Public Allies is not a radical organization. In fact, the Bush administration
tripled its funding, named them a model of faith-based and community initiatives,
and hired them to help other nonprofits improve their services (they teach people
how to fish rather than give them fish). Also, John McCain has championed and called
for more than tripling AmeriCorps programs like Public Allies if he is elected.

The organization does not sponsor, endorse or participate in partisan or protest
activities whatsoever and its service is conducted in partnership with groups like
American Red Cross, Boys and Girls Clubs, faith-based organizations, and even
charter and choice schools.

The organization’s leadership curriculum is fairly similar to the types of
leadership curricula that FORTUNE 500 companies use. Public Allies’ effective
management and business savvy led Fast Company Magazine to give them a “Social
Capitalist Award.”

It is a shame that people will make up “facts” and distort information to attack a
good organization because the Obamas have supported it.

i think it is wise to keep sarah out of the feeding frenzy for the time being and be selective on her interviews right now. i don’t think it’s a bad thing. seeing how viciously she was attacked as soon as she was announced as running mate, it’s a good call IMO. i’m rooting for her to study up and kick ass, but i have a feeling she will do great.

Here’s the deal, comments are just that, they aren’t blog posts. If you have something you want to get out, go start a blog. No more 18 paragraph comments will be allowed. Keep your comments brief and to the point and if you expect them to be approved. And if you continue to badger, your ability to post will be revoked.

I personally want diversity of opinion represented here, within limits. Moonbats are something else entirely.

Good luck with the petition drive. The bottom line is, we’ll see in November whether McCain has made a good move or not. I believe he has. You believe he has not. Time will tell and we look forward to the results. Do you?

If she goes out and makes a mistake, that is something that [voters will] care about, and that’s something that will haunt [McCain] for awhile, so I think this is a smart move.

This has got to be one of the craziest messaging decisions ever: Harris is conceding that Palin’s not even ready to be a vice presidential candidate, let alone be president.

I just don’t see how they can sustain two weeks of keeping Palin in hiding. Every day the McCain campaign keeps her away from reporters just highlights the fact that they don’t think she’s ready.

This strikes me as a pretty impressive strategic blunder.

But records show that Palin — first as mayor of Wasilla and recently as governor of Alaska — was far from shy about pursuing tens of millions in earmarks for her town, her region and her state.

This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. “The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship,” she wrote in a newspaper column.

In 2001, McCain’s list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town — one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion.

McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin’s tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002. The funding was provided to help direct locally grown produce to schools, prisons and other government institutions, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Wasilla received $11.9 million in earmarks from 2000 to 2003. The results of this spending are very apparent today. (The town also benefited from $15 million in federal funds to promote regional rail transportation.)

The community transit center is a landmark: a one-story, tile-fronted building with a drive-through garage. Its fleet of 10 buses provides service throughout the region. Mat-Su Community Transit Agency officials say the building was made possible with a combination of federal money and matching gifts from a private foundation.

Taylor Griffin, a McCain campaign spokesman, said that when Palin became mayor in 1996, “she faced a system that was broken. Small towns like Wasilla in Alaska depended on earmarks to take care of basic needs. . . . That was something that Gov. Palin was alarmed about and was one of the formative experiences that led her toward the reform-oriented stance that she has taken as her career has progressed.”

Palin, he said, was “disgusted” that small towns like hers were dependent on earmarks.

Public records paint a different picture:

Wasilla had received few if any earmarks before Palin became mayor. She actively sought federal funds — a campaign that began to pay off only after she hired a lobbyist with close ties to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who long controlled federal spending as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He made funneling money to Alaska his hallmark.

Steven Silver was a former chief of staff for Stevens. After he was hired, Wasilla obtained funding for several projects in 2002, including an additional $600,000 in transportation funding.

That year, a local water and sewer project received $1.5 million, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, which combs federal spending measures to identify projects inserted by congressional members.

When Palin spoke after McCain introduced her as his running mate at a rally in Ohio last week, she made fun of earmarking. She said she had rejected $223 million in federal funds for a bridge linking Ketchikan to an island with an airport and 50 residents, referring to it by its derogatory label: the “bridge to nowhere.”

In the nationally televised speech, she stood by McCain and said, “I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.”

However, as a candidate for governor in 2006, Palin had backed funding for the bridge. After her election, she killed the much-ridiculed project when it became clear the state had other priorities. She said she would use the federal funds to fill those needs.

This year she submitted to Congress a list of Alaska projects worth $197.8 million, including $2 million to research crab productivity in the Bering Sea and $7.4 million to improve runway lighting at eight Alaska airports. A spokesman said she cut the original list of 54 projects to 31.

“So while Sen. McCain was going after cutting earmarks in Washington,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, “Gov. Palin was going after getting earmarks.”

tom.hamburger@latimes.com

i saw it as a woman being forced to eat crow, not based on true recognition of her mistake but based on being – rightfully – pilloried, but not being able to eat the crow with dignity.