There's an interesting article on Alaska Dispatch about Sarah Palin and Sudan:
As early as 2006, Reps. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, and Les Gara, D-Anchorage, prodded Palin to restructure the permanent fund to divest in Darfur.
"If this genocide were occurring somewhere on the American continent, or someplace in Europe," said Lynn in a 2006 letter to Palin, "would we invest Alaska's money with corporations that do business with the perpetrators? I don't think so. Genocide is genocide, whether in Darfur, Africa, or anyplace else." Gara added to the letter: "Given the thousands of good companies we can invest in, taking a moral stand against the unconscionable won't cost the Permanent Fund a dime."
Over the next two years, Lynn, Gara and others consistently lobbied Palin to support legislation to divest from Darfur, but the administration did not change course until two weeks before the end of the legislative session in 2008, which was too late for a bill to be passed, Gara said at the time and reiterated in a recent email.
But Palin, in a '08 vice presidential debate with Joe Biden, implied that she had advocated the state divest from Sudan from the moment she found out. "When I and others in the Legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars," Palin said.
There. The amazing CEO of Alaska took a very long time to find out about the investments in Sudan despite having received letters about it for nearly two years, then acted too late for any measures to be implemented in the 2008 legislative session. She lied during the vice presidential debate, taking credit for something not due to her because she spent her busy days sitting on her hands about it.
Sheesh, she must have been terribly busy writing phony letters to newspapers, calling people names, arranging her children's travels on the state dime and drinking coffee: All the the real priorities of a busy governor, CEO extraordinaire...
Andrée McLeod sent me a copy of a press release about the missing e-mails:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, June 13, 2011
Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska resident and registered Republican Andrée McLeod has written the Alaska governor and attorney general asking why there is a huge 22-day gap of missing emails in the close to 25,000 of Palin emails that were released in Juneau, Alaska by the State of Alaska on June 10, 2011. (See email below)
McLeod asks, “I write to inquire about a huge 22-day gap in Palin’s emails that were released ...by your office. That’s almost a month’s worth of missing Palin emails!”
McLeod called the governor’s office Monday morning, June 13, 2011, to ask about the missing emails. She was told that no one else had called to ask about them.
McLeod continued, “Palin’s standard practice of operating government through secret back-channels with private email accounts on unsecured and unprotected servers violates the freedoms that the Alaska Public Records Act guarantees us and infringes on our right to know about the inner workings of our government.”
Alaska Governor Parnell and Attorney General Burns received McLeod’s communication Monday night. McLeod hopes to receive an explanation as to why there is such a huge gap in the release of Palin’s emails. “Where are the emails? Where did they go?” McLeod asks.
From: Andree McLeod To: 'sean.parnell@alaska.gov'; 'johnjburns@alaska.gov' Cc: Don C. Mitchell (Dcraigm@aol.com); 'Perez, Linda J (GOV)' Subject: HUGE 22-DAY GAP IN PALIN EMAILS ????
Governor Parnell and Attorney General Burns,
I write to alert you and to inquire about a huge 22-day gap in Palin’s emails that were distributed on Friday, June 10, 2011 by your office. That’s almost a month’s worth of missing Palin emails!
Sarah Palin was sworn in as governor on December 4, 2006. There are about 7 pages of a few emails that span from December 4-8, 2006…and then the dates shoot right up to only one on December 30, 2006…while the rest of the emails begin again on January 2, 2007 and onward.
There is no mention of this 22-day gap of missing Palin emails listed in the Alaska Public Records Request Privilege Log either.
Where are these emails? Where did they go?
The last email before the 22-day gap was from DNR employee Marty Rutherford on December 8, 2006, and states:
Michelle,
Thank you so much!! I have the Governor's personal email as well, so I'll just
use that for awhile.
MartyR
This was in response to Michelle Fabrello:
Marty,
I wanted to let you know that this is a "public" address for the Governor, it is not one that she has access to. I check this account daily, and can forward things on, but I am worried that emails might get missed as there are times when I am unable check it for hours. KrisPerry might have a better email address for her.
Thanks so much,
Michelle Fabrello
Coordinator for Constituent Relations
I would appreciate a prompt response to this serious and important inquiry. Why is there such a huge gap in the emails Sarah Palin sent or received between December 8 through December 30, 2006?
Where are these emails? Where did they go?
