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Did the Globe blow it on Sarah Palin and rape kits?
By adamg on Sat, 10/04/2008 - 9:59pm
Michael Graham (yes, that Michael Graham), calls out the Globe over an editorial on Palin and rape kits in Wasila. Why, the Globe outright lies, he accuses.
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And to answer the question I bet a couple of you are asking
Didn't I write just a couple of days ago that I was trying to keep Universal Hub focused on Boston, so what the frick am I doing posting two Sarah Palin things in one day?
Yes, I did write that. And I still believe that. What makes these two posts different (I think) is that there is a Boston connection. In the first post, the connection is the origins of a phrase Palin used - it comes from John Winthrop aboard the ship the Puritans were on in what is now Boston Harbor. In this one, it's a dispute a local radio talk show host has with something one of the local newspapers wrote.
But tell me how I'm wrong.
I figured you just liked the
I figured you just liked the way she winked at you ;-p Thursday during the debate but I'm glad to learn you have a more substantive reason.
![IMAGE(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk143/nfsagan/100308palin.gif)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
Lets face it. She's quite a story.
Wasilla Hometown paper says it's TRUE
Wasilla did not want to pay the cost for rape kits and so decided to bill the insurance company of the patient (crime victim) or the patient directly (crime victim) for the cost of the kit rather than pay it themselves as the state law required. Read on. You'll see why I believe it.
New Mayor Palin Fires Police Chief, which is her right 1/30/97:
On March 6, 2000, Del Smith, the Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, testified in support of HB 270 (the bill outlawing the billing of rape kits) and the minutes noted:
Gov. Palin under fire for Rape Kit and Bridge to Nowhere by Former Gov Knowles (Wasilla hometown paper The Frontiersman says it’s TRUE.)
A former worker with VCCB notes via 9/22/08 email:
The debunking of this claim is true only if you accept that Wasilla police are in compliance with the law by billing an alleged rape victim’s health insurance or sending the victim the bill and having them seek reimbursement from the VCCB. It’s clear that the Wasilla police chief’s intention was to do so in violation of the law although no records of such billings could be produced. Palin’s hand picked police chief, in trying to avoid $5000 - $14000 per year in evidence collection expenses in rape investigations decided to try and have the expense paid by an entity other than the town, in violation of the statute.
Another source
USA Today: Palin's town used to bill victims for rape kits.
Too bad Katie Couric didn't
Too bad Katie Couric didn't get a chance to ask Mayor Palin the question:
And as of 2000, the state
In fact, the State of Alaska changed the state law so that no town in Alaska could charge the victim for a rape kit, which is used to collect evidence about an alleged rape.
The kit itself cost less than fifty bucks but the examination and the tests that are done on the samples cost hundreds of dollars, typically $800.
Palin and her chief of police Charlie Fannon did not like the new law because he didn't think the town should have to pay the $5000 - $14000 a year for rape kits that could not be charged to the person's health insurance policy. Palin was elected as a reformer on a tax reduction platform, notwithstanding the fact she championed the building of a town-owned ice hockey rink.
Palin and Fannon are both more concerned about the money and who pays it than the rape victim who does not have health insurance. They want to charge her and have her get the money back from her rapist. Lovely.
Alaska's rape rate is 2.2 times the national average. Lovely.
Well you know , hey there,
Well you know , hey there, can I call you anon? Yeah Barack Obama would charge you for universal health care , heck gee golly come on now say it aint so. I just think if these girls, young woman , would just not have any of the wink wink nudge nudge ya know we wouldnt be in this mess ya know. John McCain is a maverick and he and I will change what you talk about in DC dont cha know. I am talking straight talk, American express talk to the people of America. Rape is bad and I tolerate rape victims, of course I do I will allow them to have the choice to be what they are ya know. ;)
I dont care what Mr Michael Graham has to say about the rape kits and Sarah Palin, plain and simple she wanted to save as much money as she could to create her little shrine to herself that so she tried cutting every thing she could from the budget that wasnt on her political radar. Wasilla is such a small place you would think they would be able to find anybody who raped a girl in town and be able to punish them and charge them for the rape kits that were needed to help the victim. Amazingly the smaller the town is the easier it seems to be for these people to hide.
Who says Sarah Palin's
Who says Sarah Palin's Anchorage supporters can't get an awesome rally going:
![IMAGE(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hWAVXHNngbk/SOgm_shuONI/AAAAAAAACLE/_I5-TQHX1fQ/s400/rallies7.jpg)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
More importantly, see what Sarah Palin's injection of religion into politics(video) has done to the quality of life in Wasilla, AK.
