Sarah Palin Lies: On the Media's Radar

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
Sarah Palin Lies: On the Media's Radar
1
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 1:29am

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/did_palin_really_take_a_pay_cu.php

Did Palin's Pay As Wasilla Mayor Really Get Cut?

By Greg Sargent - September 18, 2008, 2:49PM

One thing Sarah Palin cites as proof of her reform credentials is a pay cut she says she took when she became Mayor of Wasilla in 1996.

"As mayor I took a voluntary pay cut, which didn't thrill my husband; and then as governor I cut the personal chef position from the budget, and that didn't thrill my hungry kids," Palin said recently, repeating a frequent refrain.

But did she really get an overall pay cut as mayor? The record suggests a more complex story.

While Palin did appear to get a pay cut ordinance passed upon entering, several years later her salary had actually gone up to the point where it ended up thousands of dollars higher than it was just before she took office, local press reports at the time show.

Two reports in the local Alaska press in 1999, three years after she became Mayor, say explicitly that her salary at that time was $68,000, higher than the $64,000 it was just before she took over as mayor. The pay hikes were apparently due to mandated salary increases that the City Council refused to overrule, though that's not certain.

The McCain campaign was unable to explain why her salary had gone up and how that squared with her claim of taking a cut.

Asked for proof of her claim that she took a pay cut, the McCain campaign provided us with minutes from a Wasilla City Council meeting from November 13, 1996, which appear to show that Palin introduced and passed some sort of measure to reduce her salary by 10 percent.

But that's not the end of the story.

Three years later, on March 12, 1999, an article ran in The Frontiersman which explicitly reported that Palin's salary was higher at that time than it was when she took over. The article describes a City Council vote where the Council, in the words of the paper, "decided to leave the mayor's salary at $68,000." It was $64,000 when Palin took over, according to the paper.

An article in the same paper a week earlier shows Palin herself discussing the fact that she'd accepted the increase, albeit against her will:

The mayor's wage was increased from $64,000 to $68,000 in 1996, just before Sarah Palin was elected.
"I voted against it when I was a council member and I felt like a hypocrite when I came in and had to accept it," Palin said.

"Two and a half months after I was elected, the new resolution kicked in, but I took a pay cut down to $61,200. Then I had to accept the $68,000 since the last fiscal year started."

So what appears to have happened is this: As a Council member she voted against hiking the mayor's salary from $64,000 to $68,000, but it passed anyway. When she came in as mayor, she passed the ordinance which brought her salary down to $61,200. But that may not actually have taken effect, and Council-mandated raises brought her actual salary up to $68,000.

The McCain campaign was unable to explain whether her salary actually was cut. And the McCain campaign declined to comment on the fact that her salary had actually ended up higher than it was when she first took office, beyond referring us back to the original minutes of the initial meeting where the first ordinance was passed.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 1:33am

Her eyes should have been dry enough for Restasis...after not blinking and all. lol.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0908/Palin_asked_daughters_on_veep_vote_after_they_were_already_in_OH_for_announcement.html?

September 18, 2008

Palin asked daughters on veep vote after they were already in OH for announcement

Appearing on Fox last night, Sarah Palin told Sean Hannity a heartwarming story of how she asked her teenage daughters for their opinion before accepting the vp offer.

"So ask the girls what they thought and they’re like, ‘Absolutely, let’s do this, Mom,’” Palin recounted of her daughters, Bristol and Willow.

Yet, according to the campaign-provided timeline of how Palin's selection came about, her kids only found out the big news after they were spirited from Alaska to Ohio for the announcement.

"While there, Governor Palin's children, who had been told they were going to Ohio to celebrate their parents' wedding anniversary, were told for the first time that their mother would be a nominee for Vice President of the United States of America," said the official timeline, as released by McCain's campaign last month.

Todd Palin, in a separate interview with Fox this week, also said the kids were not told about the decision until after they left Alaska.

Asked about the discrepancy, Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said: "She asked the girls to vote once they arrived in Ohio."

When it was noted that, that would have been after the decision had already been made, Schmitt said Palin was still in Arizona at the time.

This, of course, doesn't change the fact that the children were already in Ohio for the express purpose of announcing he news.

By itself, the tale is a small thing. Perhaps Palin was more running it by them then asking them. But why, when many of her policy-related statements are coming under question, would Palin embroider something that is so easily proven untrue?

Al Gore was roasted in 2000 for his exaggerations, and the pattern of them gave Republicans a brutal frame to use against him. With these sorts of stories, Palin is giving Democrats the same sort of ammunition.