Gov. Sarah Palin (flickr)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made lemonade out of lemons today by auctioning off on the Internet the fancy wardrobe purchased for her failed vice-presidential run, and raking in more than a million dollars — which she immediately donated to the Needy Governors’ Winter Clothing Fund.

The feisty four-eyed political phenomenon evidently doesn’t plan to stop there: Papers have reportedly been filed for a new corporation specifically meant to cash in on her sudden fame with myriad money-making projects.

For example, hubby Todd will be scooping up snow from the lawn of the Palin house in Wasilla, Alaska, and molding it into souvenir “genuine Alaska Toddballs” to be sold for $10 apiece to spectators at January’s Washington inauguration ceremonies to throw at President Barack Obama.

Black Ice, a consulting arm, will specialize in personal vendettas, using covert ops to go after in-laws, friends, employees -– anyone who, as the prospectus puts it, “ticks you off.” A character-assassination campaign aimed at eliminating Arizona Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz,) as a future GOP presidential candidate is allegedly the firm’s first assignment, paid for with uncashed Palin dry-cleaning, limo and lunch vouchers from the recent election contest.

Certain projects seem intended to both make money and further Palin’s political career. Although a plan to trade her governorship, her tanning bed and Todd for the disgraced Ted Stevens’ Senate seat was shot down by the Alaska Supreme Court, insiders mutter Palin may still go through with her idea of performing a “Dance of the Seven Bath Towels” for a private audience at $1,000 per head.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of a new children’s book, “Marveltown.” His other books include “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

TWI’s Laura McGann reported yesterday about Palin’s tendency to reward her friends with cushy jobs.

The Los Angeles Times today provides some more details, illustrating that, in a state already legendary for rampant corruption and cronyism, the Palin administration stood out as a hotbed of patronage.

Palin often tells audiences that, as governor, she “took on the good ol’ boy network” in her home state. However, according to The Los Angeles Times, Palin replaced the old “good ol’ boy network” with one of her own. From the article:

* More than 100 appointments to state posts — nearly 1 in 4 — went to campaign contributors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.

* Palin filled 16 state offices with appointees from families that donated $2,000 to $5,600 and were among her top political patrons.

* Several of Palin’s leading campaign donors received state-subsidized industrial development loans of up to $3.6 million for business ventures of questionable public value.

* Palin picked a donor to replace the public safety commissioner she fired. But the new top cop had to resign days later under an ethics cloud. And Palin drew a formal ethics complaint still pending against her and several aides for allegedly helping another donor and fund-raiser land a state job.

The article quotes a University of Alaska historian who describes Palin as having a “penchant for placing supporters, many of them ill-prepared, in high posts”

According to article, “all five Palin selections for the powerful Natural Gas Development Authority, which oversees a proposed gas pipeline project were donors” — a fact that may cloud the McCain campaign’s praise for Palin’s work in negotiating a $40-billion natural gas pipeline. If you stack the government’s deck with your supporters, how tough can the negotiations with the energy industry really be?

Palin’s friends from Wasilla also received choice appointments to the office of attorney general and to the state agricultural division. In the latter case, the woman appointed was previously a real-estate agent who cited a “childhood love of cows” as a qualification.

The article contains many more examples.

With the Bush administration’s politicization of the Justice Dept., failed response to hurricane Katrina and corporate profiteering from the war in Iraq, the United States has seen what can happen when powerful politicians put personal loyalty and political connections ahead of actual qualifications for high-level government posts. Palin’s apparent record in Alaska could provide a window into what a Palin vice presidency might look like.

Gov. Sarah Palin (flickr: bbeanan)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — On the campaign trail over the past two weeks, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been courting the working-class vote.

“I know what Americans are going through,” she said after the stock markets took another dive last week. “Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak — which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday, working-class American running for such an office.”

