I know we're sick of Palin diaries around here, but I wrote this as an email I'm sending to all the women in my life, if you don't want to read this, don't.
Sarah Palin is the new GOP darling, and has provided new hope to John McCain’s quest for the Presidency of the United States. Since the campaign’s announcement of her as the Vice-Presidential candidate to run alongside John McCain, she has also laid claim to the hopes of all American women, saying "it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all". The McCain camp is holding her executive experience as the mayor of a town of 6,500 people from 1996 to 2002, combined with her two years as governor of America’s 48th most populous state, as her qualifications to be second in line for the Presidency.
For today, I’d like to review Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and how this love of earmarks relates to the price she asked the victims of rape in her city to pay for the evidence needed for justice.
She, along with McCain, wraps herself in the mantle of the outside reformer, unafraid of her own party, willing to cross party lines to root out corruption and waste wherever it may lie. More of her and McCain’s facts to backup these claims are being proven false every day. She didn’t actually fire the state-provided chef she claimed to have fired. She didn’t really sell that plane on Ebay. She’s claimed to oppose Federal pork-barrel earmarks, while leading Alaska it had $506.34 in earmarks per capita, easily the highest in the nation. To give you an idea of just how much this is, Arizona, McCain’s home state, has $18.70 of earmarks per person. I’ll leave it others to further examine her history as governor.
During her time has mayor she hired a lobbyist linked to the now disgraced and convicted Jack Abramoff. The city of 6,500 obtained $26.7 million in pork-barrel earmarks during her last four years as mayor, that’s a per capita of over $1000 per person, expensive for even Alaska. Steven R has already written a wonderful diary about a policy position of her appointee as Police Chief, Charlie Fannon. Chief Fannon went on the record with his opposition to a law signed in May of 2000 requiring that cities foot the bill for rape kits for victims, essential to the conviction of the perpetrator. You see, until that time, Wasilla expected women to pay for their own kit for $300-$1300, on the premise that the kit would be paid for by the fines and penalties assessed of the eventual convict, assuming a conviction was forthcoming.
A city swimming in federal earmark money that can’t afford to help ensure that victimized women don’t have to pay for the evidence to seek justice, this is the city that Palin led as mayor. Between 2000 and 2005 Wasilla averaged 2 arrests per year for rape. This number does not count attempted rapes.This also doesn’t account that the DOJ estimates that as little as 26% of rapes go unreported, or those who are never arrested and charged for a notoriously hard to try and convict crime. In 2003, her last budget, Wasilla had a total budget of $12.5 million including capital projects (Ordinance 02-23 (am), 5/13/2002). In 2000, said Chief Fannon, "I just don’t want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer" when asked about the rape kit law.
Maybe she could have used of the $27 million in earmarks the city had obtained. Just how many rape kits could she have afforded with that? Assuming the maximum price of $1300 per kit, that money could have bought 20,538 kits. Alaska averaged 541 rape arrests per year between 1996 and 2002. That means that just the federal pork money Wasilla obtained could have provided enough rape hits to provide the entire state of Alaska with rape kits for at least 30 years. And yet Sarah Palin’s own police chief couldn’t see the point in "burdening the tax payers" with the costs of the kits for his town’s women.
If this is the type of judgment and sensitivity we can expect from a McCain-Palin ticket, I think the first woman elected Vice President, may also be the most notorious. She is not the anti-government crusader she claims to be and she is certainly not going to support the positions of most women in this country. Not only did the women of Wasilla have to pay for their own kits, if Palin had her way, they couldn't even obtain an abortion in the case the rape left them pregnant. Get out there and work for Obama. Donate to Obama. Get someone elected who will do something good for women in this country, fighting for equal pay for equal work, their right for choice, and the expansion of the FMLA.
I know Obama is running against John McCain, and that Palin is just a Vice Presidential pick, and they don’t win or lose elections. In this case, Palin was McCains choice. Her positions and qualifications speak directly to his. If Palin would be a disaster for women in this country, how could John McCain be any different?
I've got a new daughter and I don't want her growing up with the legacy a McCain-Palin ticket would leave us.