountable officials, and be binding on millions of voters who had no direct input or influence. It is a question about the very nature and relation of government to the people.
There are multiple position permutations here, and it does no service to honest debate to misrepresent them. Being opposed to this kind of development does NOT mean having contempt for government, nor does it mean wanting government to be ineffective. It also does not mean being opposed to the concept of environmental regulation or protection, or to the existence of the EPA.
It means, rather, opposing a trend in the way government operates. Some conservatives merely oppose the trend outlined here and leave it at that. In my estimation, the majority of conservatives fall into this category.
Others conclude that the existence of federal agencies, and the idea of prophylactic government, lead inexorably to such developments, and that such underlying causes are what have to be eliminated. Still others argue that private property ownership would work even better than government regulation to identify true pollutants and suppress them, through recourse to lawsuits against polluters.
It is not the case that conservatives, as a group, see no role for government action. It is also not true that conservatives have any power to keep government from being “effective.” First of all, this proposition begs a definition for “effectiveness.” The difference between the left and right is not in whether they will LET government be effective, but in whether they think it CAN be, for about 90% of the purposes on which they disagree.
Of course, the other factor being begged in the argument is what the purposes of using government are. With public welfare programs, for example, conservatives will point out that instituting them never produces a declining clientele over time. Instituting public welfare does note help people get off it it. It never has. Not even once. Invariably, in all times and places, instituting public welfare leads to increasing welfare populations.
Therefore, it CANNOT be a reasonable purpose of a public welfare program to help people not need welfare. We can proclaim that purpose until we’re blue in the face, but absolutely no historical evidence supports it as a RATIONAL purpose.
Conservatives will oppose instituting or enlarging public welfare entitlements because of this history. This is not because conservatives have contempt for government. And when expanded public welfare offerings produce, as they invariably do, expanded welfare constituencies, that is NOT because conservatives, through their opposition have somehow prevented the government program from being “effective.” The result is, rather, the predictable and inevitable result of instituting public welfare programs.
Many conservatives have no problem with a limited public assistance “safety net.” What they require is that it be, in fact, limited: with an expiration date, work requirements, and so forth. Some conservatives, on the other hand, believe that only private charity is truly effective. Still others think government programs should be instituted only at the levels closest to the people, because the impersonality of federal administration turns what ought to be temporary assistance, with a human face, into an automated entitlement.
What all conservatives have in common is that they regard assistance programs — at least programs supporting the able-bodied — as having the goal of moving people through temporary circumstances and into self-sufficiency. This is why they do not agree with the left that merely expanding funds for programs that already do the OPPOSITE of that is an appropriate activity for the government.
When Rush Limbaugh says he doesn’t want Obama to be effective, he means that he doesn’t want Obama to do things like expand detrimental activities by government, or accelerate damaging trends in unelected, unaccountable imposition of mandates. He is concerned that Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will do precisely those things — and having seen Obama’s strong-arming of the finance and auto industries, and Congress’ spending and regulating activities just in the first 6 months, I’d say Limbaugh’s concern is valid.
When you see politicians doing things you think are detrimental to the country, I’m pretty sure you don’t feel wrong about hoping they don’t “succeed.”
July 12th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
I guess I missed seeing the step in the argument where you show that the availability of welfare programs is the main causal factor of the inability of people to be self-sufficient.
I also missed understanding how the only purpose of public assistance is to get people to stop needing the benefit. I was under the impression that there are people who will never be more than slenderly able to cope.
July 12th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Quill – “It’s one thing to have principled hard-fought disagreements with your opponents. It’s quite another to let things devolve so far that your relationship becomes paralyzed by mistrust and dysfunction.”
We won’t agree on the main point; but I’ll agree that Palin has been ineffective since November for that reason if you will agree that Obama has been similarly ineffective for the same reason.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Roger Simon advances the morbidly interesting prediction that over the next two election cycles the Democrats will lose control of one or both Houses and that that will save Obama in 2012 in much the same way, he (or his editor) suggests, that Bill Clinton was “saved” in 1996; in other words, Americans have come increasingly to prefer divided government.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Just to summarize what I wrote on JED’s blog (before the comment mysteriously evaporated into the ether): I would describe Palin as a political pragmatist who has spent little of her career self-consciously defining her own ideology in the manner of a Reagan or a Thatcher. To be blunt, she has never gone up against heavy duty intellectual opposition – the media obsession with pulp hardly qualifies – and it shows. Pragmatism is a very endearing and enduring American trait but the pragmatist is always in danger of belong swamped by stronger currents. Sarah needs an ideological life jacket – notwithstanding that some might dismiss one as a straight jacket – if she is to keep her head above water.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:59 am
The NYT today has a lengthy piece on Palin’s road to resignation. Ir paints her as a sympathetic character, but badly flawed. Even her Republican friends seem to think she does not know how to pick her fights and is crippled by managerial dysfunction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/us/politics/13palin.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all
“[Republican adviser Fred] Malek said he told Ms. Palin that “you have got to set up a mechanism so you can return calls.”
