Sarah Palin's grifting - The evolution

While Sarah Palin appeals for help in a legal case and continues to sting the palinbots for donations to Sarah Pac, I thought it would be interesting to chart the evolution of her grifting ways.


MODEST

Per diem and children's travel

Sarah Palin billed the state for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. She also charged for travel expenses to take her children and husband on “official out-of-town missions.”

Property taxes

Sarah Palin failed to pay property taxes on her cabin, allowing honest taxpayers to foot the bill for the services her family enjoyed.


MODERATE

Alaska Fund Trust

The Alaska Fund Trust document included a clause regarding rights of withdrawal up to the maximum yearly amount to fall within the Federal Gift Tax exclusion. It applies to each beneficiary and shall be exercisable only by written notice to Trustee of the amount Donee wishes to withdraw, but no purpose for said withdrawal need be shown.

The sole trustee was Kristan Cole, Sarah Palin's long term friend, former beauty queen and one of the stars of Dairygate.


Here are some of the potential opportunities to benefit from taxpayers and other money:

Housegate

Housegate is a favourite with many readers as a potential means to use taxpayers money (as building materials) on Sarah Palin's house. It's been claimed that Todd and his buddies built it, but Sarah Palin suspended the requirement for building permits, so nobody knows if that's true.


Dairygate

A lot of money changed hands in the Dairygate affair, not to mention at least a million dollars worth of equipment that went missing before the official auction.

Ted Steven's 527

Palin Served As Director Of ‘Ted Stevens Excellence In Public Service’ 527. Palin’s name was listed on 2003 incorporation papers of the “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.,” a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. She also “served as one of three directors until June 2005, when her name was replaced on state filings.”

Unlimited funds from corporate donors... hmmm, sounds juicy!

Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend

Alaska Permanent Fund dividend checks barely made it out on time last year after a computer technician accidentally wiped out a data file containing hundreds of thousands of dividend applications.

Recovering from the Permanent Fund Division data loss involved calling in temporary workers to reconstruct lost data. Applications from the increasing number of applications filed online were able to be recovered; but paper applications had to be reconstructed by hand.

Sarah Palin refused to allow disclosure of the mandated state audit report on the computer failure.

Juneau freelance reporter Bob Tkacz was one of the reporters asking for the transition reports.

"No other governor in my experience has ever kept those reports confidential, and certainly never censored them in the way the Palin administration did," he said.

The Permanent Fund Division is still run by Debbie Bitney (formerly Richter), who also ran Sarah Palin's Inaugural Committee from her private business address.


The list of potencial sources of money is pure speculation, as there's no proof Sarah Palin helped herself to any of it. It only becomes relevant to any discussion because of her proven tendency to feel entitled to taxpayers money, as shown in the modest grifting section. Sarah herself is fond of saying that there are no coincidences.


THE BIG TIME

Wardrobe

The taste for big time grifting came from at least $250,000 worth of very nice clothes, including underwear for the whole family (somehow, the children kept losing theirs...).

Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund

This new legal fund doesn't seem too popular. The website is never updated, there are no progress reports and we still don't know if the people who donated to the old illegal fund received their money back.

Sarah Pac

It looks like Sarah Palin now favours less dodgy ways to get her hands on other people's money. Sarah Pac has had its fair share of accounting discrepancies, but we could try to be charitable and put it down to sheer incompetence...

Sarah Palin couldn't resist another dose of Alaska's taxpayers money for the latest lawsuit (old habits are hard to shake), but the real money now comes from people too stupid to know they're being taken for a ride.

That's progress!

Sarah Palin leading the way on tax dodges

(Photo courtesy of Mudflats)

The cabin on Safari Lake, owned by Sarah and Todd Palin with Scott Richter, has been appraised by the Mat-Su Borough at $99,700.



