Sarah Palin's Book: The Fact Check

The Associated Press Looks at the Claims Former Vice Presidential Candidate Makes in "Going Rogue"

(AP)  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 and $30 from a state representative 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 gave a comparative sum to charity.



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.

[billatmsn]

Levi has a certified copy of the birth certificate and it says Sarah is the mother of the child.

[Omni-Present101]

She [Quit]

Simple and Plain.

That Hill Billy from Alaska is a Quitter, Not a Go Getter.

Metaphor: Basketball Point Guards Finish the Game, Unless they Foul Out of a Game, Benched by the Coach, If their Un-Productive or their Severely Injured and Cannot Play.

Sarah Pulled Herself out of the Game [Alaskan Governorship] because that Game was Not Worthy Enough...

Most Point Guards Know Each Game Played is Important and Siginficant.

Ask Mark Sanford, John Ensign and Tim Pawlenty, Sanford and Ensign have every Right and Reason to [Quit] but they Refuse to [Quit] and they're Not [Quitting] they will Finish their Terms, under All the Un-Wanted Stress & Media Madness, Sarah Palin could only Dream of having to Confront.

Palin [Quit] and that's Irresponsible, You Spin that any way You Please.
_________________

Sarah Palin: A Hollow, Floating, Bubble.

Note: A Bubble is a Beautiful Thing, To Look at....

But a Bubble is Very Light and Very Easy to Burst !!!

_____________

[sammiak]

I can not believe what I read on those blogs. How they try to discredit Sarah for a job well done. I know they have to be Democrats who are running scared. As for Katie Couric she needs to come back to earth with the rest of us. She has a big EGO and puts her self above the normal people she serves. She was not fair to Sarah Palin at all. She was for Obama and was very biased. That's her right in her private life but not on news. Sarah has a high IQ just like Obama does.Lets wait and see what Obama can do? He is a good talker but can he delivery. So far NO. But give him time as we need to give Sarah time and leave her family alone. How would you like it if everyone started in on Obama's girls? Sarah Palin is a rising star and you watch her as you did Obama out of nowhere. You go Sarah.

[Omni-Present101]

CBS News: Please Talk about Real Women with Real National and International Experience, such as Former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice and Senator Lisa Murkowski, who should be the Nominees for President and Vice President of the USA...

Opposed to this Hollow, Floating, Bubble, by the name of Sarah Palin, who has No National or International Experience or National Policy Making, whatsoever.

Please Respect the American People as Thinkers and not as Dumb, Hollow and Shallow National Enquirer Tabloid Trash Readers

____________________

[Omni-Present101]

A Job Left Unfulfilled, is a Job Well Done to You ?

She [Quit]

Simple and Plain.

That Hill Billy from Alaska is a Quitter, Not a Go Getter.

Point Guards Finish the Game, Unless they Foul Out of a Game, Benched by the Coach, Un-Productive or their Severely Injured and Cannot Play.

Sarah Pulled Herself out of the Game [Alaskan Governorship] because that Game was Not Worthy Enough...

Well Most Point Guards Know Each Game Played is Important.

Ask Mark Sanford, John Ensign and Tim Pawlenty, Sanford and Ensign have every Right and Reason to [Quit] but they Refuse to [Quit] their Not [Quitting] and will Finish their Terms, under all the Stress, Plain could only Dream of Confronting.

Palin [Quit] and that's Irresponsible, You Spin that any way You Please.
_________________

Sarah Palin: A Hollow, Floating, Bubble.

Note: A Bubble is a Beautiful Thing, To Look at....

But a Bubble is Very Light and Very Easy to Burst !!!

_____________

[AlaskanIndependent]

Did you actually watch the Couric interview, Sammiak? I did and it was quite apparent that Couric asked very legitimate questions and treated Palin better than most politicians get treated by reporters seeking honest answers. Palin could not give honest answers so she blames Couric, just as she always blames everyone else for her shortcomings. As an Alaskan I can say that Palin failed us as a governor, and we can only hope that she never again holds a public office.

[noloyalisti]

Raftermann, We the People actually do hold the power, we just don't know how to use it. Just look at how consumer (that is us) spending drives the economy and corporate profits.

We also passed women's rights, civil rights, got rid of CFCs and hormones in lots of our foods. We need to organize to write to Obama and do boycotts and strikes if need be. We need to make sure EVERYONE shops local and with small business.

[AndyMaxo]

I wonder is Sara Palin will read this article. If she does she might be surprised to see how many facts she got mixed up. Man, how mixed up can somebody get? I suppose she just never figured that anybody would be checking up on what she says.
We all fudge the truth a bit sometimes, but for goodness sake not on everything that we do or say.

[RedWings_ninety_one]

you never know, mabe she'll read the blogs and get some decent ideas too.

[ajvw]

about as mixed up as nobamas jobs saved numbers

[Johnna Fisher]

I think they call it "New Speak" in the book 1984.

[noloyalisti]

I hope we can elect a more progressive President in 2012. Or, maybe enough people will get tired of us giving corporate welfare that we will actually use our power to get Obama to really do progressive changes. Like single payer health care.

[rafterman1]

it has nothing to do with *our* power. Obama can only do what the Republican opposition will let him do. If you aren't satisfied with Obama's attempts to move forward with his platform, look to the right to see what the holdup is - the party of NO.

[RedWings_ninety_one]

50BMS13,
You have a good point with Iran.

[hungry1968-17]

by 50BMS13 November 16, 2009 1:51 PM EST
RedWings_ninety_one
That is how much time until we get a new President. At this point I don't care who it is. Someone who can deal with Iran.






Why?

What does Iran mean to America, besides "nothing"?

[noloyalisti]

You righties must learn to have some spine. Don't be so frightened of everything. It is fear that allowed the Bush Crime Family to push America off the cliff.