“You are getting a bad rap,” he recalled saying. “Important people are trying to talk to you. And she said, ‘What number are they calling?’ She did not know what had been happening.”
I’ll try to return fire on some of your comments a bit later.
Enjoy
July 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Got to remember we have PREVIEW! Awesome.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Make that “straitjacket.” No humor intended.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:06 am
“I’ll agree that Palin has been ineffective since November for that reason if you will agree that Obama has been similarly ineffective for the same reason.” — Sully
Certainly, Obama has not been able to get Republican buy-in for his plans. I still don’t get the sense that Republican leaders feel tremendous personal animosity toward him — or that these relationships are not salvageable. It’s tough to imagine a scenario in which a minority party that controls no branch of government would be in a happy place.
Still, Palin got nothing of consequence done in the past year. Obama — to your side’s dismay — has gotten lots done, just about everything he’s wanted so far. “Ineffective” doesn’t seem to fit.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Thinking of installing some super-awesome comment apps with editing, nesting, images, e-mail options, etc.
“Nothing of consequence done” remains inaccurate. Get to know AGIA: It’s not done, that will take years, but getting Exxon to commit was considered a major victory even by P’s critics.
Returns aren’t in yet on who should be most dismayed and on what actually ahs gotten “done.”
…except to the measures themselves and what they’re supposed to address.
Though maybe Obama’s luck will hold and not just Cap & Trade but Obamacare as well will go down to crushing defeat, and Holder will zip his lip on truth commissions – saving Obama and his party from having to take responsibility for the consequences.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I think the main objection of many conservative minded Americans is the notion that the government swamp gets deeper and deeper with no signs of ever being drained. The number of people enjoying government welfare payments versus the number of people actually footing the bill. The stimulus just passed is an excellent example of this – it has moved so slowly, and has been absorbed by so many government agencies, that even if it were an effective program the government leeches have to get their cut first.
Palin for all her issues was just a person, not necessarily a politician, who saw quite plainly all the stupidity that goes on in government. When the big sharks moved in, not being a politician was a liability. Look at the four candidates in the recent election. Of the four, who had the most executive experience? Palin. Who had least amount of executive or legislative background? Obama. Were any of the four particularly impressive? No. We have hacks in congress who are busy lining their own pockets while extolling “public service”. And we increasingly have a population who doesn’t seem to care because they are more worried about the next American Idol than the fact that their government is acting like mafia bosses. There is a point where it becomes unsustainable, and Obama to his credit has found that point with quickly, probably protecting us from much of any more stupidity and with losses in both chambers in 2010. So he will be effective in electing republicans in the next cycle because he has clearly demonstrated he is not what he campaigned on to that amorphous group known as independents.
Of course my expectations that enough of the GOP can not fall into the exact same hole remains limited. I still see us now as Rome on the downside, as the English empire in decline. When Rome fell, the world fell in darkness; when Britain fell we were there to pick up the pieces – with a similar economic and political heritage. When we fall, there will be no “enlightenment based” culture to follow up. That leadership – if it comes at all – will come from the far east, and will look very different to all of us. Few here will see it coming, and the ones who decried our past as evil will be the ones crying the loudest when they finally realize we weren’t so evil after all.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:25 am
CK – in reality Obama hasn’t gotten nearly as much as I expected because he tried to eat way too much too far left. He got the big stimulus bill and the massive budget – thus securing himself the title as the biggest spender in history. It also sucked out his ability to pay for much of anything else. Effective means you get signature pieces of legislation passed. What are his? Cap and Trade will never survive the Senate, that seems pretty obvious. Health care is in trouble because people who know the system realize his proposal means the end of employer based health care and being sucked into a public option run by the government. Everyone knows what that means. It isn’t reform. Card check means US jobs leaving the shores while strong arming people to join unions without the right to even vote on it secretly.
All the while his spending hasn’t helped, other than provide more evidence for RCAR’s gold standard position and force China to laugh at our financial representatives. Unemployment is at 9.5% and forecast to move over 10%. Businesses are not hiring because they don’t know what the regulatory/legal environment will be 6 months from now. Obama owns the economy and it will be the anvil that drags his party down. I like that type of effectiveness.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:36 am
“Quill’s flat wrong about the parties. Palin showing up at these things is the best thing that could happen for them. You might have actual crowds there and people of the more-or-less middle in attendance.” –fuster
I think CKM said something similar. I defer to your greater knowledge of the Tea Party movement and how Palin might be received. I have no doubt she would attract crowds and cameras.
I know only what I read of the movement, and based on this, I believe a) that the movement bills itself as non- or bi-partisan and b) that is it leery of being coopted by any person or party seeking to use it as a springboard for their ambitions.
Now I have no doubt Sarah Palin would love to install herself at the head of the Tea Party movement, but that would seem to be a nail in the coffin of the argument that the tea parties are non-partisan.
