Dear Mr. M. Joseph Sheppard

Dear Mr. M. Joseph Sheppard

Thank you for commenting on my blog. I just have a couple of questions…

On July 3, 2009 Sarah Heath Palin, in a dramatic announcement on her back lawn, quit her job as governor of Alaska because, she said, her presence was a distraction to the state and she would be able to do more for Alaskans and the country out of office than stuck in a lame duck term. With the help of a ghost-writer, Sarah Palin finished and subsequently had published her autobiography called Going Rogue and was on a whirlwind book-signing tour by November.

Her PAC continued to rake in the same big bucks as it did while she was the VP candidate on John McCain’s 2008 ticket. She personally rakes in $1mil per year working part-time for Fox News Channel. What I want to know is this:

What is it – specifically – that Sarah Heath Palin has done for Alaska and the country with this new-found wealth of time and money?

Has she founded any groups to help underprivileged children be better fed or educated?

Has she funded any drives to help native Alaskans in rural communities supplement their critically low food and heating supplies, issues they face yearly along with flooding that now comes from eroding coastal shores?

Has she donated her time and made sizable  donations to promote Down Syndrome awareness?

Has her PAC fully financed Republican candidates for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles?

Since walking out on her role as governor of Alaska to purportedly ‘do good’ for state and country, Sarah has had three winters to make her mark as charity leader for multiple causes for her state and six opportunities to enroll in university semesters that would extend her political resume and broaden her education. Has she?

The unfortunate answer to each of these questions is nup, nup and nup. In fact I see nothing that even remotely resembles sacrifice on her part in either time or money to promote any of the issues she told us emphatically were close to her heart. She didn’t personally pay for her scant trips abroad.  Because she refused to come out of her hotel room and mingle with the people, India and Israel media treated her like a rock star rather than a travelling dignitary. And what her PAC didn’t pay for on her overseas junkets, Evangelist groups like Samaritan’s Purse, did.

On behalf of Sarah Palin (the now millionairess) SarahPAC made a one-time contribution of $1,000 to Down Syndrome Assoc.(Sarah Heath Palin charges $100k + for each speech she makes on anyone’s behalf, while enjoying first class accommodations wherever she travels at the expense of the group who hired her to speak. Sarah and Todd could easily have made this donation themselves.)

You can count on less than ten fingers the number of campaign contributions SarahPAC has made to Republican candidates since its founding. (Even though, it’s interesting to note, the entire point of a PAC is for a popular politician to elicit funds and publicity for the lesser known candidates they wish to support, SarahPAC seems always more eager to pay extraordinarily large salaries to a handful of staff, picking up the tab for Sarah’s airfares and hotel accommodations while she travels to make her $100k speeches and – oddly enough – the massive postage needs of three ladies in Wasilla. Oh and let’s not omit the huge monthly retainer fee to her flavour of the month attorney.)

Sarah Heath Palin banked in excess of $7 – 10 million dollars by 2010 and has, by virtue of public records, donated nothing to any of her purported pet causes. Not time, not money, nothing. She’s not formed a single fund-raising drive for native Alaskans in danger of losing their homes and livelihoods to the growing negative effects of global warming on their villages. She’s not run one ad campaign to save Alaskan fishing sites from big oil or mining companies attempting to destroy the Alaskan waterways in the name of profits.

In fact, for someone who grew up in America’s last frontier and helped eke out a living by fishing its shores, Sarah’s not done anything at all to promote environmental preservation. (At least nothing that personally cost her a single penny.)

Show me what Sarah has accomplished for Alaska and her country since the summer of 2009 without citing speeches one must purchase a ticket to attend and don’t use the stale  ‘well she’s busy taking care of Trig’ because (a.) we know that’s not entirely true and (b.) she assured all of us, way back in September of 2008, that raising a child with DS would not come between her and her political duties, that she was a hockey mom with a servant’s heart and could do both with ease.

Since July 2009 Sarah has published 2 lucrative books, built a new home in Alaska, purchased another home in Arizona, made a self-serving television program and flown back and forth between Alaska, Arizona and California to supervise home improvements and appear on DWTS with her daughter, Bristol, (take a breath) but I hardly see these events as being beneficial to state or country. – and no proceeds were ever donated to charities.

She did make a 2011 pre-campaign-campaign tour of a few north-eastern US states (telling Piper they and her accompanying parents were on a family vacation) in a fully outfitted bus-length RV wrapped in $14k worth of PAC donation-paid political propaganda – all the while charging her PAC for hired limos and first-class hotel rooms and meals.

