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On the same day that Sarah Palin blasted Barack Obama for his Special Olympics joke on The Tonight Show, the Alaska Governor announced that she would not be accepting $170 million for economically disadvantaged and special needs students. Thus she decided to put her 2012 ambitions ahead of special needs students.

While Palin’s office is claiming that they are only taking half of the federal stimulus money, the reality is that they are taking 69%. Palin used the national debt as the reason why she is turning down additional education funding, “Simply expanding state government under this federal stimulus package creates an unrealistic expectation that the state will continue these programs when the federal funds are no longer available. Our nation is already over $11 trillion in debt; we can’t keep digging this hole.”

She also used building codes as a reason why she turned down federal stimulus money, “We won’t be bound by federal strings in exchange for dollars, nor will we dig ourselves a deeper hole in two years when these federal funds are gone. For instance, in order to accept what look like attractive energy funds, our local communities would be required to adopt uniform building codes. Government would then be required to police those codes. These types of funds are not sensible for Alaska.” Oh my God, not uniform building codes!!!!

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Why should Sarah Palin let the educational needs of a few special needs kids ruin her run for the White House in 2012? Don’t these people realize that she has national ambitions? If I lived in Alaska, I think that I might be getting a tad bit nervous about my governor making decisions that seem to be based on positioning herself on the national stage as the anti-Obama. The good news for the parents of those students in lower income families and those who have special needs is that the Alaska legislature has an opportunity to take the funds despite Palin’s objections.

Her actions today show that Sarah Palin may care about her special needs child, but contrary to what she said on the campaign trail last year, she won’t put her own political ambitions behind the needs of other special needs children in her state, she should be ashamed of herself, but team Palin 2012 probably views this as a wise political strategy. The problem is that if Palin is willing to sell out special needs kids in order to get the Republican nomination in 2012, then she will dump any principle that she claims to hold if it will advance her political career.