For the Tea Parties to be relevant, IMO, they must capture the political center. Sarah Palin is very much a socially conservative, partisan figure of the far right. That means either the Tea Parties would be seen as an arm of the GOP — sure death. Or they would be seen as an independent movement to the right of the GOP — surer death.
Not all attention is good. America is naturally skeptical of any group that takes to the streets. Such protests seem to attract the wacky. The signs often do more harm than good. If you doubt me, just go to YouTube and watch the interviews with those queued up outside Palin campaign events. An analogy: Imagine if antiwar protesters chose Al Sharpton to be their figurehead. You get attention, but lose all credibility.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am
“Big Govt Republicanism is a failure, Big Govt Liberalism is a failure, let’s try small government conservatism, in the context of an American renewal agenda.” — CKM
Small government conservatism is a pipe dream. It’s as utopian as any idea ever uttered by a liberal.
No Republican has ever cut the size of government. Reagan cut taxes, but increased spending, exploding the deficit. Nothing conservative there. Tax rates aside, Jimmy Carter was arguably the most fiscally conservative modern president, in that the economy took its lumps in real time. He didn’t charge the good times to a credit card. (Debt to GDP was lowest under Carter.
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/thefederalbudget/ig/Political-Economic-Measures/Debt-GDP-by-President.htm )
If you ask Americans if they want universal healthcare, most will say yes. Fewer after you start talking about specifics costs and tradeoffs. Same goes for small government. Sounds good until you start talking about what government is taking away.
JE Dyer’s post, seemed to say that conservatives didn’t want to get rid of much government, just rein it in a bit. I’m afraid that’s not “small government.” Discretionary spending is a sideshow. The issue is entitlements. We are going to have to address our entitlement issues. That means some combination of cutting benefits and raising taxes.
Demographics are a ticking timebomb. The Baby Boom is retiring. They are shifting from supporters of the tax base to dependents of the tax base. These “welfarfe recipients” are never moving into the workforce. And they will be dumping assets over the next 20 years to provide income. That’s going to depress real estate, stocks, everything. That’s a fierce headwind.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Quill, you’re confusing terms, and writing like a liberal reactionary: “Small government” isn’t the same as “fiscal conservative,” though in they obviously have overlapping concerns.
Reagan’s Faustian bargain with the Congress may define the unsustainable compromises and therefore the limitations of an era whose end we may actually be glimpsing. I agree with you about the fiscal-demographic headwinds, and about the possibility, if not the certainty, that reflexive supply siderism may prove as impotent against them as reflexive liberalism.
Merely heading off an entitlement trainwreck may be relatively easy compared to some of the other things we’ll need to do. It’s not just that we have $60 T in obligations: There is significant reason to wonder what $60 T will be worth in ten years.
JED can speak for herself, but from my reading of her work, both the post above and elsewhere, I think she has things in mind that are rather more dramatic, in the way of removing economic/regulatory overhead, than reining in government “a bit.”
July 13th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I think you’re projecting, while uncritically swallowing the caricature of Palin advanced by lefties desperate to marginalize her, and while presuming a static picture of a “political center.” There’s nothing “far right” about Palin’s enunciated platform – national security, energy independence, fiscal conservatism, local control, small government. Her radicalism is, arguably, the radicalism of the radical center, as supported by polling data, and her pro-life orientation is more centrist than Obama’s Spartan approach to the unwanted.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“There is significant reason to wonder what $60 T will be worth in ten years.”– CK MacLeod
Ever fishtail while driving? You steer into the skid one way, then when you start to lose it in the other direction, start cranking the opposite way. Hopefully, the oscillations subside and you keep it on the road.
We are in that situation. Of course what we do now will result in higher inflation and interest rates down the road, which we will then have to correct for with monetary policy. The alternative is to not attempt to address the current skid and let the car end up in a ditch. It’s really not an option, no matter what the backseat drivers say.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
And if the car’s running on empty, you’re going to have to get out and walk. Do you believe what you said about those headwinds or not?
July 13th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
“I think you’re projecting, while uncritically swallowing the caricature of Palin advanced by lefties” — CKM
Nonsense. My opinion of Palin hardly matters. She is a partisan figure. And she has virtually no support beyond the conservative base. Don’t ask me. Ask America.
Here’s her latest Public Policy Polling approval nos.
Conservative: 77% approve
Moderate: 27% approve
Liberal: 20% approve
And on the question of whether she is fit to be president, the nos are pretty much the same. A big “you’re kidding, right?” from liberals and moderates.
Agree Palin is fit to be president:
Conservatives 67%
Moderates 19%
Liberal 11%
I don’t know. Having more than a quarter of conservatives and almost three-quarters of moderates say a candidate is unfit to serve would seem to be insurmountable.
