The Pepple Mine Project and Alaska Initiative 4: How Palin Rolls (Over the Environment and the Law)

[Joanne98]

With all the furious rhetoric building around McCain’s running mate, I found a comment from a post I wrote about Sarah Palin on GlobalWarmingisReal informative and enlightening. It’s good to see how many Alaskans feel about their “pitbull with lipstick”

The commenter is a lifelong Alaskan resident, a member of the NRA, and a wildlife biologist. He brought up some very interesting issues that, to my knowledge, have not yet made it to the mainstream press.

Invoking “Personal Privilege”
It is against the law in Alaska for the Governor to take sides on a ballot measure. For Palin, getting around that law meant merely “taking off her governor hat” while talking to the press in order to take “personal privilege” in order to firmly state her opposition to ballot measure 4, a clean water initiative.

Well, isn’t that dandy. Illegal, but dandy. And what is it with Republicans and their “hats”? In any case, it seems obvious that a Governor can’t simply state, while talking to the press, that she’s taken off her Governor hat so she can now speak publicly when the law expressly forbids her from so doing. When you’re talking to the press, your Governor hat is stuck to your head. Sorry, but “personal privilege” in this context is apparently something Palin just made up.

It might come in handy should she become VP.

Check out Palin changing hats in the video on a local TV station KTUU’s website.


What hat was the Department of Natural Resources wearing?
Palin’s Department of Natural Resources had also clearly come out against Measure 4 on its website. The shuffle of hats and statements of personal privilege didn’t quite wash for the agency. They were forced to take the Governor’s political opinions down from the website.

So What’s the Big Deal with Measure 4 in Alaska?
Measure 4 (which, incidentally, was defeated) would have stopped the huge Pebble Mine project. The Pebble Mine, if allowed to proceed, will place the largest open-pit mine at the watershed draining into the largest salmon-producing river system in the world.

Most scientists believe there is a very high probability that the operation will seriously pollute a watershed ecosystem depended upon by native Alaskans, sport fishermen, and a thriving tourist and fishing industry.

The project is colossal in its scope and many fear it will become Alaska’s worst environmental disaster.

Aside from Palin’s illegal comments against Measure 4, millions of dollars of misleading advertising was poured into the state from the two foreign mining companies behind the Pepple Mine project, both of whom have terrible environmental records.

A somewhat lengthy but worthwhile article by Troy Leatherman about the project and its history was published in Fish Alaska magazine.

Joe Biden and the Alaska Pipeline
We are likely to hear more from Palin about how Biden, way back when, voted against the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

As my source in Alaska says, who worked on the pipeline as a young lad, what Palin doesn’t mention (or doesn’t know) is that the original plan for the pipeline was to bury some 800 miles of hot pipe through mostly permafrost. Another almost certain environmental disaster and, as my source calls it, an “engineering folly”. Score one for Native leaders and environmental “extremists”, the original plan was stopped.

Biden favored a pipeline the would run from Alaska to join Canada’s pipleline system to the U.S. midwest. That would have kept oil from Prudhoe Bay mostly out of single-hulled tankers (heading to Asian markets) and out of the sediments of Prince William Sound, where oil remains to this day.

And the real extremist is…
Sarah Palin will likely continue to trumpet her “environmental extremist” rhetoric. Given her record as governor of Alaska, I suggest that it is she who is the extremist. Whatever “green cred” John McCain has been able to muster thus far (not much, but perhaps some) is washed away in a polluted stream of disregard and misinformation from his running mate.

Wearing their Press Hats
Enough with the lightweight talk of how Palin is a “reformer” or “maverick”. Enough with the gushing over her “historic speech” the other night. The mainstream press failed miserably this past week to report what was really going on outside the convention in St. Paul. In fact, the mainstream press has failed miserably these past eight years. It’s time they did their job and started asking some tough questions.

Palin is a virtual unknown and reporting that she hunts and eats mooseburgers serves nobody.

It’s time for the press to do their job. Too much is at stake.

http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/09/05/the-pepple-mine-project-and-alaska-initiative-4-how-palin-rolls-over-the-environment-and-the-law/

[Joanne98]

1. kick

[Arctic Dave]

2. Its Pebble Mine and Palin totally kissed up to the

corporate mining companies over it.