As economic forecasts remain bleak and the foreclosure rate continues to rise, the McCain campaign needs to shore up support among blue-collar workers in such key battleground states as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Palin’s folksy language and personal anecdotes are clearly part of that effort.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Palin often calls herself working class and a regular “Joe Six Pack.” But her income, assets and access to health care place her higher up the economic ladder. While she describes herself as a member of the working class, when faced with policy choices on issues important to blue-collar voters, Palin, over the course of her political career, rarely breaks in their favor.

A close examination of Palin’s record on such issues as health care, the minimum wage, taxes and retirement funds shows that she has remained silent on proposals that would channel public money to programs beneficial to working-class Alaskans. In other instances, Palin supported programs that favored wealthy Alaskans over low-income families.

Financially, Palin and her husband, Todd, are far from being members of the working class. In America, where class is usually defined by household income, a middle-class family earns about $49,000 a year. In Alaska, the median income for a family is about $60,000. The Palins made $166,000 last year, putting them in the top 20 percent of U.S. earners, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. When including the $17,000 Palin received in per diem payments as governor, the family is bumped into the 95th percentile. The Palin’s assets total $1.2 million, including a lakefront house valued at about half a million dollars, a snowmobile and a float plane.

Todd, a union worker on the North Slope, and Sarah Palin both have jobs that include comprehensive health benefits for their family. And, unlike most Americans, Todd Palin and the Palin children are entitled to federally funded comprehensive health care because of Todd’s Native Alaskan ancestry. The Dept. of Health and Human Services provides comprehensive coverage through the Indian Health Service for people like Todd Palin and his children, who trace their Yup’ik heritage back to Todd Palin’s maternal grandmother.

Many working-class advocates in Alaska say that Palin’s affinity for the working class has not resulted in increased funding for programs that benefit working families.

Instead, as her supporters say, Palin has established her fiscal conservative bona-fides in resisting spending on social programs — even when the state’s budget surplus is expected to reach between $5 billion and $9 billion next year in a state of about 650,0000 people.

Palin has been specifically criticized for allowing Alaska to remain one of the least generous states in a federally backed health-care program for the children of working-class families; for remaining silent on a proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage; for tacitly supporting the privatization of public employee pensions; and for implementing a regressive tax in her hometown of Wasilla while mayor.

HEALTH CARE

Lack of health care is a hallmark of an hourly, working-class job in America.

Both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama have taken up the health-care issue in the presidential campaign. Palin noted during the vice-presidential debate that her family has gone through periods when they were uninsured. She said she understands what it’s like for Americans “to sit around the kitchen table” figuring out how to “pay out-of-pocket for health care.”

While this may resonate with many voters, it’s unlikely that Palin or her family has gone for long without health insurance. Todd Palin has had high-paying union jobs on the North Slope for much of the Palins’ marriage. Now, as governor, Sarah Palin qualifies for state coverage.

Even if they did lack insurance, the family would likely have qualified for a federally funded state-based program, Alaska Area Native Health Service, because of Todd Palin’s Native Alaskan ancestry.

Residents are eligible for the program’s free services if they hold stock in one of four native Alaska corporations, including the Bristol Bay Native Corp. According to public disclosure forms that Sarah Palin filed with the state of Alaska, her husband and their children are BBNC shareholders, meaning they would likely qualify for the health service program.

The McCain-Palin campaign has not replied to repeated inquiries, left over the course of four days, requesting comment about the native health-care program.

As governor, Sarah Palin has not sought to dramatically expand coverage for the children of working-class Alaskans.

By next year, Alaska’s state budget surplus is expected to be between $5 billion and $9 billion because of the high price of oil. Taxes on oil production and oil royalties account for the bulk of the state’s revenue. Alaskans do not pay income tax.

A separate fund of just under $40 billion holds oil royalties that are distributed yearly to all Alaskans, even children. This year payments hit $2,000 per person. The state also dispensed an additional $1,200 per person to help offset the same high energy prices fueling the budget boon.

During this boom time in Juneau, Palin has proved herself to be a staunch fiscal conservative, rather than a populist politician of the working class.