Wasilla is about as far from the center of America as you can get.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
“And if the car’s running on empty, you’re going to have to get out and walk.” – CKM
If the central planners have gotten it right, you just slow down and let the hybrid’s electric motor kick in.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Get back to me on those numbers next year, this time. In the meantime, it’s rather striking that the firm would even ask whether someone is “fit to serve” – as though she was suspected of passing secrets to Al Qaeda, or had been caught smoking crack with a lover she’d been stalking. Merely asking the question is virtually push-polling.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
If the central planners have gotten it right, then I wait a little longer, and wake up.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Thank you CKM for spanking Noonan, and for organizing such a thoughtful discussion. Palin is a promising work in progress. So are Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. She could learn from their sophistication, and they from her common touch. She did not go to Harvard or Yale. Unlike David Brooks, she did not get to debate Milton Friedman at Chicago. I think Mc Cain’s decision (to add her) took her by surprise and of course her life has been a whirlwind ever since. She’s smart to recognize she needs a time out.
CKM, you are certainly as sophisticated, well educated and articulate as Noonan. You instinctively reach out to and help our gifted sister from Alaska, while PN wants to tear her to shreds.
I think there is some room for optimism here. We need to show voters that Democrats will never get enough government. They will always want more taxes, more agencies, more programs, and this kind of trend will only bring our nation down.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Broken Record Time,Can you imagine SP in charge of our economy? I wonder if she is viewing or reading Niall Ferguson’s “The Ascent of Money” or she is hitting her Hayek and Von Mises. I don’t believe that she has a better than a Jr high school understanding of the History of Capitalism or the history of anything,except the history of her career and family. I’ll betcha she has read “Ice Palace” by Edna Ferber.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
RCAR, I can imagine SP helping to loosen the grip of the government on our economy.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
RCAR – I find it interesting, and I think Ferguson, Hayek and Von Mises would as well, that you believe any politician should be or can be “in charge of our economy.”
July 13th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
de Tocqueville, too – referring to democracy: “Under its rule, it is not so much what the public administration does that is great, but, above all, what people do without it, and independent of it.”
July 13th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Come to think of it I suspect Ferguson, Hayek or Von Mises would have instructed you pretty forcefully to avoid the fallacy of considering even themselves qualified to be “in charge of our economy.”
July 13th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Zoltan – are you referring to the Green Room piece I just put up? I tried to track it back to here, but for some reason the referral isn’t coming up on the thread. Maybe it’s just being delayed. Anyway, thank you for your kind words.
As for RCAR, I’d love to be there to watch his head explode when SP came out for an asset-based currency.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Anyone trying to undo the government grip on the economy is going to have to have a deep understanding of the connection points. Hacking at the knots based on common sense alone might be reckless.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Knowledge of “the history of capitalism”! An elitist criterion of dubious utility. Exactly what part of the history of capitalism do you need to know to veto a spending bill or to submit a budget in which costs and revenue are more or less in balance? Capitalism has a history going on seven centuries now. What on earth did FDR know about the Medici, the Fuggers, or the Rothschilds? What, for that matter, did Ronald Reagan know or need to know about such arcana? I doubt that even fabled arch-capitalists like Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan knew or gave a fig about the history of capitalism.
Barack Obama as president is no surprise whatsoever, his dissembling during the campaign notwithstanding. Similarly, we know what we need to know to predict what Sarah Palin would do as president. We could know that simply from what se did as Mayor of Wasilla, forget about Governor of Alaska. Do you imagine there is some serious disconnect between Barack Obama the community organizer and ACORN ally and President Obama? What would Sarah Palin do as president that would be a surprise?
July 13th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
“We could know that simply from what se did as Mayor of Wasilla, forget about Governor of Alaska.”
Are you talking about her raising a sales tax to build a budget-busting hockey complex that created huge litigation costs for the town and left it deep in debt? Or are you referring to the corruption aspect, in which the contractors for the hockey complex donated the materials for Palin’s lakefront house?
Either way. Thanks but no thanks.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Sully,But the fact is that Geithner and Bernanke,professional career bureaucrats/politicos are in total charge of our economy,and that is because BHO knows about as much as SP. If I were in charge,I would appt Peter Morici or Mike Hudson as economic Dictator.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any unfavorable un-fact about Sarah Palin that Quill would consider questioning. Next we’ll hear that she doesn’t believe in dinosaurs and went on a massive shopping spree with campaign funds.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Good grief! What trivial rubbish!! Forgive me for not immediately conceding on the basis of a two-sentence, tendentious summary of Palin’s mayoralty of Wasilla, a precis that stinks of talking-point-ology.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
If we’re talking about qualifications for being “in charge of our economy” we should probably remember that Jimmy Carter undoubtedly very closely studied his briefing books, as well as a wide variety of bound books, on economic history and theory before he gave his “malaise” speech.
Reagan, on the other hand, might well have guessed “Prussian general” if asked who Von Mises was at a weak moment; but he understood on a gut level that there ain’t no free lunch.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Sully,you just made my point,Carter hired Volcker,and Volcker helped Reagan look good,you’ll notice that Volcker is nowhereman in Bho’s eco-group,why do you think that is?
July 13th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
“Forgive me for not immediately conceding” Joe NS
I forgive you.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
RCAR – “If I were in charge,I would appoint Peter Morici or Mike Hudson as economic Dictator”
Which goes to show that Sarah Palin would (probably) make a better person to have “in charge” than you, since at least she would presumably avoid falling into the fallacy of yearning for an “economic dictator.”
