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Sarah Palin Doesn't Live on Main StreetVeep Candidate’s Lifestyle Higher Than Average
Sarah Palin's lakeside house, with an airplane in the driveway and a to-die-for view, surpasses the average "Main Street" abode, but where does Main Street still exist?
The truth is that the Palin lifestyle there on Lake Lucille is more comfortable than that of most Americans. Sarah and Todd are believed to have more than a million dollars worth of assets spread over property they own, the family’s valuable fishing rights and the snowmobiles, boats, cars and plane they have. The Palins owned another lakeside house. Two months before Sarah’s mayoralty ended in 2002 she had to ask city planning officials to forgive zoning violations so she could sell that house. Palins Are Hard WorkersSarah and Todd have, admirably, worked for what they have. Supporting a family with five children is not easy. The disconnect is how they describe their lifestyle in an attempt to get the average American’s vote. Every summer Todd heads west to Dillingham, where he was born near Bristol Bay, and fishes for salmon from his Nushagak River property. Sarah often joins him. Commercial fishing is not an easy way to earn a living. The Associated Press looked into the Palin lifestyle and concluded that the family’s income “reached comfortably into six figures even before she became governor, capitalizing on valuable fishing rights, a series of land deals and a patchwork of other ventures to build an above-average lifestyle.” The Other AmericaIf you cross the continent from Alaska to economically impoverished Washington County, Maine you don’t find lobster fishermen living with amenities the Palins enjoy. Most commercial fishing is a seasonal job; in Maine you can’t switch to a good job in the oil fields to boost income. The estimated median household income in Washington County is $23,000--that’s per household, not per person! Many Americans are, like the Palins, working more than one job. These are Americans struggling to pay for gas needed to drive to their jobs. There are no planes in their driveway. For some it is now “what driveway?” They have lost their homes as part of a financial crisis which may get worse before it gets better. For others, choosing between mortgage payments and heating oil is a no-win situation. One wonders: Does the federal government know where the money will come from to take care of burgeoning welfare rolls? The Demise of Main StreetMain Street is passé in most of rural America. WalMart helped Main Street businesses go broke across small-town America. Little family owned businesses—like drug stores, hardware stores and clothing stores in the same family for three generations—couldn’t compete against WalMart. What was left on many Main Streets went thumbs askew and bottoms up during the current Bush administration. All across small town America there are boarded up, empty stores on Main Street. Politicians talking about Main Street America must be dreaming of the peace and prosperity that characterized America decades ago. SOURCES: Associated Press (for linked photos and their captions) and the owner of a former business incubator in Machias, Maine.
The copyright of the article Sarah Palin Doesn't Live on Main Street in US Elections is owned by Rosemary E. Bachelor. Permission to republish Sarah Palin Doesn't Live on Main Street in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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