Mediaite: Gov. Palin will not receive speaking fee for 'Restoring Honor' rally

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Left-leaning website Mediaite admits that Gov. Palin will take no speaking fee for addressing Glen Beck's big rally next month at the Lincoln Memorial:

A source close to the event has verified to Mediaite that Sarah Palin will not be receiving a fee for her appearance at the rally, and that the funds raised will be used for basic overhead such as audio/video equipment, bathroom facilities, and the like. Beck won’t see any of the cash, and has even made a large personal donation, according to the charity.

In fact, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation says that the “Restoring Honor” rally has already netted the charity “just over $2 million,” which means they’ve more than covered the estimated cost of the rally, with a month and a half to spare.

The charity is the Special Operations Warrior Foundation (SOWF), which provides full scholarship grants and educational and family counseling to the surviving children of special operations personnel who die in operational or training missions. SOWF also offers immediate financial assistance to severely wounded special ops personnel and their families.

So scratch one DNC talking point. The leftist will have to move on to the next bogus talking point, probably another big lie like the rally is raaaacist or something.

- JP

Whatever Sarah Palin's speakers fee, it's worth every dollar

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In the midst of the media hysteria, driven by the left's jealous outrage over Sarah Pain's speaker's fee, Anna Tinsley at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram provides a Texas perspective:

Organizers for the future Uptown Women's Center in Dallas wanted a big draw for their one and only fundraiser for a new health and wellness resource center for North Texas women.

They were able to land one of the hottest speakers on the circuit: former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, whose calendar is already booked for the whole year.

"She's a very popular draw," said Carolyn Cline, executive director of the Downtown Pregnancy Center in Dallas, which is working to develop the uptown center. "Our phones are ringing off the walls.

"There's a huge buzz about her coming. We believe we'll have standing room only."

Tickets for the April 30 dinner with Palin, believed to be the former Alaska governor's only Dallas appearance this year, are selling for $1,000. Two tickets to a VIP reception with Palin and the dinner are selling for $25,000.

The organizers of the Dallas event, like their counterparts at the CSU Stanislaus Foundation, are prohibited by the terms of her Washington Speakers Bureau contract from disclosing the exact amount they will be paying Gov. Palin to speak.

That the former vice presidential candidate commands the reported six-figure fees reserved, some claim, for former presidents and vice presidents drives leftists and their media mouthpieces up the wall. How dare that woman not just demand -- but actually get -- the same kind of money that Bill Clinton and Al Gore routinely get paid (without controversy) for making public appearances? Why, there should be a law against such a thing! Never mind that some athletes and actors, whose contributions to society are at best debatable, get the same kind of money for showing up somewhere and sometimes even saying a few words.

Is Sarah Palin worth that kind of money? Even a casual glance at our unofficial Sarah Palin events calendar says "You betcha!" If an event organizer provides her with a large enough venue, Sarah Palin has proven that she can easily sell upwards of 10,000 tickets. Do the math. Even selling the cheap seats can raise some serious cash. Even at a modest $25 a ticket, selling 10,000 of them yields a gross of a quarter of a million dollars. If the Dallas event is a sellout, which is all but guaranteed, it could raise nearly $2 million:

"Of course $100,000 is outrageous, but it's not out of line with what other people are getting," said Jim Riddlesperger, a political science professor at Texas Christian University. "When you are in the promotion business, you've got to spend the money for the headliner to draw people to your function. When you think of the cost of things these days, $100,000 is not a huge investment."

Some speakers at TCU may be paid $60,000 to $80,000.

Palin... has proven to have a broad appeal.

Reports show since she resigned her job as Alaska's governor last year, she has earned $12 million through TV and book deals and speaking fees, including $100,000 for some speeches.

[...]

"Very few others get individual paydays at that rate," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "No other governor in the country, except maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger, could command a speaker's fee like that now.

Consider this: Sarah Palin drew 16,000 people, mostly women, to a Friday event in Louisville which last year drew only 5,000. But even in a smaller venue, she helps to stuff the coffers with cash. Saturday in small-town Washington, Illinois she drew 1,100. The Peoria Journal Star reported:

Some 420 banquet/speech tickets sold for $200. The 560 speech-only tickets were $75 for balcony and $100 for main floor. Private reception tickets cost $2,500. Three balcony tickets (Row AA, seats 206 to 208) for the speech were being offered Wednesday on eBay for $600. A speech ticket was offered for $100 through an ad in the Journal Star classifieds.

