Slap Shot: Alaska Legislators Set to Override Palin's Veto
As Sarah Palin leaves Alaska yet again for a pair of photo-op sessions in New York on the road to her 2012 bid for the presidency, Alaska's legislators, fed up with Palin's political posturing, have indicated that they have amassed sufficient votes to override her veto of President Obama's $28.6 million in State Energy Program stimulus funding.
It will take a 75 percent legislative majority to override her veto -- no small feat in a rightward leaning state. It would appear to be a political slap shot headed straight for the net.
Don't believe the headlines of the mainstream media and rightwing apologists for Palin who claim this is part of some Democratic and/or liberal plot against Palin in the Last Frontier. This effort in Alaska is bipartisan and is being headed up on the Republican side by a slew of GOP legislative leaders, including lower house members Mike Hawker, John Coghill and Jay Ramras; and GOP Senators Gary Stevens, Tom Wagoner and Lesil McGuireIt also includes members of the conservative all-Republican Senate minority, Palin's staunchest supporters during her two-plus years as governor.
Hawker told the Anchorage Daily News:
This is just one of those cases where there is such a profound difference of opinion between the legislative branch of government and the executive branch. We could have one of those rare and difficult instances where we are actually able to override a governor's veto of an appropriation item.
Palin, of course, has used Obama's stimulus package as a way of maintaining the semblance of a national profile in opposition to the president on economic issues. That she hasn't the slightest bit of economic savvy was underscored throughout last year's presidential campaign (who can ever forget that infamous interaction with Katie Couric?), and just this week, Palin made some thoroughly inane assertions on economic policy while introducing right-wing radio talk show host Michael Reagan (son of the conservative icon) to a red-meat audience in Anchorage. Her remarks, transcribed quite nearly in full (with hilarious commentary provided) by The Mudflats, included this gem:
Reagan knew that real change and real change requiring shaking things up and maybe takin' off the entrenched interest thwarting the will of the people with their ignoring of our concerns about future peril caused by selfish short-sighted advocacy for growing government and digging more debt, and taking away individual and state's rights and hampering opportunity to responsibly develop our resources, and coddling those who would seek to harm America and her allies.
Yes, that is another direct quote.
Les Gara, the popular Democratic representative from Anchorage, who many have identified as a possible gubernatorial candidate next year, told me today that he remains "disappointed" with Palin's decision:
When 49 out of 50 governors have accepted the energy stimulus, you have to ask what is going on here. We're talking about windows and insulation in a state that desperately needs to increase our energy efficiency. The governor's decision doesn't help the national goal of weaning ourselves from foreign oil, or our goal of increasing affordable, diversified energy production. I'm concerned the Governor's just trying to position herself in opposition to the President's efforts.
After calling the stimulus an "an unsustainable, debt-ridden package of funds" and likening it to "a bribe," Palin actually accepted 97-plus percent of the Obama stimulus. Talk about faux opposition.
One Republican legislator I spoke to this week who is fearful of political reprisals from Palin said that "I've never seen someone so disengaged from the legislative process. She claims to be all about Alaska; what she's really all about is Sarah." In April, Palin's nomination of Wayne Anthony Ross as Alaska's attorney general was overwhelmingly turned down by the legislature--the first time in Alaska's history that had ever happened. She's setting her self up for another fall.
The only question remaining about a stimulus override seems to be not if, but when. If the Federal government requires a vote earlier than next January, then it is possible a special session will be convened by the Legislature. If it's not necessary, the state lawmakers are likely to wait until the beginning of the next legislative session in January of 2010.
Such an override would mark a less-than-propitious way for Governor Palin to begin the legislative season in a year that she is slated to run for re-election.
Award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn is at work on a book about Sarah Palin and her role in American politics, to be published by Macmillan/St. Martin's in 2010.
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These statements and others by Palin convince me that she must be doing one of two things. She's either sharing the results of her latest set of madlibs (Fox News edition) or entertaining us by calling rounds of buzz word bingo (bingo cards furnished by Rush Limbaugh).
