Palin's New Book plays loose with 'facts'

[Crossroads Inc.]

LINK

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 5 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time.
Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.
Palin goes adrift, at times, on more contemporary issues, too. She criticizes President Barack Obama for pushing through a bailout package that actually was achieved by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush — a package she seemed to support at the time.
A look at some of her statements in "Going Rogue," obtained by The Associated Press in advance of its release Tuesday:
___
PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.
THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City's Central Park for a five-hour women's leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children's travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.
___
PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors if her campaign perceived a conflict of interest.
THE FACTS: Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC.
Of the rest, about $76,000 came from Republican Party committees.
She accepted $1,000 each from a state senator and his wife in the weeks after the two Republican lawmakers' offices were raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a powerful Alaska oilfield services company. After AP reported those donations during the presidential campaign, she said she would give a comparative sum to charity after the general election in 2010, a date set by state election laws.
PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, "you'll have to be brave enough to fail."
THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama's stimulus plan — a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts — and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed.
Palin's views on bailouts appeared to evolve as McCain's vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said "taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution, to the problems on Wall Street." A week later, she said "ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy."
During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being "instrumental in bringing folks together" to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said "it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in."
___
PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all."
THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.
Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.
___
PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.
THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.
___
PALIN: Criticizes an aide to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, for a conflict of interest because the aide represented the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline and then left to work as a handsomely paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin asserts her administration ended all such arrangements, shoving a wedge in the revolving door between special interests and the state capital.
THE FACTS: Palin ignores her own "revolving door" issue in office; the leader of her own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the rights to build the pipeline.
___
PALIN: Writes about a city councilman in Wasilla, Alaska, who owned a garbage truck company and tried to push through an ordinance requiring residents of new subdivisions to pay for trash removal instead of taking it to the dump for free — this to illustrate conflicts of interest she stood against as a public servant.
THE FACTS: As Wasilla mayor, Palin pressed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family's $327,000 house, then did not keep a promise to remove a potential fire hazard on the property.
She asked the city council to loosen rules for snow machine races when she and her husband owned a snow machine store, and cast a tie-breaking vote to exempt taxes on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one. But she stepped away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snow machine race in which her husband competes.
___
PALIN: Says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people's electricity bills to "skyrocket."
THE FACTS: She correctly quotes a comment attributed to Obama in January 2008, when he told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Obama has argued since then that climate legislation can blunt the cost to consumers. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.
___
PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went "in favor of the people." Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.
THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs' lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was "extremely disappointed." She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. "It's tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision," she said, noting many had died "while waiting for justice."
___
PALIN: Describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a practical, libertarian haven of independent Americans who don't want "help" from government busybodies.
THE FACTS: Alaska is also one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving much more assistance from Washington than it pays in federal taxes. A study for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2005, the state received $1.84 for every dollar it sent to Washington.
___
PALIN: Says she tried to talk about national security and energy independence in her interview with Vogue magazine but the interviewer wanted her to pivot from hydropower to high fashion.
THE FACTS are somewhat in dispute. Vogue contributing editor Rebecca Johnson said Palin did not go on about hydropower. "She just kept talking about drilling for oil."
___
PALIN: "Was it ambition? I didn't think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons." Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.
THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But "Going Rogue" has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.
___
AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

I'd say im surprised, but at this point the only thing that surprises me is just how blatantly she lies about some of these issues.

[Lonestar]

This morning in the Post it mentioned that Palin was bitching about how the McCain campaign "shielded her from reporters" because they didn't think she knew what the hell she was talking about, then she goes on to talk about how mean Charles Gibson and Couric are.

[Patrick Degan]

I'd say im surprised, but at this point the only thing that surprises me is just how blatantly she lies about some of these issues.

I'm not at all surprised. We're talking about a Republican Rightard here: the sort of person for whom lying is about as natural as breathing.

[Lagmonster]

She also confirms in her book what we already know about her stance on science: According to the review in the NY Times, she apparently criticizes evolution theory. She also apparently compares herself favourably and often to Ronald Reagan, as if there were any doubts as to what ideology she hails from.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Nice Review, found This Part, to be quite enjoyable.

The most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the news media, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million advance for writing this book.

In what reads like payback for disparaging comments by John McCain’s aides about her after the ticket’s loss to Barack Obama, Ms. Palin depicts the McCain campaign as overscripted, defeatist, disorganized and dunderheaded — slow to shift focus from the Iraq war to the cratering economy, insufficiently tough on Mr. Obama and contradictory in its media strategy

Lets hear it for Republican infighting!

[Ted C]

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.
THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City's Central Park for a five-hour women's leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children's travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

Not that I like being put in the position of defending the psycho pit-bull hockey mom, but isn't this being somewhat nit-picky? She claims she didn't stay in high-priced hotels "often," so she's getting hammered for what seems to be one exception. The extra costs for bringing her children are probably avoidable, but one high-end hotel stay out of an unspecified number of other trips doesn't refute the statement that she "usually opted for less-pricey hotels".

[Covenant]

Not that I like being put in the position of defending the psycho pit-bull hockey mom, but isn't this being somewhat nit-picky? She claims she didn't stay in high-priced hotels "often," so she's getting hammered for what seems to be one exception. The extra costs for bringing her children are probably avoidable, but one high-end hotel stay out of an unspecified number of other trips doesn't refute the statement that she "usually opted for less-pricey hotels".

But she said she ONLY wanted the reasonable rooms, was tight with the state's money, and does so in a way to draw a distinction with other politicians. If a hypothetical you starts claiming you never did anything bad, then as soon as they dig up something bad, it's not a nit-pick anymore.