We truly are doomed if we’ve gotten to the point where even the apparent quasi-libertarians yearn for a man on horseback.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
“RCAR – “If I were in charge,I would appoint Peter Morici or Mike Hudson as economic Dictator”
Do you think Bernanke is not an economic dictator?
July 13th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
One of you guys, or both of you, or all of you, should take on the heavy mantel, yay the Mickey Mantle, of authorial responsibility, and put up some main posts on economics.
I’m tempted to send out author passwords to everyone here, and dare you not to take advantage!
That’d show you.
Hmmmm….
July 13th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
“I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any unfavorable un-fact about Sarah Palin that Quill would consider questioning.” –CKM
Please point out one “un-fact.”
Regarding the hockey complex, those would all be facts. Even Palin wouldn’t dispute them. It cost vastly more than was budgeted. Palin jumped the gun and started building before clear title to the land was granted. The town ended up with huge legal bills and got squeezed on the price. Palin raised taxes to cover the cost. The town still carries the debt. One of the contractors that got the contract for the hockey rink donated materials to build the Palin’s house.
There’s a lot of additional smoke surrounding the building of her house. But I didn’t go there, because nothing’s been proven. Todd says he and a few buddies built the house. Many people suspect it was the same contractor that built the rink and donated the materials. No way of knowing because Sarah at about that same time suspended the need to disclose such info on building permits in Wasilla. Sort of a big deal in Alaska because of the whold Ted Stevens flap.
Maybe we should have a one free housing corruption scandal for every politician. It wouls save a lot of work.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I feel like Michael Corleone – “Just when I thought I was out. . . they pull me back in.”
Sarah Palin is interesting but essentially old news until we see how she reinvents herself (or fails to) over the next ten years. Her resignation almost surely rules her out of the presidential sweepstakes for at least the next two cycles. Why are we arguing about her current qualifications when they will be irrelevent before she can credibly run?
July 13th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
CK,i would be happy to post articles that in my opinion would be informative&worth reading,maybe with some inobtrusive commentary.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
RCAR – “Do you think Bernanke is not an economic dictator?”
Bernanke may well believe he is an economic dictator; but, fortunately, he’s just playing around the edges of the economy. Heaven help us more than heaven helped the “new soviet man” if we ever get a real economic dictator – no matter how apparently wise he or she is.
The RCAR of old would never have gone down this path. I’m beginning to think you’re a fake RCAR.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I kinda think she’d tell the story a leetle bit differently, recalling, for instance, the role played by the town’s own voters in passing the initiative that okayed the building initiative.
Your negative narration on the house – going into it without going into it – is unseemly, Quill – or might be in some more public context than deep in a thread on a micro-blog. Palin’s lawyer has smacked hard on this pseudo-story. I won’t concede for a second that there’s a “housing corruption scandal,” certainly anything on the Rezko level, here.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
CKM: You were in the Navy, right? Almost a lifer. Annapolis? Bet you could write a book, but, maybe you did write more than one book already.
Are you an expert on The Russian Navy? Is that why it is listed on your blogroll? They sure seem to have a lot of submarines, those Russkies!
Putin strikes me as the most dangerous psychopath on Earth. Far worse than Ben Laden, Mugabe and Chavez and Ahmadinnerjacket.
I’m tired of talking about SP. She can take care of herself for now. If she’s learned anything at all during the past month, she will definitely want to get to know you.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Sully is headed for RCARnoia. The thread is spreading contagion!
July 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Sully, I’m just getting discouraged by our Marx Brothers tactics. I really don’t want the ecocrisis to result in WW3
July 13th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Ahh – Zoltan, you have me confused with JED – she’s the Navy veteran sometimes also known as Opticon – at the Optimistic Conservative blog – whose writings on Sarah Palin are among the best you’ll find. I agree that SP ought to give JED a call.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Quill, the problem here, oxymoronically speaking, is one of monumental minutia. You have examined Sarah Palin’s tenure as mayor, discovered nothing good, and two items of accusation. Nothing else happened in four years worth mentioning. Then, if we are to believe your libel on Alaskans, a woman with a two-sentence history of mayor ran for governor and was somehow elected.
And let’s look at those items. One of them involves “lots of smoke.” Even more damningly, though “nothing has been proven,” “Many people,” attired in deerstalkers and puffing on meerschaums, I’ll wager, are busily “suspecting” things. Furthermore, the building of her residence, concerning which there’s “smoke” and “no proof” is comparable in Alaskan eyes to Ted Stevens’ quarter-billion boondoggle. The electorate just swallowed their concern and voted for her anyway.
As to the hockey rink. That Sarah Palin “jumped the gun” is not a fact but a characterization. But now you’ve led the discussion now into the Alaskan building-permit process, sinking deeper into flea-flicking inconsequentiality.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Joe NS
Speaking of smoke. Look over the thread and count the number of substantial, substantiated criticisms I have made of Palin.
Palin was elected Governor as an outsider. Her role as mayor was of little consequence and little examined. She made her bones as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Committee, where she quit in protest over the ethical problems of her fellow Republicans. Quitting seems to be a habit, but in this case, it set her up well to run as a reformer in a state that lives off federal pork — more per capita than any other welfare state — with all the corruption that entails.
Now, I am not the one who suggested we need not even look at Palin’s record as Governor and that all we need to do is look at her time as mayor. You are. If those are the rules, then fine, let’s look at her tenure as mayor. Her signature project, the legacy of her administration, resulted in a 25-fold increase in longterm debt, higher taxes and mismanagement ending in the eminent domain seizure of private property.
The WSJ, not a liberal paper, agrees with me.
“WASILLA, Alaska — The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.
The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin’s legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.”
Under Palin, Wasilla’s long-term debt increased from $1 million to $25 million.
If you consider that trivial, fine by me. I don’t need to reach back to Palin’s Wasilla days to know she is unfit. So please, nominate her. We’d love to run against her again.
Finally, the portion of the house issue that is rumor was presented as such. Spenard Builders Supply, which has sponsored Todd’s snowmachine team and paid Sarah Palin to appear in TV commercials, also was a contractor for the sports complex and supplied materials for the Palin’s house. That is fact. If it weren’t, Palin’s saber-rattling lawyers would have pounced on the Village Voice, right? Right. Glad we could clear that up.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Gosh, I’ve now met TWO new brilliant conservative women all in the space of one week, thanks to the demise of Contentions’ Comments. Thank you Mister Podhorentz!
Next thing I know I’ll wake up and Laura Ingraham will be sitting in my lap.
CKM: why don’t you and JED (and Laura I) all run for Congress? We could use some new blood there. Pelosi has had too much work done on her face. It looks like a train wreck without the makeup. Rumor has it she can no longer close her eyes.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Zoltan, the “C” stands for Colin, as in Mr. Colin “CK” MacLeod. Or were you referring to extra-curricular activities about which the less we learn, the better for all concerned?
I believe that JED, like SP, is maximizing her potential energy by remaining cagey about any specific political intentions.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Quill, all that’s clear is that you are up to your neck in misdirection. According to the WSJ article you cite, a real-estate speculator, aware that the city was interested in a piece of property owned by a nature conservancy, and sensing an opportunity for a killing, bought the land from the conservancy for way, way more than what the city claims they (the conservancy) had agreed to accept. The federal court first ruled in the City’s favor. At that point, Palin went ahead with the project. The Court reversed itself on appeal, and the city was forced to buy the land at a higher price plus interest.
Furthermore, in the Anchorage Star of November 30, 2005, we read:
“Wasilla voters agreed in 2002 to a half-percent increase in the city sales tax to pay off a $14.7 million bond to build the multi-use facility. The project ‘was completed on schedule and under budget,’ Mayor Dianne Keller said, and the complex opened its doors March 6, 2004.
“Sales tax revenue, which can only be used to pay the bond, is coming in faster than expected. Keller said she believes the facility will be paid off at least two years ahead of the 10-year schedule.
“The operating cost and revenue picture is less rosy. The complex saw a loss of just over $145,000 in fiscal year 2004, according to a 2005 financial report from the Wasilla finance department. Preliminary numbers show a loss of just over $212,000 in fiscal year 2005. Deputy city finance director Susan Colligan said an auditor must confirm those numbers.”
The citizens of Wasilla wanted a sports complex. They voted the funds to pay for it. Palin’s principal failing was in not waiting for the appeal to be ruled on. The judge’s ruling on appeal appears to have been on procedural grounds. The City had signed the wrong papers, and left the decion on the merits of the case, i.e., that the Nature Conservancy had engaged in double dealing with a real-estate shark, unchanged.
You left the impression in your post, I would ague deliberately, that Palin had saddled Wasilla with $25 million as a result of the deal, when in fact the complex was budgeted for $10 million, came in on time and under budget and is expected to be paid off on schedule. There are words for that kind of selective citation, none of them pretty.
Here we have an intricate land deal that took years to settle, and you are claiming that the result, a $1.1 million dollar expenditure over and above the $15 million cost of the complex, renders Palin “unfit.” Obama is wasting that much per minute these days, but he’s got your vote.
But the larger issue goes unaddressed. The woman was mayor six years and left office in Wasilla with an 88% approval rating. And you have decided she’s unfit because the City of Wasilla filed the wrong papers leading to a 7.5% charge? Oh yes, and the “rumors” about her private residence. Did nothing else happen in SIX YEARS that as the slightest bearing on her fitness for executive office. You have scraped through the bottom of the barrel and that’s what you’ve come up with.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Correction, in the above “the complex was budgeted for $10 million” should be “$10 million less [than $25 million]“
July 13th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Well, you shouldn’t let not being a woman stop you from running for Congress, sir.
