Sarah Palin

I started this blog a few months after Sarah Palin returned to Alaska, having lost the election to Obama. She was still the governor and I focused on her record and on her day-to-day "governing." How things have changed!

Today Sarah Palin is the mouthpiece and poster girl for the ultra-conservative movement that gained momentum in the wake of Barack Obama's arrival in the White House. That's a very important detail, a black man at the helm, swimming against the current, with the economy in freefall. Perfect.

But what's Sarah Palin's role? Who is this woman and where did she come from? We have been scratching our heads, asking many questions and looking for the answers since McCain presented her to the world at large. Before that day, there she was chugging along, pretending to govern the largest, wildest state in the US and all that.

In the absence of proper vetting from the McCain people, we took it upon ourselves to find out what was behind this hockey-mom of five and lipstick wearing pit bull.

We went way back, to her city councillor and mayor of Wasilla days. I want to have another look at her good old days, but from a slightly different perspective and starting a little bit further back into the past.

In 1983 Linda Menard talked Sarah Louise Heath into entering a beauty pageant to win some tuition money for college. Sarah says she was reluctant (Going Rogue), but decided to give it a try, the tuition money would be worth any embarassement she had to endure. She won the Miss Wasilla leg of the contest and went on to become the second runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, with a Miss Congeniality trophy on her mantelpiece as a bonus. Sarah has a fragile ego, her sense of self is based on the input from people around her. When Linda Menard suggested that Sarah should enter a "who's the fairest of them all" competition, was she really telling Sarah that she was indeed the prettiest girl in Wasilla? Did other people tell her the same thing? I believe they did. And they did it with the best of intentions, their minds were on the tuition money. Strut your stuff, sister, play your flute, that would be neat. Sarah would be able to continue her education and make something of herself. So they flattered and reassured her about what she could achieve.

But Sarah started to believe she was the prettiest (not quite) and also the nicest girl in Alaska. Don't get me wrong, she was a good looking girl and possibly a nice enough lass. But not the fairest of them all... No beauty contest winner is, and probably most of them know it. But not our Sarah. Low self-esteem makes people believe in certain things so they feel better about themselves, they feel bigger and stronger. Sarah wasn't terribly interested in education but went college hopping anyway - feeling pretty and congenial. So far, not much harm had been done.

Moving on to politics, that's when things start taking a less savoury turn. Opportunists can spot a useful tool (fool?) a mile away. I guess the AIP, the Dominionists and the very conservative Texans and Oklahomans who lusted after the Alaskan oil considered this ambitious but vulnerable person a fantastic find. If she was susceptible to the well intentioned flattery of people who loved her, she was just as likely to buy it from these groups. The prize was bigger. It would validate her in a much more desirable sphere, she would become an important person, not just a pretty face. We all know she couldn't do the job and so did she, but that wasn't important to her at that point, she would get around it somehow. Somewhere down the line, she convinced herself that hell yeah, she could not only do that job, but could do bigger ones as well. The people who put her there kept on feeding her illusions, this pretty woman would go far and deliver them what they wanted. Power, what else?

Sarah took aim at bigger and better prizes. She ran for lieutenant-governor and didn't make it, she thought she was going to be appointed to a Senate seat in Washington, DC and didn't make it. She warmed a seat at the Oil & Gas Commission for a while, then decided to go for the top position in Alaska and made it this time. I don't believe for one minute that she plotted her own way into that mansion in Juneau. Our opportunists above had reached their goal and Sarah convinced herself that she was qualified for any job as she cleared each hurdle. Life was good for Sarah.

She was ambitious, enjoyed the good things in life and saw nothing wrong with making the most of her position to score a few state funded freebies for family and friends.

Then McCain won the primaries. His campaign needed a presentable woman so they could bank on the Hillary effect. There were loads of disgruntled women up and down the country who were very cheesed off when Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Hey, how about that Sarah from Alaska? Opportunists in shinier suits had spotted her. It had happened again.

Yes, she was ready. No, she didn't blink. Sarah's ego felt warm and toasty. And a myth was born.

Sarah Palin does have a magnetic presence. She evokes strong reactions in people, whether they love her or loathe her. We know that she's reactive, so the criticism directed at her bolstered her ego in the same measure as the flattery she received. She wasn't being criticized bacause she was incompetent, nooo. It was because she was a woman, because she had a large family, because she had chosen to have a child with Down syndrome, because she was loved by so many, because, because...

Election lost, Obama in the White House, back to Alaska.

Back to Alaska... The unofficial vetting of Sarah Palin opened the eyes of many Alaskans to a less than flattering picture of their governor. They found her to be somewhat lacking in the ethics department. The complaints multiplied in rapid succession while she half-heartedly carried out her duties as governor. Maybe the opportunists in Alaska had lost some of their interest in her and she was at a lose end, drifting and dreaming of all the glory that could have been hers.

Some adoring groups had been formed in the Lower 48, notably C4P. The media still liked her, she sold well. Everybody still talked about her. Perhaps things weren't so bad after all. I don't think she could do much more other than dream at that point. A few magazine covers for herself and the hapless Bristol was the best she could hope for.

Enter our sinister characters from outside Alaska. Hey, that Sarah from Alaska seems to be still very popular, couldn't we use her again? Everybody talks about her, people are still talking about pregnancies and her daughter or something like that all the time and those C4P people worship at her feet. The media is doing very well from all her stories. Good or bad, folks can't get enough of this woman and the rest of the clan. Hey, she's still quite hot too. We could repackage the girl and that whole family of hers and they would come in handy, don't you think?

Oh yes, and how! They made her an offer she couldn't refuse. Listen, Sarah from Alaska, we think you would make a great president. But you would have to leave this governor gig behind. We need to raise your profile, make you really presidential. Publishing your memoirs woud be a great start. It worked for Obama and it would put some dollars in the bank. That can't be bad, eh? You need to be seen and heard all the time, how about a Fox News contract? Oh, and speaking engagements, starting with one abroad. Foreign policy credentials, you know? You already have the Twitter and Facebook thingies covered, clever girl! We need to raise money as well, a Pac would be ideal. Anybody who wants to be president has one, what do you say? Oh, you have that covered as well? You clever, clever, clever girl! There might be something in it for your lovely family as well. What say you? Are you with us?

This time she blinked, repeatedly, but it was from excitement, not hesitation. Hell yeah, I'm outta here! Not so fast, Sarah. We need Alaska to build up your image. You know how fascinated those people in the Lower 48 are with this beautiful state, the last frontier, and how much they admire your tough image, you hunt, you fish, you're sooo fantastic.

You know the rest. We had to suffer the tweets, the Facebook notes, the op-eds, Going Rogue, America by Heart, the Tea Party rallies, the Beck/Palin jamboree, the Fox News interviews, the pedophile labels she attaches to her foes, the death panels, "Sarah Palin's Alaska", the crosshairs, the surveyor signs, the "Blood Libel", the abstinence, Candies, Dancing with the Stars and much much much more.

Sarah Palin and her family are in our faces all the time, day after day. We direct all our venom at the Palins. We talk about Sarah's wigs, her lips, her boobs, her clothes. We talk about Todd and question his cojones, we call Bristol a fat slut, we say Willow is a vandal, we wonder who fathered Track, we went from seeing Piper as a cute little button to seeing her as a sullen little brat who wears make-up and wears a bumpit under her highlighted hair. We wonder about Chuckles, we have loads of theories about everything. We have also worried our heads about Levi, Sherry and Mercede. Awww... we still love Trig and Tripp.

