Another Palin Lie

TPM reports. She claims:

As mayor I took a voluntary pay cut, which didn't thrill my husband.

When she took office in 1996, the mayor's salary was $64,000, but three years later, it was $68,000. And, in what way is that a pay cut?

It gets a little complicated, but when all the facts are aired, she distorted the truth (read, lied) about the pay cut.

As a Council member she voted against hiking the mayor's salary from $64,000 to $68,000, but it passed anyway. When she came in as mayor, she passed the ordinance which brought her salary down to $61,200. But that may not actually have taken effect, and Council-mandated raises brought her actual salary up to $68,000.

Oh, she just had to take that pesky old salary increase because hey, that's what the City Council voted on anyway. And who is she to stand in the way of existing rules -- Palin the reformer who took on the Old Boys' Network.

In my line of work, I work with all kinds of potential borrowers. Sometimes, I get a customer whose credit score, or savings in the bank, or income is just short of the minimum required to qualify. Sometimes -- and this was in the past when lenders made exceptions -- I could get around those little shortages. But put all of them in one borrower and it usually means that the customer does not qualify.

Likewise, the salary issue in and of itself is not a big issue, but when combined with all the other little lies (like claiming that she was winging it during a speech because the TelePrompter had broken, when in fact it hadn't) it adds up to a person who had no regard for the truth. Facts are an obstacle to overcome, a problem to be solved. As Ron Susskind's interview source, the anonymous White House aide who sounded an awful lot like Karl Rove, said, "When we act, we create our own reality." Does she ever!

From Talking Heads' "Cross Eyed and Painless":

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts dont do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts dont stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape