Science Guide

“Everything is f---ing spin.”  John McCain.

On Wednesday night former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee claimed that Sarah Palin received more votes for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden did in the presidential primaries. In fact, Biden got 79,754 votes in his short campaign, while Palin received 909 votes in her 1999 mayor race and 651 in 1996 from the approximately 8,000 residents of Wasilla. Read the full analysis.

 Palin got it wrong when she claimed that she told Congress “thanks but no thanks” to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere.

In fact, she initially favored the bridge when she was a candidate for governor. Congress had already removed the specific earmark for the bridge long before Palin as governor decided to kill the project.

 In 2006 Palin said: "People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose.” Palin described the bridge link as the town of Ketchikan and its surrounding area potential for expansion and growth. Palin said Alaska’s congressional delegation worked hard to obtain funding for the bridge as part of a package deal and that she “would not stand in the way of the progress toward that bridge.”

Palin also answered "yes" to an Anchorage Daily News poll question about whether she would continue to support state funding for the Gravina Island Bridge if elected governor. "The window is now…while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist," she wrote.  

 It was only after she won the governorship that Palin shifted her position. And even then, it’s inaccurate to say that she “told the Congress ‘thanks, but no thanks.’” Palin in fact accepted non-earmarked money from Congress that could have been used for the bridge if she so desired. She took the money she decided to use it for other state transportation purposes.  That doesn’t qualify as standing up to Congress.

FactCheck said her claim to be a crusader against earmarks doesn’t hold water especially since she argued for funds for local projects that her running mate, John McCain, had explicitly condemned.

Regarding Senator Obama, Palin said: “But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state Senate.”

Of course, we don’t know what is “major” to Sarah Palin.  But since Palin’s own ethics reforms in Alaska were important enough to highlight in her convention address, then it’s only fair to credit Obama’s efforts on that topic.

In 1998 in the Illinois Senate, Obama cosponsored an ethics overhaul that bars elected officials from using their campaign funds for personal use and it was called the first major overhaul of Illinois campaign and ethics laws in 25 years. It also bans fundraisers in the state Capitol during legislative sessions. Obama’s Republican cosponsor Kirk Dillard even appeared in an Obama ad last summer describing Obama’s skills working with members of both parties to get legislation passed.

In Washington, Obama was instrumental in helping to craft the 2007 ethics reform law that ended gifts and meals from lobbyists, cut off subsidized jet travel for members of Congress, required lobbyists to disclose contributions they “bundle” to candidates, and put the brakes on other, similar common practices.

FactCheck  noted in a recent article that Obama also crossed party lines and worked with Republican senators to help detect and secure weapons of mass destruction and to destroy conventional weapons stockpiles around the world, and to create a publicly searchable database on federal spending.

 Palin also got Obama’s legislative record wrong.  She forgot to mention that Obama proposes cutting taxes for most working families.

Palin said: “And let me be specific: The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. ...How are you – how are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?”

Her tax remarks lacked context. Senator Obama proposes to cut taxes for most individuals (81.3 percent of all households would get a tax cut), while raising them only for a relative few at the top, which she of course did not mention.

She avoided the false claims that McCain continues to make, most recently in a TV ad that wrongly accuses Obama of planning "painful tax increases on working American families."

In attacking Obama, Palin reeled off a few statements that sounded exciting but were light on facts.

<!--more--> Palin said: “America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, and he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.”

Below are factual problems with three of these statements.

Obama's not against producing more energy. In fact, he's not even against drilling for oil within limits. He has a $150 billion clean energy program and says that he wants to develop clean coal technology, advance the next generation of biofuels, prioritize construction of the Alaska gas pipeline (surely something Palin agrees with) and take a host of other steps to both conserve energy and produce it, in various forms.

If Obama's comments about meeting with "terrorist states" are worthy of ridicule, then perhaps so are those of the Bush administration and other Republicans. Obama made his first statement on this in an answer to a video question at a Democratic debate last year, when he said "I would" when asked whether he'd meet "separately, without precondition" in his first year with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Reagan, JFK and other presidents had spoken to the Soviet Union regularly, he noted.

In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in June, Obama elaborated, saying that he would take an aggressive diplomatic approach – carefully preparing for such meetings, setting a clear agenda, coordinating with  U.S. allies, and not conducting the meetings at all unless they were clearly in the U.S. interest. He also stressed he would "do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

 In recent months, the Bush Administration has been more open to beginning a dialogue with the same nations that it once referred to as the “axis of evil.” In July, Bush sent a high-level official to Geneva to sit in on nuclear talks with Iran and authorized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to speak with North Korean diplomats about ending that country’s nuclear weapons program. Reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times noted the stark contrast between the administration’s current position about meeting with “foes” and its attitude several years ago.

Further, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in May that we should "sit down and talk" with Iran. So did former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in March. As did Senator Dick Lugar, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as far back as 2006.

 Obama isn't worried, as Palin said, "that someone won't read them their rights" when it comes to suspected terrorists who are detained by the U.S. He does, however, support the right of detainees to challenge their imprisonment in federal court. That's the same position the Supreme Court took in June in a case called Boumediene v. Bush.

Palin talked about standing up to oil companies and oil lobbyists, citing her work on getting a gas pipeline built in Alaska:

 Palin said: “I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”

Actually, construction hasn’t begun on the pipeline and the project isn't quite a done deal. Palin signed legislation just last week that authorizes the state to give a license in 90 days to TransCanada to start developing the project. The state also can provide $500 million as seed money. She gets credit for moving the pipeline closer to realization after many years of talks. Palin pushed for legislation that would allow a private company to build the 1,715-mile natural gas pipeline, instead of oil companies, which she said were moving too slowly on the issue.In an Aug. 27 press release, Palin indicated that there was still work to be done before the project would become a reality:

Palin, press release, Aug. 27: “After dreaming of a natural gas pipeline for more than 30 years, Alaskans have now created the framework for the project to advance. This legislation brings us closer than we’ve ever been to building a gas pipeline and finally accessing our gas that has been languishing for so many decades on the North Slope.”

Washington Post energy correspondent Steven Mufson wrote that the major oil companies have opposed the pipeline project, saying it wasn’t economically feasible. Yet, ConocoPhillips and BP have proposed their own gas pipeline that would compete with the state-backed project. TransCanada estimates it will take 10 years to finish the pipeline, according to its application to the state, and it will cost about $26.5 billion – not $40 billion as Palin said.

 As for Palin having “stood up to ... the Big Oil companies,” as she said in her speech, she has on this issue, not on others. After all Palin wouldn’t want to ‘bite’ the hands that ‘feed’ her -- oil is incredibly important to Alaska’s economy. About 80 percent of the state budget comes from oil and gas taxes and royalties. Palin is in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore areas, a position she shares with oil companies.

So all in all, Palin gave a well delivered speech at the RNC pep rally whose mantra was "drill, drill, drill".  Her speech did exactly what it was suppose to do – fire up the republican base, nothing else.  But Palin's speech lacked facts – it was all spin, no substance.