Category: The Palin Chronicles
Posted by Mako Yamakura on Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:41 AMWhy You Shouldn't Trust Her.
This is a complete sham.
Naturally, I've always been a skeptic of some hidden gem of political might, specifically former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. And of course, people would first brand me as a liberal just because I attack her, and honestly, I can understand the vitriol. But this is a purely mathematical lie that can't be explained away.
If you really look at the so-called "evidence" of legal fees totaling $1.9 Million, of such high costs that the legal enquiries about Governor Palin are, you'll start to notice the discrepancies, and then, the credibility, shed itself before your eyes.
Follow along with the pdf, because this is a prime example of how much she really cares about Alaska, let alone normal folks.
Page one, a listing of all the various costs and legal/paralegal hours booked for all legal fees. At first glance, it seems apparent that all fees and errata total up to $1.9 Million buckaroos, but there's something odd about the specific figures. Let's look specifically at Ethics Complaints, totaling $26,849. Then turn to page two, where there are details specifically about ethics complaints, totaling $41,574.40. This total is also marked on the bottom of page one, labeled Deptment of Law - Ethics, with the exact rounded total.
Now, compare the two itemized entries of both pages one and two. These folks can't even lie on a spreadsheet they themselves released.
In the page one entry of Ethics for Monegan, they list 13.3 hours of attorney time for $14,565. On page two, they list 119.4 hours of attorney time for the exact same amount. I'll be generous, and say it's simply a clerical error. But there's more.
Listing specifically the charges for attorney time from page one and two, you can actually cross-check the detail from page two back to page one, and the discrepancies are far beyond clerical error.
3.3 hours for page one Juneteenth ($525.00) is 4.3 hours for page two Juneteenth ($525.41)
23.2 hours for page one Mcleod hire ($2,940) and 24.1 hours for page two Mcleod hire ($2939.72).
Even the additional combination of hours billed to attorneys doesn't even match up the same name in reference. On page one, Henning (use of Gov office) equals a paltry 3 hours at a total of $366, but the page two detail actually contradicts it.
Tompkins re: Palin ($317.15) and Birch re: Palin ($48.79) just happens to be $365.94.
Coincidence? Perhaps...
But look further down on page one. As costs pile up, to $1,729,367, there is an additional entry of totals that includes Department of Law - Ethics. If you total the amount presented in page two (details of the Dept. of Law Ethics), you get a total of $41,574.40. This amount is tagged onto the already calculated sum, and for the most part, an indicator of heavy political shennanigans.
At this point, once you notice that Governor Palin has actually double-charged her own estimate, and not through clerical error, what other credibility can you place upon this so-called factsheet?
$580,000 for the Personnel Review Board? Hardly an exact sum, is it?
The bulk of additional expenses originating from the Governor's office to the tune of over $425,000?
If you are a fiscal conservative, just for a moment, look over the numbers. I take very seriously the "billable" hours that lawyers put into invoices, and moreso, like to make sure that the inconceivable amount per hour they place on billable hours is at the least consistent.
Start down the row, beginning with Public Records Requests, of a Miscellaneous 0.3 hour charge that totals $10,063.
I'm pretty quick with math, and that's $30,189 an hour.
Sure, the spin can be placed to clerical error, or other fanciful flights of fancy, but I'm definitely sure they're lying and trumping up costs.
But don't let me be the last word. Look it up yourselves. Politics can blind me, I'm kinda young and progressive. But spreadsheets don't lie, and nothing adds up in this pile of BS. Mako out.
Comments
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Thank you
You're right, it's a complete sham. And it matters because if you follow Palin's actions and compare them with her rhetoric, it's clear that she is almost constitutionally incapable of telling the truth. She likes being governor, she doesn't care for the tedium of governing, and the ethics complaints provided a useful pretext for quitting. If it turns out she lied about this, what does that say for her justification for quitting?