When Mudflats first reported that the Palins had not paid property taxes on the cabin, Sarah Palin's lawyer, Mr Thomas Van Flein, said it is not the owners responsibility to notify the authorities of any changes to the property. The Palins built the very large cabin sometime after 2005, didn't notify the Mat-Su Borough and paid taxes on the land only for a number of years, with buildings appraised at zero value.

The property on Safari Lake appeared on the APOC financial disclosures for the first time in 2005.



In an article from the Mat-Su Frontiersman, dated March 13, 2010, the head of the Mat-Su Borough Division of Assessment reiterated that homeowners do have the responsibility to notify them of changes, contrary to Mr Van Fleins assertion.

In areas off the road system, Dunivan said assessors use a combination of planes, boats and off-road vehicles to spot check properties.

Dunivan said it is the responsibility of the homeowner to notify the borough of any changes to the property. But, he is also realistic.

“Typically, that is not done,” Dunivan said.

When assessors do find out an improvement has been made, Dunivan said owners are not liable for past years when the improvements may not have been included in an assessment.

This is a very nice system, the homeowners are completely off the hook for past taxes and only become liable to pay any tax on new or improved buildings when the assessors decide to have a look around or somebody blows the whistle on somebody else.

Mrs Palin was not ignorant of the rules. After all, she had been mayor of a city in the Mat-Su Borough for a number of years and knew how important it is to raise revenue through property and other taxes. Money raised from taxes pay for services, improvements, sports arenas, you name it. We suspect the cabin was built sometime around 2006/2007, when Sarah Palin was either running for governor or had already been elected.

We all know how Alaska is not very keen on taxes. But they do exist and one would expect the highest government official in the state to set a good example. As Mr Dunivan said, typically people don't inform the authorities about changes to their properties and nothing happens, they get away with it.

Including the quitter governor, ethics champion extraordinaire, honest to the core...


Read all posts by Palingates referring to Sarah's "property taxgate" HERE.

(H/T to Older_Wiser for the tax assessment news)

.

And the Oscar for grifting goes to... Sarah Palin!

Oil money from "unfriendly" socialist countries, free trampolines, free travel for her children, designer RNC wardrobe? All perfectly OK with Sarah Palin.

Now that she's a proper TV celebrity, what's wrong with swarming the Oscar gifting suite with a large entourage and helping herself to bags of swag for "charity"?

E! Online has a nice article about it.

"They were like locusts," says one vendor at the suite, regarding Palin and her large group of hangers-on. "She showed up with like 20 people, and they immediately swarmed the place taking everything!"

We're told Palin was quite the prima donna and that she insisted the suite be opened two hours early so she could come when no looky-loos would be around.

"They told us last minute to get here superearly for [Palin]," says our rightfully annoyed source. "Then, she wouldn't let anyone take her picture or do any interviews."

For those of you who think that's a standard request—uh, it's not, especially when you're getting thousands of dollars worth of free goods. Some of the products Palin picked up included Bloom facial products, which she told the vendor she needed for her under-eye area.

But don't think Sarah stopped there.

Palin grabbed some oversize sweatshirts and tie-dyed "jeggings" for Bristol, got a blowout by colorist Erick Orellana from the Chris McMillan Salon, along with snatching up jewelry from Pascal Mouawad, Skagen Watches, Lash Food and 40 pairs of Aiaiai headphones.

A spokesperson for Aiaiai tells us Sarah said "they would be great for working out."

But was Sarah just grabby 'n' whiny for a good cause? The press release for the suite states Palin gave over $1,700 dollars to the Red Cross and planned to donate what she received at the suite to charity.

Oh, really?

Too fab she gave money, but we can assure you she did not give up any of her swag.

What a happy coincidence, the amount Sarah gave to the Red Cross is the same as demanded from Levi Johnston in the custody case...

It's been reported that one of the people from Sarah Palin's entourage who had a blowout by hair stylist Erick Orellana was Willow. How will Sarah manage to donate a blowout to charity?

Whatever Sarah Palin does with the loot, she's liable for tax on all of it.