And so, Mr. M. Joseph Sheppard, you see we’re not just ‘catty’ over here on the left. We actually do our homework, get our facts straight and are not opposed to listening to the other guy’s point of view.

Show me how Alaska and the country have benefited from Sarah Heath Palin having quit her governorship. Show me where she’s shared her good fortune with those less fortunate. Show me.

Respectfully yours,
OzMud

P.S. I am a copywriter by trade, fully employed and it’s no secret that as I have the luxury of working from my home, most of my typing is done in bunny slippers and pj’s.

 

 

SarahP(alin)A(ccess)C(ash) finally getting the exposure it so richly deserves.

Malia Litman posted this story on her blog today – and because it speaks to a sentiment by which so many of us have been so frustrated for so long I thought it should be re-posted – everywhere.

It’s not by accident Alaskan bloggers refer to Sarah Palin as Granny Grifter. Alaska’s taxpayers have been witness to (and victims of) the Palin’s enjoying unearned government perks for a couple of decades now. In fact, the list of the number of incidents that directly or indirectly put government funds and personal donations into Palin pockets since her mayorship back in the nineties is mind-numbing. How she’s been able to get away with the practice of stealing from tax payers for so long could almost cause one to believe in miracles.

But now the publicly-aired quarterly financial reports are shining bright on Sarah’s grifting and a few of her faithful followers and regular PAC contributors are stepping into the light. They are beginning to ask questions like why are their donations to SarahPAC  paying three ladies in Wasilla a total of $35,000 for three months of clerical work? Why did the PAC foot the bill for a $19,000,  2-minute video to rebut the movie Game Change – when neither the HBO movie itself or the rebuttal have anything at all to do with the current election cycle?

And I must admit, for all the time and energy I’ve personally spent on this blog jumping up and down, flailing my arms while trying to help the other bloggers shine that light on the Palin’s unethical fleecing of the public  – it’s now rather satisfying to rest on the sidelines with the others and think … hey Palinbots? Told you so!

[Click Image to enlarge]

The Atlantic article by staff writer Conor Friedersdorf is here.

Nice catch Malia – you may have found a Republican we can actually get behind.

 

The EarthQuakers – What did they Sacrifice?

As the Iowa Caucus draws to a close and the maintenance crew sweeps up the last of the burst balloon bits, torn posters and fast food debris I can’t help but wonder what personal sacrifices the Palin supporters made to write their Queen onto the 2012 ballot – and now that it’s obvious the gesture didn’t work will they recognize their movement to draft Sarah has made them tragic earthquake victims or  will they still keep opening their wallets?

I do know that people who don’t have a lot of money to begin with have to make personal sacrifices in order to pay $100 for a DVD or coffee mug because money for donations has to come from somewhere. Are these Palin supporters doing without extras and necessities in order to play the SarahPAC donation game?

I once lived in San Francisco next door to a family from Hot Springs Arkansas. The houses on our block were all three story Victorian homes.  Some were single family dwellings while others were divided into flats which then accommodated multiple families. This particular family lived in a flat – two parents and two children. One Christmas the mother announced she was taking a retail job and they would not be exchanging presents or chipping into pot luck festivities because they had decided to save for a home. Everyone on the block was supportive. My mom and dad gave the kids presents anyway and included them in our holiday plans regardless.

But I put this out there because I remember so clearly from that Christmas forward my friend (their daughter) not having any sweets in her school lunchbox, never being able to buy an ice cream with the rest of us after school, skipping class field trips and my dad paying for her to accompany me on occasional weekend activities like Saturday afternoon matinees or swimming parties.

Her ice skating lessons came to a halt and for several semesters she wore hand-me-down clothing her mom found at church rummage sales. I can still hear her mother making the worn-out comment “no, you can’t have that, we’re saving for a house remember?”

To further save money an out-of-work uncle was called upon to watch my friend and her much younger brother on evenings when both parents worked overtime hours. The uncle babysitting lasted until my friend told her mother that the uncle was forcing himself on her sexually (we were about aged 10-12 at the time). I remember how horrified my parents were and that while the uncle was sent far, far away, my friend got the belt for not outing him sooner – and my dad was so outraged at her punishment he never spoke to my friend’s dad again.