This bogus spreadsheet, in addition to the problems you noted, also does not include the amount of money spent on the ethics complaint that Palin filed against herself. It mentions the cost of the legislature's inquiry into Troopergate, but she filed a complaint with the Personnel Board (which serves at the pleasure of the governor) so she could evade the Legislature's inquiry.(Surprise! They said she hadn't done anything wrong.)
Two weeks ago the Personnel Board released their figures on the costs of all these ethics complaints. They said they'd spent just short of $300,000, of which almost $200,000 was incurred by Palin's complaint.
I don't see that listed here. Also, in Alaska, people making records requests pay for them. This spreadsheet doesn't make it clear if those revenues are included or not.
Those of you who think this doesn't matter are wrong. Anyone who has cast herself as a political victim and yet wants to have a national role deserves such scrutiny. She has a long record of exaggerations, omissions, and outright lies. Americans deserve to know that.
All politicians, liberal or conservative, should be held to their word. Please remember, she campaigned on a platform of transparent government. She actually said, "Hold me accountable." It's about time she was.
This is what you wanted! Let her go...
I donno there Chris, maybe I just disagree with the idea that everything apparently is Obama's fault. Huh. Mako out.
This is what you wanted! Let her go...
Thorswitch,
Does this mean we should continue to hound her until she dies, because technically she could always run for office?
Give me a break! Just bring this back up when she runs for office again! You're just drinking the liberal Kool-aid they're pumping out...
Gulp... Gulp...
This is what you wanted! Let her go...
Sushi...
I am not "deflecting it". We have trillions being wasted by the Obama administratio and you choose to ignore that to analyze Palin (an outbound politician).
This is akin to worry about a napkin lying on the floor of your restaurant while your weekly shipment of sushi-grade tuna sits outside on the sidewalk in the hot summer sun...
This is what you wanted! Let her go...
She may be out of the AK Governor's office, but that's no guarantee she's out of politics. Given that political memories can be short, in 3 years, people may decide her resignation wasn't that big of a deal and consider her a viable candidate for national office. That scares the daylights out of me.
Palin has serious issues with truthfulness - she tried to get the McCain campaign to lie about her husband's affiliation with a secessionist political party, she lied about saying "thanks, but no thanks" to "The Bridge to Nowhere," she lied about what percentage of the country's domestic energy supply comes from Alaska, she lied about the Branchflower report - claiming it exonerated her when it actually found her in violation of ethics laws, she lied about meeting with Russian trade officials and she lied about meeting with a British diplomat - and those are just some of the ones that are easily debunked with a bit of checking. Now she's lying about how much the ethics complaints against her have cost and she's lying on the spreadsheet to try and justify that number.
As long as there's any risk of her running for national office, it's important to keep showing her for the liar that she is. As a country, we don't need her, and we can't afford to forget why.
This is what you wanted! Let her go...
sorry CP, I meant Chris D.
This is what you wanted! Let her go...
CP, actually, I had suggested back in early April that McCain look for Alaska as a possible VP candidate. And on Labor Day, I thought, hey, this might be the best or worst idea.
And I spent about 30 minutes between beers looking over it. It's that obvious. Deflect it all you want, sir. Mako out.
This is what you wanted! Let her go...
I am in total agreement with one of your points Mako:
"Politics can blind me, I'm kinda young and progressive."
And they have in this instance. Based on your post, you just spent a chunk of your own time going over the records of a woman who is quitting her job.
If one of your employees, let's say a waitress, quit at your restaurant becuase she wasn't making enough money, would you review her bills and expenses to confirm her reasons?
You can make the argument that Palin is not a waitress, but the principle remains the same: she's quitting. I don't know why you and people like Libby can't just let her go, this is what you all wanted in the first place.
Now you have to crawl up her tail with a microscope so you can give her one last "kick" on her way out the door?
You're looking at Palin's exiting while federal health care and cap and trade threaten to kill our economy? I expect you to be smarter than this.
There were two things I thought you had Mako: class and brains. Maybe I was wrong...
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