More about Sarah, not a good choice for VP!

A friend sent me this letter from a "friend" of Sarah Palin. This is more evidence that Sarah is not a good VP candidate. Check the sources. She scares me as a potential leader of this country. Check this out:


Hi - The following letter has been verified by Snopes as true and has been quoted in The Nation, The Illinois Daily Journal and the Anchorage Daily News, as well as on 200 websites as of this date. I'm passing it along because the woman who wrote it sent the original to just 40 family and friends. Thanks to the power of the Internet, thousands of people have learned a lot about Sarah Palin from someone who knows her well, Anne Kilkenny, a longtime Wasilla resident whose motivation for sharing this information is her belief that voters must be informed--and that's why I'm sharing it with you and hope you'll share it with YOUR friends.

If you want to check out the Snopes report, it's at http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/kilkenny.asp. If you'd rather not receive political news from me, please let me know.

Thanks,
Diane

Dear friends,

So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the last
2 days that I decided to write something up . . .

Basically, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have only 2 things in common:
their gender and their good looks. :)

You have my permission to forward this to your friends/email contacts with
my name and email address attached, but please do not post it on any
websites, as there are too many kooks out there . . .

Thanks,
Anne

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone
here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name
basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my
child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with
her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during
her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in
middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won't vote for
her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe".

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept
her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven
months.

She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There
is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there"
and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion
snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of
the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for
salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the
imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style
ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at
the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000
residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this
small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire
this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into
some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall
campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative". During her 6 years
as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During
those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by
38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced
progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed
even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property
owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't
enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was
needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with
indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters
to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported?
The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m
for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which
she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even
have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the
delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice
addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she
claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects
that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated
more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in
Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us
energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed
distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended
that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed
distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's surplus, borrow for
needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or
compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her
staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who
proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City
Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the
library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the
defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out
censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People
who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this
day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for Mayor, so
what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the
experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or
elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally
dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely
loyal--loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal
agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the
State's top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's Police Chief because he "intimidated" her,
she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has
the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had
every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important
factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's
ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has
had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and
family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her
ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she
knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public
furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help.
The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing
her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her
first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal
City Administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this
ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything
publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the
best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the
few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in
oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid
$122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was
told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work.
Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State
Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In
a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political
suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job
she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics
and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club" when she dramatically
quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator
Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and
publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it
became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines,
then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling
them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of
these projects--which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of
their importance--but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as
"anti-pork".

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders
hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other
members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal
conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They
call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory
ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated
around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high
school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected
member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah
refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of
legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the
beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global
warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiaitive
that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from
mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who
you listen to). She has pushed the State's lawsuit against the Dept. of the
Interior's decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a
heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable
and experienced than she.

However, there's a lot of people who have underestimated her and are
regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT
*"Hockey mom": true for a few years.

*"PTA mom": true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not
since.

*"NRA supporter": absolutely true

*social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that
would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she
did this because it was unconsitutional).

*pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote
it.

*"Pro-life": mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby BUT
declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation

*"Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has
residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No
legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory
or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of
about 5,000.

*political maverick: not at all

*gutsy: absolutely!

*open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining
actions.

*has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

*"a Greenie": no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and
disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

*fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

*pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city
without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to
early 20th century standards.

*pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on
residents

*pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in
Wasilla's history.

*pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make
her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is
pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I
am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the
schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find
references to my participation in local government, education, and
PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen when
good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because few have
gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I
don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she
is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow
in the future: that's life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so
people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at
censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say
anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS
I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in
spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from
information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla,
and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation?
for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person
to get any info out of City Hall--they are swamped. So I can't verify my
numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the
population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000", up to 9,000. The day
Palin's selection was announced a city official told me that the current
population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have
used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was
growing rapidly in the mid-90's.

Anne Kilkenny
August 31, 2008