For example, Alaska is one of the nation’s least generous states when it comes to working-class children’s health-care programs, according to a report from the non-partisan health-care research group Kaiser Family Foundation.

Alaska allows children of parents earning up to 175 percent of the poverty level, or about $30,000 a year, to participate in the program. Only two states in the nation, North Dakota and Nebraska, have less generous programs. Another 40 states cover up to at least 200 percent of the poverty level, around $42,000 nationally.

In May 2007, Palin signed a bill that re-instated 1,300 of 2,500 children who had been cut from the state’s version of the federal “SCHIP” program — the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — during tight financial times a few years before.

Under SCHIP, the federal government grants states 70 percent of the cost of providing health-care for the children of the working-class.

Palin’s critics say that during a time of budget surplus the program should be expanded, not just partially reinstated.

“[SCHIP] is a very cheap way of getting health-care for working families,” said Rep. Les Gara, a Democrat from Anchorage who is critical of Palin’s policies affecting the working class. Gara said he thought Alaska should cover children up to 200 percent of the poverty level, as most other states do.

MINIMUM WAGE

One cornerstone of Palin’s campaign on the national stage has been “job creation.”

While mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002, Palin supported growth and job creation as well. Her policies ushered in rapid commercial development — particularly the construction of new big box stores. Today, the biggest employer in Wasilla is Wal-Mart, employing more people than the city.

Palin supports job creation, but she has not supported government’s role in setting wages.

Though the cost of living in Alaska is higher than most other states in the United States, because most basics have to be shipped in, Gov. Palin regularly remained silent on efforts to raise the Alaska state minimum wage from $7.15 an hour to $8 an hour last year. In rural parts of Alaska, like the town of Nome, milk recently topped $7.50 a gallon and gasoline cost $5.36 a gallon. About 5 percent of the Alaska workforce makes minimum wage, some 14,000 people.

Next summer the Alaska state minimum wage will fall below the federal minimum wage if it remains the same. The hourly rate is lower than that of 35 other states – and the lowest minimum wage on the West coast.

RETIREMENT PRIVATIZATION

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt last week, Palin sympathized with Americans whose retirement plans are in the market, noting how she felt the pain too.

“The relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we’re taking, probably $20,000 last week in his 401(k) plan that was hit. I’m thinking, geez, the rest of America, they’re facing the exact same thing that we are.” When asked why things are tight for her family, she said, “It’s just the great financial crisis that America is in as our savings accounts also, and a 401(k), they’re being hit.”

Palin didn’t mention that she did not intervene when state lawmakers attempted to reinstate a state pension plan supported by labor unions and public employees, for which Palin qualifies.

In 2005 President George W. Bush wrote to state legislatures across the country urging them to privatize state pension programs. Alaska lawmakers, led by then-Gov. Frank Murkowski, adopted such a plan for all new state employees.

Three years later, there is little public support for the system. A coalition of unions, state employees and public policy analysts has formed to push the legislature to re-adopt the old system.

Though both Republican and Democratic leadership has agreed the privatized system probably does not save the state money, a vote to return to a standard pension plan broke along party lines.

Palin did not weigh in during the debate.

“I think with some leadership,” Gara said. “We’d be able to reverse that Murkowski rule.” Gara pointed out that Palin had an 80 percent approval rating at the time of the vote, and her backing could have been vital.

REGRESSIVE TAXATION

Palin’s signature project as mayor of Wasilla was a sports complex, complete with an indoor hockey rink. The project was meant to be a community focal point, particularly in the long, dark winters here. It’s popularity has taken off recently.

To pay for the rink, Palin took out a $14.7 million bond. She raised local sales tax by half a percent to cover the cost of the project.

The move perhaps paints a slightly different picture from what Palin’s has presented on the national stage.

“As mayor, every year I was in office I did reduce taxes,” Palin said during the vice presidential debate. “I eliminated personal property taxes and eliminated small business inventory taxes and as governor we suspended our state fuel tax.”