Any of these things may or may not bring Sarah Palin down. I think not. Dissecting the Palins, finding fault in eveything they do helps us vent our spleen and direct our frustrations at someone. I admit that it's a lot of fun at times. We need a break from the anger every now and then. While we do that, our sinister friends are satisfied, rubbing their hands in glee. Everything is going according to plan. While we watch Sarah and her family, we fail to see the real villains. We know they are there, but we can't see them very clearly and can't direct our anger at them. That's what Sarah Palin is for. They put her out there to screech their talking points at every possible opportunity and to absorb the criticism, the insults, anything we can throw at her, as long as none of it reaches them. We started to find out who they are and asked questions on a few occasions, we started to pay attention and were beginning to make some progress in the right direction but they were b-o-o-o-ring and oh? What's that over there? Yay! Another Sarah Palin tweet! She screeched again, is that a wig? Back to the Koch Brothers... hello? Is Bristol preggers? Did Sarah have another facelift? Black bra under a white t-shirt? Honestly! Ah, ok, Koch Br... wasn't that a terrible tweet by Ram? Is Todd ill? Was that Bristol or Willow? What were we talking about? Yes, the Koc... Abstinence my ass! This new woman of Todd's must be Trig's mother. Does she have a cold sore or is that a scar?....... It. never. stops.

Meanwhile, the corporate citizens move the country to the right, to the right, to the right, they whip up the passions of people full of fear and not much intelligence, they make the vitriol emanating from their talking heads appear normal and acceptable. We talk about all these things, we worry, but we are too easily distracted. People who are sincere Republicans and wish to embrace different values shake their heads in despair, with nowhere to turn to in order to validate their own concerns.

I have been distracted as well and enjoy a bit of gossip as much as the next person. But when I did a retrospective to compare where Sarah Palin and I were two years ago to where we are now, prior to jumping back in, the penny dropped. I saw the whole picture for the first time.

Does the fact that neither Sarah Palin nor her family are ultimately responsible for all the ugliness we've seen in the past two year absolve her? Probably not, not entirely. But the deluded beauty queen from Wasilla is not going to be president of the United States. She's been duped. Again.

Do we keep holding her feet to the fire? Yes, we do. But her fall won't be a complete victory unless we challenge the rest of the culprits. When she falls, they will be done with Sarah from Alaska, ready to replace her with a less colourful, less tabloidy figure who would repeat exactly the same talking points, using exactly the same rhetoric, but this person would sound credible, sober and balanced. People who wouldn't buy it from Sarah Palin might buy it from this new serious, intelligent sounding character. Sarah would have accomplished her mission, she would have made all the junk she spewed ad nauseam for two years a big part of the political discourse already and nobody would bat an eyelid.

That's the story as I imagined it to be. It's not accurate in the detail, but not too far fetched when we look at the whole. After two years with Sarah Palin, fiction appears to be more believable than reality...

We should still keep our eyes wide open. But we could do better if we closed our eyes to shiny objects, myself included. There's room for snark and humour, of course. But let's us not take our eyes off the ball for too long or we'll lose this game.

I will need some help navigating the dark waters where the elusive characters behind the scenes sail their yachts. I specialized too much in one particular subject, but whilst she may be the star of this play, she didn't write or direct it. I'm very interested in the production as a whole.

Palin and Bachmann - the blind leading the blind

I would like to share a glimpse into the the minds of two people I admire. Both believe that asking questions is more valuable than accepting things without further thought.

Stephen Fry

People sometimes accuse me of knowing a lot. 'Stephen,' they say, accusingly, 'you know a lot." This is a bit like telling a person who has a few grains of sand attached to him that he owns too much sand. When you consider the vast amount of sand there is in the world such a person is, to all intents and purposes, sandless. We are all sandless. We are all ignorant. There are beaches and deserts and dunes of knowledge whose existence we have never even guessed at, let alone visited.

It's the ones who think they know what there is to be known we have to look out for. 'All is explained in this text - there is nothing else you need to know,' they tell us.

We are perhaps now more in danger of thinking we know everything than in those dark times of religious superstition (if indeed they have gone away). Today we have the whole store of human knowledge a mouse-click away, which is all fine and dandy, but it's in danger of becoming just another sacred text. What we need is a treasure house, not of knowledge, but of ignorance. Something that gives not answers but questions. Something that shines light, not on garish facts, but into the dark, damp corners of ignorance.

(Excerpts from Stephen Fry's foreword - The Book of General Ignorance)

Isaac Asimov

The greatest scientist have been wrong on this point or that - Newton on the nature of light, Einstein in his views of the uncertainty of principle - and it does not lessen respect for their achievements. Scientists expect to be improved and corrected; they hope to be.

The Moral Majority, however, speaks, it would seem, with the voice of God. How do they know what they know? Why, they themselves say so; and, since they speak with the voice of God, the Moral Minority is never wrong and cannot be wrong.

And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would tell us what books to read and what not, what thoughts to think and what not, what conclusions to accept and what not.

And what does the Bible say? "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch" (Matthew 15:14).

(Excerpts from the essay "The Blind Who Would Lead" - The Roving Mind)


Stephen Fry celebrates ignorance as the gateway to acquiring knowledge and Asimov doesn't close the door to accepted principles being challenged and corrected. Both men believe in curiosity as a motivating factor for expanding the mind.

Many prominent politicians and talking heads have their minds closed to the possiblity of other viewpoints being valid at all. Their truth is absolute and should be imposed on the rest of the country. Hey, let's not stop there - their truth should be imposed on the rest of the world!

The list of such holders of absolute truth is long, but the ones that irritate and dismay reasonable, thinking people the most are Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck.


Two of them have ambitions to achieve higher office, so Stephen Fry's "Something that shines light, not on garish facts, but into the dark, damp corners of ignorance" would be good advice for the MSM: They should stop being dazzled by shiny objects and start shining a light on the dark, damp corners of Palin's and Bachmann's lives in order to deliver the electorate from ignorance.

The media has a duty to prevent the US from falling into the ditch.

Sarah Palin's popularity has always been a myth

Sarah Palin's percentages appear to be slipping fast. In a straw poll at the 2011 CPAC, Sarah Palin came in 9th place, with only 3% of the votes.

Ron Paul – 30 percent
Mitt Romney – 23 percent
Gary Johnson – 6 percent
Chris Christie – 6 percent
Newt Gingrich – 5 percent
Tim Pawlenty – 4 percent
Michele Bachmann – 4 percent
Mitch Daniels – 4 percent
Sarah Palin – 3 percent
Herman Cain – 2 percent
Mike Huckabee – 2 percent
Rick Santorum – 2 percent
John Thune – 2 percent
Jon Huntsman – 1 percent
Haley Barbour – 1 percent
Other – 5 percent
Undecided –1 percent

Last year Sarah Palin came came 3rd, with 7% of the total votes:

Ron Paul - 31 percent
Mitt Romney - 22 percent
Sarah Palin - 7 percent
Tim Pawlenty - 6 percent
Newt Gingrich - 4 percent
Mike Huckabee - 4 percent
Mike Pence - 5 percent
Sen. John Thune - 2 percent
Mitch Daniels - 2 percent
Rick Santorum - 2 percent
Hailey Barbour - 1 percent
Other - 5 percent
Undecided - 6 percent

The CPAC straw polls are popularity contests among fellow Republicans and are different from an actual election, of course. Let's have a look at the election results that placed Sarah Palin in office.

