Small Town America

From The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh

The day that small town U.S. stormed world stage

By CHRIS STEPHEN
in New York

Sarah Palin was midway through her electrifying speech to the Republican convention on Wednesday night when she abruptly wandered off script.

"I love those hockey mums," she said, smiling. "You know, they say the difference between a hockey mum and a pit-bull: Lipstick."

The ad lib brought the house down, as well it might. For the party faithful it was confirmation that Mrs. Palin, until a week ago almost unknown, not only shared their values but had charisma to boot.

She didn't stop there. Mentioning Barack Obama only once by name, she nevertheless tore in to the Democrats' candidate.

"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

"Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?"

Attempting to underline a reputation for down-home values, speaking of taking power as governor of Alaska, she said: "I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay. I also drive myself to work."

And with fuel prices at the top of most Americans' worry list, she was unapologetic about renewed drilling in the U.S.

"To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

"And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both."

Sarah Palin's public persona is rooted in Small Town America, a place she took time to praise by quoting president Harry Truman: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity,'" she said, then added: "I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind."

So do the Republicans: Those are the people that John McCain is now banking on to get him elected.

Small Town America seems a remote place to Europeans weaned on a diet of film and TV emanating from either coast.

Small Town America is derided by the inhabitants of New York or California as the "flyover" states because they are best observed from 40,000 feet.

For its fans, Small Town America is the heart of the country. It is the rose-tinted paintings of Norman Rockwell, neighbour helping neighbour, the farmer working hard by day and relaxing by night on his porch with family around him and Jesus at his shoulder. It is also the original article: Small towns were the first settlements, and, in the minds of millions, they resemble, more than the corrupted cities, the solid values of the first settlers.

Mrs. Palin encapsulated that image brilliantly. "She did it with a forceful smile, she did it in a way that was humanising," said radio talk show host Robert Traynham. "If I'm the Obama camp, I'm thinking I've got a problem."

In a single speech, more than Mr. McCain, more than Mr. Obama, she has defined the coming election.

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organiser'" she said, with a dig at Mr. Obama's previous occupation. "Except that you have actual responsibilities."

Beyond talk of the economy, of health care, Iraq or global warming, this election is now set to be a replay of the Clinton-Obama primary battle earlier this year: Mr. Obama representing the city dwellers, Mr. McCain – egged on by Mrs. Palin – the God-fearing, duck-hunting, hard-working countryside.

Mrs. Palin herself drew the line in the sand, pouncing on an unguarded Obama comment from earlier this year that small town Americans "cling" to guns and God.

"I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," she said.

Her own persona is the perfect Republican photo-fit: Her husband rides snowmobiles, she enjoys hunting moose and church activities, has raised five children and refuses talk of abortion even when carrying a Downs syndrome child.

Mrs. Palin has given what was a demoralised party a narrative they can run with: It is a narrative that says troubled times are the best times to return to the honest and simple values of hunting, fishing, hard work and Jesus.

Mrs. Palin is Christian, not in the sense of having tea with the vicar, but a bible thumper. She was baptised in the same Pentecostal Assemblies of God church of which the former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, was a member. It was he who said the Iraq invasion was doing God's work.

And Mrs. Palin sees the hand of the Almighty all around her, even in her desire to push a pipeline though Alaskan land now reserved as a polar bear habitat. Her job as governor, she explained, was reaching out to the people so that "We can work together to make sure God's will be done."

For the Republican top brass, a candidate who is both Small Town and Big Oil is a dream come true, ensuring funding will continue to roll in.

The first casualty in all this is Mr. McCain himself: He hoped to win the election by offering himself as a social liberal to a country tired of the failures of a right-wing Bush administration.

Instead, bullied by conservatives, Mr. McCain has himself swung right, coming as near as he can to agreeing that abortion should be scrapped, gay marriage banned and creationism taught in schools.

But while Republicans are invigorated by Mrs. Palin, Mr. McCain's task of reaching out to the middle ground just got harder.

Put on the spot, most Americans tell pollsters they support the right to abortion; and parents in most states object to the idea of teaching creationism.

Mr. McCain's move to the right may leave the middle ground clear for Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama has already criticised the Palin speech, for failing to mention the economy, regarded by voters as the single biggest failing of the Bush administration. Mrs. Palin, and Mr. McCain, will need to put flesh on the bones, struggling, as Mr. Obama is, to translate soaring rhetoric into concrete ideas.

