Another look at Housegate

Housegate has captured the imagination of many readers. We compared photos of the Sports Complex in Wasilla with photos of Sarah Palin's house many times and discussed all the possibilities of any wrongdoing.

Unfortunatelly, since the long article on the New York Village Voice - The Book of Sarah - no new information has come to light. The article appeared on October 8, 2008.

There are several oddities and coincidences regarding Sarah Palin's house, but it would take more than a few discussions on a blog to make this into a real "gate." Ted Stevens nearly faced a prison sentence for something similar, but the investigations were not carried out by a blogger... we may ask questions, but we can't make the charges stick.

ODDITIES AND COINCIDENCES

• Both the Sports Complex and Sarah Palin's house were built within the same timeframe, using the same building materials supplier - Spenard - who contributed to Sarah Palin's gubernatorial campaign and sponsored Todd Palin's team on the Iron Dog races.
• Todd Palin claimed to have built the 3,450 ft $552,000 house, which features enormous windows, with the help of a few of his buddies in their spare time.
• Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits as mayor of Wasilla, so there is no record of who Todd’s “buddies” were.
• The enormous windows and staircase railings appear to be a tribute to the architecture of the Sports Complex.

These are the things that raised the red flag, but we don't know if they were ever investigated by the proper authorities. We have noticed that anything investigated by the Alaskan authorities have a tendency to come to nothing when it involves Sarah Palin.

Perhaps we should pin our hopes on the dreaded "feds..."

Please read previous Housegate posts on Palingates and look at all the pictures.


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Looking into Sarah Palin's finances

This post lists 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

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


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.

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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

PART 5 - 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 6 - 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.

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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
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Sarah Palin, please be more specific. Which local Sports Arena are you going to use for your book signing?

Sarah Palin twitted:

AK book signing is Dec22, 11-2@local Sports Arena...very excited about this bc we'll get 2see old&new friends&share holiday cheer@same time!
about 1 hour ago from TwitterBerry

Is the signing going to be held at this local Sports Arena, Sarah?



(Click on photos to enlarge)

We couldn't help but notice the similarities between the "house that Todd built" and the Sports Complex in Wasilla...

Many questions were raised about her house, but no answers were ever offered.

If the signing is held in Wasilla, there will be some nice, fresh footage and photos.

We love photo comparisons!

More posts about Housegate.
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Sarah Palin, money, houses... (and a PS)

So our Sarah is building a chateau nextdoor to the house Todd built and has designs on another adjacent house...

OK. She can do that. She could build an island in the middle of lake Lucille and put a castle there, it would look great, really regal!

But these things cost a lot of money and I'm worried Sarah may have some trouble with that. A real state developer from Alaska estimates the price of the plot where the construction is going on at around $200,000. Add the cost of materials and contractors and we're talking big money. These things always cost more than the initial estimate, don't they?

Sarah Palin made a few dollars with one of her thousands speaking engagements, but that would cover just the purchase of the land. Yes, she may have pocketed a handsome advance for her book, but she would have to sell a pile of books to earn the advance before she makes any actual money out of the deal. Since "Going Rogue" went on pre-order sale, the price has been slashed to less than half of the original cover value and Newsmax is offering free copies to people who subscribe to their magazine. It doesn't bode well.

I'm not sure her appearance at a Milwaukee right to life gig will bring in enough badly needed dollars. According to her Linkedin profile, she's looking for job opportunities. Let's not forget that Todd is unemployed, which is not very helpful when paying for building materials and contractors. At least I expect they're paying the contractors on this occasion. Their original house was built by Todd and his buddies, but in the absence of building permit requirements in Wasilla, we don't know exactly what happened there. Well, Sarah is nothing if not transparent...

Another source of dollars is the Alaska Fund Trust. Yes, yes, it was supposed to pay her legal fees, but the wording of the trust document is somewhat vague and it could really be used for anything, provided the trustee approved. The trustee is beauty queen, dairy industry expert and real estate agent extraordinaire Kristan Cole. She would approve anything Sarah Palin asked for, no questions asked.

