Is Democracy a farce?

The Murdoch scandal in the UK exploded when it was revealed that the phone of a thirteen-year-old murder victim had been hacked by his organization, pulling at people's heartstrings.

That may have caused outrage, but it's the tip of the iceberg and almost irrelevant in the great scheme of things. Yes, it was a despicable act, but ultimately, it affected a limited number of people. What emerged from the wider investigation is the level of influence Murdoch has both on politicians and the Police. Tony Blair took the country into an illegal war and it seems his narcissism, his desire to go down in history as a second Churchill, was well exploited by Murdoch, who also pushed the WMD agenda in the US very vigorously through Fox News. In the UK, he didn't need a dedicated propaganda TV channel in order to promote the invasion of Iraq, he went straight to the heart of government.

This is the story of one corporation in a country with considerably less influence in the world scene than the US.

Now we see the corporations calling the shots in the United States Congress. They don't want to pay their taxes and would prefer the old and the poor to foot the bill instead. The GOP and the Tea Party are very happily doing their bidding, even though none of it makes sense. How can they possibly justify taking from the poor to give to the rich?

The smell of corruption fills the air, but is anybody investigating how the corporations exert so much influence on so many politicians? The rhetoric about job creation is utterly unconvincing. They haven't created jobs for Americans, they have been outsourcing jobs abroad, putting many thousands of Americans out of work. Their only objective is to protect their profits, that's all there is to it. And these so-called representatives of the people are defending the corporations very ferociously, risking the derailment of the whole economy.

I can't believe these politicians are doing these things solely to oppose any of Obama's solutions, there must be some larger reward. A number of these representatives are too stupid and may be content with the transient taste of power, but I do believe some of the bigger fish are in line for future pay-offs for their efforts. They may not take the money now, but there must be something juicy in the horizon for them, when they stop being politicians.

News International rewarded many of the people who helped them through the botched investigations in the UK with well paid jobs. Other big companies have given former government ministers seats on their boards of directors after they had advanced their objectives in the House of Commons.

Are the corporations making similar promises to some politicians, both in Congress and the Senate? Are there some off-shore bank accounts getting bigger?

When a country is effectively run by the corporations, having elections and calling it a Democracy seems to be a farce of Shakespearean (or Disneyesque?) proportions.

Does anybody in the US have the power and the courage to probe and expose what kind of influence the corporations have on elected representatives of the people and on the lawmakers?

Perhaps if a thirteen-year-old murder victim was thrown into the mix, the authorities would finally become outraged and start asking questions...

Sarah Palin's house

This appeared on Sourcing from China:

There’s possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin’s house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the “same windows, same wood, same products.” Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.

The post gives no links, so we don't know what these Alaska sources are, but it looks good. It's so lovely to read the word indictment next to Sarah Palin's name...

Sarah Palin will be going to China soon. I wonder what topic she'll choose for her speech? "How to build a house in three weeks with some help from hubby's buddies" sounds appropriate.

All Housegate posts. More details about a possible indictment.
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Sarah Palin is so transparent...

When Sarah Palin was elected governor of Alaska she wasted no time in appointing her cronies or having them go for interviews to fill important positions in the state's offices.

Jon Schmidt, Kristan Cole, Brad Cole and others were appointed to various boards and commissions.

Debbie Richter, a good friend and business associate, applied for the job of director of the Permanent Fund Dividend Division. She's now called Debbie Bitney.

Debbie's husband, John Bitney, was a key aide in Sarah Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign. When she took office, she gave Mr. Bitney a job as her legislative director, and a few months later stood beside him at a news conference and praised his work. Seven weeks later she fired Mr. Bitney for what her spokeswoman described as "poor job performance." What really happened? Governor Palin got a call from another old friend, Scott Richter, informing her that his wife, Debbie Richter, and Mr. Bitney were having an affair. Scott and Sarah's husband Todd are great friends.

I found some articles on Bloomberg and Juneau Empire.

Bloomberg:

Shortly after she was elected governor, Palin's office signed off on hiring Deborah Richter -- who attended college for a year then worked in bookkeeping and finance jobs -- as director of a division that distributes dividends to Alaskans from the state's oil-wealth savings account. Richter, who said she's known Palin for 13 years, was Palin's gubernatorial campaign treasurer and ran her inaugural committee.