Sincerely,
Andrée McLeod
BTW Sean: In my review of the emails, I noticed that your personal private email account sparnell@alaska.com was used a heck of a lot more extensively than you’ve let on to the media.
It’s imperative that a law be passed to prohibit the use of private email account for official business so the people’s business is protected and secure…and not at risk of getting hacked as was done with Sarah’s emails.
Readers who have followed the shenanigans of the Board of Game in Alaska will be familiar with the name Corey Rossi.
Corey Rossi
He was appointed director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation by Sean Parnell in 2010, something that caused major discomfort among nearly 40 retired state biologists.
Just recently Palin overtly politicized the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) by creating a brand new "leadership" position and filling that position with family friend Corey Rossi who has for the past year been a Board member and spokesman for a radical new hunting organization whose only work so far has been to try to kill as many animals as they can that may have blood-stained pointy teeth.
Going back a bit further, we find a Corey Rossi ardent supporter very close to home: Sally Heath.
Prior to Rossi's appointment, somebody raised concerns about his ethics:
Palin's most controversial legacy, perhaps, stems from her appointment of Denby Lloyd as commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in 2006. Lloyd proceeded to name a friend of Palin's family, Corey Rossi, as the "assistant commissioner for abundance management" (a newly created job) in December 2008 and then promoted Rossi to run the Division of Wildlife Conservation (one of the highest positions within Fish and Game) in March 2010. Before joining the Fish and Game Department, Rossi spent 20 years killing predators for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, including stints as a contractor and ultimately as a manager of that agency's lethal effort in Alaska. Rossi lacks a college degree, but says he's learned on the job and taken some relevant college courses. He also used to make money as a hunting guide and had ties to Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. He listed Palin's parents as the top references on his résumé and says he actually employed them for about 15 years; Palin reportedly pushed for his recruitment to the state's wildlife management effort.
The amazing CEO of Alaska had a lot of imput not only from the First Dude, but from mom as well. Vendettas, favours and cronyism were the hallmarks of Sarah Palin's administration.
Sarah Palin actually forwarded her mom's e-mail to her colleagues and sounded like a little girl:
I read somewhere that the palinbots believe the e-mails prove that Sarah Palin never approved wolf aerial hunting. Well, she tried, but didn't get away with it:
A recently acquired troll thinks Sarah Palin's e-mails show her in a positive light. He borrowed Larry Hagman's name and I think the real Larry would not be amused. He is a liberal and would never show any admiration for Sarah Palin.
The e-mails show very little evidence of governing by the amazing CEO, but show instead an immature woman who writes like a teenager:
Sarah Palin likes to show what a good Christian she is:
As a good champion for special needs, her choice of words couldn't be better:
Would she have affectionate nicknames for foreign leaders if she ever makes it to the White House? Sarah Palin referred to Jay Ramras in language very becoming of a lady:
One of the palibots' main arguments for liking Sarah Palin so much is that she's one of them. I agree. Sarah Palin is inarticulate, shallow, ignorant and vulgar. Just like her stupid followers.
Searching through over 24,000 e-mails is a very tall order. I searched a few specific months and also some hot subjects. E-mails related to the Branchflower report, Walt Monegan, etc, were heavily redacted, as were the e-mails about Mat Maid. That was to be expected, so no surprises there.
I've been following the live blogging by Bill Dedman and Sylvia Wood on msnbc.com Open Channel and reading other blogs in order to get an idea about the whole thing. The pro-Palin camp had hopes that the e-mail dump would prove what a fantastic CEO Sarah Palin was during her short tenure as governor. Her amazing "CEO-ing" must be in the privileged log, because I couldn't find much evidence of governing in the e-mails I read. There was a lot of housekeeping, travel arrangements for the children and trying to control her image in the media. Her own e-mails to others contained a lot of "awesome," "sick" and other one liners as comments to stuff other people sent to her. Another hot subject was... coffee!
Ivy Frye seemed obsessed with giving the governor copious amounts of coffee. I searched March 2008 and noticed a number of e-mails about coffee, all from Ivy Frye, so I entered "coffee" in the search box. It returned five pages about it, not all from Ivy. It seems to me that Sarah Palin drank a lot of coffee during her pregnancy with Trig.
That's the humorous part of it. What's not so funny was something Jason Easley noticed and wrote about on Politicususa. While the privacy of state officials was respected, according to an AK statute, the privacy of people who dared criticize Palin was not. Their full names, addresses and phone numbers were left intact. As Jason put it, Sarah Palin put new crosshairs on a number of her past constituents. We all know how charming and respectful the palinbots are...