The thing is, money has to come from somewhere. In many ways the commitment made by this family to save enough money to buy a first home is commendable. But on another level, the severity of sacrifice made by the two small kids was beyond harsh. For more than one or two holiday seasons there was no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny and little fuss made over birthdays while all around them their friends had presents to open, candles to blow out and parties to plan. (And of course the obvious observation needs to be made – if the parents hadn’t been so keen on getting a free babysitter would they have left their daughter in the care of the uncle?)

The parents desire to become home-owners was so strong it excluded their children from much of the socialization that happens in grade school. No trips or money to buy treats at bake sales or joining in with others for parties or after school activities. And I can’t even begin to describe the humiliation my friend surely must have felt by having to purchase her first bra at a church charity sale surrounded by a group of women who all knew her uncle had molested her.

And when I think of all the not-so-well-off people who have made similar familial sacrifices in order to afford sending donations to SarahPAC the irony makes my blood boil.

The Republicans behind Sarah Palin running for president all believe that government handouts are wrong – that people out of work should just suck it up and find jobs – that free medical treatment or food stamps go against the grain of people standing up on their own two feet – that the elderly and infirm should just figure it out…

…and yet all their heroes (not just Sarah Palin) run political campaigns forged on the collection of public donations. You know – that darned ol’ *gasp* free money thing they so adamantly scream at Pres. Obama about.

At least at the end of the day my friend and her family were able to move into a lovely house in the avenues. What are the Palin supporters getting for their sacrifices? I mean besides a packet of lies and a boxful of empty promises.

*          *          *

O/T – my follow-up posts on the SLRC race and the Childrens Hour are still forthcoming – it’s just that I’ve stepped into this weird dimension I like to call the hurrier I go the behinder I get… so your patience is much appreciated

 

The Curious Disappearance of the Curious Bus Tour Curiously Still Collecting Donations

The Bus To Nowhere

It’s been roughly 18 days (if I got the dates right) since Sarah Palin abruptly ended her One Nation Owes Me Money  bus tour ostensibly to recoup and regroup and then do a little jury duty before getting back on the road to showcase Real America for those of us who may not understand where Real America umm – is.

Granted it’s only just getting into mid-July and as Sarah put it when questioned about stopping the tour well it’s a summer tour and summer is long… so okay – fair enough. Summer in the USA is not actually over for another six weeks.

So what’s the plan? There is a plan, right? Well there must be because SarahPAC is still actively collecting donations for bankrolling the bus tour. Surely they wouldn’t still be advertising the tour and asking for donations unless there actually WAS such a tour, right? Right? I mean - they wouldn’t actually be so smug as to collect money for an event that was already finished would they?

Well, let’s visit SarahPAC  and see, shall we? Looks norm-wait – what’s this?

A popup banner as you enter the site… [click thumbnail to enlarge] 
And a top-corner ad on one of the pages… [see below]

I find this whole thing terribly curious.  First inasmuch as a Political Action Committee accepts donations for strictly political purposes but then is free to spend those collected funds on anything from jacked-up salaries for friends and co-horts to unnecessary attorney fees to inflated PR needs, all under the guise of overhead costs, and then for family vacations or paying one’s mortgage as long as one is not actively running for office oneself - I find it all curious and curiouser.

Sarah Palin the millionairess – still collecting $5. donations from people who can barely feed their families in today’s financial clime – and this time for a road trip that in all probability is finito, having shot itself in the foot many times over causing it to limp to a premature halt. Well, as governor Sarah accepted $500k for a bridge to nowhere – only stands to reason she would want to collect an equal amount for a bustrip to nowhere now that her political career is kaput.

(Close your eyes Keri!)

Silly Poofs!

 

Ask SarahPAC #3

 

 

OzMud Freeware: Copy & Paste at will

Edit: Changed tips to snacks after being reminded that (1) Sarah doesn’t tip (h/t to Karen) and remembering things such as ice creams, chocolates, Red Bulls & coffees had been omitted.

 

Ask SarahPAC #2

 

OzMud’s Freeware: Copy & paste at will

 

Ask SarahPAC

Freeware: Copy and paste at will

 

How Can The Press Keep Getting This Wrong?

Dear American Press,

Sarah Palin’s campaign for the office of POTUS began on 6 March 2008 when she announced to a handful of your ADN peers that she was seven months pregnant. That’s the announcement that launched her head and shoulders above the other candidates John McCain had on his VP short list. How does this relate to a presidential run? Easy. Nobody ever risked simultaneously faking a pregnancy and making a lifetime commitment to raising a child only to aspire to second place.

