Sarah Palin and "The end of the political pole dance" or "What do you mean I can only afford one tassel?" Update!

"What are you saying I can't still bring in the money from horny Republican men?"

Courtesy of Politico:  

Sarah Palin’s political action committee raised $388,000 in the first three months of the year, but it spent $418,000 and didn’t give a dime to any candidates — which is the purported purpose of the PAC.

Instead, Sarah PAC spent $255,000 on fundraising and a small team of political consultants that Palin has continued to support even as she receded from the political spotlight during the heat of the GOP presidential primary. 

It may be a little cruel of me, but I LOVE that even as it becomes increasingly clear that Palin is finished in the world of politics, she cannot bring herself to discontinue with the charade, which means she has to keep "consultants" and "media people" on her payroll for the sake of appearance.

Which of course fits right in with the Palin family tradition of polishing a turd and trying to pass it off as a gold nugget.

And hey do you remember how Palin said that she really did not care about the movie "Game Change" and would NEVER even bother to watch it?  

The PAC paid a little more than $19,000 to a Franklin, Tenn.-based company called Passcode Creative that has produced hagiographic Palin videos. The payments appear to coincide with the production and release of a video rebutting HBO’s “Game Change,” which Palin has alleged is based on a “false narrative.” 

The two-and-a-half-minute video, which was made to look like a movie trailer, was titled “Game Change We Can Believe In.” 

The video splices together a series of laudatory statements about Palin from McCain strategists Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace, who are portrayed in “Game Change” as expressing doubts about Palin. 

Yeah you know, not to be a stickler or anything, but usually when something "doesn't matter" to you, you don't spend $19,000 of your supporters money trying to refute it.  I'm just saying.

SarahPAC also paid $1,000 to send the Palin family to DisneyWorld

 In the first three months of the year, the PAC also paid $27,500 each to Palin chief of staff Michael Glassner and issue consultant Peter Schweizer, $22,000 to speechwriter and Palin Internet defender Rebecca Mansour, $41,500 to Crawford, $21,000 to researcher Andrew Davis and $12,500 to conservative coalitions liaison Pam Pryor. 

Well there are all of the usual suspects. (With the notable exception of Meg Stapletongue. Hmm.)

Nice to see that RAM is currently being paid so well to stay the hell off Twitter while slaving to make Sarah Palin sound like she knows anything about anything.

Considering how little SarahPAC seems to have done this quarter (Except for making that highly entertaining Palin mythology film of course) I started to wonder just what they had manged to spend $418,000 on?

Apparently the answer was buying stamps and filing papers. No, really!

The PAC managed to spend in excess of $67,000 dollars on "postage." And an additional $35,000 plus dollars on "clerical" work (This includes "data entry.").  Now some of this seems fairly legitimate, such as $38.00 to the Postmaster General in Arlington, Virginia, but the majority of it seems a little suspicious.

Personally I think it must be clear to everyone with even one or two working brain cells that SarahPAC has really never been anything but a huge slush fund for the Palin family, and that there is some creative bookkeeping happening to keep Uncle Sam from taking notice, but thirty five THOUSAND dollars for "clerical work" in three months? I mean come on!

Which begs the question, just what is being paid for here?

Much of the postage goes through two companies, MDI Imaging and Mailing and Southwest Publishing and Mailing, which appear to be fairly legitimate.  However for the life of me I cannot imagine how one can spend $67,000 dollars for postage in three months. Especially when only bringing in $388,000 for the quarter.

Now as for the clerical, that is perhaps even more suspicious.

The "data entry" portion was done by a company called Sterling LLC for a total of $8000, which was always paid in increments of $2,000.

The rest was paid to three Alaskan women, Carol Ryan of Wasilla, and what I am assuming is the mother daughter team of Marilyn and Tiffany Lane. Altogether this trio was paid almost $27,000 dollars for the quarter. If that continues for the entire year these three will have earned over $100,000 for "clerical work."  That is quite a sum of money for stuffing envelopes, filing papers, and.....?

Something smells very fishy, and it is not just the hands of a certain Alaska "fish picker." (Insert your own joke here.)

So what do YOU think "clerical work" stand for?

(Here is the link to the SarahPAC quarterly report, if you want to do a little digging of your own.)

Update: Okay by popular demand allow me provide this link to an open letter from Conor Friedersdorf over at the Atlantic to Sarah Palin on behalf of her donors.