"The Internal Revenue Service launched a campaign Thursday aimed at clarifying the tax consequences of the gift-jammed goody bags and luxury giveaway suites that surround awards ceremonies and film festivals. The bad news for every A-lister and low-level minion alike who ever pockets a freebie: It's taxable income."

Hollywood must be paying for past sins. They were hit by a modern version of the plague of the locusts...

(If anybody would like to emulate the latest grifter style and order a jacket like Sarah Palin's, look in the "Petite" collection at Nordstrom. With 50% discount, you can pick one up for only $48.90!)

HuffPo also has a good article about it.
.

Sarah Palin's affair with the Tea Party is over - she cashed in her $100,000 and said good bye.

Examiner commented on Sarah Palin's speech in Arkansas:

Yesterday at an event hosted by the Arkansas Republican Party, Sarah Palin told the audience that the Tea Party is not strong enough to field its own candidates on a Tea Party ticket so they need to pick a Party, preferably the Republican Party.

"Now the smart thing will be for independents who are such a part of this Tea Party movement to, I guess, kind of start picking a party," Palin said. "Which party reflects how that smaller, smarter government steps to be taken? Which party will best fit you? And then because the Tea Party movement is not a party, and we have a two-party system, they’re going to have to pick a party and run one or the other: ‘R’ or ‘D’."

Sarah Palin is a shameless opportunist and is using the Tea Party movement as yet another political prop. She spins and lies to suit her own needs.

Sarah Palin answering pre-approved questions after her speech in Arkansas

She said about her fee to speak at the Tea party convention:

"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."

Sarah Palin made sure she had enough wriggle room when she said that. The teabaggers believed she would use the money to support their candidates. They do have candidates...

Palin marginalized the Tea Party with her saying that they are not capable of running their own candidate and then ridicules them some more by saying that its time to pick either the “R” or the “D”. Palin knows that they have already qualified candidates in some States such as Nevada where the Tea Party is now recognized and they are running their own candidate against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

So, Sarah didn't commit to supporting any particular party, but has consistently endorsed and campaigned Republican candidates, apart from Rand Paul. The only reason she supports and donates to any candidates at all is to justify her SarahPac, a great money earner for herself and her "consultants".

The sentence "I'll be able to donate it to people and those events, those things that I believe in" really means that she will keep the money, thank you very much, because the only thing she believes in is her growing bank account. Perhaps she realized she can make more money from the Republicans...
.

Sarah Palin's empty promises

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?

***
Links
APOC index
APOC FAQs
APOC Statutes and Regulations
.

How many people paid $300 to watch the Super Bowl with Todd Palin in 2008? - UPDATES

Todd Palin was very involved with The Friends of the Alaska Governor's Mansion Foundation. Breakfasts, luncheons and other events were hosted by the First Dude to raise funds for the improvement of 716 Calhoun Ave, Juneau, AK.

One of the events promoted in Todd Palin's name was this:



Todd and his staff were busy organizing the Super Bowl event, co-ordinating with the members of the Foundation and trying very hard to sell tickets.

UPDATE 1

I missed this interesting e-mail when I wrote the original post. (H/T to silver_desert)










They discussed the Super Bowl in a Foundation meeting.





I found the Foundation's details and also their form 990.

The only problem with raising money by selling tickets to watch the game with Todd at the "House" is that the NFL doesn't like it at all. They stopped churches having Super Bowl parties. The only venues allowed to have public broadcasts of the games are sports bars, provided they don't charge their patrons for admission.

Todd, his staff and the Foundation were resourceful in coming up with all kinds of ideas for fundraising, but they couldn't be bothered to find out what the NFL rules are regarding broadcasts of the games or the copyright laws. The NFL didn't know anything about this fundraiser. Until now...

By the way, the Foundation was asked to foot the bill for an extraordinary improvement to the House: a trampoline.

