It is a common trick corrupt politicians in the Third World use. Often they do not buy expensive big ticket items. They don't even accept them as gifts. It often happens that the car they are driving belongs to a businessman that needed a favor - the politician is simply storing it for the businessman. Sometimes furniture in the house they live in may belong to another person as well. The furniture is not a gift - it is there because the owner of the furniture needed a place to put it. It is all very innocent, they say.
Last week, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska testified at his trial. I chuckled when I heard about his testimony. It was very familiar:
Stevens has said he never sought gifts and wouldn't even accept a free lunch, much less expensive remodeling services. But prosecutors say he had a history of accepting gifts — including an expensive massage chair from a friend — and omitting them from the financial disclosure forms.
He said he considered that chair a loan.
"And the chair is still at your house?" prosecutor Brenda Morris asked.
"Yes," Stevens said.
"How is that not a gift?"
"He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift," Stevens said. "He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift. We have lots of things in our house that don't belong to us."
Playing to the jury, Morris appeared confused.
"So, if you say it's not a gift, it's not a gift?" she said.
"I refused it as a gift," Stevens replied. "I let him put it in our basement at his request."
Senator Stevens would fit right in as a Third World politician. The trick is to never accept it as your own. When discovered, you simply give the item back since it never was a gift and never belonged to you.
Today Sarah Palin spoke out on her $150,000 shopping spree. She declared, "Those clothes, they are not my property." The clothes belong to the RNC, and apparently she was just holding them. She said that she is not taking them with her after the campaign:
"This whole thing with the wardrobe, you know I have tried to just ignore it because it is so ridiculous, but I am glad now that Elisabeth brought it up, cause it gives me an opportunity without the filter of the media to get to tell you the whole clothes thing," she said.
"Those clothes, they are not my property. Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I'm not taking them with me. I am back to wearing my own clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska. You'd think — not that I would even have to address the issue because, as Elisabeth is suggesting, the double standard here it's — gosh, we don't even want to waste our time."
Like Ted Stevens, Sarah Palin seems entirely comfortable using things that do not belong to her. When exposed, she can always return them. She fits right into the corrupt Alaska political culture she claims she is reforming.
Her words and deeds would make Third World politicians smile.
[Cross posted at my blog.]