Sarah Palin received 48.33% of the vote in the election for governor, 114,697 votes. That's based on the number of people who voted, but it represents only 22% of the total number of people entitled to vote. Only 47% of people elligible to vote actually bothered to cast their ballots.



Wasilla had 5,469 inhabitants in 2000. Sarah Palin was elected mayor in 1996 and re-elected in 1999. Based on the number of inhabitants above, of the people elligible to vote, only 20% voted in 1996 and 22% in 1999.

Sarah Palin's enormous popularity and highest approval rate of all governors around the country, as stated by the McCain campaign in 2008, is simply a myth. It's easy to spin anything based on the figures above if they're taken out of context of the reality regarding politics in Alaska.

A great number of people live in remote, isolated areas and even those who live in not so remote areas don't have much of a clue about politics in Alaska, nor are they interested in it. Here's a first hand account of some reactions to Sarah Palin's resignation. The people in question don't live in the isolation of the western or northern parts of the state, but in a well known town in the Prince William Sound area.

I walked around with a shirt I made the day after she quit, that said "Dude where's my Governor" inside an outline of Alaska that was blue and gold, the colors of our flag. For a full 2 months I had people who live here asking me what that was about. They had NO idea the woman had quit. That just goes to show how little people pay attention to what's going on in politics here.

Sarah Palin appears to be popular up and down the country. Everything she says or does is reported by the media because it sells. This may give the illusion of popularity.

I wouldn't say she's incredibly popular in the nice sense of the word. But I'll admit that she's extremely colourful... so is Lindsay Lohan.

It's been reported that Sarah Pac has hired a shiny new chief-of-staff, Michael Glassner. Is she going to run? My cynical mind tells me that this move has more to do with money than any actual plans to announce her candidacy. Her chances of securing the nomination as the GOP candidate appear to be minimal. Why not keep the donations coming in until the last possible moment? Unless she has plans for a third party run, which I don't believe would deliver her the big prize anyway...

Previous post on Palingates: Sarah Palin's popularity - The Myth

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Two years in the lives of Sarah Palin's political props

I wrote a post about Sarah Palin's large, loving family on March 9, 2009. They have changed a lot since then, but are still being used as props.

The Palins then:

Todd's nativeness is constantly exaggerated. The stories get more and more embroidered and outrageous. Todd is an example to all natives, his lyfestyle should be copied by all those whining natives. They should seize opportunities upon the North Slope, the mines, anything that doesn't involve preserving their way of life. Todd did it and still returns to his village, still embraces all things native, still lives in rural Alaska when he has the chance. Yes, Todd spends one season doing real work and the rest of the time he indulges in the quaint native lifestyle in his village and all its pleasures. It's a win win situation!

Track made the sacrifice of not pursuing higher education in order to serve his country in Iraq. We all heard it at the rallies. Track is risking his life so the people of America can have freedom of speech. He's also obeying God's will. After all, the war in Iraq is a task from God.

Bristol served more than one purpose. She was paraded before the nation and the world as a pregnant teen to prove that Sarah was Trig's mother. Now Bristol is the poster girl for planned, unplanned, accidental, whatnot teenage pregnancy. Abstinence is good, is bad, it works, it doesn't work, it's not realistic, whatever. Sarah is the ultimate supportive parent, the living proof that these things can happen in any family, but they are blessed to have a strong, loving family and so on.

Willow should be renamed Wisdom. She was the first one to notice that Trig had Down's Syndrome, giving Sarah another opportunity for an emotional platitude. "If he does, you know you will still love him, Willow. It'll be okay." Then Willow made an incredible remark when she heard on the radio that 95 % of the people in America would benefit from tax cuts, according to campaign promises made by Barack Obama. She turned to her mom and asked "What about the other 5%?" Mom explained that those were the ones who had worked hard to make America great, but they were rich. "Why should they be punished for their success?", said Willow. Oh, the wisdom of a child!

Piper is Sarah's favourite sidekick. She goes everywhere with Sarah, she appears in every interview, whenever possible. Of all the members of the family, Piper is the busiest state official, clocking more airmiles in the service of the state than all the others. We saw Piper standing next to Sarah at the 50th year of Alaska Statehood gala, in January this year, wearing a lovely summer dress and high-heeled sandals. When Matt Lauer interviewed the Palins at their home, there was Piper in high heels again, so cute! Piper gives radio interviews as well. I wonder when she manages to find a gap in her busy schedule to attend school!

Trig doesn't rank as high as Piper in Sarah's preferences, but he'll do as a valuable prop. Trig was the vice presidential campaign mascot. He was passed to everybody who cared to hold him, was dressed like a cute elephant for Halloween, had his hair smoothed with Piper's spit (that cute Piper again!). He worked tirelessly during the campaign, staying up late, braving the noise, the bright lights and all the commotion of the rallies. Trig does a great job humanizing Sarah Palin.

There are no photos of the whole family from March 2009. This will have to do, just delete Levi

The Palins now:

Todd is not so native anymore. I suppose it isn't a very hot selling point for Sarah's new image. She made some passing references to it on Sarah Palin's Alaska, but the show was all about HER, after all. These days Todd doesn't work for a living anymore. Now he's a combination of enforcer, handbag carrier, supermom to the children, still doing the Iron Dog thing and appears to be the only adult from the clan who has a proper relationship with Trig. According to the tabloids, gossip websites and various bloggers, he's not too keen on "hot" Sarah and has strayed a bit. Who's going to carry Sarah's purse now?

Track is still the token army guy in the family. Now he's a veteran and nobody can take it away from Sarah. The last time we saw him, he showed utter disinterest in the family business he was about to inherit. We didn't really buy that story line from Sarah Palin's Alaska. Track is not a willing prop and Sarah can't use him much, apart from wearing bracelets and hanging stars around the place to show she has a son in active service. Is he still active? Never mind...

Bristol has changed the most and is now a mini-Sarah, complete with her own prop. Bristol does speeches (as opposed to screeches, but still...), is dilligently writing her memoirs and has hinted at a political career. Bristol changed diapers, couldn't get a decent night's sleep, got up at 4 or 5 am to bathe Tripp, bought a condo, sold the condo, posed for magazine spreads, "danced" her way into American hearts, then packed her stuff and her prop, bought herself a new chin and moved to Maricopa. The mother/daughter bonding on Sarah Palin's Alaska was truly moving: Clay pigeon shooting and whacking halibut, such tender moments...

Willow's image has changed also, too. Once a child wise beyond her years, she transformed into a rebellious young woman, sneaking boyfriends into her bedroom, pulling faces at inappropriate moments and smashing her younger sister's face into cakes. Apparently, she also acquired a taste for some breaking and entering. As a prop, she serves as an illustration of Sarah's magnanimous attitude to dealing with teenagers. She let's them make their own mistakes and find their own way, but laments their mistakes being on the cover of the National Enquirer. Hey, they don't need the NE, Willow and Bristol can display all their charm on Facebook, where they use well constructed sentences, full of beautiful words.

