"President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 PERCENTAGE POINTS LESS than it was for most of the Reagan administration."

If you want to "protest" that, the chairman of Exxon-Mobil thanks you...!

Last week, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, hadn't sought earmarks or special-interest spending from Congress, presenting her as a fiscal conservative. But state records show Gov. Palin has asked U.S. taxpayers to fund $453 million in specific Alaska projects over the past two years.

These projects include more than $130 million in federal funds that would benefit Alaska's fishing industry and an additional $9 million to help Alaska oil companies. She also has sought $4.5 million to upgrade an airport on a Bering Sea island that has a year-round population of less than 100.

Sen. McCain has made the battle against earmarks and wasteful spending a centerpiece of his campaign. He has never sought earmarks for his state of Arizona and vows to veto pork-barrel spending bills that come to his desk as president, saying these projects should go through normal budget review. And he derides the argument that states often make: that they're funding important projects.

"If they're worthy projects they can be authorized and appropriated in a New York minute," he explained on his campaign bus earlier this year, before Gov. Palin joined the ticket. "If they're worthy projects I know they'd be funded."

During an appearance Friday on ABC's "The View," Sen. McCain said Gov. Palin shared his views, and hasn't sought congressional earmarks. "Not as governor she hasn't," he said.

In fact, in the current fiscal year, she is seeking $197 million for 31 projects, the records show. In the prior year, her first year in office, she sought $256 million for dozens more projects ranging from research on rockfish and harbor-seal genetics to rural sanitation and obesity prevention.

When pressed about her record as governor, she said: "We have drastically, drastically reduced our earmark request since I came into office. This is what I've been telling Alaskans for these years that I've been in office, is no more."

Alaska's success with earmarks is due in part to the power of Sen. Ted Stevens, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The state's earmark requests stand out in part because its state government is among the wealthiest in the U.S. Flush with oil and gas royalties, it doesn't impose income or sales taxes. In fact, money flows the other way: Every man, woman and child this year got a check for $3,200.

The McCain campaign has also come under fire for saying on the stump and in TV ads that Gov. Palin killed the controversial "Bridge to Nowhere," a $223 million earmark linking the mainland to a sparsely populated island. In fact, she supported the project initially and killed it after it was widely criticized and Congress allowed the state to use the funds for other projects.

On the campaign trail, Gov. Palin has repeatedly attacked Sen. Obama on earmarks. "Our opponent has requested nearly one billion dollars in earmarks in three years. That's about a million for every working day," she said at a rally in Albuquerque, N.M.

Sen. Barack Obama requested a total of $860 million in earmarks in his Senate years, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. That doesn't include $78 million for projects that were national in scope and had been requested by many lawmakers. Sen. Obama halted all earmark requests in fiscal 2009.

It is difficult to compare Sen. Obama's earmark record with Gov. Palin's -- their states differ in size, for instance, and the two candidates play different roles in the process. But using the same calculation that the McCain campaign uses, the total amount of earmarked dollars divided by the number of working days while each held office (assuming a five-day workweek, every week, for both), Gov. Palin sought $980,000 per workday, compared with roughly $893,000 for Sen. Obama.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin promotes herself as a small-government conservative. But when Alaska government officials wanted to shut down a money-losing creamery, the governor overturned the decision after dairy farmers near her hometown complained the loss of subsidies would cripple them.

On June 16, 2007, Gov. Palin attended a rally by dairy farmers near her hometown of Wasilla who pleaded that the creamery stay open to help them and other members of the local dairy industry. "Things are kind of a mess right now with what's happening with Mat-Maid, and we're going to clean it up," the governor said at the event.

She then sacked the creamery board and replaced it. The new board, headed by one of her childhood friends, ordered the creamery kept open.  Six months later -- after the business racked up more than $800,000 in additional losses, according to state officials -- the new board ordered it closed again.

The candidate's handling of the matter has been fodder for some critics challenging her credentials as a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative. She has also been criticized for securing federal earmarks as mayor of Wasilla and, as governor, for raising taxes on oil-industry profits. "I think what happened here was her personal desire to satisfy a local constituency, versus what is right for the state," says Lyda Green, president of the Republican-run state senate and a political rival from Wasilla.

The McCain-Palin campaign wouldn't make Gov. Palin available for comment on that. But Brian Jones, a campaign spokesman, said Gov. Palin is a proven cost cutter who has vetoed more than $500 million in "wasteful" government spending and ordered state officials to cut back on earmark requests, among other things. "We will gladly match her record of reform and fiscal responsibility to either Barack Obama or Joe Biden," Mr. Jones said. Mr. Jones also defended her action on the creamery, saying the governor was acting prudently.

Supporters of Gov. Palin say she was motivated primarily by a desire to save the creamery's 70 jobs and help the handful of local farmers reliant on it. They say she helped keep the small dairy industry from collapsing by giving the farmers time to find new places to sell their products. "It takes good leadership to say, 'Wait a minute. Let's take a look at this before we shut this down,' " says Kyle Beus, a former local dairy farmer.

Matanuska Maid has had a checkered financial history. Formed by a farmers' cooperative in 1936, the creamery was taken over by the state in 1984 after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following a legal dispute. One of the employees, Joseph Van Treeck, was named chief executive in 1985 and went on to run a mostly profitable business for the next two decades.

But financial conditions at the creamery deteriorated rapidly in 2005. The creamery, 20 years ago, depended on local dairy farmers for most of its milk. To meet growing demand for its milk, yogurt and other dairy products, though, Mr. Beus, who used to sell milk to the creamery, said the factory had to import most of it from the Pacific Northwest over the past decade. Until about two years ago, milk and fuel prices were low enough to support profits. But a 50% run-up in milk prices between 2005 and 2007 -- combined with soaring energy prices and increased competition -- sent Matanuska Maid into a tailspin.

After the state board ordered the creamery closed, Gov. Palin -- with an entourage that included her husband, Todd; daughter Piper; and representatives of the news media -- showed up at Matanuska Maid's two-story plant and requested a tour. Although the governor's office said at the time that the visit had been scheduled, plant officials said they got little advance notice. Workers told her she would have to be accompanied by Mr. Van Treeck, who was in a Creamery Board meeting at an Anchorage hotel about two miles away. After he declined to leave the meeting, board member Rhonda Boyles says she, Ms. Boyles, warned him, "Joe, this will be on the 10 o'clock news."

Within days, the governor replaced the entire Board of Agriculture and Conservation, which oversees the Creamery Board. The new agriculture board then appointed itself as the Creamery Board and named Kristan Cole -- a grade-school classmate of Gov. Palin -- as the chairman. The new board reversed the closure and removed Mr. Van Treeck as CEO. He filed a suit in Alaska Superior Court charging he didn't get what he was owed. The case is still pending.

Ms. Cole declined to comment on the suit. She blamed mismanagement by the past regime for part of its financial problems. She said the creamery failed to rein in spending, for example, as milk prices were rising. Officials of the old creamery board dispute that.

The decision to keep the creamery open at first looked good. In June 2007, it posted a small profit. But the next month, Matanuska Maid posted a $300,000 loss -- its biggest ever in a month. Ms. Cole attributed that, in part, to the cost of going through a near-closure. The losses kept mounting until the new board in December decided to close the business down.