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Ideology the big issue for Christian candidate delivering electoral shock

PROFILE

People in the small Alaskan town of Wasilla remember how they got their first Christian mayor.

The traditional turning points that had decided municipal elections in the town of fewer than 7,000 people – Should we pave the dirt roads? Put in sewers? Which candidate is your hunting buddy? – seemed all but obsolete the year Sarah Palin, then 32, challenged the three-term incumbent, John C. Stein.

Anti-abortion flyers circulated. Mrs. Palin played up her church work and her membership in the National Rifle Association. The state Republican Party, never involved in the past because city elections are non-partisan, ran advertisements on Mrs. Palin's behalf.

"Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, 'Whoa'," said Mr. Stein, who lost the election. "But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I'm not a church-going guy and that was another issue: 'We will have our first Christian mayor'."

Shortly after becoming mayor, Mrs. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every city council meeting in Mrs. Palin's first year in office, said Mrs. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at a council meeting. "They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her," Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to "resist all efforts at censorship," Ms. Kilkenny recalled. The mayor fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but rescinded the sacking after residents made a strong show of support. In 1996, Mrs. Palin suggested to the local paper, the Frontiersman, that conversations about banning books were "rhetorical".

'Sexual imprinting'

Looking for the perfect partner?
Then just take a good look at your parents

Published Date: 03 September 2008 in The Scotsman, Edinburgh
By Tanya Thompson
Social Affairs Correspondent

The next time you gaze into your partner's eyes you may find they look vaguely familiar. Scientists now believe they have found the key ingredient to any love match – and it's all in the genes.

A new study suggests that "daddy's girls" choose men who look like their fathers, while "mummy's boys" cannot resist women who remind them of their mothers.

Scientists say people use their opposite sex parents as a template for picking a mate by a process called "sexual imprinting".

Psychologist Dr. Tamas Bereczkei and colleagues took 52 families and examined how alike various members were based on facial measurements. They found the women picked men strikingly similar to their father, with the mouth and nose being the most important features.

Meanwhile, the findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggested men actively seek out women who look like their mothers.

Dr. Bereczkei, of the University of Pecs in Hungary, said: "Significant correlations have been found between the young men and their partner's father … especially on facial proportions belonging to the central area of face. Women also showed resemblance to their partner's mother … in the facial characteristics of their lower face.

"Our results support the sexual imprinting hypothesis which states that children shape a mental template of their opposite sex parents and search for a partner who resembles that perception."

Well-known daddy's girls whose husbands bear more than a passing resemblance to their fathers include television presenter Zoe Ball. Her husband, the DJ Norman "Fatboy Slim" Cook, has similar eyes, ears and smile to those of her father, ex-children's TV presenter Johnny Ball.

The same goes for celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, whose husband, advertising guru Charles Saatchi, and father, ex-Chancellor Nigel Lawson, have similar eyes, noses and hair styles. Gwyneth Paltrow's husband Chris Martin also bears a long-faced resemblance to her late father Bruce. And Scots actor Ewan McGregor's wife, Eve, is said to be a carbon-copy of his mother Carol. Their faces follow the same shape and both have dark hair, sensuous, oval eyes and long, thin eyebrows.

It is believed the phenomenon of sexual imprinting evolved to help youngsters choose a compatible mate.

By modelling their own choice of partner on their parents' successful marriage, a daddy's girl or mummy's boy may increase their own chances of having a happy partnership. They may also believe that a man who looks like their father or a woman who looks like their mother is more likely to be a good parent.

Professor Cary Cooper, a psychologist from Lancaster University, said: "I think unconsciously we probably do select our partners based on our own parental models."

In the study, 14 facial proportions were measured on 312 adults from the 52 families, and the correlations between family members were compared with those of pairs randomly selected from the population.

The family consisted of a young man and his long-term partner or young woman and her long-term partner, his father and his mother, and her mother and father. The young people, all university students, were aged between 21 and 32 and the average length of their relationship was 18.6 months.

Bristol Palin Deserves Privacy

The Huffington Post
Sept. 2, 2008

By Ruth Hochberger

When an individual throws him or herself into the glare of publicity by standing for public office, does the candidate drag the members of their family along with them? And should the press feel obligated to reveal prior or current indiscretions of the family members as they do the candidate?

Several baseline questions need to be addressed before answering either of these very troublesome questions: Has the candidate made his/her relationship with their family an issue in the campaign? Has the family member injected himself/herself into the campaign? What is the nature of the indiscretion? How old is the family member? Does the family member's act (or omission) shed any helpful light on the character of the candidate?