And for Sarah Heath Palin, the office of Vice President would be just that: Second place. She said it herself in an interview in Isreal. When asked why she thought she and John McCain lost the 2008 election without hesitation her glib and inappropriate reply was because I wasn’t on the top of the ticket!

For all you political geniuses out there who believe she’s not touring the upper east coast collecting campaign money and bagging votes well – in my 60+ years of life shared on two continents under two governments, you’re the most naive bunch of journos I have ever seen.

Stop scratching your heads wondering if she’s running in 2012 or not. You can’t see it because you keep trying to fit her White House bid into a reasonable set of protocols. Stop it. There’s nothing reasonable about Sarah.

Stop chasing after her and hold still. Take a deep breath. Now - open your eyes and look at what’s right in front of you: Nobody takes a family holiday in an oversized bus decorated with campaign slogans and Republican memes, prominently plugging a PAC donation website unless they’re running for something. And for our Sarah, the only office worth the effort is the top one.

Sarah’s running for president. Count on it. She’s been running  for three years and she’s gambled everything on winning. You people just haven’t been paying attention.

So stop trying to cover your journalistic inadequacies with phrases like America is too smart to put Sarah Palin in the White House and go after the real story: Is America just stupid enough to put her there?

Sincerely,
OzMud

 

The Great Grifter .02 “Show Me The Money”

The ADN’s (Anchorage Daily News) comprehensive listing of all ethics complaints filed against Sarah Palin between 2008 and 2009 is archived here.

According to a statement by the Alaska State Personnel Board, Ethics Violations Complaints that reach their offices do not require a legal defense on the part of the state worker named in the complaint until and unless the board determines a violation has been made. (I apologize for not being able to recover the link to this past quote. It is out there, though, and I would ask the author of the newspaper article to please verify the accuracy of this information.)

Of 18 complaints filed and cited in the article above, fourteen were dismissed outright (many within just a few days of filing), one was settled with the ex-Governor agreeing to reimburse the state for her children’s travel expenses on ten state-paid trips and two findings (as of the date of the ADN article) are still pending.

The first complaint to be aired nationally (although I’m not at all certain it was the first complaint registered) was split into two decisions. The first finding determined that one-half of the complaint, the half concerning the alleged improper firing of an employee, was not improper under the guidelines of the governor’s office. The second half of the complaint, the half concerning the alleged improper use of her authority as, and office of governor of Alaska, was determined to show Sarah Palin had in fact abused her power as Governor of the State of Alaska. 

When Ms. Palin did not get a complete dismissal on this complaint, she personally hired a second set of legal eagles to give her the ruling she was after. That attained, she went on national television (literally hours before the 2008 national election of which she was a candidate) to thank the personnel board for finding in her favour (even though they hadn’t) and to wave the flag of ‘see I told you I didn’t do anything wrong’ in front of media cameras. 

Evidently, and according to state lawyers, (including, coincidentally, the then State Attorney Joe Miller who is rumoured to have contributed to this ruling), abuse of power on the part of their governor isn’t even a misdemeanour in Alaska. But I digress. 

Fourteen cases dismissed outright. One retried by the accused to get a favourable dismissal. One settled without dispute or penalty. Two still pending judgement by the Personnel Board. The same Personnel Board, (also coincidentally), personally hand-picked and hired by none other than Sarah Palin herself. 

Where are the “millions of dollars in legal defense costs” so generated by these ethics violations complaints that a woman worth more than $20,000,000 needs to accept and continue to fundraise for reimbursement of said costs? 

How many times, and by how many different organizations and private citizens must these same costs be repaid to the Palin family? 

Sarah PAC, in their quarterly financial disclosures in 2009 and 2010 have listed reimbursement of these costs to the Palins and their lawyers. (In fact, Attorney Van Flein is listed as a paid expense on more than one line of more than one SarahPAC quarterly report. Are we to believe his services need to be paid by a public PAC when his client earns in excess of 10 million USD per year?)

A Texas millionaire who said he felt sorry for Sarah has claimed to have reimbursed her for these same costs. 

Two websites were created to raise funds to pay these costs so Sarah wouldn’t have to – both still exist online and at least one continues to collect public donations to pay for these costs. 

And now – The RNC has recently claimed, in a financial disclosure that a portion of their payment to Sarah Palin was specifically for covering these same legal costs.  

