This is a truly startling little read, from one of Sarah Palin’s old constituents as Alaskan Mayor.
If she’s to be believed then Palin’s mayoral reign over the tiny town of Wasilla should sound startlingly familiar to anyone who’s watched the last 8 years of the Bush Administration deeply politicized mismanagement.
She fired experienced public servants because they won’t bow to bizarre ideology: including a librarian who refused to ban books Palin didn’t like. She sliced progressive taxes on the rich, raising regressive ones on the poor, and then spent lavishly: leaving the town in newfound debt. She hired a lobbyist who scored the tiny town almost 27million in federal pork. And in the face of management squabbles, she seems to have handed off the actual day to day administration to another person.
Pile this record on top of her support for ignorance-only sex education, creationist-seasoned science-classes, and a hearty round of theocratized historical ignorance and Christianist knee slappers and she sounds like the second coming of the Mayberry Machiavellis.
I’ve had a hard time getting too worked up about the thought of a McCain administration, but the idea of a Sarah Palin taking over wherever he finally leaves off is sounding less and less encouraging. Bush has gotten a worse rap than he deserves. Even still, I’m not eager to spend the next four to eight years sapping my forehead in everything from wearied exasperation to shock.