The accounts and list of donors were supposed to have been made public in July. Has anybody seen them? Me neither. I find the whole thing a bit odd. Sarah wrote "thank you" notes to a number of donors to the fund with which she had no involvement but her trustee failed to disclose anything about any of it as promised on the official Sarah Palin legal fund website. The last we heard about it was that it was frozen and they had not touched a cent of the money, pending some investigations regarding the legality of the legal fund itself.

I know it's rude to discuss other people's money troubles, but I'm curious...

Sarah Palin owed half a million dollars in legal fees. Is her lawyer still waiting for his money? Did she pay him out of the book advance she hasn't earned back yet? Did she pay him with the money she was paid for the Hong Kong speech? How did she pay for the land nextdoor to her house? If she's going to buy the white house, where is the money going to come from? How did she pay for the materials for the chateau? Are the contractors being paid?

Unless Murdoch considers her book advance a gift and doesn't expect the sales to earn the money back, it doesn't seem prudent to be spending at the present rate...

PS - Are there any tax experts/book contract experts who could help clarify the conjectures about tax-free gifts and clauses that may be included in book contracts regarding advances? Your input is most welcome...

(Kristan Cole photo: AP)
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Sarah Palin's house

This appeared on Sourcing from China:

There’s possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin’s house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the “same windows, same wood, same products.” Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.

The post gives no links, so we don't know what these Alaska sources are, but it looks good. It's so lovely to read the word indictment next to Sarah Palin's name...

Sarah Palin will be going to China soon. I wonder what topic she'll choose for her speech? "How to build a house in three weeks with some help from hubby's buddies" sounds appropriate.

All Housegate posts. More details about a possible indictment.
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Sarah's housegate returns

I'm reposting this because a number of comments on a more recent blog have revived interest in this story. The other Housegate posts can be found here.

A fellow blogger has put a together a meaningful collection of photos of Sarah's house and the Wasilla sports complex. I raised the same points in Housegate - questions, but didn't have such good photos to support my arguments. The new photos show the glass balustrade and railings in their full glory!

Now we need some photos of the kitchens for comparison... Many people remarked on the similarities between Sarah's kitchen and the one she had installed in the sports complex.

Knowing what we know about Sarah Palin's inclination to take advantage of her position, both as mayor and as governor, for personal gain, it strikes me that these little bits and pieces either amount to an enormous coincidence or to something very fishy indeed...

Link to photos: click here
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Housegate - questions

There are some interesting similarities between Sarah's house and the Wasilla sports complex. The glass panelled balustrade featured in Matt Lauer's interview after the election (from around 3:35 to the end) bear a striking resemblance to those in the complex. The windows look similar too. Let's put it this way: the windows of the house look like those one would find in a commercial building, same goes for the glass balustrade. We know both the contractors working on the complex and the Palins used the same builders materials supplier, Spenard. But couldn't the Palins have chosen something a bit more homey and less sport complexey? Spenard are big in Alaska, I'm sure the Palins could have purchased windows and balustrade with a more residential look from their catalogue.

Looking at the windows again, from what I've seen in those TV programs where people embark on very ambitious projects and the viewers are regaled with detailed footage of how things come together, Todd's "buddies" would have needed some sophisticated, heavy equipment to get those windows in place. They look VERY expensive and nobody in their right mind would have trusted some bare handed "buddies" to instal them without incident. The same goes for the glass panel balustrade. They are not your run-of-the-mill, off the shelf type of thing. Again, they're very expensive and would need to have been fitted by expert contractors.

Let me play the devil's advocate and give the Palins the benefit of the doubt. Let's say that no parts of the house came from the complex building site. It still remains an absolutely ENORMOUS house, built to a very high standard, using very expensive components. Which was apparently built in no time at all, by multi-talented Todd and "buddies".