At a press conference in Wasilla, the town’s current mayor differentiated the sales tax hike from other types of taxes, noting that it will be eliminated once the bond is repaid.

The tax, though temporary, is still regressive as opposed to progressive. There is no sliding scale adjusted for income level. Federal income taxes, for example, are structured so that those who make more money pay a higher percentage of earnings in taxes. Low-income people, with less disposable money, pay a smaller portion of their overall pay.

“The tax is unfair,” said Bob McIntryre, the director of the non-partisan Citizens for Tax Justice.

McIntyre explained that the tax disproportionately affects low-income families, who generally spend everything they make. “Things that you spend money on that are subject to sales tax goes down dramatically as income rises,” McIntyre said.

In a 2003 report, McIntyre studied Alaska tax policies from 1989 to 2002 and found that regressive tax policies are common in the state. McIntyre found that the poorest Alaskans, those making under $15,000 a year, paid 3.8 percent of their income in Alaska state and local taxes. Middle-income earners paid about 3 percent of their income. Wealthy Alaskans paid roughly 2.8 percent.

With no progressive income tax in place, working-class Alaskans end up paying a higher percent than their wealthy counterparts.

On the campaign trail, in battleground states across the nation. Palin is running as a strong advocate of the working class. This is an essential part of her message. But her record in Alaska, as both a mayor and governor, shows someone who has not been eager to push for pro-working-class policies.

Update: This story has been corrected to say Gov. Sarah Palin signed a health care bill in 2007, not 2004.

The most remarkable is a push by Palin in 2002 to pass a zoning exception, which she ultimately received, so that she could sell her $327,000 house on Lake Wasilla:

Two months before Palin’s tenure as mayor ended in 2002, she asked city planning officials to forgive zoning violations so she could sell her house. Palin had a buyer, but he wouldn’t close the deal unless she persuaded the city to waive the violations with a code variance.

Palin also cut taxes on snow machines and snow machine races at a time when she and her husband ran a snow mobile store. She also accepted freebies like an “awesome facial” and “gorgeous flowers.”

Perhaps these are just examples of typical small town politics, but when Palin’s experience at the local level serves as the basis for her national bid, it all looks a bit different.

According to a document released by the city, this is true — Palin’s salary was reduced from $64,200 to $61,200 shortly after she took office in late-1996. However, in June 1998, her pay increased to $68,000, She received another pay cut in July 1997, before having it restored to $68,000 three months later, where it remained until she left the position in 2002. From TPM:

The records don’t explain the mechanisms by which the pay shifts happened. As best as we can determine, the cuts were engineered by Palin herself through some sort of executive mechanism, and the raises were City Council-mandated hikes.

What’s the upshot? Well, Palin’s claim that she “took a pay cut” as mayor is true in a narrow sense. She came in and took a pay cut that she engineered herself.

But in a broader sense, the claim is an oversimplification that borders on misleading. The bottom line is that whatever her intentions, over the course of her mayoralty Palin’s pay went up thousands of dollars and stayed higher for years, money which she presumably kept. (If any proof emerges that she donated it to charity or channeled it back into city coffers in some other way, we’ll happily update.)

This isn’t another Bridge to Nowhere. But it does fit a pattern here, where Palin burnishes her reform credentials by describing intentions as realities or otherwise boiling down the record into easily-digestible sound-bites that at best are half-truths, as this latest one has now proven to be.

It also illustrates that all information originating with the McCain campaign is suspect until independently confirmed — fact-checking is a good game to get into if you want serious job security for the next couple of months. After eight years of near-constant spin from the Bush administration, is this what the American people are looking for from their government?

The state also picked up the tab for the first family’s travel expenses when accompanying Palin on state business — and at least once when Palin’s husband, Todd, traveled alone.

First, the most glaring item:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers 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 wrote some form of “Lodging — own residence” or “Lodging — Wasilla residence” more than 30 times at the same time she took a per diem, according to the reports. In two dozen undated amendments to the reports, the governor deleted the reference to staying in her home but still charged the per diem.