Piper... the cute kid from the campaign now looks deeply unhappy. Piper was OK on the first book tour, but the child we saw on the second looked sullen and distant. On Sarah's show she sported a bumpit under her highlighted hair and the cuteness was a thing of the past. We also noticed that Piper wears make up on occasions. On Sarah Palin's Alaska, Piper's mother/daughter moments were very awkward. Trig is now too heavy for Piper to carry around and she appears to have lost her babysitter role.

Trig is still his lovely self. He doesn't seem to be a very useful prop these days, at least not in person. Sarah still talks about what a blessing he is and how incredibly brave she was to have chosen to have him, but on Sarah's show he didn't seem to like her very much and showed his displeasure on more than one occasion. She took him to some Tea Party rallies, but the lack of chemistry between them is showing more and more. Trig was the underdressed star of the first book tour, but he was smaller and more compliant then (and never felt cold or uncomfortable, a real trooper!). I expect we'll see less and less of Trig in future. I didn't watch all the Sarah Palin's Alaska episodes. I gather all Sarah's children had their turn, with a dedicated episode each. Even Sarah's daddy and her brother had their moment of glory. Did Trig have a special episode? Unless we count the one with cousin Matthew, a freshly discovered cousin/ nephew/whatever with Down syndrome, where Sarah teared up spouting her usual platitudes, there was no episode for Trig. There was nothing about his daily routine, the therapies and programs to help him reach his full potential. Trig is a blessing, pity he was not blessed with a decent mother.


In the past two years we have seen many changes in the Palin family. All for the worse, I would say.

We would love to leave them alone, but Sarah Palin keeps shoving them in our faces to market her Christian/real American family values...

Sarah Palin, still not acting her age

Today is Sarah Palin's 47th birthday. We often refer to her as a vindictive 15-year-old high school girl with petty grievances and scores to settle. I believe it's more serious than that. She IS a very vindictive woman and never misses an opportunity to have a dig at people she feels deserve one. Her past and present attacks and actions range from very damaging to very silly and childish. But let's not forget the damage she inflicted on many when she was in power.

When she held office in Alaska, she actually had power and misused it regularly to exact revenge on her foes or in some cases, to dispose of former allies who were no longer useful to her. Here's a far from a comprehensive list of her old victims:

John Stein - Helped launch Sarah's political career, helping her to get elected for Wasilla's City Council in 1992. In 1996 she ran for mayor against Stein. Her campaign began circulating the word that she would be "Wasilla's first Christian mayor", implying that Stein was Jewish. He's a Lutheran. They also started another vicious whisper campaign, spreading the word that Stein and his wife - who had chosen to keep her own last name when they were married - were not legally wed. "We actually had to produce our marriage certificate," recalled Stein, whose wife died of breast cancer in 2005 without ever reconciling with Palin.

John Bitney - Mr. Bitney was a key aide in Sarah Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign. She had known him since high school. 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. In her book "Going Rogue," Sarah Palin gave this description of Bitney: "He turned out to be a BlackBerry games addict who couldn't seem to keep his lunch off his tie."

Walt Monegan - The Commissioner of Public Safety was fired when he refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, from his state trooper job. The whole fiasco became what's known as Troopergate.

Lyda Green - Palin was a guest on the right-wing Bob and Mark Show. Bob Lester, the conservative shock jock who hosts the show repeatedly called State Senator Lyda Green a “cancer” and a “bitch”. How did Sarah Palin react to all this? She laughed along and said she would be “honored” to have Lester with her when she gives her State of the State address. Sarah Palin said quite recently that if she announces her candidacy for president in 2012, she will do it on Bob and Mark's show.

Mike Wooten - Sarah and Todd Palin pursued a long drawn-out vendetta against her former brother-in-law, the aforementioned state trooper, which culminated in Troopergate. Todd Palin was heavily involved in the efforts to have Wooten fired.

Mary Ellen Emmons - Wasilla's former city librarian, who was fired, reinstated following public outcry and finally resigned. The start of Ms Emmons misfortune started after Sarah inquired on the procedures to have books removed from the library. Ms Emmons wouldn't entertain the idea of removing any books.

Irl Stambaugh - Sarah fired the popular Police Chief of Wasilla stating that she did not feel he fully supported her efforts to govern the city. Apparently he "intimidated" her.

Andree McLeod - Between 2002 and 2005, Sarah was a great fan of Andree, a republican political watchdog. Some snippets of e-mails Sarah sent to Andree during that period: "That was a great letter to the ed. this week Andree. I haven't had time to call but wanted to tell you it was, again, insightful & educational & good writing."; "Ugh! I know you must get so frustrated because you’re all about accountability! Thanks for working to instill public trust in all this Andree!"; " I'm proud to know you!!!". There were many more, all very friendly. In 2008 Andree requested copies of e-mails from the Governor's private e-mail accounts used for state communications to clarify some ethics issues. Sarah Palin reacted: "This is the same Andree McLeod that follows us around at public events and camps herself out in our waiting area and hounds us for a job..." referring to Andree as the "falafel lady." Andree continues to challenge the ethical lapses of those in power in Alaska. Her attempts to keep the quitter governor in check were not motivated by personal grudges, but by her embarassement and dismay about the state of politics in Alaska.

Sarah Palin assumed the role of attack dog in McCain's campaign, the lipstick wearing pit bull. Her attacks on then Sen. Obama are well documented.

After her run for VP, Sarah Palin attacked or mocked bloggers, Katie Couric, Tina Fey, campaign aides, Andrea Friedman, Rahm Emanuel, Dave Letterman, Levi Johnston and many others. She also encouraged a backlash against the citizens of Alaska who had the temerity to question her unethical practices.

Since quitting the office of governor to become a celebrity talking head, Sarah Palin has expanded the list of "enemies" considerably. Joe McGinniss, Michele and Barack Obama, Kate Gosselin, a teacher in Homer, a man with a camera at the airport in Valdez, she had some choice words for most of them, just to mention a few examples. Without naming any particular foes, Sarah Palin has the "lamestream media" as the source of her most profound resentment and doesn't spare this large group whenever she encounters a keyboard or a microphone.

I gave more detailed examples of her actions against her perceived enemies when she actually held office and had more power to damage them. That's part of her record as a politician.

We don't know for sure if Sarah Palin will pursue a future political career, but we have noticed that not only her behaviour has not changed, but her need to react to criticism and constantly attack or ridicule people she considers her enemies has become urgent and uncontrollable.

Sarah Palin's immature rantings make her look and sound like a caricature of a mean spirited 15-year-old hig school girl, vaguely understandable in a person aged 15, but coming from a 47-year-old woman with political aspirations, they make her look and sound utterly ridiculous.

AFTERTHOUGHT

I came to the conclusion that Sarah Palin poses a lesser risk to all when she behaves like a difficult adolescent. When she does act her age and uses a certain rhetoric in her public speech, her victims face a much greater risk. Ask Gabby Giffords...

Previous posts on Palingates about Sarah Palin's victims.
Tina Dupuy's "Sarah Palin's Enemies List"

Sarah Palin failed vulnerable children in Alaska

I'd like to revisit a subject close to my heart, involving the rights of children.

