Palin Cracks Down On Everyone But Herself

Palin Accepted $25,000 in Gifts

The 41 gifts Palin accepted during her 20 months as Governor includes honorific tributes, expensive artwork and free travel for a family member.

They also include more than 2,500 dollars in personal items from Calista, a large Alaska native corporation with a variety of pending state regulatory and budgetary issues, and a gold-nugget pin valued at 1,200 dollars from the city of Nome, which lobbies on municipal, local and capital budget matters, documents show.

Gold Nugget Alaska Pin - And this one’s only $200

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More From the Washington Post:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has made a crackdown on gift-giving to state officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda, has accepted gifts valued at $25,367 from industry executives, municipalities and a cultural center whose board includes officials from some of the largest mining interests in the state, a review of state records shows.

And:

Gift rules for elected officials vary among states, with some such as Wisconsin banning all gifts and others with no applicable rules other than anti-bribery statutes. When former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) ran for president this year, he faced questions about his acceptance of more than $150,000 in gifts during a decade in office.

“This is not a gift,” reads a handwritten note on Palin’s disclosure form. “It is merely interaction with a parent who is registered as a lobbyist with the state of Alaska.”

About a quarter of the entities bestowing gifts on the governor are represented by one of Alaska’s most influential mining lobbyists, who said in an interview that she was not involved in the tributes. The lobbyist, Wendy Chamberlain, has a relationship with the governor’s family through the friendship of their teenage daughters.