This story is not true
GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS
This particular Democrat talking point has been widely known not to be true for weeks. The controversy is why the Boston Globe would print it now, when everyone already knew it was debunked weeks ago.
And furthermore, just because a person is running as a political candidate against the candidate you happen to support, you don't have to become deranged loon about it.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/...
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTM...
Another overview on the history of this story
Here's another overview on the history of this story:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/20...
Yelling: GET IT THROUGH
Yelling:
and posting links isn't a compelling way to make your case. If you want me to take your argument seriously, make one.
The poster pointed out that
The poster pointed out that even the solidly leftist Slate.com has repudiated this charge - before the Boston Globe ever ran it. The poster also provided citations that take you a few seconds to check out. Whining about caps is not an intelligent response. He made his case perfectly clear. You, on the other hand, did not make any case.
making a claim and having reasons
Claiming an allegation is not true, and explaining the reason that supports your claim is the difference between a debate on the merits and a spitting contest. You don't seem to recognize a difference.
I didnt read that particular
I didnt read that particular story on slate but would like to argue about Slate being "leftist" I find them to be "objective." While the majority of their writers are democrats who voted for John Kerry in the last election (we know because they are one of the few news sites that actually polled their writers and encouraged them to lay all the facts on the table in 2004) there is plenty of stories that are not left centric. Christopher Hitchens for one , he writes in Slate alot and is one of their better known personalities, skewers people on both sides and was pushing for the Iraq war back in the beginning when Daily Kos was screaming no war. I find their blog sections to be more liberal minded, but thats where they encourage almost pure opinion out of their writers, and the actual stories to be more centric, and even the blogs have conservative voices strewn across them.
Palin and the rape kits
Unfortunately, what we have established is that despite compelling evidence to the contrary, some people will NEVER give up on an indefensible position. Ever. People who shout about people, er, shouting? I have to admit, when somebody preaches racist lies or disingenuous garbage to me, I also tend to eventually lose my temper. The really smelly upshot is going to be in early 2009, when the thrown garbage has to be cleaned up. It ain't gonna be pretty, folks. What are the odds of the Globe ever saying in an editorial: "You know what? In this one case, we screwed up. We apologize." THEN I will respect the motives of Ms. Loth and Co.
Factcheck.Org September 24,
Factcheck.Org September 24, 2008
Q: Did Sarah Palin make rape victims pay for their own rape kits?
A: Palin's police chief in Wasilla did that. Whether Palin supported this is not certain.
We've seen countless Internet and e-mail claims that Sarah Palin forced women to pay for their own forensic testing when reporting a rape. Unlike some claims about Palin, this one has some merit, though Palin's precise role is unclear. Here's the story:
In 2000, complaints about this practice in rural cities including Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill preventing alleged victims of sexual assault from being billed for forensic tests. It was signed into law by then-Gov. Tony Knowles. Palin had been the mayor of Wasilla for four years at the time, and a local paper reported that the Wasilla police chief, Charlie Fannon, defended the practice, saying he had billed women and their insurance companies for these tests rather than placing a "burden" on taxpayers:
Palin wasn't quoted in any news coverage at the time. More recently, after she was picked to be Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate, her spokeswoman Maria Comella told USA Today that the governor "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test." Comella declined to answer questions about when Palin found out about the practice and what, if anything, she tried to do about it. Fannon, who is no longer the chief of police, has not spoken to the press either.
Eric Croft, a former Alaska state representative who sponsored the 2000 legislation, told CNN that "I find it hard to believe that for six months a small town, a police chief, would lead the fight against a statewide piece of legislation receiving unanimous support and the mayor not know about it." But Croft, a Democrat, says he does not recall discussing the issue with Palin at the time.
- Jess Henig
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_sarah_pa...
OK So either Sarah Palin
OK
So either Sarah Palin agreed with the police chief and is an aweful person for doing that to a rape victim
OR
She had no clue about it even while it was happening in the town she was in charge of. Even while her police chief was out in the field pushing to not allow the bill in question to pass. Which makes her seem kind of useless as a mayor.
Wasilla is a small place, its not like this was some precinct in Roslindale making its own policies that could easily be out of view of the mayor for a couple of years.
Doing the math ...
If the Police Chief complained that it would cost $5,000 to $14,000 a year ... and the kits cost about $500 a piece ... and Wasilla had (at that time) about 6,000 people ...
That means 10-30 rapes per 6,000 people per year or about 15 to 50 per 10,000 people (US rate in 2000 was 3.5 per 10,000 persons).
Wasilla was the rape capital of the US by those numbers - 4 to 15 times the national rate is a pretty sick rape rate! One would think that the kit cost would be the least of the worries!