You’ve shown yourself to be an excellent organizer and thinker, you have.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:07 am
“Palin’s principal failing was in not waiting for the appeal to be ruled on.”
Well, that’s some progress anyway.
During Palin’s time as mayor, the city’s long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25, the bulk of which is sport complex spending. You don’t think that’s significant for a town with at budget of $20 million? What does that say about her attitude toward debt?
Some conservative questions:
Why is Wasilla in the hockey rink business? If there exists a market for this, shouldn’t the free market be providing it? Did she look at ways to attract private investment, or is operating hockey rinks best done by government? Isn’t government crowding out private enterprise?
Why, if I am a single resident of Wasilla, should I be taxed to fund some other family’s entertainment activities?
If Wasilla — the meth capital of Alaska — feels the need to geometrically increase its debt, is a sports complex really its no. 1 priority?
If I were a conservative, looking for the true Sarah Palin, I’d be worried about the disconnect between what she says about the role of government and incurring debt and raising taxes.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:32 am
New CBS poll out today:
“Would Palin have the ability to be an effective President?”
Yes 22%
No 65%
“No,” by Party
Republicans, 51%
Democrats, 86%
Independents, 55%
People also don’t believe that she is telling the truth when she says she is resigning for the good of Alaska.
“Is Palin resigning because she thinks it is better for:
Political career, 52%
Alaska, 24%
Don’t know, 14%
July 14th, 2009 at 9:37 am
One peril of devoting insufficient time to orchestrated character assassination is, at first, an inability to recognize its exempla when they come up like weeds for no apparent reason. Accordingly my ingenuousness was seriously challenged when I read the first of Quill’s attacks on Sarah Palin. It took me a little while to get up to speed on the issues raised, and what I have learned is, I am ashamed to admit it, what probably everyone else knew as long ago as last October, namely, that Quill’s accusations are front-to-back, left-to-right, top-to-bottom junk.
Last October, the Village Voice ran the story from which Quill cribbed his “analysis” of Palin’s “fitness,” a simple cut-and-paste hack of a left-liberal diatribe, similarly with the Wall Street Journal material he provided. (FYI: the news division of the WSJ is DEFINITELY liberal. The editorial side is conservative. Quill surely knows that, so his suggestion that the WSJ story came from an unbiased source was deliberately misleading.) To resume, the story originally broke on October 8, 2008. It was obviously a partisan hatchet job, and it disappeared quickly when the mainstream media largely ignored it, as they were certainly wise to have done.
Then Palin announced her resignation. The impetus behind the resurrection of this piece of garbage was a SINGLE blog by an Anti-Palin Alaskan named Shayma Moore, who suggested, for all we know on the basis of an entry in her dream book, that the Governor had resigned because she was facing “criminal investigations!” and “indictments!!” for the alleged hockey-rink and personal-residence misprision stories that had been moldering in their graves nine months.
At once, Igors like Quill – and a hundred other graverobbers, I’m sure – dug up the cadavers and to the cry of “It’s alive! It’s alive!” propped them up, stench and all. Ms Moore was gulty only of childlike malevolence. Quill is another matter. He brought this “material” to our attention here AFTER the FBI and Alaska attorney general went on record as saying that there are not now nor have there ever been ANY investigations of Palin with regard top these maters because , one must suppose, they were prima facie garbage.
I have learned my lesson. I will never again respond to a coprophage like Quill again without first looking at the wider and wilder political marching orders to which he is so clearly responding to robotically.
A few final details: In 2002, when Palin was building her home, Spenard’s was the primary building-supply store in Wasilla, and the ONLY one capable of supplying a large project like the sports arena. There was no Home Depot or Walmart’s (though there are now) in Wasilla or anywhere nearby. Ninety-percent of the homes in the Mat-Su Valley were built with materials supplied by Spenard’s! Why palin’s home should be any different is impossible to say. The whole accusation is buncombe.
After consulting the Wasilla City Government website and looking at their consolidated balance shets for FY 2003, the last fiscal year on which Palin’s mayoralty had an impact, I discovered that the figure of $25 million indebtedness is a further falsehod. The actual figure is under $20 million, deriving primarily from two bond issues: $6 million in 1998 for roads and water systems, and $14.7 million in 2002 for the sports arena.
When Palin took office in 1996, the Wasilla road and water system had not been upgraded in 60 years. At the same time, along with the rest of Alaska, the city was in the midst of a boom and fantastic growth. The bond issues were of course approved by the voters, and the Palin administration did what had long needed doing.
Finally, Conservatives have no problem whatsoever with local initiatives for broadly-supported projects like the sports arena. It’s called subsidiarity. The lowest level of government appropriate to the task at hand is the first place you go for making such building decisions and for financing them.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:07 am
“After consulting the Wasilla City Government website and looking at their consolidated balance shets for FY 2003, the last fiscal year on which Palin’s mayoralty had an impact, I discovered that the figure of $25 million indebtedness is a further falsehod. The actual figure is under $20 million, …” — Joe NS
Of all your counter-factual assertions, this is perhaps the saddest, Joe NS, because you apparently conducted your own research (I applaude the effort) and still came up with the wrong answer.