While reading the msnbc.com Open Channel, I noticed that when they wrote about Mat Maid (@3:57 p.m. AT), they provided a link to a summary about it. I clicked on it and arrived at Palingates! Summarizing such a complex saga paid off in the end. Much of the credit goes to Andrew Halcro, who wrote extensively about it. Although he provided a lot of material, searching his site is not the easiest thing in the world and putting together all the pieces of the puzzle is a daunting task for people not familiar with the topic. I tried to present Dairygate in an easy to follow format so we could make sense of it. The summary linked by MSNBC wouldn't have been possible without the very valuable and exclusive information provided by a trusted (and verified) source in Alaska. Thank you, you know who you are.
I'm sure there are more interesting tidbits to come out, but so far I haven't seen any earth shattering revelations in these e-mails, not that I expected any...
I'll leave you with a screenshot that sums up Sarah Palin's attitude to her children's travel. Even with all the tweaking and the immense effort in the part of her staff, she still had to reimburse the state for some of it.
The last sentence puzzled me. Is she saying she didn't understand the rule, or did she wish it was more understanding (as in accommmodating)? Anyway, wasn't the Governor's House their house?
I'll comment on any other relevant information as and when it emerges, but my feeling about these e-mails is that they won't make a lot of difference. I'm very surprised it took nearly three years to censor this pile of junk. I'm sorry I can't be more optimistic. We'll see...
Crivella West has 31 pages showing up in searches already. It looks like we're going to have a lot of fun in the next few days. The only snag is that whole thing is very slow at the moment, there must be a lot of people snooping over there.
We waited nearly three years for these e-mails, they'll keep... If anything, the wait shows how open and transparent our Sarah is.
Do share any interesting nuggets as we won't all be using the same search terms and all the information will take some time to sift through. Of course, it will be quite a job to separate the wheat from the chaff.
So... get a hot drink (or a cold one), put your reading glasses on, roll up your sleeves and dive in!
Knox News reports on the trial of the student who tricked his way into Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account by using the password recovery feature. He didn't have to guess anything, as the "secret" answers to the questions were all over the internet. David Kernell is not a hacker, he's simply clever.
It's official: One-time vice presidential candidate and conservative star Sarah Palin is coming to Knoxville.
But Palin won't be headlining a Tea Party. She'll be taking the witness stand.
Palin, former Alaska governor and running mate to Republican Sen. John McCain in his 2008 bid for the White House, will testify in U.S. District Court in Knoxville next month when University of Tennessee student David C. Kernell stands trial on charges involving Palin's personal Yahoo! e-mail account.
Kernell's defense attorney, Wade Davies, wants Palin to bring any documents relating to that account - when it was opened, how it could be accessed and why and who was allowed to use it.
"I don't want to get in the position where at the last minute there are questions about whether (subpoenas) were properly delivered," Davies told U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley on Wednesday when seeking the legal OK to electronically serve witnesses, including Palin.
The defence attorney is no fool and must have followed Troopergate and other Palin shenanigans. Wade Davies seems to have a good insight into Sarah Palin's 'style'.
Cast your minds back to September 2008, when the incident first came to light. One person in Alaska, familiar with the way the governor conducted state business in unorthodox ways and who's a champion for for real transparency in government, had something to say about it:
Andrée McLeod, who filed the FOIA request, said yesterday evening that Palin should have known better than to conduct state business using an unsecured e-mail account. "If this woman is so careless as to conduct state business on a private e-mail account that has been hacked into, what in the world is she going to do when she has access to information that is vital to our national security interests?" she asked.
McLeod's Anchorage attorney, Donald C. Mitchell, said Palin declined to comply with a public records request in June to divulge 1,100 e-mails sent to and from her personal accounts, citing executive privilege.
Andree commented recently:
There is a bill, SB 249, that would prohibit the use of private email accounts for official business, among other things.
The bill is stuck in the Senate State Affairs Committee and they refuse to schedule it for a public hearing.
Members of the Senate State Affairs Committee are:
Chair: Linda Menard Vice-chair: Kevin Meyer Senator Hollis French Senator Albert Kookesh Senator Joe Paskvan
With Linda Menard as chair…is it a surprise that this bill is stuck?