Let's look at the situation of Bristol Palin, five months' pregnant, unmarried, 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate-in-waiting, Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. The Palin camp announced the pregnancy in an effort to debunk rumors that cropped up in the blogosphere that the candidate's five-month-old son had actually been born to her daughter, Bristol, not to her.

With respect to the first question -- has the candidate made her relationship with her family an issue in the campaign -- the answer is a qualified yes. While Palin has not really been a candidate long enough (she was anointed Friday) to have made much of anything an issue in the campaign yet, her "family values" positions are certainly among the principal reasons she was chosen by McCain. In fact in the speech announcing her selection, he called her emblematic of "the hopes and the values of working people." So, an editor could make an argument that the "family values" issue makes a daughter's teen pregnancy fair game in a presidential race.

Has the family member injected herself into the campaign? Absolutely not. Aside from a quick photo shot of Bristol, alongside her brother and sisters on the platform on Friday, I have not heard a word she's uttered in support of her mother, McCain, the Republican platform or, for that matter, any public issue.

What is the nature of the indiscretion? A teen pregnancy out-of-wedlock. I don't think this clears the bar for press exposure. In 2001, the 19-year-old Bush girls, Barbara and Jenna, received misdemeanor citations from the Austin, Texas, police for underage drinking. Some at the time felt it was unfair for the press to inquire about and probe the incident and the Bushes' reaction. When law enforcement gets involved and there is a public record, the incident is fair game. When Andrew Giuliani put his name on a lawsuit against Duke University and filed suit, that is fair game for reporting. When a 17-year-old girl gets herself pregnant, I believe the press ought to stand down unless there's an unusually good justification for publishing.

How old is the family member? 17. Would any parent out there want to be judged as fit or unfit for their job on the basis of the nutty or irresponsible stuff our kids do? Even the proudest of parents knows that we're just a hair's breadth away from potentially disastrous consequences -- particularly with teenagers. This is not Billy Carter, or some other wacky adult relative who should be held responsible for his actions -- this is a near-child, who made a stupid mistake and now will live with it. It is very different than a responsible adult relative who screws up and embarrasses the candidate (and almost always knows that they're going to).

And finally, does the family member's conduct shed any light on the fitness of the candidate to hold office or on the candidate's morals, principles or values? The answer here is no. I am sure that in the days and weeks ahead there will be many things we learn about Sarah Palin that will make us acutely perplexed as to why John McCain thought she was the best possible option to be his second-in-command, but having a pregnant teenage daughter will definitely not be on the list. There are those that argue that having a teenage daughter get pregnant may be some reflection of her mothering skills, her attentiveness, her insight into her own family. I don't buy it. And even were that so, it would not provide any window on her suitability for the office of vice president; it would only be a measure of her mothering.

The toughest ethical questions faced by journalists involve when to involuntarily strip subjects of their privacy over matters they do not want disclosed. Since privacy is one of the most cherished values in a civilized society, we in the press need to be absolutely sure that when we do it, we have some higher ethical justification. In this case, there was none.

Hurricane Palin

McCain creates a disaster story for the news-starved press.

By Jack Shafer
Slate's editor at large

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008

The news abhors a vacuum. Politicians, public-relations disinformers, media consultants, and other spin artists may think it's wise to suppress the elemental force that is the news. But when the news breeches the container it's been stuffed into, mayhem results.

Journalistic mayhem is a fine description for the last couple of days of Sarah Palin coverage. Starved to the point of collapse from the restricted-calorie diet served at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the press needed a news feast to restore its powers. With the Republicans' convention lite staring them in the face, the ravenous press corps decided to switch the menu from St. Paul to New Orleans. The evening news anchors — NBC, CBS, ABC — were all defecting to the Gulf Coast over the weekend. But then the press scented the lard-fried Snickers bar that was Palin. Now that Hurricane Gustav has fizzled, there is only one disaster story to cover, and she's it.

Would the press be tearing into the Palin story with the same passion had the Democratic Convention produced news beyond the Clinton-Obama pissing match? Or had the press not already put itself to sleep producing hundreds of stories speculating on who the veep nominees would be? Or had Gustav turned the Superdome into a giant soup bowl? I think not.