In April 2009 I wrote a post about a lawsuit against then governor Sarah Palin and a host of officials with various state agencies. The suit was filed by Psych Rights, the Alaska-based mental health law project, seeking to stop the de facto forced medication of children under the state's care - foster kids, juvenile detainees - and children covered under state health programs with psychiatric medications. It was filed on September 2, 2008.

In February 2008, before filing the present lawsuit, Jim Gottstein wrote to Sarah Palin on behalf of Psych Rights:

"It is a huge betrayal of trust for the State to take custody of children and youth and then subject them to such harmful, often life-ruining, drugs. They have almost always already been subjected to abuse or otherwise had very difficult lives before the State assumes custody, and then saddles them with a mental illness diagnosis and drugs them. The extent of this State inflicted child abuse is an emergency and should be corrected immediately. Children and youth are virtually always forced to take these drugs because, with rare exception, it is not their choice. Psych Rights believes the children and youth, themselves, have the legal right to not be subject to such harmful treatment at the hands of the State of Alaska. We are therefore evaluating what legal remedies might be available to them. However, instead of going down that route, it would be my great preference to be able to work together to solve this problem. It is for this reason that I am reaching out to you again on this issue."

Gottstein got a mealy-mouthed answer to this letter from an agency head, but there's no indication that Palin ever saw the letter. There was no response from her office.

When I wrote the last update on this topic, Sarah Palin was still governor and I didn't know the outcome of the lawsuit. Today I found out what happened.

In May 2009, the trial court decided PsychRights lacked standing and the case should be dismissed and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal on October 1, 2010, including the approximately $4,000 attorney fee award against PsychRights.

Another lawsuit was filed by PsychRights more recently.

Jim Gottstein is taking on psychiatry in Alaska for over-prescribing medicine to children.

The list of those named in Gottstein's lawsuit is long: More than a dozen child psychiatrists, health agencies, state officials, and pharmacies that include Walmart, Fred Meyer and Safeway.

Gottstein believes foster children are one of the largest groups of children that are over-medicated in Alaska. The goal of the lawsuit is to stop this practice.
He says they are using powerful drugs on children that are intended for adults.

"People put on these drugs have a life expectancy of 25 years shorter than the general population. These drugs are so harmful, that they literally kill people," Gottstein said.

"A lot times it's easier to medicate someone and just have them go numb than to actually help them process all these emotions," said Candice Tucker, who is now a part of Facing Foster Care in Alaska.

Tucker was in foster care for three years and believes her social workers and doctors relied too heavily on drugs.

"I remember every medication I've ever been on," she says.

"Abilify, Respridol, Trozidone and Benzatropine for the side effects," she listed off.

"It angers me, because there are harmful side effects to these medications. They cause health problems. Half of them aren't even recommended to be used by someone under the age of 18, yet they're being prescribed to four-year-olds," she said.

I included the latest case because practices that preceded Sarah Palin and continued under her administration are still widespread and still harm vulnerable children.

It seems to me that there's a culture of collusion against the most vulnerable members of society in Alaska. Various agencies, that should be looking after the interests of these children, take them away from a bad situation and attempt to "solve" their problems through the use of unsuitable medication, creating other problems that will have repercussions in their future lives.

News from England highlight some of these repercussions:

Ten girls who were heavily sedated while living at a care home during the 1970s and 1980s went on to have children with a range of birth defects, an investigation revealed.

As teenagers at the Church of England-run Kendall House home in Gravesend, Kent, the ten were restrained with huge doses of tranquillisers and other drugs, according to BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

It is feared hundreds of other girls who were in UK care homes during the same period and suffered the same mistreatment may also be at risk of having children with birth defects. (Daily Mail, UK)

Alaska has a higher than average incidence of birth defects. Governors and state agencies seem incapable of acting in the interests of vulnerable people in Alaska. The attitude of those in charge range from total indifference to outright collusion. They seem incapable of joining the dots and co-ordinating services to improve the quality of people's lives and prevent their ever damning statistics from getting worse. The courts help legitimize the position of the state and its agencies.

Sarah Palin can't be sued now. But she should bear responsibility for her legacy, gladly perpetuated by those who came after her.

If we take Sarah Palin's record in this particular area, add her destructive rhetoric regarding healthcare, her general indifference to the vulnerable, young and old, can the country really afford her the opportunity to make any future decisions on their behalf? Can anybody turn a blind eye while she influences the political conversation with her simplistic and shortsighted soundbites?

This and older posts on Palingates may be read together by clicking on this link.

Education and Sarah Palin

The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know. ~William R. Inge

Sarah Palin on education

2007:

I’ve also committed to help provide local school districts with more predictability, for better planning by supporting “early funding of education.” I’ll introduce a separate education appropriation bill and ask that it’s passed. Our local school districts deserve to know what they have to work with early enough for them to create efficiencies through planning. (State of the State Address to the 24th Alaska Legislature Jan 17, 2007)

2008:

It is our energy development that pays for essential services, like education. Victor Hugo said, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” It’s a privileged obligation we have to “open education doors.” Every child, of every ability, is to be cherished and loved and taught. Every child provides this world hope. They are the most beautiful ingredient in our sometimes muddied up world. I am committed to our children and their education. (State of the State Address to the 25th Alaska Legislature Jan 15, 2008)

2008, during the vice presidential campaign:



In February 2009 Sarah Palin decided to opt out of an effort to write nationwide education standards in reading and math. It was reported at the time:

The effort is in its development stages, with state and federal education officials, and others, trying to agree on what the core standards should be. Agreeing to adopt the standards is a step for later. Besides Alaska, the other states that have turned away from the effort are Missouri, South Carolina and Texas.

Anchorage School District Superintendent Carol Comeau, who is in charge of nearly half of Alaska's 120,000 public school students, said she was disappointed with the governor's decision. As a parent and educator, she said, she wants to know how Alaska's kids compare.

Alaska has many long standing problems when it comes to education .

Comparisons don't favour the state:

• Alaska's dropout rate, at 8 percent, was double the national average in the 2005-2006 school year, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Department of Education.

• 38 percent of today's ninth-graders will have no high school diploma 10 years from now, according to the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education.

• Alaska ranks 50th, or last, in the number of ninth-graders who will likely have a bachelor's degree in 10 years, according to the commission.

Also in 2009, there was the question of the stimulus funds:

Anchorage School District Superintendent Carol Comeau and about 30 other superintendents from urban school districts met with Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Monday while they were in Washington, D.C., for an education conference. They met in the Executive Office Building, Comeau said, mostly to talk about how school systems will spend stimulus money.

"It's a significant opportunity for some significant change that's going to impact -- long-term -- kids, especially kids in poverty." Comeau said.

Sarah Palin still hasn't decided how to spend $115 million in what's known as the "state stabilization fund," money that's supposed to help states balance their education budgets.

How did Sarah Palin deal with it?

Gov. Sarah Palin just told reporters that she’s accepting only 55 percent of the federal economic stimulus money being offered to Alaska. The governor said that she will accept only about $514 million of the $930 million headed to the state.

“We are not requesting funds intended to just grow government," she said.

The biggest single chunk of stimulus money that Palin is turning down is $160 million for education.

