I’ve watched Palin grow as a public speaker, become skilled at being interviewed, and as skilled as any Republican at debating back when her political positions are challenged. Any Republican who hasn’t paid any attention to her since the last presidential campaign will be surprised and pleased.

From my understanding of Palin’s quitting as governor, that was due to Democrats’ abusing Alaska’s “no-cost to accuse” version of ethics laws. Appointees from the top to the bottom of her administration were victims of accusations of multiple frivolous ethics violations. The accusers had an extraordinarily low threshold to trigger an investigation and were required to have no money at stake in the game. The accused had to spend tens of thousands of dollars, repeatedly, to defend themselves or be forced to quit the job.

Palin was not only forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars, repeatedly, out of her own pocket to defend herself but was also faced with trying to run a government in which no one was willing to net, after getting paid their salary, paying large wads of cash out of their pockets for the privilege of working in high positions in the state government.

Now Alaska had had corruption problems which require loosening the restraints on reporting and investigating ethics violations. But in no manner was that change intended to allow the ethics in government system to be used to hound large numbers of officeholders and appointees from government as part of a political vendetta triggered by the governor being selected as a VP candidate.

I haven’t read her books or seen her movie. I expect she explains it somewhat as I have unless I’m completely misremembering what I read as the events unfolded.

I hope Palin get in because the position of someone who’s number one issue is enacting a flat tax and doing other things to fundamentally change the way government works is still somewhat open.

Romney has a timid plan which tinkers at the borders of the current tax system
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Perry doesn’t have a plan yet.

Newt doesn’t have a plan yet.

Cain has his 999 plan which he openly admits he came to not out of economic considerations of the best level of taxation for maximizing government revenue or for maximizing economic activity. He states he came up with 999 because he wanted the rates for his three tax categories to be the same. I have to assume that’s for the political reason of 999 being catchy and easy to remember for the average voter this election season since Cain hasn’t advanced any other explanation of why the rates should be the same. On the grounds of workability and political viability, his plan would be a large tax increase on the poor. Non-working poor face a 9% increase through the new sales tax. Working poor would be facing that 9% increase plus the 9% income tax minus the elimination of the payroll tax which is near 6% for a total tax increase of more than 12%. His website makes no mention of an earned income tax credit which would be a further tax increase on the working poor. There’s no mention of businesses being required to pass along their savings on their portion of the elimination of payroll taxes on to the employees nor any requirement for businesses to pass along savings on their business income taxes along to their customers or employees. Over a number of years, those savings would inevitably be passed on down as businesses compete to stay competitive but you couldn’t count on that money in the first few years to be there to cushion the plan’s tax increases on the poor. Other republicans aren’t attacking Cain’s plan because Cain doesn’t look likely to win. But if Cain wins the nomination, would you seriously expect a democrat opponent to fail to point out proposed huge tax increases on the poor and milk that issue for all its worth?

Paul eliminate the income tax and raise other national taxes to pay for it. In the long run, that’s where we need to be, Eliminating the income tax could have been done, revenue neutral, at any point in the early 1990′s if spending had been rolled back to what it had been four years earlier. But that window of opportunity closed. To go directly to that without any transition would require more scorched earth tactics to the federal government and more tariff and other tax increases than any president is likely to get public support for.

