Hi Gang,
For those of you who are following Troopergate up in Alaska, ABC news has a new development. Palin argues that she fired the top cop in Alaska not because he refused to fire her estranged brother-in-law but because he persisted in making a lobbying trip to Washington to get funding for a new program to reduce the sky high rates of forceable rape in Alaska. Palin said that she had not approved the trip accusing Monegan of begging for pork - which she really promises she is against now - and when he insisted on going anyway, she fired him for insubordination. One little problem - well, several because we now know that Palin is the Alaska Pork Queen - it turns out that Palin's office approved Monegan's trip and then fired him for going on it. Palin staffers in Alaska say that the trip was approved as a matter of routine before they knew its purpose.
This raises another question in my mind. Why are trips to Washington, D.C. by Alaskan state officials approved as a matter of routine??? Possible answer: because department heads in Alaskan government have to got to Washington all the time because that's where they get their funding!!
The more I hear about Alaska the more I think that the oil is the cleanest and the fish the nicest smelling things up there. What a cesspit of corruption and incompetence.
5 comments:
The dumbest thing the Palin/McCain camp has done is try to block the investigation. I can't believe they are this dumb. By evading subpoenas, they are giving credibility to the charges. As is so often the case in politics, it is the coverup, not the misdeed, that is the greater sin.
Assume for the moment that the charges are true...
Then blocking the investigation is the rational choice.
One thing that is coming out in this is the central role that Todd Palin seems to play in the government of Alaska despite not having an official position that was either elected or appointed and confirmed. Republicans howled like crazy about Hillary having anything to do with policy when she was first lady. But they are silent about the "First Dude."
Oh well, if ABC news said it...
Wow. Way to leave out some things, like facts.
First of all, there was a list of reasons why Palin fired the guy, the trip to DC was the "last straw." Also, the trip itself may have been financially approved, but like it says in the article you cited, it didn't mean he was authorized to lobby in opposition to the Governor's position.
And of course Palin is filing to stop the Personnel Board from investigating. According to Alaska law, it is supposed to go to the state legislature. That process, not surprisingly albeit disappointing, has been hijacked by Obama supporters and will probably turn out badly for Palin, despite the fact she did nothing except fire someone she was allowed to fire because she didn't agree with him.
I'd trust ABC news before I trusted "anonymous" on the internet.
As for Eileen...Do you Palinistas really want to get into an argument about "the facts?"
So Palin is defending the authority of the Alaska legislature now? She's refusing to cooperate with an investigation that began before she was nominated to be the Republican VP candidate. An investigation that was voted on by every Republican in the legislature. Also the subpoenas that Palin and her husband are now refusing to comply with were voted on by a committee with 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats and the deciding vote was cast by a Republican from Wasilla. It's really hard to make the case that this is all being orchestrated by the Obama campaign. But if you are going to make the case, please provide some evidence. The accusations of Palin's spokespeople, of course, do not count as evidence.
Also, the idea that Palin was opposed to lobbying Congress for funding for Alaskan state projects is absurd. She thought it was great for the mayor of a town with 5,000 odd inhabitants to hire full time lobbyists to get dozens of millions of dollars from the taxpayers of the "Lower 48" to finance lord knows what up there in Tiny Town. Now, all of sudden, she's so opposed to getting federal funding for a project to reduce the astronomical rates of rapes in Alaska that she'd fire an official that, coincidentally, she pressured to fire her asshole brother-in-law?
Look, of course Governors are allowed to fire people. The reason this is a story is because Palin (and the Republicans) claim that Palin is a reformer, a breath of fresh air. A strong, honorable woman who doesn't do things the old way. But this case just reeks of personal vendetta. It sounds more like "Jerry Springer goes to Washington" than "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington." The reason this is a story is because no matter how you cut it, the story line contradicts some major aspect of the image of herself that Palin is putting forward.
It's the same thing with the Bridge to Nowhere thing. It's not that people think it's illegal to ask for federal money to build bridges for insignificant backwaters, it's that it contradicts the official Palin image/biography.
Facts?! The last thing you want to talk about is facts.
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