Andree McLeod is no fool either. She had Sarah Palin worked out well before Wade Davies.
Good luck to both. When it comes to Sarah Palin, tenacity alone can work a bit slowly. A good dose of luck can't hurt in keeping their spirits up!
An Alaska judge has refused to reconsider his ruling that state law doesn't forbid the use of private e-mail accounts to conduct state business.
The decision stems from a 2008 public records request that showed then-Gov. Sarah Palin and members of her staff had been using private e-mail accounts. Activist Andree McLeod sued, arguing that Palin and the governor's office had a duty to save as public records e-mails related to state business, regardless of the accounts that messages were sent through.
The judge contends that it is up to the legislature to change the law and close the loophole, he can't legislate from the bench.
Meanwhile, the legislators who could address this issue once and for all, led by Sarah Palin's old friend and ally Linda Menard, are dragging their feet regarding the loophole-closing bill SB 249 because they don't want to embarass Sarah Palin...
Sarah Palin is always saying that she doesn't like "politics as usual" and the ol' boy system. I must admit, this a case of ol' girl system that goes back to Sarah being crowned Miss Wasilla all those years ago. Sen Linda Menard is still watching out for her protegee in the halls of the Capitol, but neither of them would call it "politics as usual".
Same old, same old...
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While we're on the subject of e-mails, please note our new addresses on the sidebar and amend your address books accordingly. We decided to stop using our personal e-mail accounts for business. Ha ha, I'm joking.
The reason for the change is to show which address is for Regina and which is for Patrick. The old addresses didn't make it very clear and things were a bit muddled from time to time. I think they look really neat!
The issue of Sarah Palin's transparency returns...
We're glad that this particular topic will not go away. Sarah Palin harped on this note since her gubernatorial campaign, continued on the same note in the vice presidential roadshow and made several references to being open and transparent in "Going Rogue".
Sarah Palin used her influence and her Personnel Board to hide her transgressions from the public when she was governor.
Certain recipients had their names redacted, but some of them are easily recognizable as government officials, such as Kris Perry, Frank Bailey, Ivy Frye, Talis (Colberg) and Meg Stapleton. Hardly family or friends. We suspect her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles, was also included among the recipients:
Another e-mail was sent to quite a number of government officials:
I love the tone of Sarah Palin's e-mails. Yes, she's definitely transparent, but NOT open. Her intentions are quite transparent, but she certainly didn't want to be open to public scrutiny.
This video shows it very clearly:
Two years later, Sarah Palin and her family still adhere to the same old style.
Bristol Sheeran Marie Palin has started her very own LLC (Limited Liability Company) The NAIC code 541820 is listed in the state of Alaska simply as Public Relations Agencies:
But in the document NAICs Definitions 2007, on page 444, we find an expanded definition of Public Relations:
So what is BSMP, LLC all about?
Our friend Archivist, of So it goes... , believes it's a convenient way for the Palins to get their hands on SarahPac's money:
IF Sarah decides to pay BSMP LLC $500,000 to 'consult' ... she CAN do that.
It's a FRONT to absorb the PAC funds... avoiding tax on Bristol's earnings is small potatoes compared to being able to essentially PAY HERSELF out the the PAC to 'consult' and 'endorse' candidates!
Bristol doesn't have to do a thing, all she has to do is accept the 'fees' for the 'Political Consultations'.And Sarah can 'pay' for 'Political Consultations' out of the PAC ... most of those donations by Sarah's schmucks are going to stay in the Palin family; some of it will pay for travel to speak and she might give $2000.000 here and there to 'candidates of her choice' ... but ... she can blow the whole wad on 'Political consultations' if she wants to!Political Consultations with BSMP LLC, her daughter's company. A daughter who barely has a High School education...
On page 428 of the NAICs document, there's an overview of the 54 sector as a whole:
Bristol does not have a high degree of expertise or training, does she?
Rachel didn't appear to buy Van Flein's explanation.
We don't buy it either... the Palins may not be open, but they're all too transparent.
I suppose we'll have to wait for the next SarahPac accounts to be disclosed. Does anybody know when it's due?
(Click on pictures to enlarge)
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UPDATE:
Celtic Diva has a very important post regarding the harassement of the judges in the Bristol Palin v Levi Johnston custody case. Sarah Palin's supporters have a protest organized on Facebook. I made some screenshots of the protest page and of Sarah Palin's own Facebook page, where the link to the protest appears unchallenged and unmoderated.
