Topic: Newsmax
Phil Brennan uses a Sept. 10 Newsmax article to regurgitate a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Republican Rep. Jim DeMint's claims that Sarah Palin "killed" the "bridge to nowhere" project in Alaska. In fact, the project was dead as a federally funded enterprise long before Palin "killed" it.
Brennan fails to note that, as Media Matters notes, Congress eliminated the specific earmark for the bridge in November 2005, a year before Palin became governor -- though it allowed Alaska to keep the money from the earmark to spend on other projects, money Palin has made no effort to pay back).
While Brennan repeats DeMint's statement that Barack Obama "voted for numerous wasteful earmarks" and that Palin has "buck[ed] Alaska's decades-long earmark addiction," he and DeMint fail to note that under Palin, Alaska still far outstrips all other states in earmark money per capita. While the national per-capita earmark average is $51, Alaska's per-capita average is $506.
