Left In Lowell

More information is coming out on Governor Sarah Palin hourly. Aptly, amid our local discussion of managerial incompetence, I read a very interesting look at how she left her town in the lurch when she left its mayor’s office:

Sarah Palin left the finances of her town Wasilla in tatters when she moved on in 2002 (h/t xgz). She wanted a legacy as mayor, it seems, and pushed hard for the town to build a hyper-expensive sports complex. But Palin screwed the process up badly. Instead of buying the land for the complex when it was offered, her administration allowed a developer named Gary Lundgren to snap it up. Then Wasilla tried to seize the land from Lundgren through eminent domain. In the end, what with court costs Wasilla paid at least $ 1.7 million for land it could have bought for less than one tenth that sum - if the purchase had been handled properly. For this incompetence, Wasilla is still paying a steep price: higher taxes and cutbacks in services. In other words Palin is about as efficient as Michael Brown, onetime head of FEMA.

Diarist loyalson, a resident of Wasilla, has more to say about the damage Palin did to his town while she was mayor.

There’s so many parallels to a previous local administration here, it’s astounding. And would anyone in their right mind think our previous CM would be qualified to be President should something happen to a ticketmate?

Couple that with her apparent lack of knowledge about the Iraq war (she knows less than the average blogger, it would appear from her quotes on the matter) or even what the Office of the V.P. even does, and her mention of being Alaska-centric today in her speech (that’ll go over well with the other 49 states) and Troopergate, which while not as bad an ethics investigation as Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is undergoing, is still fresh and immediate.

I dunno, this is looking pretty flimsy. It doesn’t seem like this was very well thought out by the McCain campaign. Then again, it’s hard to polish your reputation when your whole party’s in the ditch, and besides, who else was there? Romney? The base would hate voting for Mormon. Lieberman? Similar problem with the base, on abortion and other things. Guilani? Again, same. Huckabee? Rove wouldn’t hear of it I’m sure.

There were, to my mind, many more qualified candidates (including many qualified yet acceptably conservative women) they could have picked. How weird they arrived on someone McCain doesn’t appear to know very well at all.

So say the reports. Sarah Palin is the 2006-elected new Governor of Alaska.

Does McCain think picking an extremely conservative, anti-choice, inexperienced, potentially ethically challenged (a pending investigation, and given Alaska’s current ethics troubles all ’round…) woman would woe disgruntled Clinton supporters?

I will give him one thing, though, it is a historic pick for the Republican party, to have a woman on the ticket. At least that’s something. More barriers are breaking down.

However, if McCain wanted to hit Obama hard on inexperience, he just sort of completely undermined it. Since Palin would be a heartbeat from the presidency should McCain (heaven forfend) get elected, he can hardly criticize Obama when he’s the one putting someone with even less “experience” on his ticket.

It doesn’t help at all that she’s married to a oil baron.

Finally, the day has arrived. Can we take this off our plate now? Can the Lowell Sun stop teething on this silly thing? Good lord.

You can download the now-public Stoklosa School report, done for the City by its lawyer in the case, here. Note that once you arrive one the page you can hit the link to download the PDF, but it’s 16MB. I’m sure City Manager Lynch is relieved to get this off his desk.

Kudos to the sane handling of this by Lynch, who came in long after this mismanaged mess was created, and had to make lemonade with those lemons. Jeers to the Lowell Sun who not only attained illegally leaked information from City Councilors and used it as a battering ram for their save-the-former-CM’s-reputation agenda, but who also distracted us with non-issues while the very real issues were largely unattended to. We now have a settlement, which was probably the best we were going to get, without a protracted and expensive court battle. Let’s put this baby to rest, now.

Hunter. Mind the swearing. I’m in as much shock as he is, poor guy.

The pillars??? That’s the best they can come up with? The PILLARS????

They are rapidly collapsing into self-parody. No, wait, they did that long ago…maybe this is collapsing into a black hole of self-parody.

I’m wiping the tears of laughter out of my eyes as we speak.

Wow, I would totally go pick lettuce in Yuma for $50/hour. That’s more than either my husband or I get per hour in our jobs! That’s like around $100K per year! Hard labor for $50/hr sounds good to me. I do it all weekend in the backyard anyway, for free! For $100K per year I could hire someone else to do the landscaping.

Edit: This is the context, the quote which leads to this Amazing Exploding McCain:

John McCain: “I don’t think I need to tell you that there are jobs that Americans will not do. I don’t think I have to tell you that there are … the backbone of our economy…

Audience members: “Pay them the right wages.”

