When Sarah Palin was criticized about her large fee for addressing the teabaggers convention in Nashville, she told Greta Van Susteren:"The speaker's fee will go right back into the cause. I'll be able to donate it to people and those events, those things that I believe in, that will help perpetuate the message, the message being: Government, you have constitutional limits. You better start abiding by them."
Back in September 2008, Sarah Palin made a similar promise:
Gov. Sarah Palin, touted by Republican presidential nominee John McCain as a reformer when he picked her to be his running mate, says she will donate to charity more than $1,000 in campaign contributions from two Alaska politicians implicated in a federal corruption probe.
Palin said Thursday she also is giving back $1,000 from the wife of one of the men. The move came a few hours after The Associated Press reported that Palin had accepted the money during her successful 2006 run for governor. Palin was elected easily after she promised to rid Alaska's capital of dirty politics.
"Gov. Palin has made a career of holding herself to the highest standards of ethics. As soon as the governor learned of the donations today, she immediately decided to donate them to charity," campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin said.
We have received some interesting information about the Palin/Parnell campaign disclosure statements.
Sarah Palin did attempt to give the "bad" money to charity. The only problem was her ignorance of the laws governing her own state. Here are the copies of letters exchanged between the campaign treasurer and APOC:
The carryover reports shown below reveal a curious fact.
The screenshots show that the balance remained exactly the same as in the report submitted right after the gubernatorial campaign. That was to be expected.
Sarah Palin couldn't give anything to charity. She can't touch that money at all because she's not a candidate for any state elective office.
The only way she would be able to spend any of the $49,540.30 would be to close the campaign account, disperse the funds and submit a final report, which has not happened, as we can see below. Another alternative would be for Sarah to run for office, so she could quit...again!
Not one dollar was returned to any donors or given to any charities.
Sarah Palin did not attempt to make any changes to the rules while she had the authority as governor of the state of Alaska. If she had, that would have enabled her and other candidates in the same situation to make charitable donations or return the money to certain donors. After all, Sarah Palin championed the remarkable ethics legislation, didn't she?
Why does Sarah Palin still have a "Palin for Governor" account when she didn't want to be a "lame duck" and dislikes "politics as usual"? What is she going to do with nearly $50,000 and when?
Her grand gesture during the vice presidential campaign was just that, an empty promise she would not keep.
This is typical Sarah Palin modus operandi: all talk, no knowledge, no action and no credibility.
Do we detect a pattern?
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