Trampoline at the Juneau mansion

Unless the Palins are trampoline fanatics and had one at the House in Juneau and others at each of their properties, it could well be that the fun addition to the House found its way to the other fun house in Wasilla...

Palins' house in Wasilla

UPDATE 2

Reader Anony in Fla found Sarah Palin's financial disclosure for 2007 and we can see that the trampoline was in the list of gifts (page 14). It was a gift from the Juneau Governor's Prayer Breakfast Committee, valued at $340.


.

Looking into Sarah Palin's finances - PART II

We had fun this weekend, looking at the Teabaggers Ball, Sarah Palin's hand and all that. But now it's time to got back to the serious business of the Palins' finances.

This post contains all the previous photos and information from the original post of February 6 with added information, now posted as a new thread. This way we don't have all 600+ comments repeated here, which makes it very difficult to navigate. To refer to the old comments, please click HERE.

We had a closer look at the Alaska Inaugural Committee. It uses the same contact address as Richter Investments Inc.




The Alaska Inaugural Committee provided a different address on their tax return.



The statements at the end of the tax return are quite interesting.





The tax return doesn't show any contributions to their chosen charity, the only mention of it appears in the closing statements.

The Waterfall Committee is a Virginia charity which raises money primarily for breast cancer screening for women in rural Alaska. I have searched the Waterfall Committee but didn't get very far. There are some reports of dodgy business in an article from TPM, but it refers to fishing trips by congressmen, financed by Waterfall, during Murkowski's administration.

Using information from TPM's article, I found the following address for the Waterfall Committee: WATERFALL COMMITTEE 20809 CONFIDENCE CT, ASHBURN, VA 20147-3924, which is the same address as:

John H. Moseman was appointed Director of Congressional Affairs of the Central Intelligence Agency on 12 February 1996.

Mr. Moseman has most recently served as Deputy Staff Director, Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community. In his eleven-year career in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Moseman served as Chief of Staff and Legislative Director for Senator Frank Murkowski (Alaska); Minority Staff Director/Chief Counsel, Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs; and Minority Staff Director, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

A search of the database on guidestar yields only one result:



It looks like we came full circle, with no recent information regarding the Waterfall Committee. It doesn't appear to exist as a separate entity. The only related result was for a Warterfall Foundation in Fairbanks.

I would like to thank all the commenters who posted links and unearthed what information is available about both committees.

I performed a final search on Alaska Inaugural Committee to check something before publishing the post. All google results now lead to this:

I must point out that things have changed since writing the first "finances" post last Saturday, when I could access the website. That's how I made the screenshot you can see below, in Part 5 - The Richters.

Fascinating stuff...

I managed to obtain a screenshot of the Alaska Inaugural Committee sponsors, thanks to a link posted by Emily Peacock:



We'll look into the Palins' real estate dealings in PART III, coming soon.

+++

Here's a list of the Palins' properties and expensive toys, including several photos. Apart form the new chateau, all properties were acquired before Sarah Palin's book deal.

PART 1 - The properties

Palins' old house

Palin's present house, built at the same time as the sports complex


Palins' present house

The kitchen

The railings

Please note the railings reflection

Palins' cabin in Petersville, declared value: $0.00

The Palins own property with Richter and the Hansons


The property owned with the Hansons


Palins' new chateau, built after the book deal. Interesting windows...

PART 2 - The sports complex

PART 3 - The expensive toys

Todd Palin shows off his snowmobile to Greta Van Susteren on Lake Lucille


Todd Palin with one of his snowmobiles


Piper on her four-wheeler


Cousins and their snowmobiles in Petersville. The person in Arctic Cat gear on the right is Willow


From "Going Rogue"


Sarah Palin and Piper having fun on another fancy toy


Sarah Palin poses with Todd's Piper seaplane


Greta Van Susteren and Sarah Palin looking at Todd's Piper seaplane

The famous tanning bed

They also own various cars, but I couldn't find exactly which were their own and which were provided by the state. The only vehicle definitely owned by the Palins prior to the book deal is a black VW Jetta Diesel.

