Palin’s big three based on outright lies

When I first heard that Sarah Palin was John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 election, I admit I knew little about the Alaska governor. Sure, the campaign had attacked Obama as inexperienced. They may have cited his short tenure in the US Senate. I admit it is a gutsy move to pick up a running mate that embodies your opponent’s shortcomings.

I decided to research Palin’s big three claims: she’s a fiscal conservative, she turned down pork barrel spending and she said, “Thanks, but no thanks” for that infamous bridge to nowhere. Like many others, I decided to check the facts behind each claim. I will be blunt about my results: each of these claims is an outright lie, and I have no qualms about using the word “lie” to describe each.

Here’s my take, and this may just be me: if you make a statement based on fiction and repeat it despite being faced with the facts, it’s a lie. There is no euphemism, no flowery language, no politically correct doublespeak to describe this. It’s not exaggerating a fact, as there is no fact to draw from. It is not omission, as there isn’t even a single piece of truth to these claims. They are lies, and it’s time to call them as such.

Lie number one: Sarah Palin is a fiscal conservative; that is, she believes in decreased governmental spending and debt. In fact, she indebted the citizens of Wasilla, Alaska, no less than $20 million to build a civic center. Of this, $1.3 million was accrued because Palin went forward with building the center before even securing an unchallenged deed to the property, causing litigation and delays. This, of course, was after she grilled gubernatorial opponent John Stein about a sales tax increase to improve Wasilla’s roads, water treatment and infrastructure. If this is Palin’s record on spending, it is hardly decreased and shows no concern for debt.

Lie number two: Palin turned down federally earmarked spending. Taxpayers for Common Sense studied federal earmarks by state, finding that Alaska’s 2008 average federal earmark spending per citizen was $506.34. This is nearly ten times the average American’s cut of federal pork spending of $51.19. But, hey, it could be worse; Wasilla’s residents, under Palin’s leadership in 2002, averaged roughly $1,000 each. A governor that turns down earmark spending does not run a state in which citizens have the highest per capita pork spending in the nation.

Lie number three: “Thanks, but no thanks” on that bridge to nowhere. The Gravina Island Bridge would have cost $398 million to connect a town of 50 to the mainland. The bill got national attention when Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska threatened to quit Congress if the funds for the bridge were diverted from his state to rebuilding bridges damaged in Hurricane Katrina.

Congress approved the bill with Alaska’s money intact, although it was not specifically marked for the Gravina Island Bridge anymore. It wasn’t until 2007 that Palin reversed her support on the bridge, though she obviously felt comfortable keeping the federal money given to her state. Palin said “Thanks” to the funding and used the controversy as a key issue with Alaska voters.

She fought for the money, she got the money and she kept the money. That’s hardly, “No, thanks.” However, a crasser two-word message to voters may sum up Palin’s decision to keep the money and run a presidential campaign as though nobody would remember this fact.

As much as I would love to pin this squarely on Palin, she wouldn’t be selling her stories if nobody was consuming them. The real tragedy here is not that another politician is being brazenly dishonest. The tragedy is that voters consume the rhetoric without fact checking, that media outlets do not press the candidates to substantiate their claims and that we can show better voter turnout for American Idol than a presidential election.

Until then, Palin and others like her will continue fill the airwaves and plaster our televisions, each trying to sell us a new bridge, each more boldly and recklessly than before.