An interesting quote from the McLies campaign today:
"As her record shows, Gov. Palin is committed to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice," Hazelbaker said. "She does not, nor has she ever believed that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence gathering test."
Oh really? Well, what about this:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's hometown required women to pay for their own rape examinations while she was mayor, a practice her police chief fought to keep as late as 2000.
A former Alaskan lawmaker says it seems unlikely that Gov. Sarah Palin was unaware of Wasilla's policy.
A former Alaskan lawmaker says it seems unlikely that Gov. Sarah Palin was unaware of Wasilla's policy.
Former state Rep. Eric Croft, a Democrat, sponsored a state law requiring cities to provide the examinations free of charge to victims. He said the only ongoing resistance he met was from Wasilla, where Palin was mayor from 1996 to 2002.
"It was one of those things everyone could agree on except Wasilla," Croft told CNN. "We couldn't convince the chief of police to stop charging them."
Alaska's Legislature in 2000 banned the practice of charging women for rape exam kits -- which experts said could cost up to $1,000.
Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, often talks about her experience running Wasilla, population approximately 7,000, and that has prompted close scrutiny of her record there. Wasilla's practice of charging victims for their rape exams while she was mayor has gotten wide circulation on the Internet and in the mainstream media.
...
Judy Patrick, who was Palin's deputy mayor and friend, blames the state.
"The bigger picture of what was going on at the time was that the state was trying to cut their own budget, and one of the things that they were doing was passing on costs to cities, and that was one of the many things that they were passing on, the cost to the city," said Patrick, who recalls enormous pressure to keep the city's budget down.
But the state was never responsible for paying the costs of local investigations. Patrick was also a member of Wasilla City Council, and she doesn't recall the issue coming before council members, nor does she remember discussing the issue with Palin.
She does recall Palin going through the budget in detail. She said Palin would review each department's budget line by line and send it back to department heads with her changes.
"Sarah is a fiscal conservative, and so she had seen that the city was heading in a direction of bigger projects, costing taxpayers more money, and she was determined to change that," Patrick said.
So, here's what we know: 1) Gov. Sarah Palin was the mayor of Wasilla; 2) Wasilla forced women to pay for their own rape kits; 3) Gov. Palin was heavily involved in funding activities for the city and even went "line by line" through the city budget. So, basically, either the McCain campaign is lying about her lack lack of support for rape victims, or she was completely clueless about funding in her own city. I question the argument that she didn't know about the rape kits, given that her own police chief was fighting legislative efforts to require city funding:
Tara Henry, a forensic nurse who has been treating rape victims across Alaska for the last 12 years, told CNN that opposition to Croft's bill from Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon was memorable.
So, then, was she unaware of her own police chief's lobbying efforts? Or is she just lying through her teeth? More likely, Palin was taking the insane religious stance that emergency contraception, which is part of a rape kit, is akin to abortion. Awesome.
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