The Meat: Sarah Palin on Ethics, Corruption, and Oil vs Obama

This fine essay from Ticker at Jus' Sayin' lays out some very deep research about Sarah Palin and her accomplishments: the details of Palin's ethics reforms, as compared to Obama's, Palins experience in oil and gas, compared to Obama's, and Palin's actions to clean-up corruption in the Republican party.

As a senator [Obama] he is not in a governing experience, he is only one small part of a body that actually does not oversee anything and does nothing except recommend. A governor has to make decisions on matters of state, a senator does not. Even a mayor has more governing powers than a senator so the Dems come up empty on that one. As has been stated, Gov. Palin has been running a state government while Sen. Obama has been running for government office. There is a great difference in that. AF Ticker

Gov. Sarah Palin and Change We Can Really Live With by AF Ticker, Jus' Sayin' August 29, 2008

Sarah Palin. Just who is she. She is a working Mom, a homemaker, a career woman, a former mayor and Governor of Alaska. So how does that make her qualified to be VP of the US and a heartbeat away from the most important office in the world? Is she qualified or are the Democrats going to have a field day declaring that she is not.

Let’s start with the question, is she qualified. Certainly she is short on experience but no one is claiming that she has a long resume but… and here is where the Democrats had better tread very lightly. They say now that McCain’s argument against Obama’s lack of experience is gone but is it?

As soon as the Democrats begin this rhetoric about Gov. Palin lacking experience as a leader one only needs to ask the question, just how many years does Obama have governing anything. Has he ever had to establish a budget for a government body… answer NO!. Has he ever had to actually run a governing body…. Answer NO! So the argument of lack of governing experience goes out the window and the burden falls back on Sen. Obama who has zero governing experience.

As a senator he is not in a governing experience, he is only one small part of a body that actually does not oversee anything and does nothing except recommend. A governor has to make decisions on matters of state, a senator does not. Even a mayor has more governing powers than a senator so the Dems come up empty on that one. As has been stated, Gov. Palin has been running a state government while Sen. Obama has been running for government office. There is a great difference in that.

The Dems will claim that Sen. Obama has had a rougher road to travel than Gov. Palin. Oh really? Please explain.

I don’t believe Sarah Palin attended private, elite schools as a child. According to the record she attended public schools and so she is familiar with the real problems in the schools from a former students point of view.

How did she attend college. Well, it was not on the premise of race or gender it can be assumed. It seems that Gov. Palin won a scholarship by virtue of being selected as runner up in the Miss Alaska Pageant which helped pay her way through college.

Her Dad was a science teacher in public schools and her Mom was a school secretary. It would seem that Gov. Palin would be well acquainted with the difficulties that school teachers have, income wise, where as Sen. Obama only understands from book knowledge, no first hand knowledge.

Gov. Palin earned her degree in journalism with a minor in political science. Gov Palin actually had a job rather than a position. She was a sports writer and reporter on radio and television. She also has worked along side her husband as a commercial fisherman. So in reality who has more experience in knowing the struggles that Mr. and Mrs. Smith USA experiences? The answer is not Sen. Obama but Gov. Sarah Palin.

Now it seems that the Obama campaign has attempted to make a big deal out of some ethics bill that Obama was suppose to have brought forth in Illinois. It is not what the Obama camp seems to imply.

The ethics bill — which passed in a not-so-close 52-4 vote in the Illinois senate — did not clean up Illinois politics. It did at least bar political fundraising on state property. It blocked lobbyists and contractors from giving personal gifts to legislators. But it did not stop them from giving contributions in the so-called “pay-to-play” game. It did not prevent major political donors like Tony Rezko from influencing the makeup of the powerful boards that control the state’s pension funds, filling them with crooked allies who would help him steal. It did not prevent incumbent legislators from rolling campaign funds into their personal bank accounts." So much for Sen. Obama’s ethics experience.

Now compare that to Gov. Palin’s clean up of Alaska corruption. Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she served from 2003 to 2004 until resigning in protest over what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, who ignored her whistleblowing complaints of legal violations and conflicts of interest.

After she resigned, she exposed the state Republican Party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, one of her fellow Oil & Gas commissioners, who was accused of doing work for the party on public time, and supplying a lobbyist with a sensitive e-mail. Palin filed formal complaints against both Ruedrich and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who both resigned.

Oh, there is more: Gov. Palin’s tenure include a successful push for an ethics bill, and also shelving pork-barrel projects supported by fellow Republicans. After federal funding for the Gravina Island Bridge project that had become a nationwide symbol of wasteful earmark spending was lost, Palin decided against filling the over $200 million gap with state money. "Alaska needs to be self-sufficient, she says, instead of relying heavily on 'federal dollars,' as the state does today."

