The Bridge to Nowhere lie is going to come home to roost. Expect

to see that dropped from her stump speech soon. Not only did she support the earmark for the bridge, she also hired a lobbyist for her little city when she was mayor, to go get her some of those nice little earmarks.

"While running for governor in 2006, though, Palin backed federal funding for the infamous bridge, which McCain helped make it a symbol of pork barrel excess.

And as mayor of the small town of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002, Palin also hired a Washington lobbying firm that helped secure $8 million in congressionally directed spending projects, known as earmarks, according to public spending records compiled by the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste and lobbying documents."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-31-palin-bridge_N.htm

She could very well be the gift that keeps on giving.

:kick:

but who knows.

we'll see if, after the hurricane, we see more of this.

"In September 2007, Palin's office issued a new release saying the governor had "cancelled all state work on the Gravina Island bridge project, which gained national fame as a symbol of what critics said was wrong with federal budget earmarks."

"I think that's when the campaign for national office began," Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein told the Anchorage Daily News on Saturday."


It was a purely political decision, as a way to set her up for all of this. So it's been less than a year since she decided she was a "reformer".

:dem:

on MSNBC's website as well. I don't see anything about it on CNN's.

The fishery connection is particular interesting -- recall that the Palins have a family fishing business and that Palin has supported fishing interests over the mining industry.


http://thepeach.blogspot.com/2008/08/palin-lobbying-firm-under-investigation.html

While mayor, Palin hired a Washington lobbying firm to secure $8 million in congressionally directed spending projects, better known as earmarks. The lobbying firm was headed by Steven Silver, a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the main force behing the "bridge."

Steven Silver is a member of the firm Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, a lobbying firm with offices in both Virginia and Alaska. The firm is connected to a long running corruption probe of oil money, legislators, and lobbyists in Juneau's Statehouse. In the summer of 2007 the F.B.I. raided the homes of Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young as part of the investigation. So, while Palin trumpets her political reform horn, the reality is that she used the same lobbying firm that was under investigation in 2007.

The concern over the investigation became so great that the firm has recently changed its name to Hoffman, Silver, Gilman & Blasco. The Peach can only wonder if the name change also occured to avoid any embarassment or connection to Palin.


http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=900005489758

In fact, several of the firm's partners are not just Alaska natives — they were raised in Stevens' office. One, Steven Silver, was once a legislative assistant to the Republican senator; partner Gilman, a childhood friend of Stevens' son, Ben, left his position as a fisheries aide to the senator for lobbying work in the seafood industry. In the late 1990s, Senate records show, Ben Stevens even registered as a federal lobbyist for the firm, representing the city of Unalaska.

These days, Robertson, Monagle represents more than 20 public entities in the state, as well as significant players in Alaska's seafood industry, such as Trident Seafoods and Seafreeze. But although it has had a hand in a flood of federal dollars to Alaska (for example, it represents Ketchikan Gateway Borough, a beneficiary of the nine-figure "Bridge to Nowhere"), the firm has kept a relatively low profile. Neither Robertson, Monagle nor Stevens' D.C. office returned calls for this story. . . .

Yet Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh also focuses on issues that, to anyone outside a key group in the state, are obscure. In a state that is tiny in almost every sense but the geographic one, the members of the fishing industry make up an even more isolated subset. Though they create billion-dollar revenues, fishing and processing are largely done by private companies working in coastal communities with limited ties to the state capital. Given the high stakes and specialization of the fishing industry, many of the Alaska delegation's former staffers are lured into lobbying on its behalf. . . .

More than a half-dozen Stevens aides have left the Hill to take up prominent positions in the fisheries lobbying industry over the years. During that same period, says Seth Macinko, a University of Rhode Island professor who studies Alaskan fisheries, the industry has increasingly looked to its congressional delegation for policy changes, undercutting regional efforts to set policy by the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.


http://mikk2.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/the-ferry-king-the-unabridged-version/

Sen. Ted Stevens, who championed $452 million in federal funding for Alaska’s notorious “bridges to nowhere,” has directed the Navy to build an experimental ferry it once rejected to serve a little-used port in a remote area of his home state.

The high-speed ferry will connect Anchorage to Port MacKenzie in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $84 million. The project follows the same route as one of the two “bridges to nowhere,” which the non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense and others spotlighted in 2005 as examples of wasteful projects promoted by members of Congress that benefit few people. . . .

One company that could benefit from the ferry is VECO Corp., the oil services firm at the heart of a federal corruption probe that led to an FBI search of Stevens’ home July 30. The company, whose former chief executive is a business partner of Stevens, signed a letter of interest six years ago to open a manufacturing facility at the port once the ferry begins operations, which is now expected in 2009. . . .

About five months before the Navy awarded it the ferry project in August 2005, Alaska Ship & Drydock hired former Stevens chief of staff Steven Silver as its sole Washington lobbyist to obtain “funding for activities” at the shipyard, lobbying records show. The shipyard paid Silver $48,000 in 2005 and 2006. Silver did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

We're watching you......

with this repub pick? And for those who think she doesn't matter, remember, a vp is next in line to be your new leader and if all this is true, I never thought I would say this but she is worse than bush..

Palin = Bitch to Nowhere

I hesitated to post that, because the word bitch is used so casually and hatefully by ignorant people, but sometimes the term applies.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2072172/posts


I agree.
She’s not perfect and we have to stop the fawning Obama-like worship.

I like her, don’t get me wrong, but this appears to be a “finger in the wind” decision on her part - she changed her mind when it was politically convenient to do so.

---

As an Alaskan I nearly threw up when I heard her tirade against spending for the bridge in her acceptance speech. My wife and I just looked at each other with disgust at her blatant lie. However in the current effulgence of Sarah glory it will not go far.

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I've read everything presented so far. At issue is her statement from the other day:
"And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress -- I told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on that bridge to nowhere."

Based on the information on this thread, that was a lie. Sorry, but that's what it looks like to me. I don't know Sarah Palin from a hole in the wall. She made a very good first impression.

You can do what you like, but I'm not going to pull the wool over my own eyes. Palin worship is on a trajectory to be even worse than Fredmania was. There was a group of people completely unwilling and unable to see reality. Trust but verify, the saying goes. You can drink the kool aid if you want. I'm keeping my eyes wide open.

I like Palin. I wish this story weren't what it is. But someone will have to somehow figure out a way to explain this to me. Sounds like she fudged the facts at her national debut. I'm still voting for McCain. But this story, for me, signifies the end of the honeymoon. That was quick.