The Richters and Palins also shared an investment: 30 acres of rural property near a lake in Petersville, Alaska, worth $47,300, according to Matanuska-Susitna Borough data.

"It sounds like a patronage deal for someone who ran your campaign; that's pretty normal,'' said Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. "What's not normal is that they have business dealings together.''

No evidence has emerged to suggest that laws were broken in the appointment.

"She was qualified,'' said Pat Galvin, commissioner of the Department of Revenue and Richter's boss. Galvin said he also interviewed other people for the job and that Richter has done well. He said Palin's office approved his selection of Richter.

Palin's gubernatorial spokesman, William McAllister, said the decision to hire Richter was Galvin's. "I have no knowledge of land ownership or college degrees,'' he said.

What would anybody expect them to say? "The governor told us to hire her friend and she turned out not to be terribly qualified but she was very nice, so we hired her." Yeah, right.

Juneau Empire:

Alaska Permanent Fund dividend checks barely made it out on time last year after a computer technician accidentally wiped out a data file containing hundreds of thousands of dividend applications.

After desperately trying to recover the file with help from Microsoft Corp., the Permanent Fund Dividend Division of the Department of Administration went to the backup tapes.

Then things got worse.

"The problem was, there was some file that linked information wasn't backed up," said Debbie Richter, division director. "That was an essential piece of the puzzle."

Eventually, the reports were released - minus the explanation of what had happened at the Permanent Fund Division.

Juneau freelance reporter Bob Tkacz was one of the reporters asking for the transition reports. He was dismayed at the response from a governor who had campaigned on openness.

"No other governor in my experience has ever kept those reports confidential, and certainly never censored them in the way the Palin administration did," he said.

Recovering from the Permanent Fund Division data loss involved calling in temporary workers to reconstruct lost data. Applications from the increasing number of applications filed online were able to be recovered; but paper applications had to be reconstructed by hand.

A snippet from the Bloomberg article appeared on TPM Muckraker and in one of the comments I found quotes from the Juneau Empire article and these questions:

Three thoughts:

Excuse me, but "manually reconstructing" thousands of several hundred dollar payments from a state royalty fund? That sounds like it could be open to abuse.

Who was the "contractor" hired to help sort it out? How much were they paid?

Why did the Governor refuse to allow disclosure of the mandated state audit report on the computer failure?


If it sounds fishy, it probably is. Sarah Palin specializes in fishy.

Link to FBI

(Hat tip to JMGUIZZ1)
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Sarah Palin can't do anything wrong... ever

Oct 2008 Palin office defends charging state for children's travel

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is allowed to charge taxpayers for her children's commercial airline tickets because they represent the state wherever they go with her, the governor's aides said Wednesday.

"There's an expectation that the First Family participates in community activities," said Sharon Leighow, the governor's spokeswoman. "They are representing the First Family and the state of Alaska."

The AP reported that often the children were not invited to the events the governor attended, but she brought them anyway and charged the government.

The AP also reported that Palin ordered the children's travel expense forms changed in August to add language claiming that they performed official state business on the trips.

Leighow also defended other state-paid trips the girls made. She provided to the AP on Wednesday an e-mail that the governor's office received that invited Bristol to a five-hour New York conference in October 2007 that she attended with her mother. Palin charged the state $1,385.11 for her daughter's flight. They shared a room for four nights in a luxury hotel on Central Park.

But the conference organizer said Bristol was only invited after the governor said she was bringing her.

Feb 2009 Palin to reimburse state for family travel

Gov. Sarah Palin has agreed to reimburse the state nearly $10,000 to cover assorted costs related to various trips taken by her children in 2007 and 2008, but she's not admitting that she did anything wrong.

The charges at issue include the cost of airfare and one meal when daughter Bristol to accompanied Palin to New York City in 2007 for a women's leadership conference, according to the settlement agreement. State travel forms put that cost at about $1,400.

Other questioned trips were in Alaska, including one last year to the start of the Tesoro Iron Dog snowmachine race, in which Palin's husband, Todd, was one of the contenders.

The settlement was signed Monday by Palin and Anchorage lawyer Tim Petumenos, who was hired by the state Personnel Board to investigate the complaint.

"Nothing in this agreement constitutes an admission of wrongdoing, and none has been found," the document said.

Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, took it a step further.

"The governor has been exonerated of all wrongdoing in this ethics act complaint. There is no finding of wrongdoing and there is no ethics violation," Van Flein said in a news conference.