The details are pretty irrelevant in this case, since she's being vague in order to advance the idea of her as a 'frugal' penny-pinching leader whose modest requirements distinguish her from the pampered needs of Obama and other Ivory Tower Intellectuals, blah blah, when she took off FIVE DAYS for a FIVE HOUR conference, did so in an extremely nice room in a nice luxury hotel, brought her Daughter, and billed the state for it.

[Civil War Man]

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.
THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City's Central Park for a five-hour women's leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children's travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

Not that I like being put in the position of defending the psycho pit-bull hockey mom, but isn't this being somewhat nit-picky? She claims she didn't stay in high-priced hotels "often," so she's getting hammered for what seems to be one exception. The extra costs for bringing her children are probably avoidable, but one high-end hotel stay out of an unspecified number of other trips doesn't refute the statement that she "usually opted for less-pricey hotels".

There's also the part at the end where she ran up $20,000 for what were effectively vacations for her kids, then basically wrote it off as a business expense. Averages out to somewhere in the area of $8000 per year for her children's travel throughout her term.

I also remember a bit of a todo about various shopping sprees she went on while campaigning, though I believe she billed the McCain campaign and not Alaska for those.

While she didn't claim to never stay in high-priced hotels, she worded it in a way that depicted her as some frugal business traveller, which is at the very least disingenuous.

[D.Turtle]

I also remember a bit of a todo about various shopping sprees she went on while campaigning, though I believe she billed the McCain campaign and not Alaska for those.

You mean this part:

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

[...]

September payments were also made to Barney’s New York ($789.72) and Bloomingdale’s New York ($5,102.71).

Macy’s in Minneapolis, another store fortunate enough to be situated in the Twin Cities that hosted last summer’s Republican National Convention, received three separate payments totaling $9,447.71.

The entries also show two purchases at Pacifier, a top-notch baby store, suggesting $196 was spent to accommodate the littlest Palin to join the campaign trail.

An additional $4,902.45 was spent in early September at Atelier, a high-class shopping destination for men.

I bet all those McCain campaign donors were so happy that their money was used so well.

Frugal, my ass.

[RedImperator]

There's no love lost between Palin and Team McCain. I attended a talk given by Steve Schmidt last year, and while he didn't come right out and say it, the impression he gave that Palin was an idiot, the campaign didn't do due diligence, and the only reason she was on the ticket at all was because the McCain campaign was facing the possibility of going into September down 20 points and had to throw the dice (in that respect, he added, it worked, and I'm inclined to agree; the selection of Palin killed the buzz from the DNC and the McCain campaign came out of the RNC doing about as well as it would in the entire campaign; remember how bad everyone on the (D) side was panicking in the first two weeks of September?).

[Crossroads Inc.]

There's no love lost between Palin and Team McCain. I attended a talk given by Steve Schmidt last year, and while he didn't come right out and say it, the impression he gave that Palin was an idiot, the campaign didn't do due diligence, and the only reason she was on the ticket at all was because the McCain campaign was facing the possibility of going into September down 20 points and had to throw the dice (in that respect, he added, it worked, and I'm inclined to agree; the selection of Palin killed the buzz from the DNC and the McCain campaign came out of the RNC doing about as well as it would in the entire campaign; remember how bad everyone on the (D) side was panicking in the first two weeks of September?).

Looking at things in hindsight, I am convinced that she was added to Mc Cains ticket PURELY to shore up Republican voters. Looking at the polls before the convention and before she was announced, Mc Cain Clearly looked doomed. Mostly because a Large amount of far right Republicans simply didn't trust him.

Enter Palin, a Far Right Fundi, a Women, a "folksi" independent gun loving governor with lots of "real world experience" In a nut shell, Everything the far right see Mc Cain as NOT being.

Overnight Mc Cains approval rating sore, the amount on the far right who say the aren't going to vote for Mc Cain all but evaporates in a matter of days. In the days the follow Mc Cain looks strong and suddenly seems to have a chance to Catch Obama.

So IMHO, Palin was never about anything other then a pure publicity stunt to shore up his base. In that regard she worked, if Mc Cain picked virtually anyone else, save a true far right wacko like Palin, I would wager Big Money that his defeat wold have been Even Larger. So in a nut shell Palin was from the start, nothing more then a "Hail Merry Pass" that worked just long enough to make Mc Cain seem credible again.

[Duckie]

The rumour I've heard is that McCain wanted his friend Lieberman, but picking Lieberman would have been the death cry of his campaign since the far right would never have it. Campaign advisors were considering Pawlenty, but he was considered insufficiently exciting to counter Barack Obama's minority appeal, so enter Palin.

[RedImperator]

If I recall correctly, Schmidt confirmed that McCain's first choice was Lieberman, and was Lieberman practically right up to the first day of the convention. Then the conservatives threatened to defect, and that was that. The consensus on the campaign was that the last thing they needed was a floor fight. In fact, according to Schmidt, they needed the convention to go perfectly because they were in dire straits.

Enter Palin. Palin was selected for a lot of reasons, but a big one was generating buzz and excitement about a campaign that until then nobody cared about. Not just among the far right, but the electorate in general. "Shoring up the base" wasn't going to cut it, not when they were 8 points down on the first day of the RNC. They sincerely hoped that Palin could appeal to independents and women--especially working, blue-collar women who'd made up Hillary Clinton's base and maybe were supporting Obama reluctantly because he had a (D) after his name. Not just the PUMA dead-enders (who McCain had already anyway), but a real chunk of the Democratic electorate. And for a couple days, it actually looked like she could. Then she had those disastrous interviews and her approval rating went in the toilet, followed shortly by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, after which McCain couldn't have gotten elected if Jesus Christ himself was his running mate.