Thanks to McCain's miscue, everything the press touches about Palin turns into a scoop: her earmark flip-flops, her political inexperience, her Alaska Independence Party connection, her views on teaching "creationism," her book-banning phase, plus the "troopergate" scandal, her husband's ancient DUI, and her pregnant teenage daughter. And the press rampage has only just begun.

The press isn't retaliating for having been starved. Like an undammed river, it's merely returning to its original path. Palin and John McCain and the Republicans deserve every column inch, every broadcast second of scrutiny they're getting. I believe — unlike Barack Obama — that members of a candidate's family are fair game once a candidate thrusts them onto the public stage — as did Palin when McCain presented her as his pick for vice president in Dayton, Ohio, last Friday. The eagerness with which politicians deploy their children as campaign props stands as an open invitation to the press to write about them. And because kinfolk tend to exploit their familial connections to the executive branch (Donald Nixon, Billy Carter, Roger Clinton), the press will want to keep an eye on Palin's extended family, too.

The press is merely doing on short notice what the McCain campaign's vetting team should have done between March — when he clinched the nomination — and now: properly vetting his vice-presidential candidate. Does Palin have what it takes to serve as president? Do any Tom Eagleton - or Spiro Agnew - type skeletons lounge in her closet? Will Joe Biden eat her alive in their vice-presidential debate? Can she subordinate herself to McCain?

Like the Democrats, the Republicans created a news vacuum into which they hoped to insert a mock convention that would rubber-stamp the nominee's agenda and send happy vibes to the electorate. The Democrats got away with it in Denver, but luck has shone on the news beasts in St. Paul. Even if an asteroid were to blot out New Orleans today, a giant squid were to topple the Golden Gate Bridge tomorrow, and fire ants were to kill every human on Fire Island by the end of Thursday, the biggest story of the week would still be McCain's cockeyed selection of Palin.

Thanks to McCain's goof, news will abound for the next three days. It won't be an open convention, but it will be more open than the Republicans ever anticipated. Reporters will push delegates to defend Palin's qualifications and the manner in which she was selected. The commentariat will fill the void with jaw music about Palin on every channel. Some Republican looking to make a name for himself (and earn a dagger in the back) may even call for Palin to step down before she's nominated. This is like a replay of George H.W. Bush's pick of Dan Quayle for vice president in 1988, only worse!

Until somebody in the press corps with the proper rank sends the McCain campaign a thank-you note for tapping Palin and restoring vitality to the coverage, this column will have to do. Thanks, y'all!

Will Bush cancel the election?

From newsmax.com:

U.S. Will Attack Iran in Weeks
Monday, Sept. 1, 2008

The largest newspaper in The Netherlands, De Telegraaf, reported this past weekend that its nation's intelligence agency has been working closely with the CIA to help prepare the U.S. in a planned air attack on Iran.

The front-page story in De Telegraaf, published Friday and headlined "Attack on Iran Imminent," claimed that U.S. military strikes on Iran's nuclear and weapons facilities would happen in weeks.

The paper indicated Holland's military intelligence service (Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst, or AIVD), has pulled back from its operations inside Iran helping the U.S. to identify targets.

De Telegraaf reports that the decision has already been made by the U.S. to attack Iran using unmanned aircraft, hence The Netherlands' decision to remove its agents.

Excerpts from De Telegraaf follow:

"Good sources have declared to the Telegraaf that the AIVD Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst has been operating in Iran for the last few years with the purpose of the infiltration and sabotage of the weapons industry of the Iranian republic.

"The operations are said to have been 'very successful' but have recently been put to a halt because of American plans for an air attack. Information regarding the AIVD operation has been shared with the CIA in recent years, according to the sources.

"Iran is believed to be working towards an atomic bomb and refuses to comply to Western demands to stop enriching uranium. In June Israeli vice president Shaul Mofaz made the statement that an Israeli attack is inevitable if Iran continues its quest for atomic weapons."

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

In Wasilla, Pregnancy Was No Secret

From Time magazine:

By Nathan Thornburgh

So his name is Levi.

That's about the only thing that I didn't know about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. The rest of the details I picked up almost without trying, while talking about other things with townsfolk — some who know the governor and her family well, some who don't. It was, more or less, an open secret. And everyone was saying the same thing: the governor's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, the father is her boyfriend, and it's really nobody's business beyond that.

I happen to agree.