The Facebook Barracuda Brigade are simply supporters of Sarah Palin, but they were allowed to post their link on Sarah's own page. She's responsible for the content of her only "official" platform.
Jessica Beehive and Eddie Burke are much closer to Sarah Palin. They're both in Alaska and Eddie Burke in particular has very good access to the whole family.
Sarah Palin has not condemned this campaign to harass the judges, which makes her just as guilty as the rest of her misguided supporters.
We know she reads the blogs, so we may see a twit or a Facebook note about it in the near future... or not.
Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor's office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts too. ADN, August 18, 2009:
The Alaska Department of Administration this week announced the policy, which tells the employees of Gov. Sean Parnell's administration to use state e-mail "whenever feasible" for state business. It says that, if a private account is used, employees must then send copies of those e-mails to their state account where they can be archived and subject to public records requests.
People in Alaska have their doubts, as seen in these comments:
Does the "if possible" term come from when people are out doing business on their blackberries and what not? So they are not connected to a state server? I don't know , I definitly don't condone or agree with doing the people's business in secret though.
Somebody else commented on what Parnell should have said:
"There is NO reason to use private emails for state business. Bcc's are not to be used EVER. Those who are caught doing so will be immediately fired." See how simple that is?
From the ADN September 2008 article:
As far as McLeod can tell, all but one of the e-mails to the governor used her private e-mail address. The one time an aide e-mailed the governor's state account, he was reminded not to.
"Frank, This is not the Governor's personal e-mail account," an assistant to Palin wrote to Bailey in February.
"Whoops~!" Bailey responded in an e-mail.
In one e-mail string among the volumes turned over, Frye wanted to know if she would be audited or "dinged in any way" if her personal and state e-mails all routed to the same device.
"I would gladly buy my own blackberry if it and its contents were truely mine. Any thoughts here?" Frye wrote on March 17 at 10:56 a.m.
Administrators were waiting for guidance on confidentiality issues from the state Department of Law, Kim Garnero, state Division of Finance director, wrote back at 11:06 a.m. But using a personal device made an audit much less likely, she wrote.
Frye later forwarded strings about the personal e-mail issue to Palin and her husband, Todd.
In April, Frye asked the state's information technology office for help in getting her BlackBerry to default to her Yahoo account.
No one in the Palin administration could say if the governor is saving her Yahoo e-mails. If she's emptying her e-mail trash, they are zapped from Yahoo's storage system within days or at the longest, months, according to the company.
"If you are asking do we have those e-mails, then the answer is no," said Anand Dubey, director of the state's Enterprise Technology Services. "We don't control Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail or anything like that."
It looks to me that those with things to hide will hide them. Even when the courts tell them otherwise.
A state judge reaffirmed Wednesday that government-related e-mails Gov. Sarah Palin and her staff sent from private accounts must be preserved and ordered further arguments over whether to halt the use of such accounts for state business.
The outright deletion of the accounts can be verified by attempting to pull up the public profile on both addresses, which both existed during the incident.
- Both accounts were deleted simultaneously, thus linking the publicly-known e-mail address "gov.sarah" and the private e-mail address "gov.palin".
- This outright deletion may have the potential to be viewed as destruction of evidence, considering that the e-mails in the now-deleted accounts are the subject of several legal controversies.
A judge has ruled that the Alaska governor's office can use private e-mail accounts to conduct state business, as former Gov. Sarah Palin sometimes did.
Superior Court Judge Jack W. Smith said in his ruling Wednesday that there is no provision in Alaska state law that prohibits the use of private e-mail accounts when conducting state business.
State lawyers argued that McLeod misinterpreted current state law. And if the practice is to be changed, lawyers said it was up to Alaska lawmakers do it.
Somebody misinterpreted Andree McLeod's point.
McLeod contended such use of private e-mails denies citizens the right to inspect public records.
Either public records are public and open to inspection or they're not. FOIA is FOIA and Sarah Palin appears to have attempted to circumvent it.
Using private e-mail accounts muddies the waters somewhat... .
Celtic Diva needs to raise money to access some e-mails to and from Sarah Palin's "transparent" administration. The price tag is incredibly high and they use their own incompetence to inflate the costs.
We can help! Click on the link to make a contribution to Diva's transparency fund and to learn more about her troubles and tribulations as a private citizen trying to get some answers regarding the ever so ethical and transparent governor. .