When Sarah built her house... her income was 68K a year. Even adding on Todd's income, the house was too expensive for a family of four kids, plus plane, plus vacation homes, plus boat, plus snow machines, etc. Sarah was still going on and on about how they are a family of modest means, real Joe-six-pack type of people, Todd being a blue collar worker and all that as recently as during the 2008 campaign. In 2002 Sarah earned half of what she earns today... I'm just doing the maths.

Another interesting coincidence is how both buildings went up within the same timeframe. The sports complex started being built at breakneck speed even before the title to the land was secured. It would appear that what had to be secured, even before the title to the land, was the committee that would select the contractors to build the sports complex. Before the mayor left office. So many coincidences, my poor head is spinning! Could it be a case of serendipity? Mmmmm....

I am only asking all these questions because the rumours were rife during the vice-presidential campaign, questions were asked, the answers were not terribly convincing and we still don't know the identity of Todd's resourceful and incredibly skilled "buddies". No records of building permits naming the contractor*, you see?

(*Does it mean that if you had a house built in Wasilla at that time and after completion the windows of house fell out, or a member of your family was electrocuted due to faulty installation, nobody would know who carried out the work? There wouldn't be a public record of it?)
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Housegate

From the Esquire interview, another quote from Sarah Palin:

"My favorite place in Alaska is on a cold winter day in my own house, with fat snowflakes falling. In my nice warm home."

The Palin family home is a two-storey, 3,450-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, wood house situated on Lake Lucille. According to Palin’s income tax returns, the house was assessed at more than half a million dollars — $552,000 to be exact.

Todd Palin told Fox News that he built the 3,450 square-foot, half million dollar home himself with the help of some “buddies.” Coincidentally, at the same time that Todd and his “buddies” were building the Palin house, the $12.5 million dollar Wasilla sports complex and hockey rink was under construction right down the road.

The architect who was awarded the $12.5 million sports complex, Blase Burkhart, is the son of Roy Burkhart, who is frequently described as a "mentor" of Palin and was head of the local Republican Party (his wife, June, who also advised Palin, is the national committee woman). Asked if the contract was a favour, Roy Burkhart said "I really don't know." Palin then named Blase Burkhart to a seven-member builder-selection committee that picked Howdie Inc., a mostly residential contractor owned at the time by Howard Nugent. Formally awarded the contract a couple of weeks after Palin left office, Nugent has donated $4,000 to Palin campaigns. Yet another coincidence is the fact that several of the subcontractors on the sports complex - including Spenard Builders Supply - were also contributors to Palin’s campaign. Spenard happen to be one of the sponsors of Todd Palin in the Iron Dog races.

In addition to being a sponsor of Todd Palin's snow-machine team that has earned tens of thousands for the Palin family, Spenard hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.. When the Palins began building a new family home off Lake Lucille in 2002—at the same time that Palin was running for lieutenant governor and in her final months as mayor—Spenard supplied the materials, according to Antoine Bricks, who works in its Wasilla office. If the Spenard name sounds familiar, that’s because they are one of the contractors that worked on Senator Ted Stevens house. Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens was indicted for accepting $250,000 worth of free renovations to his house from oil pipeline company VECO. Stevens lost his seat in the Senate to Mark Beguich before the Senate could throw him out after he was found guilty.

Someone who visited the complex said it resembled "a huge airplane hangar" so far away from the city's center that kids can't bike or walk there. It's adorned by a plaque commemorating Sarah Palin. Even as a governor, she is still such a champion of the sports complex—which loses money every year—that she steered state funding for a new kitchen to it.

Todd Palin appears to have so many talents! On top of being the First Dude, he is a four time champion of the Iron Dog race, was production supervisor for BP in the North Slope, left that position to become a house-husband, returned seven months later as a production operator (because they needed the money to send the kids to college*), runs a commercial salmon fishing business in Bristol Bay and when he finds the time, he builds houses with his "buddies"!

Since Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits as mayor of Wasilla, there is no record of who Todd’s “buddies” were.

Perhaps the same people who found out all about Ted Stevens could do a bit of research and name these excellent "buddies". Just out of curiosity, of course!

(* Track and Bristol???)

[for a complete profile of the Governor, read The Book of Sarah.]
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