This tiny town wedged in between the Chugach and Talkeetna mountain ranges has intrigued the whole country since John McCain's surprise Friday announcement that Wasilla's favorite daughter, Sarah Palin, would be his running mate. Sure, some of the interest was a prelude to attacks on Palin's readiness for national office. But Wasilla also offered a welcome chance to get specific about the geography of a politician. It's one of our most cherished myths, that a leader can come from somewhere and you can guess at their qualities not just by what they say, but where they live.

Well, here's the deal: small towns have their own value systems, and in this situation those values are more a lot more valid than the dispassionate, pushy inquisitiveness that political journalism encourages.

I just got off the phone with a longtime Wasilla resident. She had urged me to find time today to go up to Hatcher Pass — "the most beautiful place in the valley!" — when I mentioned that the story on Bristol's baby is now national news. Her voice slowed. "Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry. That's so unfair."

Wasilla seems at times to be utterly without guile. It's a large part of the town's charm, and it's exactly the quality that could make an unorthodox pick like Palin pay off. Don't get me wrong — she's a tough politician with sharp enough elbows on her own. But still, she appears to be more steeped in the values of her hometown than any politician I've ever come across.

Maybe that means Palin is a little too much Northern Exposure for America — after all, her father's good friend Curt Menard happily showed me a picture of the governor as a high schooler in 1981, in a root cellar with family and friends, helping skin and cube and cure a whole moose. It's enough to make you almost miss fake hunters like John Kerry and Mitt Romney.

People in Wasilla are Alaskan tough, so not only does a thing like teen pregnancy not seem like anyone's damn business, but it's also not seen as the calamity so many people in the lower 48 might think it is. This is dangerous country — it's not just the roughneck jobs on cable reality shows. It's real life here. I listened to the absolutely heartbreaking story of how the godfather of Track Palin, Sarah's oldest son, died in small plane crash just minutes after having dropped off four kids. Another family invited me into their home and told their incredible story; with one son in Iraq, their other son was working on a conveyor line in Anchorage, got caught in the belt and had his head partially crushed. He lived to stand across the kitchen table from me and his parents, looking fully healed just three months later, grinning at his dumb luck and wondering what comes next in life. "It makes you realize that a thing like a little teenage pregnancy isn't such a big deal," his mom said. "Bristol — and lots of other girl like her out there — are going to be just fine."

If you haven't guessed yet, the people here are genuinely friendly. Even those in Palin's inner sanctum who have been told since Friday not to talk to reporters by McCain's media team, are almost apologetic that they can't be neighborly and chat, since you came all this way to little Wasilla. And those who can talk, do. All weekend they had the decency not to pretend that they didn't know the governor's eldest daughter was pregnant. But they also expected decency in return, that I wouldn't be the kind of person to make sport out of a young girl's slip.

The fact is, regardless of what you will hear over the next few days, Bristol's pregnancy is not a legitimate political issue. Sarah Palin is a longterm member of a group called Feminists for Life, which is not opposed to birth control. So you probably can't tag her for consigning young people to unwanted pregnancies.

You can argue that it was hamhanded of the McCain campaign — they had to have known, right? — to somehow let this drop just a few days after the announcement. Pregnancy does show, and it does have a ticking clock. The story was going to come out eventually.

As for the idea — sure to be floated — that the avowedly anti-abortion Palin may have pressured her poor daughter to ruin her life by carrying an unwanted baby to term, I wouldn't bet on it. The Palin family seems to share the same pro-life values going back at least as far back as anyone here can remember, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if Bristol wore those values, however imperfectly, as her own. At least, that's what the town thinks. And Wasilla, above all, is pretty sensible.

Copyright 2008 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Eager for Earmarks

Palin's Small Alaska Town Secured Big Federal Funds

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor, according to an analysis by an independent government watchdog group.

There was $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and $15 million for a rail project -- all intended to benefit Palin's town, Wasilla, located about 45 miles north of Anchorage.

In introducing Palin as his running mate on Friday, Sen. John McCain cast her as a compatriot in his battle against wasteful federal spending. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, hailed Palin as a politician "with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies -- someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past, someone who's stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money."

McCain's crusade against earmarks -- federal spending sought by members of Congress to benefit specific projects -- has been a hallmark of his campaign. He has said earmarks are wasteful and are often inserted into bills with little oversight, sometimes by a single powerful lawmaker.

Palin has also railed against earmarks, touting her opposition to a $223 million bridge in the state as a prime credential for the vice presidential nomination. "As governor, I've stood up to the old politics-as-usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good-ol'-boy network," she said Friday.