I don’t believe these costs actually exist. Any legal costs incurred by Sarah Palin have been derived from her own paranoia, not from any actual necessity to set up a proper legal defense. Why should the public or publicly collected funds such as those that come from PACs, Republican Committees or online fundraising websites be responsible for legal fees incurred by someone who didn’t need them in the first place? 

How many times are the Palins to be paid for the same set of fees – fees they need not have incurred according to the Personnel Board’s own statements regarding the procedure for handling ethics violation complaints in the state of Alaska, and fees which (albeit I’m no mathematical genius) have never actually been tallied on any public document? 

Please, please note:  There have been no decisions made by the Alaska State Personnel Board against Sarah to prompt launching a legal defense at all. One-half of one complaint plus a settled disagreement does not equal hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in legal defense.

The final, real troubling aspect of these supposed legal fees incurred by the Palins caused by so-called frivilous complaints is this: The dollar amount of these fees keeps morphing.  According to the Personnel Board’s own estimate, a legal defense on any complaint found to have substance should have cost no more than around $10k.

This same set of legal fees has been reported by Sarah Palin to have cost her and Todd personally $50k, $250k, $500k and $2 million  +

It’s my humble experience that the truth is a constant. Oh wait. I forgot. We’re talking about Sarah my son was born two weeks premature in Wasilla – scratch that I mean a month premature in Anchorage Palin. 

1. I’d like to see the original, actual, itemized bills for these Ethics Violations Complaints incurred legal fees.
2. I’d like to see a corresponding list of all the people – slash – public entities who have donated to, fundraised for and/or have claimed payment of these fees on public financial reports and federal income tax returns. 

And then I’d like to see the Anchorage Daily News finally do its job.

*           *           *           *           *

My thanks to all the contributors who helped with this post:
Sarah: I quit Alaska
Rocky in Texas
Lori in Los Angeles
SME131
AKRNC

To comment on this post, please scroll up to the title “The Great Grifter .02 Show Me The Money” and click on the word comments just beneath.  Thanks, OzMud

 

The Great Grift…

Hi everyone…

Am so stretched for time these days but in keeping up with the blogs a nagging thought keeps running through my head that I need to share  with all of you. It’s a question, actually, and it goes like this:

How many organizations/donation drives/PACs have paid for Sarah Palin’s legal fees incurred through her defense of the ethics violation complaints in 2008-09?

I don’t have the time to go back and peruse even my own blogs but if any of you have links to this information I would be delighted to post it all as you send it in.

Seems to me, just after Sarah quit as Governor of Alaska, there were articles written describing how the complaint process worked and that the governor wasn’t meant to incur any legal fees at all. This is why her quitter-speech (reflecting the claimed number of hours wasted by her staff on addressing the complaints and her claim of owing millions of dollars to attorneys) had been so widely criticized in the media as a complete exaggeration of the true costs.

My memory can be shakey but – I’m remembering a cost projected (by the Personnel Board I think) of less than $50k if she were to address all of them – less than that if she only addressed the few of which they found her guilty. Then Sarah posted an amount of $250k but I forget where or why.

Then we saw SarahPAC financial statements both in 2009 and 2010 which reflected their having paid her legal fees (again, purportedly due to costs directly linked to her legal defense of the ethics complaints).

Then there was the Alaska Fund Trust which was created expressly to pay for these legal fees – and when that was declared unethical, a second, supposedly legal online fund was created to cover her attorney fees (from the ethics complaints).

Now we hear that the RNC has paid for these same legal costs?

How many groups/funds/drives/PACs have paid for the same set of legal fees – fees which should not have been incurred to begin with as the Personnel Board fully explained in 2009 that she did NOT need to respond to each and every one, only those which they felt were in fact, true violations – which they hardly ever did – so…

Would someone who has the time and ability to research this please look into it? Because this just smells funny. And I don’t mean funny in a ha ha way either. I’m thinking it’s entirely possible that Van Flein is the bigger crook here, accepting payment from more than one source for a single set of attorney fees.

And then – on top of this, when you look through Palinbot comments on other blogs/articles, you see quite often her followers talking about having just sent in my $5 because poor Sarah shouldn’t have to pay for all those legal fees from those phoney ethics complaints…

Just how many times and from how many different sources are Sarah and Van Flein collecting money to cover her past ‘legal fees’?

And… why are so many people still sending this multi-millionairess $5 donations anyway? Does no one outside of Alaska realize yet just how wealthy she’s become on the bogus back of public sympathy?

To comment on this post, please scroll up to the title “The Great Grift” and click on the word comments just beneath.  Thanks, OzMud.