Bachmann vaguely is for lower taxes (which taxes?), eliminating the tax code (with no word on to be replaced by what) and doesn’t understand what the debt ceiling does and what it doesn’t do. There is no “national credit card”. Instead, the government has hundreds of thousands of lines of credit arranged with hundreds of thousands of businesses and government employees. A government employee provides work to the government in credit trusting that the government will pay the employment bill at the end of the pay period. A business provides goods and services to the government based on the government’s promise to pay their bill at the end of the month. Spending authority for the government comes through the budget process (or through the current lack of a budget process). The debt ceiling is what the person who pays the government’s bills looks at before he writes the check. If the government has enough room under the ceiling to incur the debt it would take to pay the bill then the bill is paid. If their isn’t room, the government doesn’t pay out the money it owes for the goods and services it has already received. Note this has nothing to do with the government continuing to spend money. Each government agency still has its lines of credit already in place and the authority from the budget to continue to use those lines of credit to continue doing its business whether or not the government ultimately is able to pay the bill under the debt ceiling or not. The only thing which would stop the spending is for Congress to change the law to make agencies stop spending or for all those lines of credit to be closed down because the government is not paying its bills. In previous years, the republicans have chosen to stand against government spending when taking a stand against irresponsible spending. This year, the republicans instead decided shortly before the crisis to pass an Obama spending bill then to take the stand that the government shouldn’t pay all the debts it had already incurred . In baseball this is called an “unforced error”. People, companies, and countries who don’t pay their bills or who threaten long and loudly that they will quit paying their bills damage their credit rating. Win or lose on this year’s debt ceiling debate, Congress would still have had to pass spending cuts into law to stop the government from continuing to spend money. So it makes no sense to let the spending bills pass on by into law then hold strong on the debt ceiling if your goal is to stop the government from spending. You could stop the country from spending borrowed money if you completely destroyed the country’s credit rating but you can’t stop it from spending money because the government can print money rather than borrowing it.

Santorum vaguely supports low taxes. Doesn’t say whether he wants more tax cuts or keep things as they are when he takes over as president. If he wants to cut taxes, he doesn’t say which taxes he wants to cut. If he wants to cut income taxes, he doesn’t say whether he wants to direct tax cuts at things which would directly help economic growth or if he would cater to the family values crowd with increasing deductions for kids.

Huntsman doesn’t write out any plan on his website.

Gary Johnson states he wants to simplify the tax code (I assume the personal income tax code), eliminate punitive taxation of savings and investment. (does that mean all taxation of it or just the punitive part of it), and eliminate the corporate income tax. I don’t have a problem with any of that but there’s a huge number of ways that could be done and not all of those ways would be easy or painless. He appears to want to pay for those change that by “revising the terms” of Social Security and Medicare. That sounds like more like changing the rules in the middle of the game by means-testing and raising the retirement age rather than changing Social Security by turning it into a pension program. Now from the last debate, not his website, he’s also wanting to come up with large wads of money through massive cuts to the military. I don’t think Johnson could win votes in the general election on this issue since Obama will always be able to out-promise a republican on how much he’s willing to cut the military, If necessary, Obama could promise to cut the military budget to zero then promise loan guarantees for military expenses to any country which would care to become our enemy,

So I think there;s a legit opening in the republican field for someone who is willing to aggressively work to change the nature of government. Palin could, for example, adopt Steve Forbe’s flat tax platform wholesale from his 1996 campaign then raid Ron Paul’s gold standard supporters by either promising to eliminate the Fed or by promising that, by force of law, to require the Fed to use their financial tools to stabilize the value of the dollar relative to gold rather than leaving them free to do whatever the heck they feel like.

I think Palin at the heart wants the dramatic changes in government that Bachmann talks about but hasn’t proposed yet. And Bachmann is completely correct that if ever there was a year to push for every change we’ve ever dreamed of, this is the year.

I followed the Alaska ethic debacle and know what people have told me about Palin’s book.

I’m curious as to how you know it has “NOTHING” (in capital letters) to do with the ethics charge abuses against people in her administration? I mean, its okay to have an opinion about what’s going on inside someone else’s head but you seem to be very confident not only that you know what her unvoiced personal opinions are but also to know exactly what information she used to form that opinion.

“Rather, it was because she was bored with her job and no longer wanted it. She was telling her staff as early as February 2009 that if she could find a plausible way to quit her job, she would do it.”

May I ask were you got that information (because I would like to read it) and why you think that person is telling the truth rather than Palin? Juicy revelations on celebrities are made all the time for financial reasons or to gain a brief moment of fame for the (supposed) leaker. There’s a couple of weekly magazines which exist due to people acting on these motives plus hundreds of books written each year.

Could the person who related that tidbit to you have some motive to say that about Palin other than a burning desire to reveal the absolute, unvarnished truth?

…so you are trying to say that Palin is all things to all people?