Here’s exactly what I said. “During Palin’s time as mayor, the city’s long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25 [million].”
From the source you cite (FY2003 Financial Statements, P.23 and elsewhere], Wasilla’s long term debt totaled $24.1 million, comprising $18.6 in general obligation bonds, $4.3 million in loans payable and $1.2 million in special assessment bonds.
If you want to fault me for the rounding error ($24.1 million vs. $25 million), have at it. I’m pretty happy that I got that close, closer than you got while actually looking at the financial statements.
The real bottom line, though, is that even if you were right, which you are clearly not, that Wasilla’s LT debt went up only 20-fold and not 24-fold, it still marks an explosion of debt on Palin’ watch and by her hand.
Those were fat times for Wasilla and all of Alaska. I wonder how they feel about her tax increases and debt burden now?
The ad hominem stuff doesn’t bother me, but statements like this are just too jarring to let pass:
“But the larger issue goes unaddressed. The woman was mayor six years and left office in Wasilla with an 88% approval rating.”
Did she really leave Wasilla with an 88% approval rating among Wasilla residents? Maybe you are right. Can you provide the source? But I’m guessing you are confusing her honeymoon approval levels as governor, which would be statewide numbers, completely unreflective of her job as mayor, and measured long after she let office in Wasilla.
Don’t worry, if you are wrong on the 88% approval rating, I will not accuse you of being a “coprophage.” I find such slurs of character and intention to be classless, don’t you? You realize the irony of you labeling me a “character assassin,” don’t you? Probably not.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Quill, the very bottom of bottomest lines on the GREAT WASILLA SCANDALS that you’re valiantly bringing before our o’er-scaled eyeballs, is that no one here is in a position to judge them. It’s completely presumptuous for you or anyone to guess how Mr. and Mrs. John Q Wasilla feel about the awesome/inconsequential city debt of $24 or $25 MM. Maybe they feel just fine about it. Maybe 24% of Wasillans feel horrible, and are glad to tell the ADN reporter who has each and every one on speed-dial, and maybe the vast silent majority of Wasillans (all 300 of them) feel pretty darn terrific about the complex and the massive boom that added a Wal-Mart and a Home Depot to Spenard’s among their contracting and home refurbishment options. Maybe they got a Barnes & Noble, too, bringing culture to the meth-jonesing yokels! You ever seen them mix paint at Home Depot? It’s quite the spectacle. And if Sarah’s organizing brought that to her itty-bitty community, I say it would be a bargain at $48 to 50 MM, and you’re in no position to prove me wrong.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Quill, “character assassination” does not enter into what I am directing at you. If I attacked Uriah Heep, would that be ironic? You, “Quill,” are a literary fiction, flashing pixels, and could be 12 people or no people at all, a robot, a program, a listserv at the DNC. What I write about and to you is tempered by and only need be adjusted to the level of contempt “your” scribblings evoke, because that’s all you effectively are, robotic scribblings, a paste-and-cutter of other scribblings. Get a grip. Nothing I write could harm your character, much less assassinate you. You have no idea what irony is.
Sarah Palin, however, is an identifiable individual, with a clear record that whatever you are persists in distorting by citing certain things and omitting others in the same article(s) that utterly undermine what, at last, was whatever the hell you are’s only discernible position: Sarah Palin is unfit to hold office. THAT is character assassination, or an attempt at it, because Sarah Palin is an actual character and the rubbish you presented doesn’t come anywhere near supporting.
I accept the correction of my correction on the long-term debt. The people of Wasilla, however, voted for the two bond issues. They voted for the sports arena four years AFTER they voted for the public works offering. They were not some tax levied by the City Council in secret proceedings. Yet, like a dog returning to its vomit, you continue to regurgitate the nonsense that Sarah Palin somehow inflicted this on the citizenry. And spare us the faux sympathy for the people of Wasilla. What do they think of Palin now indeed? You haven’t the faintest idea of how they feel, nor do you much care really – it’s all grist for the mill for whatever you are’s type – Unless, dear lord, please tell me that you’re about to unload on us the absolute bombshell revelation that Alaskans think their taxes are too high!
Oh, I meant to write “necrophages like Quill,” not “coprophages.” The former suits the simile I was struggling to set down; the latter is in apt. I’m not apologizing, mind you. I’m not stupid enough to apologize to a random-access memory.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Hmmmmmm Quill, aren’t Valerie and Rahm friends with Obama? And just about everyone he hired? And 30 czars? And 45 lawyers? Do we need to pay for that? Or is that part of the job creations we were promised? And our President introduced which legislature during his 183 days of being a Senator? And he won his Senate seat by how many signatures did he have deleted from petition the other Democrat had to be in the running? And I bet you believed him when he said he never met Bill Ayers.
And one more thing, isn’t Obama’s ratings hoving around the 50 or below mark? Just curious.
July 26th, 2009 at 1:09 am