Anchorage Daily News

Some readers have complained about the "Palination" of the Alaska Newsreader. Today's version blends Alaska news with national, including non-Palin items.

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Palin returns to Alaska Wednesday, addresses Track's deployment ceremony Thursday. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner says the governor will be welcomed home at a rally Wednesday, and will speak at her son Track's deployment ceremony Thursday.

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One jet goes to eBay, new campaign jet gets Palin's name. The Los Angeles Times Top of the Ticket blog shares a photo and the detail reported by the Wall Street Journal's travel blog that Gov. Sarah Palin, known for shedding one jet, now has use of another that bears her name.

It's an Embraer 190, with Palin's very own name right there in big blue letters. "The plane, chartered from JetBlue, seats about 100 and will be the traveling home for the 44-year-old Alaska Republican."

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Palin took per diem pay while staying in her Wasilla home. The Washington Post this morning took a careful look at travel expenses for Alaska's governor, noting that she "billed taxpayers for 312 nights she spent in her own home." The per diem she charged the state is meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling. State officials say this is allowed because Juneau is her "duty station." Her per diem bill was $16,951. Her family travel bill, for trips that included children or her spouse, tallied $43,490.

The first family's travel is an expected part of the job, spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said.

"As a matter of protocol, the governor and the first family are expected to attend community events across the state," Leighow 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."

The story notes that past travel expenditures have carried political risk for state officials and quotes former Gov. Tony Knowles and his practice. The story also compares Palin's travel to former Gov. Frank Murkowski. His travel bill was $463,000 the year before Palin became governor. Her travel expenses for all of 2007 were $93,000.

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"Bridge to Nowhere" continues to dominate campaign coverage. Journalists are quibbling with VP candidate Sarah Palin's claim that she just told the feds "Thanks, but no thanks" for the bridge. The Wall Street Journal demonstrates today that the governor's record indicates she backed away from the bridge, but she kept and spent the money elsewhere.

And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.

"We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge," Gov. Palin said in August 2006, according to the local newspaper, "and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative."

The Swamp political blog cites the fact-checking service PolitiFact's analysis. (This is a fact-checking operation operated by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly.) A new ad the McCain/Palin campaign began running Monday is at the heart of its clarification here.

First, we should point out that the ad is misleading because it appears to justify the claim with a newspaper article on the screen. "PALIN FLIES HIGH AS A REFORMER," says the headline from the Anchorage Daily News that scrolls onto the screen as the announcer says "she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."

We think many viewers will get the impression that the Anchorage Daily News article backs up the claim. But alas, it is TV ad sleight-of-hand. The article merely says she "ordered her administration to seek fewer congressional earmarks" after the bridge became a symbol of pork-barrel spending. There are no other details about the project or her role in ending it.

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Both camps argue over which candidate sought the most earmarks. The Washington Post, in a story about how the McCain campaign is using Palin as a fundraising tool, captures this back and forth between the two campaigns over use of those now-stinky earmarks.

Palin: "Just the other day our opponent brought up earmarks, and frankly I was surprised that he would even raise the subject at all," Palin said. "I thought he wouldn't want to go there."

Obama hasn't asked for any earmarks this year. Last year, he asked for $311 million worth, about $25 for every Illinois resident. Alaska asked this year for earmarks totaling $198 million, about $295 for every Alaskan.

Palin has cut back on pork project requests but, under her administration Alaska is still and by far the largest per-capita consumer of federal pet-project spending.

Other Palin news out today:

> Sliming Palin (Newsweek)

Addresses Internet claims and rumors over banned books, cutbacks in children's programs. An example: Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn't cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years.

> Men's support gives Palin edge in latest poll (CNN.com)

> Pulling the curtain on Palin (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post columnist)

Dionne is unhappy with the campaign's decision to only allow interviews with news media when Palin is met "with some level of respect and deference." His response to that?

Deference? That's a word used in monarchies or aristocracies. Democracies don't give "deference" to politicians. When have McCain, Obama, Biden or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton asked for deference? A few hours later came the announcement that Palin would grant an interview to ABC News' Charlie Gibson. Recall that Gibson was the co-host of an ABC News debate last April during which Obama faced a relentless pounding. Here's hoping that a sense of fairness will lead Gibson to be comparably tough on Palin this week. If he treats her more deferentially than he did Obama, we will know that McCain's war on the media is working.

> Sarah Palin's Alaskanomics (Time magazine)

Sarah Palin thinks she is a better American than you because she comes from a small town, and a superior human being because she isn't a journalist and never lived in Washington and likes to watch her kids play hockey. Although Palin praised John McCain in her acceptance speech as a man who puts the good of his country ahead of partisan politics, McCain pretty much proved the opposite with his selection of a running mate whose main asset is her ability to reignite the culture wars. So maybe Governor Palin does represent everything that is good and fine about America, as she herself maintains. But spare us, please, any talk about how she is a tough fiscal conservative.

> Get the action figure here. (Telegraph, UK)

Two Sarah Palin action dolls portraying the Republican vice presidential nominee as an executive and an action hero have gone on sale in the United States.

> The Alaska bloggers on Sarah Palin (Time magazine)

> Hugging etiquette for mixed-sex tickets (The New York Times)

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And now, on to non-Palin Alaska news.

The godwits arrive in New Zealand from Alaska, skinny and tired and early. New Zealand's One News says conservationists are worried why the birds took such a quick exit from their Alaska homeland.

The bar-tailed godwit arrives in New Zealand after a non-stop 11,000-kilometer flight over the Pacific, landing tired, worn out and starved.

Godwits have been steadily losing large chunks of their feeding grounds in Asia, where the birds stop over on their return trip to Alaska at the end of the summer.

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Juneau's assembly just says no to sales tax funding for whale sculpture. Its vote last night reverses a month-old decision to give $500,000 in sales tax reserves to a group of private citizens called the Whale Committee, the Juneau Empire reports.

Last month's decision sparked public outcry from people who said the expenditure was an inappropriate use of sales tax money. It prompted Assembly member Sara Chambers to propose a tax exemption on food because, "clearly we have more money than we know what to do with."

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Your PFD is less valuable today, thanks to inflation. KTUU says the 2008 Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend check, factored for inflation, is worth less than past dividends of smaller amounts.

This year's $2,069 dividend is the highest on record. But adjust that amount for inflation and it actually ranks fourth-highest in terms of purchasing power.

According to the Alaska Department of Labor the payouts in 1999, 2000, and 2001, which were lower, would have actually stretched further.

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Native elders comment on climate change they notice. The Homer News reports that elders in town for the biennial Gathering of Native Tradition, sponsored by Nanwalek, Port Graham, Seldovia and the Pratt Museum, shared their reactions to a changing climate.

"We're seeing different kinds of bugs, different kinds of birds. What kind of bird is that? I don't know," said Juanita Kignak of Barrow.

"You notice different animals around. Now you have geese, now you have herons. You have mallards overwintering. July used to be foggy, raining. September would be sunny," said Michael Opheim, the Seldovia Village Tribe's environmental coordinator. While not a gray-haired elder, he entered the discussion after elders had spoken. "It's getting harder to predict."

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Regional CEOs call for a bulk fuel cooperative to drive down fuel prices. The Delta Discovery reports on an area-wide meeting in which officials from communities in the Calista region met to discuss ways to contain fuel prices for villagers. Leaders from the Association of Village Council Presidents, the Calista Corporation, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. and the AVCP Regional Housing Authority came together for the meeting.

"It is extremely important that we unify our efforts," concluded Ron Hoffman, president of AVCP Regional Housing Authority. "Together we can address our energy crisis."

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