That's somewhere in the neighborhood of $125,000 to $140,000 just from the sale of the speech-only tickers. It's enough to pay Gov. Palin's speakers fee with a substantial wad of cash left over for other expenses. Five Points hasn't disclosed how many private reception tickets were sold at $2,500 each, but if they managed to sell only a hundred of them, that would have brought in a quarter of a million dollars for the scholarship fund and community center capital fund. Not bad for a town with a population of 13,000.

No matter what amount event organizers are paying Sarah Palin to speak, she's worth every dollar -- and then some.

- JP

Speaking of Sarah speaking...

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In a Chicago Daily Observer op-ed warning his fellow Democrats not to count Sarah Palin out for 2012, Phil Krone mentioned that a half dozen or speaking engagements would provide Sarah Palin with more income than her former salary as governor of Alaska:

"...she had dozens, even hundreds of invitations to speak around the country, both party speeches on the rubber chicken and tea bag circuit, as well as the very remunerative speeches to national conventions and association meetings.

Than he sniffs:

Obviously she couldn’t command the $150,000 that former President Bill Clinton gets, but I’m sure she is getting at least $25,000 or $50,000 to speak to the warehouse owners association or groups like that."

"Obviously", Phil?

There was a time when how much a person got paid for their work was not a topic for either public or polite conversation, but those genteel days are sadly behind us. We can barely remember when it was safe to sit down with the kids in front of the TV and not have to be bombarded with endless chatter about all sorts of things, including the sexual escapades of professional athletes and late night talk show hosts. Nor were the commercials which interrupted the chatter so distasteful. Ads for feminine hygiene and masculine sexual performance enhancement products are a far cry from Tony The Tiger hawking breakfast cereal and Dinah Shore encouraging viewers in song to see the USA in your Chevrolet. 

How much Sarah Palin actually gets paid for her speaking engagements is a private matter between her and her agent, The Washington Speakers Bureau. Event promoters are not supposed to disclose the amount of the fees they contract to pay the former governor to speak, but some people just can't keep a secret, it seems. It was widely reported that Gov. Palin was paid something in the six figures for her first paid speaking engagement booked through the WSB in Hong Kong. 

Next thing you know, the Wide and Snide World Web was all abuzz with noise that her agent was asking $100,000 per speech and would have trouble getting it because some "experts" were quoted as saying that event promoters would balk at paying that much. The so-called experts were soon discredited, as all Palin naysayers eventually are, when a series of speaking engagements were announced for her, one after the other - a right to life fundraiser in Wisconsin, a college in the Ozarks, a chamber of commerce event in Kansas, another one in Florida, a logging convention in northern California, a Tea party convention in Tennessee, another one in Texas, et cetera. So much for event organizers "balking" at signing Sarah Palin to speak at their functions...

It has even been reported that up in Hamilton, Ontario, some people are going to pay her $200,000 to speak at a fundraiser for a children's charity. All of a sudden Bill Clinton's $150,000 speaker fee doesn't seem quite so awesome, now does it, Phil?

- JP

She who laughs last does so on her way to the bank

At Left-leaning The Business Insider, Vincent Fernando dutifully propagates the latest DNC talking point -- that CLSA's invitation to Sarah Palin to travel to Asia for a speaking engagement at the end of the month is nothing more than a practical joke:

"Her invitation as keynote speaker in Hong Kong is so ridiculous that its absurdity can't be accidental."

In attempting to belittle former Governor Palin, Fernando beclowns himself. Think for just a minute, a chore which is impossible for the liberal mind...

Consider the report that the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate will be paid a six-figure fee for each speech she gives. That means that CLSA will be out a minimum of $100,000 for a relatively small chunk of Sarah Palin's time and trouble. Plus, she will get an all-expenses-paid trip to Hong Kong as a bonus, not to mention another stamp on her passport, one liberals criticize for having an insufficient number of marks on it. Oh, yes, and she will also pick up some foreign policy and finance cred.

Advantage, Palin.

It probably never occurred to Fernando and the DNC talking-pont team that if this is indeed a such a stunt, then the joke is on CLSA and the Democrats. And Sarah Palin, ever the happy warrior, will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Update: Anti-Palin site Alaska Dispatch doth spinneth too much, wethinks. Meanwhile, Allah says if it is a joke, then...

"...what’s the punchline? They’re going to pay her a hundred grand to come read what I’m sure will be a perfectly serviceable speech on foreign relations — and that’s it?"

- JP