It would be worth a couple of hearty guffaws were it not so disheartening. Some in the media, specifically CBS, CNN, and the New York Times, are spreading a story they evidently gleaned from Daily Kos that, contrary to what Sarah Palin said in her acceptance speech about being an advocate for special needs children, she actually cut the Alaska state budget for such programs by 62%.
This will doubtless disappoint those suffering the fevers of what Michelle Malkin calls Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS), but the charge is false. In fact, the Special Education Services budget actually rose by 12% last year under governor Palin.
What happened was that one of the programs that had formerly been folded into Special Education Services, the Alaska Youth Challenge Program, was taken out of special needs and put elsewhere in the budget. This made it look at first glance as though the special needs budget had been slashed by 62% when in fact the Youth Challenge Program actually experienced a 12% increase in funding.
It took one stay-at-home mom about 30 minutes of googling on the internet to discover the explanation that eluded the vast resources of the media organs who are spreading the false information. It makes one wonder why everyone doesn't just get their news from the internet.
RLC
