. . . er, well. . . maybe not so much. . .

The LA Times is reporting that Sarah Palin met with lobbyists for oil and natural gas companies all the time but never with environmentalists, native groups or anyone else that might have gotten in the way of making money off Alaska’s natural resources.  And oh, yeah: she used to bake cookies for journalists and call them on their birthdays.

At the risk of sounding like I support Sarah Palin, I think it only natural that a state like Alaska be a little corrupted by money.  After all, if it weren’t for all the monied interests down here in the Lower 49 greedily gobbling up their resources, Alaska would be a big, frozen welfare state.  But don’t lie about it.

I’ve just finished up an article on the Troopergate matter in Alaska involving our favourite girl, Sarah Palin.  For those of you who need a refresher on what exactly is going on, this article should probably serve as a good Clift’s Notes version.  And there are also a few other gems I’ve found around the net that haven’t made it into wide circulation, such as this one:

» Palin Attempts to Circumnavigate Troopergate Investigation || DFE News Roundup » DFE News Updates

Specifically, the Seattle Times is reporting that Todd Palin’s affidavit states that the alleged disagreement between the Palins and Monegan was over, among other things, the use of Alaska’s state trooper airplane. Todd Palin claimed that “It seemed that whenever Sarah needed this plane, it was unavailable.” Palin suggested that Monegan may have been retaliating for the Palin’s decision to sell the plane often used by the Public Safety department. This was the plane Sarah Palin has insisted on the stump was sold by her on eBay.

If you think Dick Cheney “hunting” birds that were tied down till moments before he arrived was bad, wait till you see what Sarah Palin encouraged in Alaska: hunting wolves in the winter from airplanes.

A warning: the following advertisement is not something you want to watch if you’re sensitive to animal cruelty. I’m not carrying it in my VodPod video gallery because I cannot make such a warning in that case.

Let me say that I can think of reasons people might want to justify such hunting methods.  For example, over-population of wolves.  We’ve had similar controversies in Rochester over the deer over-population problem at Durand Eastman Park, and deer don’t kill our livestock or our family dog.

However, there doesn’t seem to be any real indication that the wolf population of Alaska is really a problem.  Rather, there is a history of over-management of the wolf population that extends well into the past, and the policy is really more vestigal than a genuinely modern wildlife program.  Alaska meanwhile has the largest remaining population of grey wolves in the United States which it threatens to destroy with this backward program.

Personally, while I respect and often agree with animal rights advocates, I’m not shy about the need for hunting in some situations.  Neither do I have an objection to hunting as a recreational sport.  But where we’re from here in Upstate New York, there is a sense of basic fairness to the way we go about hunting.  For all the technology we have to employ in the task of hunting, ultimately, the expectation is that it comes down to one man (or woman), one gun and one animal.  You aren’t allowed to hunt before dawn; you aren’t allowed to shine lights at deer to stun them into immobility.  You certainly are not allowed to circle them in a plane and keep taking shots till you hit them.

Just a quick note early on a Saturday afternoon about Sarah Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere and what it cost.  Setting aside the question of earmarks as policy, I’m just interested in discussing the price tag.  The proposed earmark was to be a total of $400 million dollars.  So, how much does it cost to build a bridge in the United States, on average?

That’s not an easy question to answer for a number of reasons.  For one, cost of doing business varies from state to state.  Another problem is that no two bridges are exactly alike, either in form or function.  But it is instructive to note that the entire U.S. Department of Transportation budget for building bridges across the whole of the country is only $5 billion dollars.  Equally instructive is the fact that the Frederick Douglass - Susan B. Anthony Bridge here in Rochester - a national award winning bridge in New York State, by the way - was built for a mere $38 million dollars.

Again in fairness, the Bridge to Nowhere was a considerably more grand project than the relatively modest spanning of the Genesee River.  The Gravina Island Bridge was slated to be higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and longer than the Golden Gate.  It was required to be so because commercial fishing boats needed to get under the bridge and the span is the narrowest point between the two bodies of land.

But to put it all together, 38 million dollars gets you an award winning bridge in New York State that carries an average of 77,000 cars a day.  But in Alaska - which has a cost of living surprisingly similar to New York - you need $400 million dollars to build a bridge for 50 people.

Tell me if you can spot the boo-boo in Ted Stevens’ statement about Sarah Palin and the Bridge to Nowhere:

Stevens: No ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ Advocacy by Palin | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

“I don’t remember her ever campaigning for it. As a matter of fact, she was very critical of it at the time. And she took the money and did not use it for the bridge, so you’re wrong, as far as I’m concerned,” Stevens said today.

Uh. Yeah, Ted? It’s not the bridge we object to. It’s the money. She kept the money.

Political Animal is picking up the story of Sarah Palin’s connection to the Alaska Independence Party, which is dedicated to the establishment of an independant Alaskan nation, if you can believe it.  This is the kind of thing you might have expected a vetting process to have eliminated.  If there was one, which there clearly was not.

TPM has the video of a feisty Campbell Brown nailing McCain spokesman Tucker Brown to the wall on the “Experience Question” as it relates to the remarkable selection of Governor Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential nominee.  In an effort to defend the selection, Brown (Tuck, not Campbell) says that being in command of the National Guard serves as military command experience.  Certainly, this is true.  But when Campbell presses him on what decisions Palin has ever had to make, pointing out that equipping the troops is not the governor’s job, Tucker responds with this:

Actually, Campbell they do.  On a factual basis, they certainly do.  In Alaska, if you have any sort of emergency as things are happening in your state, the National Guard is under the command of the governor.

Fair enough.  In Alaska and elsewhere, if there are state emergencies (read: not national emergencies, in which case, the Army takes over), the governor is responsible for deploying the National Guard to respond.  So, how many times has this been necessary in the two years Sarah Palin has been governor?

According to Google News, not once.

Update: whoops!  Messed up that video link.  It’s been corrected, now.