by David Epstein
First, a small point about earmarks. McCain is now trying to defend himself on the subject of Palin's pork barreling by saying that she "vetoed a half a billion dollars in earmark projects--far, far in excess of her predecessor."
This confuses the "earmarks" that the reporters are talking about (or trying to talk about) with regular state-level pork-barrel spending. Palin can't veto federal earmarks, because she's, you know, a governor, meaning that her role is to ask for earmarks, not veto them.
As to vetoing more than her predecessors, anyone who knows how the budget game is played knows that the state legislature -- Alaska's, in this case -- asks for more projects than they can get, knowing that the governor will veto some of them to display his/her diligence in protecting the public fisc.
As Alaska's state budget goes up along with the price of oil, the legislature will naturally propose more spending, and the governor will veto more. What would be more revealing would be if she vetoed a greater percentage of pork-y requests than her predecessors, but of course no actual reporter could possibly know so much about policy to figure that out and ask the question, so we'll have to rely on those with access to the data to try and get this straight.
Why, as Brad DeLong says, can't we have a better press corps?
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