Sarah Palin: Fighting Fact-Checkers Over Taxes from a Fishing Boat

Sarah Palin won’t let anything drop. Not even when she is on a fishing boat in Homer, Alaska.

Early Saturday — 12.07 a.m. to be exact – Palin launched another round via Facebook in her row with PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times, over Democrats’ possible tax increases and the George W. Bush tax cuts expiring at the end of the year.

The fight began a week ago when Palin said on Fox News that Democrats could levy new taxes on Americans over a 10-year period. “No, this is going to result in the largest tax increase in U.S. history,” Palin told Fox News’ Chris Wallace. The website, PolitiFact, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, gave her remarks its “Pants on Fire” rating. (Yes, as in liar, liar…).

In her latest post titled, “Pants on Fire, Still,” Palin fanned her followers’ fears that “a $3.8 trillion tax increase is coming down the pike, folks.”

Palin said she will continue to call on the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress to protect “mom and pops’ tax cuts from expiring at year’s end.
She wrote, “Granted, liberals (including stubborn ‘fact-checkers’ who claim I’m lying about the soon-to-be tax cut expiration) are trying to clobber me for holding them accountable and prodding them toward revealing their intentions…”

Palin accused PolitiFact of “moving the goal posts in their second dissembling ‘fact-check’ on the Democrats’ tax hikes,” and basically agreeing with her statement.

The 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate lobs one attack after another in her post: “PolitiFact is curiously stating that in his 2011 budget, the President mentioned some ‘plan’ to do something about not raising taxes on all Americans. Um, don’t know about you, but I don’t find this general, vague promise of some ‘plan’ all that reassuring.”

After her own explanation of Obama’s budget, she writes, “Bottom line: until we see a formal proposal – an actual bill before Congress — then get ready for that $3.8 trillion hit.”

The back-and-forth between PolitiFact and Palin has continued for days. On Friday, PolitiFact responded to Palin’s statement in a previous Facebook post about Democrats non-existent plan to extend the Bush tax cuts.

The website called that Palin assertion “False” followed by a detailed explanation. “We’re not trying to antagonize Gov. Palin, but President Barack Obama has indeed published his proposals in some detail — at least twice, in the annual budget documents that the White House releases.”

PolitFact site has cited Palin three times previously with the “Pants on Fire” truth-o-meter ranking, concerning her statements about health care reform death panels, Obama’s “experiment with socialism” and Palin’s own run-in with ethics laws.

But in her Mama Grizzly fashion, Palin’s not backing down. She closes her latest post with a dig at the Left, “By the way, the Left sure gets wee-wee’d up when they’re called on something like this, eh?”

Palin said she wrote the post on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska where she’s “working my butt off for my own business, merely asking the Democrat politicos and their liberal friends in the media: ‘What’s the plan, man?'”

Palin says that the “Left” feels threatened by her question.

“So, I’ll go back to setting my hooks and watching the halibut take the bait, and when I come back into the boat’s cabin in a few hours, I’ll log back on here to read their reply,” she said.

Palin is out to win this battle. “I’ll have succeeded if they’re forced to finally reveal to Americans how they plan to increase taxes, and what they intend to do with our money,” she said. “In the meantime, I’m catching fish.”
No doubt, Palin is itching for several rounds with the accurate PolitiFact.