Another Telling Palin “Misstatement”

by tristero

Let Somerby explain how Palin “basically lied” about one more thing she’s done. The story has an interesting twist at the end:

In this passage from Friday’s speech, she gives an absurdly bowdlerized account of her vastly heroic work on behalf of Alaska’s tax-payers:

PALIN: Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor I stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically, and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska.

What a champion of the people! But Palin vastly misstates this heroic tale too. Once again, she has basically lied.

What’s wrong with Palin’s account? She makes it sound like “state revenues” soared because “oil and gas prices went up so dramatically.” But this omits a fundamental part of this story; in fact, state revenues soared because Palin and the Alaska legislature raised taxes on the oil companies! Plainly, Palin’s statement was designed to suggest that state revenues increased because oil and gas prices went up. But that isn’t what actually happened; that omits what she herself did. In reality, she imposed a new tax on the oil companies, then handed the resulting free money to voters. For a concise news report from August 10, just click here and read the first ten paragraphs. (Note: When this Seattle Times report appeared, Palin was still three weeks away from being named by McCain.)

A windfall tax on the oil companies? With the revenues given to tax-payers? That, of course, is what Obama is now proposing on the national level. It’s hard to square with Republican politics or messaging—so Palin again played games with the truth. Rather baldly, she misled voters about what actually happened.

Palin’s propensity to lie and mislead seems to be of pathological proportions. In other words, she’s a typical 21st Century Republican.