Media describes Palin budget increase as cut

Slashed funding. Budget cuts. Reduction in needed services. Increased class sizes. Shorter library hours. All of these statements are code words used by the liberal left to scare the crap out of senior citizens, school parents and unions. If you don’t agree to tax increases, your precious services – that can only be provided by the government – will be slashed.

The problem is, many of these statements are used to cover lies and misrepresentations, often supported by liberal media hacks. A great example is Paul Kane’s drive-by-media article on how Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and vice presidential nominee, “slashed” funding 20 percent to Covenant House Alaska.

Get a load of the lead from Kane’s post. Does this crap pass for vetted news at the Washington Post?

ST. PAUL — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

Let’s get this straight from the beginning. State governments don’t work in the vacume of space. Their budgets are affected by how involved local communities are in funding as well as how much cash is flowing from federal coffers.

Example. Let’s say some entitlement program is funded with $6 million 2006. The town chipped in $1 million, the state $2 million and the feds $3 million. If 2007 comes around and the same program gets $6.3 million from government sources – that is a 5 percent increase in funding, period.

What liberals do is take a look at the individual funding sources. If the town chipped in $1.2 million, the state $2.4 million and the feds $2.7 million, you are not allowed to complain about the federal government cutting your program. That is an outright misrepresentation of your situation. Got that?

Second point, just because to write a grant requesting $5 million in funding, and you’re only provided with $3.9 million, you do not have the right to go around complaining that your budget was cut by the mean Republicans. That is exactly what Kane has done in his post.

Some facts.

  • The original grant request from Covenant House Alaska (CHA) was for $5 million. It was described as a one-time need. The state legislature had no problem with the request and funded the full $5 million, but Palin marked the request down – as seen in Kane’s story – to $3.9 million. (Alaska governors have the line-item veto)
  • Technically, the grant looks to be for $10 million, but CHA intends to leverage the state funding 2:1 from private and federal sources. So I guess if they get $5 million from the state, other funding sources trigger automatically to double it.
  • The grant request also indicates that CHA had already secured $12 million in funding. Adding Alaska’s $3.9 million that is a total of $15.9 million that CHA has for this project. Add the 2:1 leverage on the $3.9 from the state, that provides almost $20 million.
  • The project is for relocation and construction of a new facility to serve homeless, runaway and at-risk youths. I’m thinking that $20 million is enough.

Again, let’s make this clear. CHA never had the $5 million. After debate and review by the state legislature and executive branch, they got $3.9 million – more than triple their total government funding in 2006.

Malkin is encouraging everyone to contact the Washington Post ombudsman.

24ahead.com has gotten into the story and understands the math. Kane on the other hand must have missed the simple math class in grammar school.

Although related to main stream reporting, going to post this under politics to spread things out a bit.

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

1 Comment

  1. Dimsdale on September 9, 2008 at 8:58 am

    Can we have a pool to see who can guess when they will drag out and dust off their favorite word: draconian?

    Additionally, if it isn't as big an increase as they, or the given agency requested, it is a cut.

    As Rush would say, "right out of the old Democrat playbook."

    Some change.

    You can literally taste the fear in the Democrats for Palin.  They first make the mistake of annointing Obama over Hillary, usurping her "inevitable" nomination, they don't even pretend to consider her for the VP slot.  And now they wonder why they are losing influence with women voters.  LOL!  There is some judgment for you.



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