I hope she knows how to ski.... that downward slope she's on now is pretty steep!
I don't understand, didn't this person suffer enough humiliation during McCain's run to realize that she is in way over her head when it comes to national politics. Even in her own state, which is a conservative political backwater, her supporters are now starting to get fed up with her nonsense. Let the GOP bring her on as a candidate in 2012- I would love it. It will be another nail in the coffin of their brand of conservatism when they realize their is not enough of their type left to win an election any more.
Everytime I hear this woman speak, my head hurts. She is so impaired in her words, her sentence structure, her delivery..................why is this challenged woman running a state? She has some sort of illness I'm sure. This is not normal. She is as confusing as hell, without a message.
why do I get the feeling that she's not even a C- grade average? We've all suffered thru one below average president, please please please America, NEVER AGAIN!
She deserves gibberish award. With tiara.
anybody notice that when stanford and palin say they would not accept this its big news !!!!!!! but when they are defeated then the media is silent - humm i wonder why. could it be that both liberals and repubs of the states agree more with obama than with palin or stanford .
Funny I heard this covered on several media outlets
Palin said in that recent speech that the current economic policies defy the prinicpals of Economics 101. Really?
Does anyone believe that Palin could answer the question, "What ARE the basic principals of economic 101?"
The response would be a 10 minute run on sentence with a jumble of words that don't say anthing at all---just like all of Palin's speeches. She sure talks a lot, but never really says anything.
Isn't this what Palin wants? To say, "I said, THANKS but NO THANKS to money from "the feds"!
Too bad the people of Alaska are being thrown under the bus in Palin's quest for fame and fortune.
Thanks for this post and for including that quote from her recent speech. Wow. I read the whole thing on Mudflats a few days ago, but I still can't believe some of her remarks, her mumbo-jumbo and complete ignorance.
If anyone was paying attention, that recent speech she gave would be the final nail in her coffin. It really is unbelieveable.
Really? Is anyone paying attention? That's some scary stuff in there.
Someone should force her to go back to school. Choose just one this time.
What is just amazing is that several times, people actually cheered her.
Guess ignorance is bliss.
"Reagan knew that real change..." My, what a convoluted sentence! Just because she's a panderer doesn't mean she can't write better speeches than that, or hire better speechwriters! Yes, she can, NOT!
Sarah Palin is the biggest laughingstock in the western world!
I strongly suggest that the Alaskans pull themselves together and get a class-action suit filed against Sarah Palin for human rights violations, punatives, emotional distress, damages, and dereliction of duties. She doesn't care a lick about her constituents, as demonstrated by her actions in the last 8 months. It is unconscionable that many native villagers had no food and nothing with which to heat their homes during this past winter.
Something should be done. The lawsuit should be followed by impeachment.
Sarah is ready for that. She has a legit "legal defense fund," the only one I ever recall hearing about for a sitting governor. Somehow, the concept of a governor with a legal defense fund seems a little .... off.
Related but off topic - in one of many ethics complaints, she was required to pay the State back for wrongfully using state funds for family travel. That was, however, just the State. If she chooses to run in 2012, I will be very interested in whether the IRS sees the rest of those "lawful" deductions, or real income.
"Uncle" Ted Stevens spent his whole career in the Senate sending money from the Lower 48 to Alaska. No wonder they have no income tax. We've been supporting them all along. Alaska gets back more in federal tax money than it pays and you never heard Palin complaining about that until she got the notion she could be a national politician.
The hypocrisy is just amazing. Now she doesn't want her own people to get money to insulate their homes-this in a state where the poor can barely afford to heat their homes and buy food in the winter.
Go for it Sarah. Show Alaska and the rest of the country how little you care for your own constituents. Now, everyone else-think what the country would be like if she was President. Probably the first thing she'd do is start a war with North Korea or invade another country in the MIddle East.
she has put on her show for the conservative base, and doesn't care about the will of the alaskan people.
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