Palin pallin’ around with lobbyists

So against all recent form, Sarah Palin made her appearance at the CLSA conference in Hong Kong.

For their money, delegates got a 90-minute speech (oh bliss), followed by a question-and-answer session. Some delegates reportedly bailed out before the 90 minutes were up. According to AP:

Palin spoke out against government intervention in the economy. “We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place,” Palin said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We’re not interested in government fixes, we’re interested in freedom,” she added.

She also praised the conservative economic policies of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, according to another attendee who declined to be named because he didn’t want to be seen as speaking on behalf of his company.

She claimed that if taxes were cut and the capital gains tax and estate tax eliminated, the world would “watch the U.S. economy roar back to life.”

Palin argued that many average Americans are uncomfortable with health care reforms that infringe on private enterprise, Chris Palmer, an American fund manager for Gartmore Investment Ltd., told reporters

Reactions were apparently mixed.

AP reported:

Two US delegates left early, according to AFP, with one saying “it was awful, we couldn’t stand it any longer.” He declined to be identified.

“As fund managers we want to hear about the United States as a whole, not just about Alaska,” one told AFP. “And she criticized Obama a lot but offered no solutions.”

CNN quoted:

“I can’t say I was actually impressed,” said Mel Goode, a business developer from New York who lives in Hong Kong. “She speaks well—a broad spectrum of what her beliefs are, family views.

“She didn’t get (into) anything too harsh ... just kept it, five children, my husband’s here, we believe in what Asia’s doing, America has a way to go to get itself back together, Reaganism.”

“I was quite impressed by her knowledge. It seemed like she did her homework now, this time around.”

The “homework,” according to Ben Smith, was supervised by major-league lobbyist and one-time Iraq advisor to Donald Rumsfeld Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign’s foreign policy advisor who so successfuly coached Palin for the Vice-Presidential debate:

Scheunemann [has] been a sharp critic of many aspects of Obama’s approach, most recently scoffing at what he described as a “unilateral preemptive concession” to Russia on missile defense bases in Eastern Europe. Scheunemann, an early supporter of the Iraq war, is prominent in the hawkish, internationalist, neo-conservative wing of the party’s foreign policy thought, and his place beside Palin also offers a bit of a clue as to the direction in which her vaguely-defined foreign policy views are likely to develop. Two other Republican policy hands, , worked on the speech as well, I’m told: AEI China expert Dan Blumenthal and D.C. lawyer Kim Daniels.

Scheunemann’s major claim to fame is his board membership of the Project for the New American Century. But his career has a few other highlights. As President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Scheunemann had a close association with disgraced Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, once the darling of the neocon drive to war in Iraq:

Chalabi is a controversial figure for many reasons. In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, under his guidance the INC, with the assistance of lobbying powerhouse BKSH & Associates, provided a major portion of the information on which U.S. Intelligence based its condemnation of Saddam Hussein, including reports of weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to al-Qaeda. Nearly all, if not all, of this information has turned out to be of questionable accuracy. That, combined with the fact that Chalabi subsequently boasted about the impact that their alleged falsifications in an interview with the British Sunday Telegraph, led to a falling out between him and the United States.

Scheunemann’s lobbying firm also works for the Government of Georgia - a relationship which caused some controversy during last year’s elections.

China Expert Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at conservative thinktank the American Enterprise Institute:

AEI scholars are considered to be some of the leading architects of the second Bush administration’s public policy. More than twenty AEI scholars and fellows served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government’s many panels and commissions.

Prominent attorney Kim Daniels works for the Thomas More Law Center, whose “About US” page says:

The Thomas More Law Center is a not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. Our purpose is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square. We achieve this goal principally through litigation, seeking out significant cases, consistent with our mission, where our expertise can be of service to others.

In the circumstances, the details of Palin’s speech that have been leaked so far seem fairly unremarkable - the entirely predictable bashing of a number of the Administration’s policies, plus some boosting of her own state’s Asian links. She may have disappointed some by omitting a claim to be able to see Hong Kong from her front window, but she did point out that at one time she could have walked there rather than flying:

“We have a special place in our hearts in Alaska for the Pacific Rim. You are Alaska’s neighbors and partners. ... We have much in common with Hong Kong. We’re both young and transient, independent and libertarian. Places that continue to show the world, the power and the resilience of the free market system at a time when too many are questioning it. ...

Personally, I’ve always been really interested in the ideas too about the land bridge. Ideas that maybe so long ago, had allowed Alaska to be physically connected to this part of our world so many years ago. My husband and my children, they’re part [unintelligible] Eskimo, Alaskan natives. They’re our first people, and the connection that may have brought ancestors from here to there is fascinating to me. Making our world seem a little bit smaller, more united, to consider that connection that allowed sharing of peoples and bloodlines and wildlife and flora and fauna, that connection to me is quite fascinating.”

All in all, how mavericky. How refreshing to at last find a US politician who’s out of the Washington loop, free of dubious associations, and without links to special interests.

Posted by YAFB on 09/23/09 at 11:41 AM • Permalink

A little primer on Fred:

It was also in 1971, The Post reported, that Malek was given a patently anti-Semitic order from a paranoid Richard Nixon to count the Jews in high-ranking posts in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Instead of refusing, Malek set about compiling a list of 13 of 35 top BLS employees who, he believed, were Jewish. Less than two months later, two senior BLS officials who were Jewish were moved out of their jobs to less visible posts. Malek acknowledges carrying out the disgusting hunt for Jews, but he denies having anything to do with the transfers.

Malek is now identified as one of Palin’s “advisors”.

I saw the AFP article before I went to Huffpo. Next time, I’ll look at both, before I say something stupid.

Anyway. On with the motley.

Betcha anything he uses a lot of footnotes.

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