She ended up accepting most of the stimulus money, the Alaska Legislature saw to that. If she could have gone through with rejecting stimulus funds for education just to make her point about growing government, the children of Alaska, so cherished and loved, the most beautiful ingredient in the world, would have been the losers.

How does Sarah Palin regard her own children's education?

Sarah Palin's children missed out (and still do) on a lot of their schooling. Considering the volume of travel expenses claims, Sarah's own statement about spending time with them (when she was governor), the VP campaign, when the children were with her most of the time, the book tours and other travel to the Lower 48 in the past two years, their school attendance is indeed poor.

Track and Bristol never gave college any serious thought. Willow and Piper appear to have many absences from school on a regular basis.

Trig is still to enter the school system, but Sarah Palin didn't exactly champion his future needs when she slashed the budget for special education by 62% in 2008 and 2009.

During her months as governor, federal funding under No Child Left Behind was likely to have been put in peril for school districts with parents who did not comply with state truancy laws and did not permit the school district properly to account for minor children's extended absences. Sarah Palin set a very bad example for parents in Alaska.

No politician or talking head would say that education is a bad thing, it wouldn't sound very good.

But there's an enormous difference between words and actions and in the case of Sarah Palin and her attitudes to education, some of her own words come to mind: She doesn't walk the walk.

Earlier posts about Education and Sarah Palin.

(Clicking on the above link will show all posts, with this very post at the top)

Is Babygate politically relevant?

Babygate is not a gate in the true sense of the word. The political angles are tangential, but this would-be scandal has captured the imagination of many.

Perhaps the attraction lies in the "Desperate Housewives" plotline, transferred to real life by a sitting governor of state. I believe a comprehensive recap of this topic is unnecessary. A simple click on the "babygate" label* or a visit to the now frozen Palin Deceptions blog will guarantee many hours of reading and poring over a great number of photographs for the curious among us.

Some won't discuss it, while others will never tire of putting forward their pet theories about Sarah Palin's strange pregnancy.

I became attracted to Sarah Palin's story because of Babygate. After spending many hours reading about it, I started this blog. It soon became apparent that I had nothing to add to the ongoing theories. Having named the blog "Palingates," I had to look for different material and the obvious path was to study Sarah Palin's political career in detail.

Can Babygate bring Sarah Palin down? Considering that serious wrongdoings have been extensively reported and failed to touch her (yet), perhaps a "gate" denied so fiercely by her fans will do the trick. They refuse to discuss it and very infrequently offer some feeble excuses, just in case the story breaks in the national media. There have been recent rumours about it happening soon. The plot thickened a bit when Patrick's "Palin Deceives" account was reported to Flickr and inactivated a couple of days ago. I don't know what will happen to the Flickr account, but Patrick has every single photo saved to disk and may decide to publish them on another photo sharing site.

Babygate discussed in the MSM will be interesting and if proven, may disperse her small but ardent fan base. Will it interest the rest of the American public? Will it make Sarah Palin go away? I don't know. I still believe her record as a politician could do her aspirations a lot more damage because it belongs in the political arena and is not based on theories. Her record is documented in black & white and can't be spun as easily as her tabloid scandals.

I still don't have any new material or new theories about this topic and can't offer any more information.

With this Babygate reappraisal out of the way (but not dismissing it), I will once again turn my attention to the other topics.

* (Please note that many photos will be missing from the Babygate posts as they came from Patrick's Flickr account.)

Sarah Palin, AGIA and TransCanada, is this the final good bye?

Last year Sarah Palin was still talking about her gas pipeline as a major achievement and part of her vision for energy independence.



Alaska lawmakers are not so keen on the idea anymore. From Alaska Dispatch, February 4, 2011:

House GOP leaders say the state should bail on the proposed Alaska natural gas line project by mid-July if pipeline backers can't prove that it is economically viable.

House Bill 142, introduced Friday by House Speaker Mike Chenault and four other key Republicans, seeks a way out of the contractual agreement put in place between the state and TransCanada under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. AGIA obligates the state to reimburse TransCanada up to $500 million for pre-construction studies and other work on the project, which envisions a large-diameter pipeline from the North Slope to either Valdez or Canada or possibly both.

But lawmakers are growing increasingly disenchanted with the pipeline's prospects and are not inclined to spend much more of the state's money on something that may never get built.

I must confess that I always found the topic of AGIA slightly boring and didn't write too much about it in the past.

This is AGIA in a nutshell:

Frank Murkowski had a plan to build a gas pipeline but was said to be in cahoots with some oil companies.

This is from an article on ADN about Sarah Palin's campaign for governor:

Tacked up prominently on a wall in Sarah Palin's downtown campaign headquarters is a newspaper clipping with a picture of two signs beside the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

The first one reads, "Canada my ass, it's Alaska's gas." Underneath it, the second sign says, "Sarah Palin."

Variation on the above slogan, on a t-shirt

Murkowski lost the election to Sarah Palin and she proceeded to promote her AGIA plan, making deals with democratic lawmakers in order to have it approved (how very bi-partisan!). The oil companies favoured by Murkowski were excluded from Palin's proposals and went on to form their own company, Denali, with their own alternative plan to build the pipeline. They own the North Slope gas and were potential customers of Sarah's pipeline.

The whole project hinged on who was going to finance it and the estimates were that it would cost at least a whopping $30 billion to build the pipeline. Sarah Palin awarded TransCanada a very nice contract (for them) to study the feasibility of this massive enterprise. They pocketed $500 million of state of Alaska money... ("Canada my ass, it's Alaska's gas.")

Just before her resignation, Sarah Palin went to Texas and met with Exxon and TransCanada executives to discuss AGIA. (EyeOnYou and AustinTxx researched an interesting post regarding some AK money awarded to Texan oil & gas companies just after the above meeting)

It appears that there is a get-out clause in the contract with TransCanada and Alaska can rescind it if the project proves not to be financially viable.

The deadline is next July 15. That may mark the day when Sarah Palin will have to stop talking about her greatest achievement: The gas pipeline and all that blah blah blah about the hungry markets in the Lower 48.

July 15 can't come soon enough.

UPDATE

Barb Dwyer offered another view about the AGIA saga and put it into the context of the discussions regarding a gas pipeline in the past 35 years. Thank you for this, Barb.

This is not something new, Alaskans have been on this merry go round for over 35 years now. AGIA is confusing and boring by design, it isn't important and was never going to happen, that was the plan all along. There's huge amounts of misinformation out there about the gasline and Halcro just adds to the mess. He really has no idea what he's talking about, he repeats what is being fed to him from the oil companies he's in bed with, which just adds to the confusion and helps to stall the process which is exactly what the oil companies want.

The bottom line is this, the oil companies do not want any type of gasline built until the technology exists to go over the polar ice cap. That way they can keep the profits all to themselves. Until then they will do anything in their power to make sure one is never built through Alaska.

When the pipeline was built in 1974, the agreement was that a gasline would be built right next to it within 5 years. The permits were secured back then through Yukon Pacific for the land next to the pipeline to be used and those permits are still valid. The route for the gasline was set in 1974 and it's the only route that can be done today. The began stalling this 35 years ago and they're still doing a masterful job of it by buying off Governors.