[stillwaters6]

2012: THE MOVIE???

Maybe not politics but Sara Palin could give Rush Limbaugh a good run for his money if she had her own talk show...

[Omni-Present101]

CBS News: Please Talk about Real Women with Real National and International Experience, such as Former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice and Senator Lisa Murkowski, who should be the Nominees for President and Vice President of the USA...

Opposed to this Hollow, Floating, Bubble, by the name of Sarah Palin, who has No National or International Experience or National Policy Making, whatsoever.

Please Respect the American People as Thinkers and not as Dumb, Hollow and Shallow National Enquirer Tabloid Trash Readers

____________________

[JEC1950]

Sarah never let facts get in the way of making a statement.

[lockdnloaded]

Reminds me of hmmmmmmm Oh Yeah, Nancy Pelosi

[stillwaters6]

2012 the movie...

[SmartPeopleRule]

"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."

Sarah Palin speaks like Stevie Nicks sings: completely unintelligible. What the heck is she saying? This sentence reads like bad chinese stereo instructions. LOL

[hungry1968-17]

Ironically, the best Fleetwood Mac song of all time, is "Sara".

And those words are completely understandable.

[hungry1968-17]

by 50BMS13 November 16, 2009 1:24 PM EST
2012






You can keep repeating that all you want, but she won't even make it past the Iowa caucuses in January.

[hungry1968-17]

by 50BMS13 November 16, 2009 1:15 PM EST
Couric's jealousy of Sarah Palin is so transparent. There have been 44 Presidents of the USA. 2 parties x2 =90 going for the job. Vp's say 90. Pretty small group to be part of. Pretty priviledged group.






Couric is jealous of Palin?

Even though Couric is ten times as successful, she's jealous of her?

[noloyalisti]

Facts don't matter with this bimbo. Not only is she a blind Republican but an evangelical who spends her time beating her head like an empty drum.

[RedWings_ninety_one]

50BMS13,
I have a question. Why do you keep putting 2012?

[50BMS13]

RedWings_ninety_one
That is how much time until we get a new President. At this point I don't care who it is. Someone who can deal with Iran.

[koyt2]

Her book reminds me of her interview with Couric. Maybe she can lie her way out of this one too.

[50BMS13]

Couric's jealousy of Sarah Palin is so transparent. There have been 44 Presidents of the USA. 2 parties x2 =90 going for the job. Vp's say 90. Pretty small group to be part of. Pretty priviledged group.

[watchdogtexas]

I assume you got a preview copy of her book and read it. I do not think so. How can you comment on something you have not read.
Liberals are never have a open mind.

[rafterman1]

watdogtexas,

Its good to have an open mind...but not so open that your brainsfalls out.

[johndevinejr]

Sarah Palin is a perfect representative of conservatives and republicans. She definitely should be the republican nominee for President in 2012.

If republicans fail to elect her as their nominee, conservatives eveywhere should band together and nominate her as the Conservative Party Candidate for President in 2012. I think Huckabee would make and outstanding Vice President since he shares Sarahs views.

[hungry1968-17]

Correct: Sarah Palin is a perfect representative of conservatives and republicans.


She is an incompetent, ignorant, and uneducated female version of Cheney.


She would ABSOLUTELY be the perfect representative of conservatives and republicans.

[elvin1983]

Is this an actual comment?? Whoa...

[bubbadubba]

Palin needs to put a bunch of nude pictures of her in the book then maybe SOMEONE might actually buy it.
On second thought, maybe not.
What a waste of trees.

[RedWings_ninety_one]

True dat

[watchdogtexas]

I am so glad that you liberals read something before you comment. Oh yea, health care bill is great. Yea!!!

[RedWings_ninety_one]

9/11

[50BMS13]

bubbadubba
A little jealous of her aren't you? You know she's hot.

[freedomvet54]

Oh please the media is so obsessed with her it's not funny or they wouldn't be broadcasting and scheduling her on the program. For a women who the media says is worthless and a nothing they are right there with there tongue hanging out and believe me she is a force to be wrecked with. They are trying to minimize her but she keeps coming back. It's so funny Mr. Bob Schiffer says she has no bearing on the republican party because they are so scattered right now all the republican party is nothing but the Conservative party is making a move and it includes over 40% of the people more than all the republicans and democrats put together so look at

[lakota2012]

by freedomvet54:
Oh please the media is so obsessed with her it's not funny......she is a force to be wrecked with.
=====================================





While you definitely have it correct as "wrecked with," it's caribou barbi and her publisher that's pushing this publicity stunt for her new fictional book of lies and distortions, starting with her Oprah interview last week!

BTW, there is no "conservative party" in America, but Bob Schieffer sure has it correct, saying "the Republican Party is very split right now," and the far-right teabagger minority is the only ones supporting caribou barbi.

[lakota2012]

by jlp28481:

No amount of fact checks will change my mind - I like Sarah Palin - I do not like Katie Couric.
====================================




by steve8313:
I love that line "No amount of fact checks....". It sums up the Republican mind set in just one short sentence. "To hell with the truth, to hell with credibility, just as long as you keep saying what I want to hear!" It's a personality disorder that all right wing Republicans have to various degrees.
============================================






Excellent reply steve, and certainly proves the cognitive dissonance of the conservative teabagger extremists.

To hell with the TRUTH and any kind of FACT CHECKING, since it's all about attacking sources like the Associated Press that did their homework and investigative reporting, and then bring in CBS and Katie Couric that had nothing to do with this at all, just because of their blind hatred against the TRUTH and those that would rather report the FACTS!

[pws54]

lakota2012, did you bother reading the paragraph below? Do you not care that she constantly contradicts her own statements/views? (Scary thought)- She probably does seem smart to you.

"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."