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So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the last 2 days that I decided to write something up …

Basically, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have only 2 things in common: their gender and their good looks. :)

You have my permission to forward this to your friends/email contacts…

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a “babe”.

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is “pro-life”. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just “puts things out there” and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She’s smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported?

The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later—to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal—loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help.

The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work.

Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects—which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance—but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT

.”Hockey mom”: true for a few years

.”PTA mom”: true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since .

“NRA supporter”: absolutely true .social conservative: mixed.

Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).

.pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.

.”Pro-life”: mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation.

.”Experienced”: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

.political maverick: not at all

.gutsy: absolutely!

.open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

.has a developed philosophy of public policy: no .”a Greenie”: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

.fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

.pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

.pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents .pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.

.pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools…

Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that “Bad things happen when good people stay silent”. Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings…

Third, I am just a housewife. I don’t have a job she can bump me out of. I don’t belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that’s life…

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship…

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS

I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I can’t recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall—they are swamped. So I can’t verify my numbers.

“Come on, when you’re writing for kids, that’s just a must right there,” said Mr. Riordan during an interview at the New-York Historical Society, where he sat on a bench in front of a glass case full of busts of Franklin. “It’s an automatic connection. I had to put that in there.”

So far Mr. Riordan (pronounced RYE-r-don) is chiefly known as the author of the popular Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, about the adventures of a young boy who is half Greek god, half human. Now he has written “The Maze of Bones,” the first installment of “The 39 Clues,” a new series that Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter books, is releasing next Tuesday.

Calling upon his experience of 15 years as a middle school English and history teacher, Mr. Riordan sought to fill the book with details that would be educational but also ensnare the average preteen reader.

“My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn’t realize they were learning,” he said. “I saw ‘The 39 Clues’ as a potential vehicle for doing some education in a fun way — to take some of these amazing stories from history, dust them off and make them alive.”

“The 39 Clues” is planned as a 10-book mystery series for 8-to-12 year olds, with a different historical figure making a central appearance in each one. Scholastic is publishing it on an aggressive timetable, with plans to release one book every two to three months. In addition to writing the first book, Mr. Riordan has outlined the next nine novels, which will be written by other authors.

The story, devised in part by Scholastic’s editors, follows the exploits of Amy and Dan Cahill, two orphans, 14 and 11, who are competing against other branches of the sprawling Cahill family (a clan that has had “a greater impact on human civilization than any other family in history”) to discover the first of 39 clues. Those clues are the keys to a secret that, when revealed, will lead to ultimate power.

Scholastic has deployed its considerable marketing fire power behind the new series, which is tied to a Web-based game (www.the39clues.com) and collectors’ cards. The publisher, which thrived on the enormous success of the Harry Potter novels, is now facing the reality that many children are now as engrossed in the Internet and video games as they are in books.

“The idea is that every aspect will add to the storytelling in its own way,” said David Levithan, an executive editorial director for multimedia publishing at Scholastic. “The Web or card experience is not at all going to replicate the book experience, nor is the book experience going to replicate the Web.”

When giving Mr. Riordan guidelines for writing the first novel, Mr. Levithan and three other Scholastic editors wanted to make sure that the books would complement the Internet game. One instruction was that the 10 books would reveal only one clue per title, leaving gamers to find the other 29 online; another was that the series take place in a number of locales around the world.

Mr. Riordan, who looks the part of a prim schoolteacher, showing up for an interview on a blazing hot summer day in a wheat-colored blazer and dark slacks, said that throughout the writing of the book he checked in with the team of editors at Scholastic, who asked him to add or change details.

He said writing a book with a committee was not selling out, but was in some ways “liberating.” Writing the Percy Jackson books, he said, “was a very solitary experience.”

“The manuscript is pretty much done before I show it to anybody — my editor or even my sons,” he said.

Mr. Riordan said that he always thought of his two sons before embarking on a project. “Are my own sons going to enjoy this book when I’m done with it?” he said. “If the answer is yes, and they’re excited about it, then I’ll probably go ahead and do it.”

The Percy Jackson novels grew out of bedtime stories he told his older son, Haley, now 13, shortly after he was identified as having attention deficit disorder and dyslexia five years ago. Mr. Riordan started by telling Haley the Greek myths, but when he ran out of tales, he invented the story of a modern Greek hero. “Percy was born out of desperation,” he said.

At Haley’s request, Mr. Riordan, who had by then already published five detective novels for adults set in and around his native San Antonio, decided to write a manuscript for what became “The Lightning Thief.”

The book was sold at auction to Miramax Books in 2004 for a low six-figure sum, enough for Mr. Riordan to quit his teaching job and focus full time on writing. The first four books in the series have sold nearly 1.5 million copies, according to figures from Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of sales.

Mr. Riordan has just completed the fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson series, now published by Hyperion Books, a division of Disney. That will be released next May. The film version of the first book, which was optioned by Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox, is being directed by Chris Columbus, the director of the first two Harry Potter movies; it is scheduled to come out in November 2009.

Mr. Riordan is working on a new fantasy adventure, as well as another book, based on new characters, set at Camp Half-Blood, where some of the action of the Percy Jackson novels takes place.

He will also continue to provide feedback to Scholastic as its editors send him subsequent manuscripts from the 39 Clues series.

Despite the fact that he is writing full time, he says he still feels like a teacher because he meets so many children on book tours. “I see hundreds of kids at a time rather than knowing one classroom very well,” he said.