When I heard Sarah Palin say at the VP debate that she’d had the Alaska Permanent Fund divest from Sudan to protest the Sudanese government’s actions in Darfur, I assumed that she had, in fact, had the Alaska Permanent Fund divest from Sudan. On the one hand, it was a totally plausible story — a lot of publicly controlled funds have divested. And on the other hand, it would be bizarre to tell such a straightforward lie. And yet lie she did:
“The [Palin] administration killed our bill,” said Alaska state representative Les Gara, D-Anchorage. Gara and state Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, co-sponsored a resolution early this year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund – a $40 billion investment fund, a portion of whose dividends are distributed annually to state residents – to divest millions of dollars in holdings tied to the Sudanese government.
In an e-mail later, Gara clarified that he believed opposition from the Palin administration helped kill his bill, but was not solely responsible for its death.
Bizarre.
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