The ad, which highlights a $1.1 million paving project on the Sunset Strip, describes the federal stimulus as one big boondoggle and doesn’t mention the Democratic Party, let alone any individual candidates. It thereby qualifies as “issue advocacy” — as distinct from electioneering communications (broadcasts which advocate for or against a specific federal candidate) — and it’s being described by Democrats as a biggest single ad buy of an already free-spending summer.

Donors to the 501(c)(4) group remain a complete mystery, but they are presumed to include David Koch, the founding chairman of the foundation and co-owner of Koch Industries, an oil conglomerate (which also does business in cattle, paper, and chemicals) that’s now the second-largest private company in the U.S.

Democrats have been handily out-raising Republicans through traditional avenues like individual and party-level campaign donations, but groups like Americans for Prosperity are the “x factor” that everyone is talking about. President Obama even mentioned Americans for Prosperity last week at a fundraiser in Austin, Texas, in which he argued, “You don’t know if it’s a big oil company or a big bank. You don’t know if it’s an insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line.”

These groups, depending on how much they lay out, might tip the spending balance in the GOP’s favor, but that won’t stop Obama and the Dems from trying to win as many political points off the issue as possible. The president knows he has a winning hand in railing against the unchecked power of corporations to influence elections, so expect him and fellow Democrats to keep singling out shadowy groups like Americans For Prosperity whenever he can.

At a rally in Ohio, Palin today repeated Sen. John McCain’s frequent claim that Obama has requested nearly $1 billion in earmarks for his home state of Illinois since being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2005 — or “nearly $1 million for every working day” he has been in office. The Republican National Committee helpfully totals all of Obama’s earmark requests, per press releases on Obama’s campaign and Senate Websites, coming up with a figure of $935.7 million on 330 projects. This claim is true.

ABC’s Jake Tapper wrote last week that “[i]n two years as governor, Palin sought 83 federal earmarks at a cost of $453 million, according to the Anchorage Daily News.”

Tapper does not provide a link, but a quick search of the Daily News’ Website turns up this story published yesterday — complete with a handy bar graph — that confirms Tapper’s figures.

If we compare Palin’s earmark requests as governor to Obama’s during the same time period, Palin actually comes out on top as the bigger porkmeister. The Associated Press reports that Obama has not made a single request this year — not surprising, considering he’s running for president and how volatile the issue of earmarks has become — and he made $339.8 million in requests last year.

Of course, Palin made this year’s request for nearly $200 million in earmarks in February — long before she knew she would be on the GOP ticket. But this does seem to indicate that she is not nearly as dedicated an earmark-fighter as the McCain campaign would have us believe.

If we consider the fact that Illinois’ population is nearly 20 times that of Alaska — and Palin requested nine times the national average in per capita earmark funding for her state this year — Palin’s attacks on Obama seem downright silly.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (Lauren Victoria Burke, wdcpix.com)

The ties that bind Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice-presidential nominee, to her state’s infamous “Bridges to Nowhere” just keep getting tighter.

Steven W. Silver, a Washington lobbyist who began representing the small town of Wasilla during Palin’s tenure as mayor, is also lobbying for construction of a controversial bridge linking Anchorage to the borough housing Wasilla, according to lobbying disclosure records.

That proposed span — dubbed “Don Young’s Way” after Alaska’s lone House member — gained notoriety in 2005, when Young and Sen. Ted Stevens (R) fought to earmark hundreds of millions of federal dollars for it and another controversial bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 7,300), to an island airport. Both became symbols of wasteful federal spending, and were widely ridiculed as “Bridges to Nowhere.”

Palin, the recent surprise pick as Sen. John McCain’s running mate, has forged the image of a reformer dedicated to reining in federal spending. While she originally supported the federal money for the bridges, she has been touting her more-recent opposition to the Ketchikan earmark as evidence that she’s a business-as-unusual politician — a message that’s evolved into a prominent campaign issue this year.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

On Wednesday, Palin told the GOP faithful gathered in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention, “I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves.”

She was talking about the Ketchikan span.

But she hasn’t come out against “Don Young’s Way.” In fact, the Palin administration has plans to hire an outside contractor to estimate what the project would cost, according to a June report from The Anchorage Daily News. The contractor alone is expected to run the state $200,000, the report said. The bridge itself has been tagged at between $450 million and $1.5 billion.

The Daily News reported:

The agency charged with coming up with a bridge plan — the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority — recently estimated the span would cost $667 million if construction begins next year. The authority, which made the estimate in response to a request from the governor’s office, said that figure could increase to $824 million by 2015.

[…]

Randy Ruaro, a special assistant to Gov. Sarah Palin, said the administration, even in the face of the recent lengthy report from the bridge authority, was having trouble getting an accurate picture of everything that is involved in the project, of the timing of the phases, and of the costs. He said the independent estimate is expected to answer those questions.

With Palin remaining receptive to “Don Young’s Way,” Sen Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has seen an opening. Thursday his office pounced, sending an email blast to reporters proclaiming, “Palin only announced opposition to one ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ still supports the other one.”

Silver, the former chief of staff to the now-indicted Stevens, began lobbying Congress on behalf of Wasilla in 2000. With Silver’s help, the town secured nearly $27 million in federal earmarks while Palin was mayor, according to an analysis done by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.

Beginning in the middle of 2004, Silver has also represented the Knik Arm Bridge & Toll Authority, created in 2003 to facilitate the bridge construction. The contract has proved a handsome one. Since that date, Silver’s firm — Robertson, Monagle & Eastbaugh — has taken in roughly $200,000 from the Knik Arm group.