My job requires me to travel frequently, and I have some experience with claiming travel expenses. I often expense taxicabs to or from airports and the occasional hotel room. However, if I tried to claim, say, my apartment or meals I’ve had here in Phoenix as travel expenses, I would probably find myself unemployed very quickly.

But wait, there’s more. According to The Post, Alaska was billed more than $43,000 for travel by Palin’s husband and children. Palin’s spokeswoman, Sharon Leighow, defended the practice:

“As a matter of protocol, the governor and the first family are expected to attend community events across the state,” she said. “It’s absolutely reasonable that the first family participates in community events.”

The state finance director, Kim Garnero, said Alaska law exempts the governor’s office from elaborate travel regulations. Said Leighow: “The governor is entitled to a per diem, and she claims it…”

Asked Monday about the official policy on charging for children’s travel expenses, Garnero said: “We cover the expenses of anyone who’s conducting state business. I can’t imagine kids could be doing that.”

But Leighow said many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of “state business” with the party extending the invitation.

To be fair, Palin has greatly reduced her travel expenses compared to those of her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, who used the executive jet the state sold under Palin. However, The Post reports other governors have been more conservative with their per diem charges.

In the past, per diem claims by Alaska state officials have carried political risks. In 1988, the head of the state Commerce Dept. was pilloried for collecting a per diem charge of $50 while staying in his Anchorage home, according to local news accounts. The commissioner, the late Tony Smith, resigned amid a series of controversies.

“It was quite the little scandal,” said Tony Knowles, the Democratic governor from 1994 to 2000. “I gave a direction to all my commissioners if they were ever in their house, whether it was Juneau or elsewhere, they were not to get a per diem because, clearly, it is and it looks like a scam — you pay yourself to live at home,” he said.

Knowles, whose children were school-age at the start of his first term, said that his wife sometimes accompanied him to conferences overseas but that he could “count on one hand” the number of times his children accompanied him.

“And the policy was not to reimburse for family travel on commercial airlines, because there is no direct public benefit to schlepping kids around the state,” he said.

The article does not accuse Palin of wrongdoing. But, if she collected a per diem for 312 nights spent at her home, that’s more than half her total time as governor.

Some things are just basic cost of living. If regular, non-governing people couldn’t get away with it in their own lives, a governor who postures herself as a waste-cutting reformer should probably pay for her own expenses at home as well.

The city of Wasilla, Alaska, has posted online a collection of documents from Gov. Sarah Palin’s six-year stint as the town’s mayor, as well as her two previous years on the city council. You, too, can participate in the frequently thankless, soul-crushingly tedious, but occasionally rewarding (just ask TWI’s Laura McGann) work of poring over city financial reports, operations and capital budgets, and tax revenues.

You can even read the city’s official response(PDF) to inquiries about Palin’s alleged book-banning proclivities — though. I should warn you that you may be disappointed.

So go ahead, have at it! Be sure to email any potential Pulitzer-winning discoveries you unearth to mdelong(at)washingtonindependent(dot)com.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Here’s the paragraph that started it in The Times:

[Wasilla is] a small, unkempt-looking place, defined by a series of out-of-town stores, a huge lumber yard, a ramshackle bar named the Mug-Shot Saloon with Harley Davidsons parked outside and a lake, by the side of which is Palin’s house….

The Frontiersman, which — good for them! — has some home-town pride, hits back:

It’s as inaccurate and unfair as it would be for anyone else to define England by a stereotypical lack of dental hygiene.

I think the problem here, as several locals have pointed out to me, is that Wasilla is not really about it’s main highway drag of fast-food chains and big-box stores that visiting national reporters have been covering.

Most residents live nestled among trees and nature and spend free time enjoying the many outdoor activities Alaska has to offer. One source cancelled on me yesterday morning because he heard the moose hunting was particularly good right now! So, I see the Frontiersman’s point that painting the place as a dump is unfair.