As mayor of Wasilla, however, Palin oversaw the hiring of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Alaska's most senior Republicans: Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July on charges of accepting illegal gifts. The Wasilla account was handled by the former chief of staff to Stevens, Steven W. Silver, who is a partner in the firm.

Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla in 1996 on a campaign theme of "a time for change." According to a review of congressional spending by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, Wasilla did not receive any federal earmarks in the first few years of Palin's tenure.

Senate records show that Silver's firm began working for Palin in early 2000, just as federal money began flowing.

In fiscal 2000, Wasilla received a $1 million earmark, tucked into a transportation appropriations bill, for a rail and bus project in the town. And in the winter of 2000, Palin appeared before congressional appropriations committees to seek earmarks, according to a report in the Anchorage Daily News.

Palin and the Wasilla City Council increased Silver's fee from $24,000 to $36,000 a year by 2001, Senate records show.

Soon after, the city benefited from additional earmarks: $500,000 for a mental health center, $500,000 for the purchase of federal land and $450,000 to rehabilitate an agricultural processing facility. Then there was the $15 million rail project, intended to connect Wasilla with the town of Girdwood, where Stevens has a house.

The Washington trip is now an annual event for Wasilla officials.

In fiscal year 2002, Wasilla took in $6.1 million in earmarks -- about $1,000 in federal money for every resident. By contrast, Boise, Idaho -- which has more than 190,000 residents -- received $6.9 million in earmarks in fiscal 2008.

All told, Wasilla benefited from $26.9 million in earmarks in Palin's final four years in office.

"She certainly wasn't shy about putting the old-boy network to use to bring home millions of dollars," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "She's a little more savvy to the ways of Washington than she's let on."

Silver, reached by phone at his Vienna home, declined to comment. Wasilla's town offices were closed Monday for the Labor Day holiday.

Maria Comella, Palin's campaign spokeswoman, said Palin sought the Wasilla earmarks because she was "working in the best interests of Alaska, working within the confines of the current system."

Palin became a staunch reform advocate after her 2003 appointment to the state's Oil and Gas Commission. She accused another commissioner -- Alaska Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich -- of raising campaign contributions from industries he was regulating. "She realized that the environment around her was no longer what it once was, and elected officials were abusing their power," Comella said.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, used to secure earmarks for public nonprofits in Illinois, but he announced last year that he would no longer seek earmarks for any entity. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), Obama's running mate, co-sponsored $85.6 million in earmarks for 2008, according to one study.

The Palin earmarks came when Stevens was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Young was a senior member of the House transportation committee.

In hiring Silver, Wasilla found someone who was a member of each lawmaker's inner circle. Silver has donated at least $11,400 to Stevens's political committees and $10,000 to Young's reelection committee in the past decade, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Sliver's firm employed Stevens's son, Ben Stevens, in the late 1990s as a federal lobbyist, according to multiple media accounts. Ben Stevens was not listed on lobbying disclosure forms as having worked on Wasilla earmarks.

The firm became ensnared in the wide-ranging federal investigation of corruption by Alaska Republican officials. Federal agents reviewed records about its other municipal clients, as well as fishing companies represented by Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh that were close to Ben Stevens.

The investigation has increasingly focused on Veco, a now-defunct energy services company whose chief executive, Bill Allen Jr., pleaded guilty in May 2007 to bribing Alaska officials.

Ted Stevens is awaiting trial on charges that he accepted more than $250,000 in unreported gifts from Allen. Ben Stevens, who has not been charged, has been identified in court documents as having accepted more than $240,000 in consulting payments in exchange for legislative favors while he served in the state Senate.

A Veco executive testified last year in a criminal trial that Allen had ordered him to arrange annual fundraisers for Young. The congressman has not been charged with any crimes.

After becoming governor, Palin became a critic of Young and the Stevenses. She endorsed Young's opponent in a Republican primary last week that is still too close to call, and last year she demanded Ben Stevens's resignation as Alaska's member of the Republican National Committee. She has also criticized Ted Stevens.

In addition, Palin has reversed course on at least one major earmark: After initially supporting the $223 million bridge, which was to connect the town of Ketchikan with a remote island, she reversed course last year and canceled the project because of cost overruns. Critics have dubbed the project the "Bridge to Nowhere."

But her administration remains eager for many other earmarks.

In February, Palin's office sent Sen. Stevens a 70-page memo outlining almost $200 million worth of new funding requests for Alaska.