The reason voters were mad at Murkowski is because in 2001, the gasline bill (from Prudhoe Bay to tidewater Valdez) was voted in to law and the AGPA was formed. Frank ignored this and began his own plan that would never work which was just another stall. Then we had Sarah running around the state saying I'm not Murkowski and I will build the Alaska gasline. That bumper sticker she had in her office was on cars all over the state. Voters were saying build the gasline that WE voted on.

The "Denali" line is the biggest scam you can imagine and it just mystifies me how anyone can think this is plausible. There isn't a chance in hell they could EVER secure the permits to build a gasline through Denali National Park and they know this. It makes the oil companies look like they are doing something but the fact is it's just a smokescreen. They will never have any permits or any access to any of the land involved. They haven't even applied for any of it because it's all a myth.

Buyers have been lining up ever since the vote in '01 to build the gasline. Foreign buyers like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have bent over backwards to try and get the Alaska gasline built so they can sell it to foreign markets, that's where the demand is. The AGPA plan was on the table for Palin and if she had done what she said she was going to do, Fairbanks would already be getting gas. The AGPA has had all the permits in place for years and land has already been cleared for the terminal. The only hold up for building this line for over 35 years now is getting a Governor to sign what the voters have already approved. Big oil doesn't want that to happen.

So Palin had three choices basically, the Denali line which has no permits and no rights to the gas. The TransCanada route which has no permits, no rights to the gas and no buyers. The third choice was the line the voters approved which has all the necessary permits intact, buyers lined up AND rights to purchase the gas. Since Marty Rutherford (former lobbyist for TransCanada) was Palins lead dog on this fiasco of course the contract was awarded to TransCanada. Things didn't go too well when they announced this though, people were REALLY pissed off. So they backed off and said they would look over the proposals again and take public input from the web on this matter and set up a public comment section on the state website for 2 weeks to hear what people had to think.

It's a shame I didn't keep screenshots of that public gripe session because it was rich. There were even tribal leaders in Canada writing in saying there's just no way in hell you're building that gasline through OUR land, but it didn't stop them. The public raised hell but instead of reconsidering, Palin decided to stick it to all Alaskans by announcing AGIA again with the added 500 million to TransCanada now with a treble damages clause. The website was scrubbed after 2 weeks and then the Legislature cut our throats by approving it.

Until Alaskans stand up and demand the gasline is built according to the bill that was voted into law 10 years ago, the oil companies will keep stalling until they can go over the ice cap. If they manage to pull this off for another 15 years they will get their wish and Alaska will get nothing.

Barb included a link to the actual proposed bill, dated 2001.

You may wish read Andrew Halcro's latest post about TransCanada. The search term "TransCanada" yields many pages of results. Halcro wrote extensively about this topic, so it makes sense to read his posts about it if you wish to find out more from the viewpoint of a person sympathetic to the big oil companies.

Special open thread - Sarah Palin on Reagan's 100th Anniversary - Live feed

I found a livestream embed of the Sarah/Ronnie lovefest on a very right wing website. Here it is. I hope it works because I'm going to be fast asleep when this thing starts. If it doesn't work, forget about it, go back to the proper (nice) open thread or follow the proceedings somewhere else... Ennealogic will be live blogging it on Politicalgates.

If it's not live when you come to the post, keep checking. I put the post up one hour before the official start, just in case...

(H/T to Trigmund Freud for suggesting it, so people would have a place to vent in real time!)



Would anybody mind terribly if I deleted the post and the thread after the event? Do we really want our collective spleen to be archived forever? Let me know, yes?

Update

I read the comments on this thread and they seemed fairly ok. It's very tempting to dump it, but I susbtituted the live feed and now we have a video of the actual speech. I'll let the thread stay, it will soon fade into oblivion. Perhaps Sarah Palin will be forgotten even faster, fingers crossed!

Ronald Reagan Jr, who may know a thing or two about his own father, doesn't hold Sarah Palin in very high esteem. I expect Ronnie Jr has his fingers crossed as well and can't wait for Sarah Palin to walk into the sunset and stop exploiting his father's image for her own ends.

Sarah Palin and her toxic record as governor of Alaska

Sarah Palin has a child with special needs and there are others in her immediate/extended family as well. Although there are no environmental causes for Down syndrome, one should expect that other birth defects, whatever their causes, would touch her heart. She pretends to champion causes related to special needs, but never goes beyond a few platitudes. When she meets a child with special needs, the best she can do is to go "Aaawww..."

Alaska has the highest incidence of birth defects in the whole country and a responsible governor would look at the statistics and try to find solutions for the problem. That's common sense.

Let's have look at some of her policies and what impact they had, how they helped alleviate such a serious problem affecting the people in her beautiful state of Alaska. Sarah Palin's record speaks for itself.

- In February 2008 Sarah Palin's administration opposed legislation that would give parents 48 hours notice before schools were to be sprayed with pesticides and other toxic chemicals. Currently, parents get 24 hours, which the bill's proponents say is not sufficient for parents who want to arrange to keep kids out of school for a few days after the chemicals are applied. Palin's administration argued that the bill was too restrictive and would force schools to notify parents before cleaning toilets with disinfectant, which, supporters say, is not true. In the same month, members of Palin's administration testified against language in legislation that would have banned polybrominated diphenyl ethers - a flame retardant that, studies show, harms the developing brain.

- In the summer of 2007, Palin allowed oil companies to move forward with a toxic-dumping plan in Alaska's Cook Inlet, the only coastal fishery in the nation where toxic dumping is permitted. Permits could not be issued without Alaska's certification that the discharges met the state's water-quality standards. Bob Shavelson, executive director of Cook Inletkeeper, an organization founded to protect the area's watershed, said at the time: "Palin's Department of Environmental Conservation issued that certification based on the long-discounted notion that 'dilution is the solution to pollution', turning the federal Clean Water Act on its head and actually increasing toxic pollution."

- Palin then took on the Clean Water Initiative, also known as Proposition 4, which appeared on the Alaska ballot on August 26. The measure would have limited the runoff of toxic metals (known to cause developmental and birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) from all mining operations, It was aimed at stopping the proposed Pebble Mine, a huge mining proposal that was controversial for its potential impact on Bristol Bay, the world's largest commercial wild salmon fishery (for which Palin's eldest daughter was named). The project had been in the works for years, and, when she ran for governor in 2006, Palin told the Alaska Journal of Commerce that, if the mine was green-lighted, "there will be remediation from now to eternity." Once in office, though, environmental concerns took a backseat. In a TV interview six days before the vote, Palin said, "Let me take my governor's hat off for just a minute, and tell you personally, Prop 4 - I vote no on that." Alaska's mining industry turned Palin's face and words into an advertising blitz and came from behind to defeat it. The irony is that the Palins have a commercial salmon fishing interest in Bristol Bay. How could the Governor support the interests of an organisation whose actions would hurt her own business? What could have made her support their interests against her own so passionately?