She has challenged the state's Republican leaders, helping to launch a campaign by Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell to unseat U.S. Congressman Don Young and publicly challenging Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings.

In 2007, Palin had an approval rating often above 90%. A poll published by Hays Research on July 28, 2008 showed Palin's approval rating at 80%.

On tax reform it seems that Gov. Palin has more experience than Sen. Obama who has talked a good talk but has no fruit to show for his efforts. As Mayor, Sarah Palin reduced her own salary, and reduced property taxes by 60%. Now wonder how the Democrats will argue that Sen. Obama has more experience in that realm.

On Energy: It would seem that Gov. Palin again holds the edge in experience in this realm as well.

Palin has strongly promoted oil resource development in Alaska, but also helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits. Palin has announced plans to create a new sub-cabinet group of advisors, to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska.

Shortly after taking office, Palin rescinded thirty-five appointments made by Murkowski in the last hours of his administration, including the appointment by Murkowski of his former chief of staff James "Jim" Clark to the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority. Clark later pled guilty to conspiring with a defunct oil-field-services company to channel money into Frank Murkowski's re-election campaign.

In March 2007, Palin presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) as the new legal vehicle for building a natural gas pipeline from the state's North Slope. This negated a deal by the previous governor to grant the contract to a coalition including BP (her husband's seasonal employer). Only one legislator, Representative Ralph Samuels, voted against the measure and in June Palin signed it into law.

On January 5, 2008, Palin announced that a Canadian company, TransCanada Corp., was the sole AGIA-compliant applicant. In August of 2008 Palin signed a bill into law giving the state of Alaska authority to award TransCanada Pipelines a license to build and operate the $26-billion-dollar pipeline to ship natural gas from the North Slope to the Lower 48, through Canada.

In response to high oil and gas prices, and in response to the resulting state government budget surplus, Palin proposed giving Alaskans $100-a-month energy debit cards. She also proposed providing grants to electrical utilities so that they would reduce customers' rates. She subsequently dropped the debit card proposal, and in its place she proposed to send Alaskans $1,200 directly and eliminate the gas tax.

Sounds as if Sen. Obama’s camp will have a difficult time in explaining away her experience and comparing it with Sen. Obama’s very limited experience on energy matters. The same can be said with Joe Biden’s lack of real experience or real action on energy as well. If you were listening to Sen.Obama’s speech of acceptance you will remember he said that McCain had been around 20 plus of the 30 years that nothing had been done about energy. Uh, it seems Sen. Obama forgot that his running mate, Sen. Biden has been around longer than Sen. McCain and would have to bear the same responsibility.

Gov. Palin is the head of the Alaska National Guard, the military and certainly has to be aquainted with the functioning of that arm of the military. What experience does Sen. Obama have in this realm. Answer NONE. Sen. Biden serves on a committee about the Armed Forces but has no real control of operations of the military, Gov. Palin does.

Gov. Palin’s son is in the military, active duty, a grunt, enlisted man, who will be in Iraq in a few weeks. He is not an officer sitting in the JAG office of the Reserves as is Sen. Biden’s son. Of course Sen. Biden’s son will also deploy with his reserve unit to Iraq this fall as well and I salute him for his service. As to who will be in greater harms way, the MOS says it all. One is JAG corp, the other is infantry, grunt, enlisted. Any questions?

So it seems that the Democrats will have a difficult time in saying that Gov. Palin is not qualified, does not have any experience when the record shows that she is by far more experienced than the individual sitting on the Number 1 spot of the Democrat ticket, Sen. Obama.

On morals and such as Sen. Obama wants to allude to but does not want to talk about as was shown on the Saddleback interview. Gov. Palin is pro-life and when notified in the early trimesters of her pregnancy that she was carrying a downs syndrome child she did not choose to abort for her “mental health sake”. She understands when life begins and understands the responsibility of making the right choice, not the choice of convince.

Of course the Democrats have already begun to criticize her for leaving her poor helpless ill child and running for the office of VP. You would think that such “progressive thinking” individuals in the Democrat Party would applaud her and applaud her husband who is stepping into the roll of full time caretaker of this child and the other children that the Palin’s have at home as well.

Again it is more hypocrisy and more of not what we do but what we say that counts for the “progressives”. Sounds like more of “just words” coming from the left. They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

It would seem from Gov. Palin’s experience along with Sen. McCain’s continuing battle for change in Washington that they are the ones to bring actually change to Washington. All we have from Sen. Obama is talk of change. What we have in Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain is experience at bringing about real change. Now that is change that we can live with.

As the saying goes, some folks sit around dreaming of making things happen. Some talk about making things happen. Others actually make things happen. So far the record shows that the McCain-Palin ticket has the edge in making things happen while the Obama-Biden ticket are still dreaming and talking about making things happen when it comes to change.

For REAL Change we can live with, vote McCain-Palin.