Nurses Present Palin Clothing Line Website...and Other Ways The Money Could Have Been Spent

Main Category: Nursing / Midwifery
Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 31 Oct 2008 - 10:00 PDT

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What else could you do with $150,000? That's the sum the Republican National Committee famously spent on wardrobe and makeup for Gov. Sarah Palin.

Contrast that with a registered nurse who can be outfitted in scrubs for just $10 for a hospital shift. "The same $150,000 would outfit 15,000 RNs in scrubs," notes Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee which sponsored the site, http://www.DressLikePalin.com.

"How disgraceful at a time when so many Americans are struggling to pay their medical bills or keep their homes," Jenkins noted.

"Spending $150,000 for a one month wardrobe while painting yourself as a 'hockey mom' or the voice of 'Joe Six Pack' is an insult," said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. "There's been a lot of talk about Marxists in this campaign, but the real Marxist is in the McCain camp - she's just a Neiman Marxist," said DeMoro.

"Real working people live and dress far differently," DeMoro noted. The $150,000 shopping spree amounts to, as one writer put it, more than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. The same $150,000 could buy 15,000 chef coats, 5,769 painter's bibs, 5,000 police shirts, 4,687 auto mechanics' coveralls, 3,750 pilot uniforms, or 3,571 housekeeper uniforms.

DressLikePalin.com lets internet browsers see other ways you could spend the money.

The $22,800 the RNC spent on makeup, for example, would pay for 224 mammograms, 651 flu shots, or provide a supply of cholesterol lower Lipitor for one person for nearly 14 years.

And that stylish $2,600 Valentino jacket would cost an average teacher one full month salary - or pay the full winter natural gas heating bills for two Midwest families.

The garish amounts devoted to Palin are not an anomaly for the McCain campaign.

At the republican convention last month, Cindy McCain was attired in a wardrobe estimated to cost as much as $313,000 - a figure that exceeds the median price of a house in Miami, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Atlanta, New Orleans, and St. Louis. It would buy you nearly three homes in Akron, Ohio or Erie, Pa., or four homes in Youngstown, Ohio.

CNA/NNOC is the largest and fastest growing organization of RNs in the U.S. with 80,000 members in all 50 states.

California Nurses Association