[Vision2020] Timothy Egan article

[Ted Moffett]

Thanks for the article...

"Moo" is good "word" to describe the respect for truth and falsehood that
characterises the political landscape of this and other presidential
elections.

I recall Carl Westberg posting on Vision2020 a statement years ago about
Obama being the future of the Democratic party.  I have tried to find this
post, but have not found it yet.  At the time of this post, I thought it
rather unlikely that Obama would be the future of the Democratic party.
Well, if Obama wins the presidency, Carl would be proved quite correct!  I
doubt that Obama will win...

Ted Moffett

On 9/18/08, Carl Westberg <idahovandal1 at live.com> wrote:


> Posted with the complete understanding that John McCain and Tina Fey, er,
> Sarah Palin will win Idaho's 4 electoral votes.  From the NY Times, Sept.
> 17, written by Timothy Egan.          Carl Westberg Jr.       September
> 17, 2008,  9:06 pm Moo
> People should stop picking on vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin because
> she hired a high school classmate to oversee the state agriculture division,
> a woman who said she was qualified for the job because she liked cows when
> she was a kid. And they should lay off the governor for choosing another
> childhood friend to oversee a failing state-run dairy, allowing the
> Soviet-style business to ding taxpayers for $800,000 in additional losses.
> What these critics don't understand is that crony capitalism is how things
> are done in Alaska. They reward failure in the Last Frontier state. In that
> sense, it's not unlike like Wall Street's treatment of C.E.O.'s who run
> companies into the ground.
> Look at Carly Fiorina, John McCain's top economic surrogate — if you can
> find her this week, after the news and her narrative fused in a negative
> way. Dismissed as head of Hewlett-Packard after the company's stock plunged
> and nearly 20,000 workers were let go, she was rewarded with $44 million in
> compensation. Sweet!
> Thank God McCain wants to appoint a commission to study the practice that
> enriched his chief economic adviser. On the campaign trail this week, McCain
> and Palin pledged to "stop multimillion dollar payouts to C.E.O.'s" of
> failed companies. Good. Go talk to Fiorina at your next strategy session.
> Palin's Alaska is a cultural cousin to this kind of capitalism. The state
> may seem like a rugged arena for risky free-marketers. In truth, it's a
> strange mix of socialized projects and who-you-know hiring practices.
> Let's start with those cows. A few years ago, I met Harvey Baskin, one of
> the last of Alaska's taxpayer-subsidized dairy farmers, at his farm outside
> Anchorage. The state had spent more than $120 million to create farms where
> none existed before. The epic project was a miserable failure.
> "You want to know how to lose money in a hurry?" Harvey told me, while
> kicking rock-hard clumps of frozen manure. "Become a farmer with the state
> of Alaska as your partner. This is what you call negative farming."
> That lesson was lost on Palin. As the Wall Street Journal reported this
> week, Governor Palin overturned a decision to shutter a money-losing,
> state-run creamery<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122152654971140245.html>— Matanuska Maid — when her friends in Wasilla complained about losing their
> subsidies. She fired the board that recommended closure, and replaced it
> with one run by a childhood friend. After six months, and nearly $1 million
> in fresh losses, the board came to the same conclusion as the earlier one:
> Matanuska Maid could not operate without being a perpetual burden on the
> taxpayers.
> This is Heckuva-Job-Brownie government, Far North version.
> On a larger scale, consider the proposal to build a 1,715-mile natural gas
> pipeline, which Palin touts as one of her most significant achievements.
> Private companies complained they couldn't build it without government help.
> That's where Palin came to the rescue, ensuring that the state would back
> the project to the tune of $500 million.
> And let's not talk about voodoo infrastructure without one more mention of
> the bridge that Palin has yet to tell the truth about. The plan was to get
> American taxpayers to pay for a span that would be 80 feet higher than the
> Brooklyn Bridge, and about 20 feet short of the Golden Gate — all to serve a
> tiny airport with a half-dozen or so flights a day and a perfectly good
> five-minute ferry. Until it was laughed out of Congress, Palin backed it —
> big time, as the current vice president would say.
> Why build it? Because it's Alaska, where people are used to paying no state
> taxes and getting the rest of us to buck up for things they can't afford.
> Alaska, where the first thing a visitor sees upon landing in Anchorage is
> the sign welcoming you to Ted Stevens International Airport. Stevens, of
> course, is the 84-year-old Republican senator indicted on multiple felony
> charges. He may still win re-election thanks to Palin's popularity at the
> top of the ballot.
> Alaskans will get $231 per person in federal earmarks — 10 times more than
> people in Barack Obama's home state. That's this year, with Palin as
> governor.
> If Palin were a true reformer, she would tell Congress thanks, but no
> thanks to that other bridge to nowhere.
> Yes, there is another one — a proposal to connect Anchorage to an empty
> peninsula, speeding the commute to Palin's hometown by a few minutes. It
> could cost up to $2 billion. The official name is Don Young's Way, after the
> congressman who got the federal bridge earmarks. Of late, he's spent more $1
> million in legal fees fending off corruption investigations. Oh, and Young's
> son-in-law has a stake in the property at one end of the bridge.
> Some of these projects might be fully explained should Palin ever open
> herself up to questions. This week she sat down for her second interview —
> with Sean Hannity of Fox, who has shown sufficient "deference" to Palin, as
> the campaign requested.
> One question: When Palin says "government has got to get out of the way" of
> the private sector, as she proclaimed this week, does that apply to dairy
> farms, bridges and gas pipelines in her state? I didn't think so.
>
>
>
>
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