In public health, that sort of phenomenon in a small place is known as a "hot spot" or a "cluster" - an area of extreme activity requiring investigation. Would not most mayors be concerned if their rate of forcible sexual assault was so extreme compared even to the Alaska rates? Would they really want it known that they put obstacles in the path of a full investigation of cases when they preside over the Rape Capital of the United States!
The unwillingness to fully investigate these cases by pushing off the cost of the kits speaks to an unwillingness to investigate and to link up data to find serial rapists.
Who was being served here? Who was being protected? I guess "denial" and "Denali" share a bunch of letters.
Seriously... Also 14,000 a
Seriously...
Also 14,000 a year doesnt sound like much, but in such a small city thats alot of money. You would think she would have a handle on such a large sum of money. I know I live in a much larger town and the mayor would definitly know about a 14,000 budget item.
I think its safe to say
This discussion really has nothing to do with boston anymore.
I dont think so, the topic
I dont think so, the topic was did the globe blow a story. The answer lies in wheter or not that story is true or logical. So the story is being discussed. Otherwise how could we possibly discuss the validity of a story if we cant discuss the story itself?
"even more false" than "false"
Who wants to take a run at fact-checking these two assertions... and who knew something could be "even more false" than "false"?
Who is Michael Graham?
??
Michael Graham
He's some guy who occasionally writes a column for the Herald, but his main job is to host a talk show on a station that doesn't get funded by money taken out of my paycheck.
Local extreme-right lunatic
It staggers me that there's actually an audience for his brand of fear- and hate-mongering here in the bastion of liberalism. Hah.
fact check
From The ABC "News" interview from which Charlie Gibson either stupidly or knowingly relied on the AP transcript that selectively quoted Palin in partial sentences so as to distort their meaning:
GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?
PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.
GIBSON: Exact words.
PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.
But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.
That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.
GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”
And now let's look at the transcript of what she actually said to the graduating class from the church where she spoke:
"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan."
Praying that something is the case is not the same as claiming that it is so. Either Charlie Gibson was too stupid to see this distinction or he was counting on his audience to be. Amusingly, the Youtuber hosting the above link falls into that category.
the Palin witch doctor video
Have you seen the Palin witch doctor video where the evangelical witch doctor "lays hands" on Palin and asks god to make a way for her in government?
If Palin believes what the witch doctor believes (and she has never contradicted this as a matter of faith) then she believes god sent her to do god's will in government. This is a pernicious, dangerous and unamerican idea. (Remember learning Bush thought the Iraq war was god's will?) Abraham Lincoln himself never presumed to be doing god's will, instead he hoped and prayed that his policy was god's will. There's a big difference. Lincoln's approach requires the most determined decision making and Bush/Palin's approach calls for divine intervention in their thought process.
Palin believes "end times" are coming and that the rest of the United States will be drawn to Alaska for survival. She's a wack job and her Republican campaign "authentic" aww shucks small town girl act wears thin pretty fast.
Thanks everyone for the help!
Interesting comments, which add up to the inescapable fact that the Boston Globe-Democrat cannot back up its claim that Sarah Palin's administration in Wasilla ever charged a single rape victim for a rape kit. Lots of speculation, lots of claims by Palin opponents that "of course" that was the policy, but no documentation.
Meanwhile, the actual testimony in the state hearings on the matter and public records I linked undermine the allegations, and no other documentation to challenge them has been presented. Which means the Globe-Democrat's claim is, at best, unsubstantiated. At worse--given documentation showing no charges to victims, but two rape kits paid for by the town before the state law took effect--blatant lies. Add to that the Globe's bizarre "she hates rape kits because she's pro-life" argument and, well, it's yet another sad day for journalism in Boston.
This is the power of the internet: the gathering of collective wisdom, the truth-revealing value of cross-examaination, and the ability to put partisanship to good use through debate and dialogue.
I appreciate it.
What is clear is that the
You seem interested in whether the Globe can substantiate. I am interested in Palin's policies.
I don't know how you get around this:
What is clear is that the state law prohibited charging rape victims for evidence collection (rape kits) and Palin's hand picked police chief Charlie Fannon did not think the $5000 to $14000 cost should be paid by Wasilla taxpayers. He wanted the victim, their insurance or the state victim's board to shoulder the cost, contrary to the state law. Fannon took an oath to upload the law, not violate it.
At dispute is whether Fannon was following Palin's orders or acting on his own. What say you?
The records before 2000 were purged recently so unless a rape victim comes forward, we will not know because Palin won't answer questions.
Here's some interesting material you might want to know about Palin. For example, did you know that the local hospital stopped doing abortions after Palin was elected mayor? How did that happen? Prevailing law (Roe v. Wade allows) abortions in the first trimester. Video