Some members of the family appear to have gym memberships and enjoy visiting tanning salons.

PART 4 - The income

PART 5 - The Richters

Article from Bloomberg:

Shortly after she was elected governor, Palin's office signed off on hiring Deborah Richter -- who attended college for a year then worked in bookkeeping and finance jobs -- as director of a division that distributes dividends to Alaskans from the state's oil-wealth savings account. Richter, who said she's known Palin for 13 years, was Palin's gubernatorial campaign treasurer and ran her inaugural committee.

The Richters and Palins also shared an investment: 30 acres of rural property near a lake in Petersville, Alaska, worth $47,300, according to Matanuska-Susitna Borough data.

"It sounds like a patronage deal for someone who ran your campaign; that's pretty normal,'' said Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. "What's not normal is that they have business dealings together.''

Article from the Juneau Empire:

Alaska Permanent Fund dividend checks barely made it out on time last year after a computer technician accidentally wiped out a data file containing hundreds of thousands of dividend applications.

Recovering from the Permanent Fund Division data loss involved calling in temporary workers to reconstruct lost data. Applications from the increasing number of applications filed online were able to be recovered; but paper applications had to be reconstructed by hand.

"Manually reconstructing" thousands of several hundred dollar payments from a state dividend fund? That sounds like it could be open to abuse.

Why did the Governor refuse to allow disclosure of the mandated state audit report on the computer failure?

Juneau freelance reporter Bob Tkacz was one of the reporters asking for the transition reports.

"No other governor in my experience has ever kept those reports confidential, and certainly never censored them in the way the Palin administration did," he said.

***

The Palins own property with Richter. These properties are listed by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough as owned by PALIN TODD M & SARAH H/ RICHTER SCOTT A and RICHTER INVESTMENTS INC/ PALIN TODD M & SARAH H

PART6 - The questions

We looked at the properties and expensive toys owned by the Palins until the book deal. Before that deal was signed, the total family income was fairly modest.

Does their lifestyle reflect their income prior to Sarah Palin's resignation as governor?

The Housegate questions resurface yet again. What's the real story behind the construction of the Palin's main residence and the large cabin in Petersville?

The Palins relationship with the Richters involves a committe that could dispose of surplus donations to the Alaska Inaugural Committe by making charitable contributions to organizations of the governor's choice.

What are the names of these charities and what was the total sum of money donated to them?

The relationship also involves a computer failure relating to the Permanent Fund Dividend.

Did any money go missing? Why wasn't the audit regarding the computer failure released for public inspection?

Does the cosy relationship between the Palins and the Richters seem a bit fishy?

PART 7 - Conclusion

Study the photos and documents carefully. If anybody uncovers any other information, please share it with us in the comments section, including links whenever possible.

***

IMPORTANT NOTICE

We have to coordinate our efforts so we can achieve the best results. When a telephone number or an e-mail address is unearthed in the course of readers research, we would prefer to receive the information via e-mail rather than have it posted as a comment. The reason is quite simple: these contacts could turn out to provide valuable sources for further research. One tactful phone call or e-mail from Patrick or myself could have much better results than a flood of calls or e-mails from a number of people.

We believe that "calls to action" work very well in the case of contacting organizations like CREW, ACLU, IRS, FBI and tipsters lines for major media outlets. But they don't work so well when they involve individuals. We don't really know the person at the receiving end and a flood of sudden communications can make the person very defensive and all the potential information could be lost.

If you come across any information as described above, please contact

patrick12344@yahoo.com or palingates@gmail.com

This is a good resource for further digging: http://www.governmentattic.org

A big thank you for all your efforts, what a team!

***
Supporting documents and resources:
Tax return 2006
Tax return 2007
IRS
Financial disclosure
Alaska Inaugural Committe report
Mat-Su Borough property search
Gryphen's post about the cabin
Article from the ADN
.