Palin makes the "midnight basketball" case

Here, courtesy of CBS News, is Sarah Palin's justification in a 2001 email to city department heads, for raising the Wasilla sales tax 25% to build a $14.7 million hockey rink and sports complex:

“…as I look at the money that government [spends] on projects, programs, personnel and facilities to ‘fix’ societies ills and I realize that it’s [be]come more politically correct and accepted for government to throw money towards ‘after-the-fact [services]’, instead of preventive measures that a community could take to support and promote…family oriented, positive, constructive activities and lifestyles. Even on the local level we [spend] hundreds of thousands of dollars on our Police Dept., Youth Court, DARE Program, etc... ‘after the fact’ fixes for juvenile problems. We are in a position to help prevent (Palin’s emphasis) the [problems] that we are now forced to pay to attempt to remedy.”

Midnight basketball, anyone? Criticism.com recalls the Gingrich-led conservative attack on such programs:

In late 1994, conservative Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House from Georgia, tendered a plan to reduce crime prevention spending by $5 billion, starting a conflict that polarized the Republican Party along conservative-moderate lines. Conservatives maintained that such spending is wasteful, while the moderates in the party favored crime prevention spending, arguing that it is cheaper than building prisons. Conservative Gingrich, in particular, has called crime prevention proposals "pork." The proposals include such programs as the establishment of "drug courts" that obtain treatment for addicts and midnight basketball leagues that give teenagers an alternative to hanging out on city streets.