- The Governor was pushed by environmental activists and Alaska Natives to pressure the military in its cleanup of one of the most contaminated sites in Alaska. Northeast Cape Air Force base on remote St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea closed its operations in the 1970s and left thousands of barrels of toxic waste, containing solvents, fuels, heavy metals, pesticides, and PCBs, a group of toxic organic chemicals that have persisted in the environment. For the past few years, the Army Corps of Engineers has been slowly cleaning up parts of the site and claims it will leave it safe. (One federally funded study still in progress by the state's premier watchdog on chemical pollutants, Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT), tested the local water and got a reading that was more than one thousand times the level that the EPA considers safe. According to Pamela Miller, ACAT's executive director, Palin should have used her powers as governor to forge a better cleanup plan. "Her administration has done nothing to work with the military to avoid possible contamination." Scientists have also opposed the Army's plan, saying it will leave the area dangerous.

- Governor Palin is very enthusiastic about drilling in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and in June 2008 submitted a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), copied to the President, Vice President, Secretary of the Interior and the Alaska Congressional delegation. If the drillig in ANWR is to be done as responsibly as in the North Slope (birth defects 4 times higher than national average) the impact among the Alaska Natives would contribute to the overall increase in birth defects in Alaska.

Sarah Palin closed her letter with an impassioned statement:

"I don't think it's overly dramatic to say that this nation's future and the quality of life for every American are dependent on the decisions you make or don't make in the next few months."

Quality of life? In Sarah Palin's world, it must mean something connected to $. People's health and that of their children is obviously secondary in importance.

In October last year, Sarah Palin posted a Facebook note about where she (still) stands on the indiscriminate exploitation of America's natural resouces.

It looks like she wishes to extend her disregard for the people of Alaska to the rest of the country and squeeze everything out of the American soil regardless of the consequences to the people, the environment and the other creatures that share it. In the case of this note, the focus is on independence from foreign sources and the tone is as divisive as ever: Them and us.

Although the Left chooses to mock the mantra of “drill, baby, drill,” and they ignorantly argue against the facts pertaining to the need for America to responsibly develop her domestic supply of natural resources, surely they can’t argue the national security implications of relying on foreign countries to extract supplies that America desperately needs for industry, jobs, and security. Some of the countries we’re now reliant upon and will soon be beholden to can easily use energy and mineral supplies as a weapon against us.

The solution? Simply, please don’t elect politicians who cast votes that lock up our plentiful supplies. Please consider the case of China bending us over a barrel as it develops rare earth minerals while we ban mining. Please consider Venezuela and Russia and Saudi Arabia and Brazil (as we subsidize their off-shore drilling) and all other energy-producing countries as the Left locks up ANWR, NPR-A, and other American lands that are teeming with our own needed energy supplies.

“Drill, baby, drill and mine, baby, mine.” Yep, the mantra may be mocked by the Democrats, but serious consequences ensue when we let the Left make us rely on foreign countries to feed us energy. The joke is on us if they win.

Sarah Palin also reiterated these views in a number of Fox News interviews and some of her speeches.

Some things never change...

(This post was based in great part on an article by Sheila Kaplan and Marilyn Berlin Snell called Northern Exposure, published in October 2008 in The New Republic)

Original post on Palingates.

Good post on Mudflats about Wasilla's Toxic Cloud. (h/t to lillibird)

More on Sarah Palin and special needs.

Dairygate refreshed

I promised to review some of original gates involving Sarah Palin and put them into the context of more recent events. Only her record as a politician would produce gates as such. The suffix entered the English language because the first of all gates, Watergate, involved a politician, not a celebrity. Celebrities may produce scandals, not gates and are not accountable to voters. That's why we can't have a Twittergate or a Facebookgate. Sarah Palin doesn't hold any political office at the moment. She was chosen by half a dozen people to do what she's doing now as a celebrity. But she was elected by the people of Alaska to be their governor and will remain accountable to them for a few more months. Let's take a trip down memory lane and shine a fresh light on some of her deeds.

Dairygate

"We took government out of the dairy business and put it back into private-sector hands - where it should be." From Sarah Palin's resignation speech, July 3, 2009.

Since her resignation, Sarah Palin has criticized every effort president Obama has made to get the economy back on track and preserve jobs in some important industries. Sarah Palin doesn't like goverment and doesn't like bailouts.

Matanuska Maid was a state run dairy. It was failing and the management board at the time had voted to close it down. Enter the governor, our very own Sarah Palin, to save the day. In a series of ambushes and staged media opportunities, she destroyed the reputation of the people who had been running the dairy for many years, fired all the members of the Board of Agriculture and Conservation (BAC) and replaced them with old friends from high school (including a woman whose sole qualification for the job was having a liking for cows when she was a child). The new board, chaired by Kristan Cole (Sarah Palin's legal fund sole trustee), immediately voted themselves as the operating board for the dairy business, eliminating a whole tier in the management chain. Money was pumped into the new venture in the form of several bailouts. After staging a dodgy auction to make some capital from the old equipment, the dairy turned private, now in the hands of assorted incompetent people who favoured a handful on dairy farmers from the Valley (one of them related to a member of the Board).

The shiny new private dairy couldn't make money and kept applying for some more, in the form of loans from the Agriculture Revolving Loan Fund. These loans are considered and approved by that lovely bunch of friends of the new owners. It couldn't be a more comfortable arragement for them. Some of the loans were taken without any collateral and some were loans to pay for earlier loans. One of the new managers was caught doing some dodgy cash deals and a nasty smell of fraud lingered around the place.

When searching for more recent news about Matanuska Creamery, I found two articles from the local the media. ADN and The Mat-Su Frontiersman interviewed Karen Olson, the CEO of the company, and the articles read as free PR for the creamery, with Olson waxing lyrical about their success. It seems to have been a trend throughout the fiasco. While we read Andrew Halcro's well documented articles about all the wrongdoings of these enterprising people and their inability to make ends meet, the media ran their success stories, marvelling at them for helping Alaskan children drink real Alaskan milk produced by real Alaskan cows from the Valley!

Back to Sarah Palin for a recap. She took a failing but honestly run state business and gave it to a bunch of incompetent people who happened to be her friends from high school or from the Valley. State and Federal money was poured into the new venture and it still failed to show any results despite obtaining generous (but somewhat suspect) loans on several occasions. Money and equipment were used in many fiddles and things were not properly accounted for. Dare I say that Sarah Palin made a bad situation worse for the state but a lot better for her cronies? Some fiscal conservative, ethical governor!

I'd like to make a parallel between Sarah Palin's actions to save her local dairy and Obama's bailout of the auto industry. I didn't read or hear anything about Obama replacing the management of any of the car factories with his high school buddies or appointing a director whose only qualification for the job was a passion for his Hot Wheels when he was a little boy...


Who would you rather have making decisions or giving opinions about the economy, the American industry and other equally important issues?

***

Previous posts about Dairygate, containing full details about all the people involved in the fiasco, their shady dealings and very useful links may be read HERE.

Should you wish to concentrate on different details of the case, bit by bit, instead of reading all four Dairygate posts at once, here's a guide to the contents of each post in the series:

Original Dairygate post: First overview.

First recap: Strange cash deals going on.

Second recap: The loans.

Third recap: Dodgy auctions, the loans and full cast of characters.

Andrew Halcro wrote extensively about this topic. The results of the search for Matanuska Creamery may be found HERE and the posts should help give you a good idea about the extent of the corruption going on over the years.

If you'd like to read the e-mails from the Crivella West database, click on THIS LINK, then click on search and enter the terms "dairy" and "mat-maid" in the search box. The database is still live and working, but searching it is not terribly intuitive.