Palin's Pork

Update:
Via TPM the Washington Independent has some interesting art on Palin's earmarks as Mayor.


Turns out that at least three earmarks secured by Gov. Palin's lobbyist while she was the Mayor of Wasilla were on McCain's annual pork hit list.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Three times in recent years, McCain's catalogs of "objectionable" spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time -- Sarah Palin.

Now, McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has chosen Palin as his running mate, touting her as a reformer just like him...

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...

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.

Read the whole thing yourself, it's a good piece.

Also of note, Think Progress has a Sarah Palin Digest up where they are compiling her statements on a variety of important issues.