So was she exonerated?

"To be exonerated suggests a hearing on the merits and a conclusion. That was not what happened here," Petumenos said.

As Petumenos described it, the governor agreed not to contest certain charges. He agreed not to file a formal accusation or take the case to a hearing.

Governor's website:

"I am gratified that this settlement explicitly recognizes and establishes that I broke no laws or ethics rules.

It is troubling that this complaint was such an obvious political weapon, with an associate of a political adversary filing this and making it public – against state law – just before the election. Beyond objecting to the obvious gamesmanship that serves the public so terribly, I think it is important to prevent the ethics act from being used as a tool to ensure that only the wealthy can seek higher office in Alaska.

This is a big state, and I am obligated to – and intend to – keep Alaskans informed and meet with them as much as I can, from Barrow to Marshall to Ketchikan. At the same time, I am blessed to have a large and loving family, and the discharge of my duties should not prevent me from spending time with them."

Considering that the Personnel Board, the Attorney General and various "independent" investigators always provide cover for Sarah Palin's misdeeds, it's impossible for her to violate any statutes or break any laws.

A few bloggers are covering the latest ethics complaints that have been dismissed. I went back to Travelgate because there was clear evidence of wrongdoing, which in the eyes of the Personnel Board and other Palin minions means completely innocent, of course.

The fact that she paid back $10,000 to the state doesn't seem to indicate innocence. They made a deal before the matter could come before the courts. Giving money back and making deals doesn't mean she's innocent. They twist and spin the facts, make big statements to the press, Sarah Palin appears to be making a grand gesture, but the facts say otherwise.

Two things stand out:

“This is a big state, and I am obligated to – and intend to – keep Alaskans informed and meet with them as much as I can, from Barrow to Marshall to Ketchikan. At the same time, I am blessed to have a large and loving family, and the discharge of my duties should not prevent me from spending time with them."

The AP also reported that Palin ordered the children's travel expense forms changed in August to add language claiming that they performed official state business on the trips.

If Sarah Palin charged the state to be able to spend time with her children then deliberately ordered her staff to alter expense forms so the travel appeared to be connected to official state business, how is it not wrongdoing?

This was reported at the same time as the reimbursent:

It's the latest development related to Palin's expenses and perks. State officials announced Monday that Palin had turned in her state Chevy Suburban after learning she would owe income taxes on any personal use of it, and last week they said she also would have to pay taxes on expense money she received while living in her Wasilla home.

It seems to me that the IRS was closing in on her and with help from her "independent" associates she managed to wriggle out of some bigger trouble.

Last week I wrote about Cheryl Metiva: "Sarah Palin's Valley friends". The Mat-Su Frontiersman has since published an editorial:

Suspending executive director Cheryl Metiva until the audit is complete was the right move.

She comes under scrutiny because former misunderstandings regarding chamber credit card purchases indicates she did not understand the card was not for personal use — which seems unlikely — or she deliberately hoped those purchases wouldn’t come up under examination of the books.

In response, via a press release, Metiva said those issues have been cleared up. Which, reading between the lines, probably means she reimbursed the chamber for the purchases and her wrist was slapped. She should have been fired.

In the press release, she intimates, those charges are all that have occurred.

Does anybody notice certain similarities in the style of the two Valley women?

That's Valley ethics in a nutshell. Now Sarah Palin has spread her wings and turned it into Alaska ethics. If she makes it to Washington, the whole of the US would go into an ethics freefall.

Where's the IRS in all this?

Latest ethics complaints: Mudflats, Celtic Diva, Immoral Minority.
RECALL Sarah Palin
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Contrasts

Senator John Dingell Becomes Longest Serving Member In House History.

What is Senator Dingell about?

Asked about the legislative highlights of his career, Dingell ponders for a moment. "Presiding over Medicare, getting it through," he answers, and then adds his involvement in the 1957 and 1964 Civil Rights Acts, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Protection Act. He also cites $16 billion for an annual grant program funding clean water.

One can't help but draw comparisons between Senator Dingell and another long serving ex-Senator... Uncle Ted.

Sarah Palin was one of the directors of the Political Action Committee serving corrupt former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Palin is listed in the 2003 incorporation papers of the “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.” 527 group.

Mmmmmm....

(Full article in the HuffPo)
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