John McCain: “You know I’ve heard that statement before. Now, my friends, I’ll offer anybody here fifty dollars an hour if you’ll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So, ok, sign up! Ok, when you sign up, you sign up, and you’ll be there for the whole season, the whole season, ok, not just one day. Because you can’t do it, my friend.”

This would be Angry McCain we’re seeing in this video, I think…note the petulance. This is the last thing you want to do when speaking to an audience you are trying to get the votes of, and yet he can’t help himself.

Makes you wonder just how volatile he would be as President when things didn’t go his way. War with Russia, anyone?

MTV News. Check it out!

And don’t forget to get your tickets for the National Anthem Obama fundraising concert featuring BMG’s David and Charley!!

Move over, Olbermann. There is nothing like watching Rachael Maddow dress down a Republican talking point like nobody’s business.

All that and home-grown too. She started her radio career in western MA.

Sorry, I just had to say something about Rachael’s amazing clarity and her ability to distill the crux of any issue at hand (Mr. Lynne’s words).

Thank goodness she has her own show on MSNBC - too bad she didn’t replace Tweety instead of Abrams.

As you can tell, we switch between MSNBC and PBS for our convention coverage.

Debunked. I really hate the traditional media. Please, can we finally boycott Tweedy?

But irrelevant is not how the protesters will be portrayed by a media that has been salivating over the possible disruption of the Democratic convention — by angry, broom-riding succubi! — for weeks. Never mind that there were probably no more than 50 shouting PUMAs. Never mind that every national political convention in modern history becomes a locus for vocal agitators. Never mind that over the weekend, antiwar protests had been larger. Never mind that in three days in Denver I had not spotted a single PUMA or Hillary protester until I found where Chris Matthews was broadcasting. Never mind the guy in the toilet outfit. To hear Matthews, and the talking heads at CNN tell it, these demonstrators were “ground zero” in a rift that could potentially destroy the Democratic Party and ruin its national convention.

Read the rest, really good. (HT: Mr. Lynne)

If you haven’t already, check out the coverage of the convention from Denver by the BMG crew. (Cue Cartman…”Seriously, I hate you guys…” [/envy])

Anyway, they are doing twitter (I just figured out what that even is *sigh*) and video and everything, including an interview with Lt. Guv Murray. Tres cool.

As for me, I have to get more work done and then maybe, maybe get to go home on time to see the Kennedy tribute. *pout*

This week marks the historic Democratic convention, which will culminate with nominee Barak Obama’s big speech at INVESCO Field. While the idiot chattering class (ie pundits) is saying that McCain has successfully managed to paint Obama as “too celebrity” (did anyone really fall for that stupid Paris ad…really now?) and that makes his stadium appearance seem more of a negative than a positive, I think it’s a great historic moment that, instead of leaving it to the insiders and the media to view it in person, opening up the speech both recognizes that historic moment, and also makes it a people’s event. Rather like Governor Patrick eschewing the cramped elite traditional swearing-in for being outside with the people who elected him. I approve.

Four summers ago, I watched the Democratic Convention in Boston on TV. So I did hear - live - the keynote speech by an unknown state Senator from Illinois running for the US Senate. I was incredibly moved and impressed by it - as a lot of people were. His ability to lay it all out in a clear roadmap - our problems, and their solutions - and his incredible turn of phrase (written, so they say, himself, not too long before delivery, a rather Lincolnesque attribute) which could address issues of race without offense but with seriousness and yes, hope that by understanding one another, we can move beyond them and above them, that clarity was such a breath of fresh air.

Four years ago, jaw gaping at what I’d just heard, I said aloud to my husband, “I just saw the first black president of the United States.”

I never dreamed that it could come so soon. I never thought that Barak Obama, who not only can speak well, but who has intelligence and gravitas, would be able to secure the nomination of the Democratic party in a mere four years.

Say what you will about how you can’t fix everything on hope…be as cynical as you like and believe it’s all nonsense. But we could use a little inspiration in this country, if only to remember what it is we can be proud of. We have had so many heart-wearying disappointments…the US torture policy…wars without end…economic robbery of the poor and middle class…homeless vets who could not get the care they needed…environmental crisis completely ignored and energy costs soaring…to those who doubt Obama can handle the presidency and all the hard work which will be necessary in the next decade, to reverse the terrible damage at home and abroad - Yes, We Can!