However, the press, national and international, isn’t here to write travel columns. We made the trek to take a look at the city that Palin ran as mayor. The McCain campaign has cited her time as mayor as one of her qualifications for the vice presidency.

The Times is “defining” Wasilla in terms of what Palin could control. Perhaps they should have mentioned the beautiful mountain views to the south of town. Still, it’s fair to evaluate the look and feel of a downtown that clearly didn’t have much planning or zoning restrictions put in place by its mayor.

It’s a harsh world.

It felt a bit like a high-school gym or auditorium, with wood floors and an unfinished ceiling. The church was founded in the 1970s, though this building was completed in 2006.

A nine-member acoustic band opened the service with 30 minutes of Christian-themed songs — think loving God, forgiveness, humility, etc. It was a sea of about 500 folding chairs — all filled. Lights were dimmed so that the lyrics of the songs were easy to follow along with on the two large projector screens suspended from the ceiling on either side of the stage. The room’s focal point was a large, back-lit wooden cross.

When the music ended, Pastor Larry Kroon, a middle-aged, bearded man, greeted new-comers and, to my surprise, “the press.” A greeter at the front door had actually already given me a “welcome” goody bag — complete with a religious-themed CD and a green water bottle with the church’s “core commitments” listed on the side.

Kroon then said members of the press shouldn’t speak with anyone attending the service, or take photos. At this point, because I’m about an ounce better than paparazzi, I started to think about what the entrance looked like and where I’d most effectively snag people slyly. Kroon added he would not speak to the press on Sunday — so I signed up to speak with him Monday.

“Please don’t use this as a fishing pond for interviews,” Kroon said. Meanwhile, in my head, I was figuring that there’s a side exit people might use that would serve my purposes.

On the plus side, Kroon did go on to say that the press is a “gift from God.” He brought up Alexis de Tocqueville’s trip through the United States in the early 19th century and how the Frenchman identified two great American virtues– a free press and a free pulpit. Kroon was playing well with those of us in the back row, scribbling notes. I actually only saw TV camera crews on my way into the parking lot; I didn’t see any other reporters at the service.

Kroon, who kept the congregation engaged for the full 30 minutes he spoke, then touched on the positive experiences he had with the national media last week. The New York Times, Kroon said, sent a religion expert, who understood churches like theirs. Another reporter, from World Magazine, recognized authors in Kroon’s library.

Hearing this made me shift in my seat. TWI did not select me for this reporting trip because of my deep understanding of Christianity in America. In fact, it didn’t come up. The relevant factors were that I used to cover Alaska politics and still follow what’s going on up here. Unfortunately, 13 years of Catholic school and CCD didn’t seem like they’d win me any points here.

Kroon also noted that he was not the person to consult on policy — foreign, domestic or local. Church members would have to make those decisions for themselves. His job is to guide them in finding the “wonder, glory and mystery of Jesus” in scripture.

The Bible study portion of the morning, the central element of the service, focused on the first chapter in the Acts of the Apostles, which tells the story of Jesus meeting with his apostles to prove that he is alive. Jesus calls on his followers to be his witness and share his message with the “outermost points of the world,” as Kroon explained. Kroon stressed the importance of this message. One of the Wasilla Bible Church’s core beliefs is ministering to non-believers.

In conversation with some church-goers after the service, I was asked, earnestly, if I’m a believer myself. When I explained my Catholic background I received supportive nods. (So supportive that one woman gave me the email and phone number of her son, who lives in Washington.)

I spoke with two different couples — two lawyers and two entrepreneurs — about the role of the church in their own lives. They all agreed it’s a real community here. When I asked for their names, though, they hesitated — saying their pastor had suggested they not speak with reporters. When I tried to get them to reconsider by bringing up the de Tocqueville individualism message, they laughed.

Unfortunately, just as one church member was writing down directions to a beautiful area just north of Wasilla that she thought I ought to visit, a member of the church approached and said I was not allowed to interview anyone “on the premises.” My small group scattered in response.

At least I still have the number of the Alaskan ex-pat in DC.