Palin's 'Speech' Was A Subtle Attack On The Poor

When Sarah Palin took the stage to read the talking points memo drawn up by Bush Administration officials, she showed the country and the world her true colors. In fact, the Republican Party in general showed America who they really are and what they stand for with their smirky and derogatory attacks on Barak Obama, liberal thinkers in general, the media, and pretty much anyone who does not subscribe to the most extreme far right positions the Republicans have to offer.

Palin, in belittling Obama's service as a Community Organizer, showed us something else. Contempt for the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. Contempt for education for the impoverished. In trying to tout her experience as the mayor of a town that would fit neatly into a four square block area of the city where I reside, Palin must have forgotten what she told the Mat-Su valley Frontiersman in October of 1996, when she was running for mayor of Wasilla, and was asked how she was going to run the city without experienced leaders. Palin replied " "It's not rocket science. It's $6 million and 53 employees." Yeah, great executive level stuff.

On the other hand, Obama, as a Community Organizer, fought the status quo in the South Chicago neighborhood where a sewage plant leaked putrid garbage, fought to force slum lords in the area to fix plumbing and fixtures in the apartments of the poor and working class, worked with area churches to give the poor a chance in life, and fought a pitched battle with the city to remove life threatening asbestos from the areas housing projects. In other words, he fought for the poor and the middle class, fought for 'the little guy'. And oh. He also worked with others who helped people in the community to get out and vote, the biggest cardinal sin for a right winger.

Palin can make no such claim. By belittling the work of Community Organizers, she spit in the faces of every person in this nation that works or volunteers at homeless shelters, food banks, soup kitchens, charities, neighborhood watch committees, and any other position that could be conceived as 'community organizing'. She herself did little to nothing to help the poor of the state of Alaska during her brief stint as Governor. If anything, the state legislators had to reign in her wishes to take money from social service block grants and give it to 'faith based initiatives'.

The $1.5 million dollars that went to the largest cities in Alaska to help keep the poor housed from the bitter Alaskan winters, to keep the food banks and soup kitchens open, to try to help those who had fallen on hard times, protect victims of domestic violence, help working class families pay medical bills, would have either had to curtail their missions or close entirely under Palin's redistribution of money. The plan was dropped only after a brutal dressing down from the State Legislators who saw Palin's ploy for what it was. An attempt to take money from the poorest areas of Alaska, and give it to the rich areas where the money was not needed. Beverly Wooley, the Anchorage Health and Human Services director said at the time that the Palin plan "stands to cripple the existing services being provided."

With the federal poverty level being set at less than 22 thousand dollars a year for a family of four, Alaska boasts the largest one year increase in children living in poverty under Palin's leadership. 2006 numbers show that 12% of children lived below the poverty level, while in 2007, the number increased to 17%. taking into account Alaska's very high cost of living, one can imagine the conditions those children are forced to live in.

This person running on a family values platform, who doesn't want anyone talking about her pregnant teen aged daughter, was the person who directly cut funding for Alaska's Covenant House by more than $1.1 million. Covenant House provides poor Alaskan unwed teen mothers a place to raise their babies for up to eighteen months, including not only food and shelter, diapers and what have you for both mother and child, but job training, education programs, and counseling to the teens that help prepare them to be self sufficient. Just doesn't fit into the 'Compassionate Conservative' agenda I suppose.

Yes, Sarah Palin cut spending in Alaska alright. She did it the way that every neo-fascist maniac has done it for the past 30 years in this nation. On the backs of the poor and the helpless. Other spending cuts include school lunch programs, fought desperately against sex education classes, (five kids and SHE fights AGAINST sex ed?), upheld the ban on salmon fishing in the southwest Aleutians causing a steep spike in poverty levels, cut state funding for Anchorage's only family shelter for the homeless, and cut in half the budget for Safe Harbors, a transitional housing motel for the homeless, with Palin stating that the public would have to donate the loss of revenue to keep the shelter open.

That's what this all boils down to. Another speech reader who will say whatever she thinks the Party Big Wigs want her to say in order to further her career. Her claims of fiscal responsibility come from the causing of untold misery for countless people by cutting off the funding for those in the most vulnerable positions. Another charlatan, another liar, another in a very long line of fascists who could care less about anyone other than themselves.

Do tell dear Sarah, as someone who despises the poor and unwed teen mothers, as someone who believes that Barak Obama's time as a Community Organizer working with the poor is easily dismissed as meaningless, how do you think that YOUR candidate, John McCain should act when he appears in New York City on September 11th to highlight the good works and achievements of................Community Organizers? Hypocrite. You're just Bush and Cheney in drag...............