Women Against Sarah Palin

Why Sarah Palin should not be President

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• Palin, in policy speech, promised more funds for special needs children while slamming basic research on fruit flies that has led to advances in research on special needs children. Read more >
• Sarah Palin thinks the Vice President is in charge of the Senate
  

  Responding during one television interview to a question sent in by an elementary school pupil about what the vice-president does, Palin again overstated the White House second-in-command's powers.
  
  "They're in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes," she said.
  
  The comment directly contradicted the separation-of-powers principle enshrined in the US constitution, under which the vice-president as president of the Senate has a casting vote in the event of a tie, but takes no other role.
  -- Yahoo News

• Sarah Palin says she supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage See article >
• Palin has shown herself to be insensitive to minorities during her governorship. "In Palin's only face-to-face meeting with black leaders in 21 months in office, words became terse when the issue of diversity arose," according to an article in the Associated Press. "Palin also promised to support tribal economic development and fishing subsistence issues, while noting personal fondness for Native culture. However, when she was ultimately elected governor, she ended up becoming the de facto head of several state lawsuits that some Natives believe have been detrimental to fishing and hunting subsistence issues, as well as tribal sovereignty and language preservation. " says an article in Indian Country Today.
• The notoriously pro-gun organization, the NRA, has endorsed McCain/Palin.
• A small thing but indicative: Ten years ago Sarah Palin spoke standard English. Watch this video of Palin from Fox News in 1998 saying "talking", not "talkin'", as she does now. ...So the folksiness is an act.
• Sarah Palin wasn't even a good mayor!
  1) She was embroiled in many disputes in her first year.
  
  She became embroiled in personnel challenges, a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council and a standoff with her local newspaper. Her first months were so contentious and polarizing that critics started talking recall.
  -- from The Seattle Times
  
  2) The sports complex she pushed through is tangled in expensive lawsuites.
  
  What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.
  "It's too bad that the city of Wasilla didn't do their homework and secure the land before they began construction," said Kathy Wells, a longtime activist here. "She was not your ceremonial mayor; she was in charge of running the city. So it was her job to make sure things were done correctly."
  -- from The Wall Street Journal
• While claiming to be a "reformer" Palin billed the state of Alaska $17,059 for "per diem" travel expenses for 312 nights she spent at her home in Wasilla. Here's the Washington Post article.. Not only that, she didn't report the money on her income tax according to NPR
• Sarah Palin, who has made a crackdown on gift-giving to state officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda, has accepted gifts valued at $25,367 from industry executives, municipalities and a cultural center whose board includes officials from some of the largest mining interests in the state, according to the Washington Post
• Like Bush, Palin refuses to talk to the press. See Newsweek. A free and informed press is essential to a democracy, Governor Palin!!
• According to Time Magazine, Alaska ranked 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434) but first in federal spending received per resident ($13,950). Its ratio of federal spending received to federal taxes paid ranks third among the 50 states, and in the absolute amount it receives from Washington over and above the amount it sends to Washington, Alaska ranks No. 1.
• "When Gov. Sarah Palin flew home to Alaska for the first time since being named the Republican vice presidential nominee, she brought along at least half a dozen new advisers to conduct briefings, stage-manage her first television interview and help her prepare for a critical debate next month. And virtually every member of the team shared a common credential: years of service to President Bush". Read the story >.
  The difference between George Bush and Sarah Palin? Lipstick.
• Palin's husband has defied a subpoena from the Alaska legislature in the Troopergate scandal, indicating the family's contempt for representative government. See The Boston Globe
• Asked Wednesday to reassure voters about her readiness to handle foreign policy in the White House, Gov. Sarah Palin offered up a dare. "I’ll be ready. I have that confidence. I have that readiness and if you want specifics with specific policy or countries go ahead you can ask you can play stump the candidate if you want to". Even notoriously right-leaning FOX news called this "a dare Palin may come to regret"
• Sarah Palin "doesn't have any foreign policy credentials", Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska told the Omaha World-Herald. See the story.
• John McCain has outlined running mate Sarah Palin's job description if they win the White House -- and energy tops the list, according to Reuters. Say goodbye to the Alaskan Wildlife Reserve, everybody!!
• McCain campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan said that Palin is "unlikely to cooperate" with the [Troopergate] investigation...When the investigation was announced less than two months ago, Palin said she welcomed it and promised her full cooperation. See The Washington Post
• Under Sarah Palin, Wasilla made rape victims pay for their own rape kits, according to former Alaskan governor, Tony Knowles. "Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill -- signed into law by Knowles -- that banned the practice statewide."
• Sarah Palin has stated that we should "perhaps" go to war with Russia in an NBC interview with Charles Gibson.
  
  GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?
  PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.
• A day before she was announced as the Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wrote a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urging him to veto a bill that would impose a clean-air fee on cargo containers moving through Oakland and other California ports. Reported in the Mercury News
• According to a 2006 article in the Anchorage Daily News, Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public classrooms.
• An informal adviser who has counseled Gov. Sarah Palin on ethics issues urged her in July to apologize for her handling of the dismissal of the state's public safety commissioner and warned that the matter could snowball into a bigger scandal. Wall Street Journal.
  Palin didn't listen.
• Palin was not a very good mayor, according to one Wasilla resident. "Far from being a fiscal conservative, Palin left Wasilla in debt, was intolerant of "divergent opinions" and "has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help." Read the story in the Anchorage Daily News.
• She DID support the Bridge to Nowhere (before she opposed it). Palin claimed that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. But in 2006, Palin supported the project repeatedly, saying that Alaska should take advantage of earmarks "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." According to the Associated Press, Palin sought $197 million in so-called "earmarks" for Alaska in 2009. In the previous budget year, she asked for earmarks worth $256 million.
  
  Quote from a Fox News story: THE FACTS: Palin did abandon plans to build the nearly $400 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport. But she made her decision after the project had become an embarrassment to the state
• Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group, who advocate for a vote on secession from the union, to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention'. Here Palin is addressing the party >.
• Palin favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
• Palin questioned the science behind predictions of sea ice loss linked to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade."
• In 2008, the state of Alaska under Palin's guidance sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in an attempt to reverse his decision to list polar bears as a threatened species.
• Palin opposed a state initiative that would have banned metal mines from discharging pollution into salmon streams.
• Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was sponsored by BP.
• Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest. "I am as pro-life as any candidate can be," Palin wrote on July 1, 2002, to the Alaska Right to Life board, according to the Anchorage Daily News
  
  Why is the right to choose whether to bear a child so important? Here is a first hand account
• Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.
• Palin supports the aerial shooting of wolves in Alaska -- despite ballot measures in the state in which voters twice since 1996 have voted to end the practice. (This according to the Wall Street Journal)
• As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them—shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."
• After she took office as mayor in November 1996, Palin asked for letters of resignation from six department heads based on allegations that they were still supporting the former mayor. She also fired Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, who unsuccessfully sued her for wrongful termination, according to court records.
• In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."
  Read the Associated Press story.