A lot. For over one year I have been researching, reading, and writing about the multitude of things that have led me to believe that Sarah Palin is unfit to serve in any capacity, at any level of government. The list of her failings is long and impressive. When someone asks me why I dislike Palin I have to pause and catch my breath. It is hard to know where to begin. Her attitude regarding homosexuality, banning books, reproductive freedom, race, equal pay for women, unethical behavior, charges to her PAC, attitudes toward people who work for her, the number of days Piper misses school, her use of Trig as a prop, the hypocrisy inherent in virtually everything she says compared to what she does, resignation from her position as Governor, personal charges for travel expenses of her children passed on to the people of Alaska, shooting animals, endangering the environment, her lack of understanding of countries around the world and basic geography, lack of education, blatant disregard for scientific evidence for evolution, lecturing at right to life rallies while hiring Lynn Vincent to be the ghost writer of her book knowing that Lynn admitted to having had an abortion, indicating that Bristol and Levi were going to marry and that would solve the problem of an unwed teenage pregnancy, mocking our President for having an understanding of the US Constitution, writing letters to herself in God’s voice and her attitudes regarding responsibility as a mother are just a few of the many things with which I take issue. However people might try to explain away my total lack of respect for Palin, suggesting that we simply have different world views. People might suggest that just because I disagree with her politics, that they still don’t understand my ongoing efforts to discredit her. On most of the issues mentioned, I recognize that there are a multitude of politicians who hold beliefs similar to Palin’s, so why would I object to Sarah Palin to the point of writing an entire book, writing daily entries on this blog, and submitting articles to Huffington Post for the entire nation to read? Palin has done so many objectionable things over the last year-and-a-half that we tend to forget the egregious things she did before the day she was introduced at the Republican Convention. In case anyone has forgotten, let me remind you of the two things that got me started: the hockey center and the Road to Nowhere.

While mayor of Wasilla, Palin authorized the construction of a hockey center on property she KNEW was not owned by the town of Wasilla (Litman 23). We might speculate about the house she was building at the same time, and whether the same contractor who was building the hockey center, and her home, might be giving her some personal reward for awarding the multi-million dollar contract on the hockey center to his company. I don’t know why Palin wanted to build the center on that particular property owned by someone else, and I don’t care. However, it matters to me that she instituted an adverse possession lawsuit against the land owner in an attempt to take his property. It does matter to me that she proceeded with construction of the hockey center before the city obtained title to the land. It does matter to me that because she proceeded to initiate construction before the town had title to the land, the town incurred over $1,000,000 in unnecessary expenses (23). It matters to me that the judge in the case found that Sarah had no right to begin construction of a building on property that she knew was not owned by the town. Her judgment, or lack thereof, in this example demonstrates a total lack of responsibility to the people of the town, and a total disregard to the rights of the property owner.

This is not about politics. It’s about judgment and about respecting the rights of an individual citizen. There is surely nothing more objectionable than a politician attempting to confiscate that which you own, without any legal basis for doing so, but only because that politician wants something you have. This is not an example of something Palin did due to ignorance or lack of education. This was a fundamental error in judgment, or worse, an attitude that she could do whatever she wanted regardless of the rights of another person.

The second example is the Road to Nowhere. Palin made the Bridge to Nowhere a household word as a result of her speech at the Republican Convention. Many of us would tell you the bridge represented a waste of tax payer dollars. There was a lot of controversy about whether Palin changed her position regarding the bridge, when it was convenient for her politically (she announced that she said “Thanks, but no thanks”, when she had originally been an advocate for the bridge, and has even been seen showing off her t-shirt supporting the bridge). However there is no dispute that the Road to Nowhere had absolutely no purpose, other than to waste taxpayer dollars. When Congress originally approved the funding for the construction of the bridge, there was also an allocation of $25,000,000 for the construction of the road leading from the airport to the bridge. When Congress withdrew the funding for the bridge, the funding for the road was overlooked. Sarah Palin indicated that “yes” she was still in favor of the construction of the road which she knew would now lead to the edge of a cliff. According to the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project, a group promoting “sensible transportation systems in the state”, the Road to Nowhere was an “irresponsible waste”. Thus regardless of any philosophical differences you might have with a person on the right, or the left, we all agree that Palin knowingly wasted our money. She knowingly wasted millions of dollars! The only explanation for this waste is a “we versus them” mentality. If the people of Alaska would benefit from the jobs created by the construction of the road, then it didn’t seem to matter to Governor Palin that the use of millions of federal tax dollars was an indisputable waste.

These two examples highlight an attitude of Sarah Palin that is deplorable. These do not represent a political philosophy unless it is a philosophy of, “…if it is good for me, it doesn’t matter if it is a total waste of tax payer dollars, and it doesn’t matter if it interferes with the constitutional rights of another citizen.” We may suspect that many politicians have a similar attitude, but it is difficult to prove it. In the case of Sarah Palin, the facts are clear. Her attitude seems to be that she will do what is good for her, and “to hell with the rest of us”.