Palin, Earmarks, and the "Bridge to Nowhere."

The vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, touted as a "reformer" by the Republican party, does not deserve the reputation that John McCain has enjoyed as an opponent of congressional pork. That much most people already know (I hope). Being a "numbers" person, I decided to investigate exactly how much pork is associated with Palin. It's a lot.

According to this associated press article, Alaska is currently the largest recipient of earmarks per person at $295. The average amount per person for all states is $34 per person. That means that Alaska's pork per resident is over 8 times the national average of all states.

However, Alaska's amount of pork has been reduced under Palin's governance. Her pork requests are still higher than any other state's, though.

Far more provocative is the story of Palin's tenure as mayor. While mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a law firm to secure earmarks for the town at a cost of $24,000 to taxpayers, an amount that later increased to $36,000. This firm secured $27,000,000 in congressional pork for Wasilla, a town of about 7,000 residents. (This data was provided by the organization Taxpayers for Common Sense.)

This totals to more than $3,800 per person, or over 113 times the national average for all states per capita.

(Some of you might be wondering at this point: how much did Barack Obama secure in earmarks for the state of Illinois during his term as senator? It was $311,000,000, about $24 per resident. This is about 70% of the national average, or about 0.7 times the national average.)

Palin supported the "Bridge to Nowhere," a bridge costing almost $400 million, from the mainland of Alaska to a small island with an airport and fewer than 100 residents, during her gubernatorial race. Palin made campaign stops on the island and wore a t-shirt that said "Nowhere, Alaska," with the island's zip code. While governor, she buckled in the face of national public opinion, and referred to "the inaccurate portrayal of the projects here" as the reason for that opinion. She later spent the funding secured for the bridge on roads.

John McCain has been quoted as criticizing pet bridge projects in 2007, pointing to a collapsed bridge in MN that resulted in 13 deaths. He connected this to the Alaskan bridge project, stating "Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it."

One has to wonder why McCain selected Palin as his running mate. She certainly does not seem to share his values--that is, unless it is politically expedient to do so.

(Sources: "'Bridge to Nowhere' Abandoned," "Palin's Pork Requests Confound Reformer Image," both Associated Press.)

What it means to be a "middle American."

In the past dozen or two years, certain Republican strategists--we can call them the predecessors of Karl Rove--have convinced America that a certain gross generalization is a true and actual fact. They have contrived a peculiar image of liberalism that “belongs” in exactly two places: San Fransisco and Boston. The idea is that these two cities are far out of touch with “mainstream” American values. My point is not to disparage these places, because stereotyping the entire population of even a small town is wrong and inevitably factually incorrect. My point is rather that the generalization of roughly a third of Americans is absurd.

The image that the Republican party invented for the liberal is twofold. First, there is the western version: the unwashed hippie who wears Birkenstocks, is homosexual and wants to teach your children to be homosexual as well, and hates Christianity. Second, there is the northeastern version: the elitist Ivy League-educated metro-sexual city dweller, who is an atheist and who also hates Christianity, and who wants to indoctrinate your children into the same beliefs.

Firstly, this stereotyping of entire regions of people--the Pacific Northwest, and the Northeast--is offensive and silly. People have created stereotypes of Southerners, too: that we are racist and bigoted; that we don’t wear shoes or have air conditioning or paved roads; that we have less than the requisite number of teeth; that we all have children by the time we are old enough to receive our driver’s licenses. I’m sure there are also stereotypes of Midwesterners, ones that include some of those same characteristics. Does it offend those of us in the South? Hell, yes, it does. And it is patently untrue, as anyone who lives here or has visited here knows.

Secondly, this caricature of liberals is as ludicrous as a similar one for conservatives would be. There are liberals in every part of this country and from all types of backgrounds; many attend church and PTA meetings. There are conservatives in every part of this country and from all types of backgrounds as well; many are atheists and single with no kids.

Thirdly, the “values of middle America” are not more or less significant than the “values of coastal America,” even if we could generalize all those values into one singular definition of a region (which we can’t). Why would they be? What right do any of us have to say that our regions are more important than others? Who gets to be “mainstream” and who doesn’t? And why would "mainstream values" be more important than "fringe values" anyway? Why shouldn't people with "fringe values" have the same freedom to practice those values as anyone else, provided that they don't harm others? Isn't that what our great nation is all about? Did abolitionists and advocates of women's suffrage not hold values that were "outside the mainstream" at one point? Should we have dismissed them for this reason?

Fourthly, the values that Americans share are far more numerous than the values that distinguish us from one another. These include values like accountability, the drive for success, and the love of freedom. These values inform our identities much more than how we personally feel about abortion.

Lastly, the reason for my blog in the first place. I live in Mississippi, and don‘t plan on living anywhere else. I am no transplant; my great-great-great-great-great grandfather also lived in Mississippi. I’m married, an Ole Miss graduate, a dog-lover, and a cook. I live in a town of about 25,000 people. I know all the words to “Dixie.” My personal goal is to have my own successful small business one day, either a furniture boutique or a small firm for providing services to other small businesses, such as tax advice and marketing. My family consists of cops, nurses, engineers, farmers, teachers, high school principals, football coaches, and accountants. I think I’m about as middle-American as they come.

And I’m casting my ballot for Barack Obama in November.