In my view, there is no better documentary to revisit than the award-winning "9/11" by the Naudet brothers. I still remember when I watched it the first time. It is one of those powerful documentaries you will never forget.
Filmmakers James Hanlon and the Naudet brothers were originally filming Tony Benetatos, a probationary firefighter, on the New York City Fire Department assigned to Ladder 1 on Duane Street with the intention of making a film about the "probie's" experience. On the morning of September 11, Battalion 1 was called out on a gas leak, Jules rides with the Battalion Chief, Chief Joseph Pfeifer, to check it out
Wasilla seems to be a fascinating place. Surrounded by breathtaking scenery, Wasilla itself cannot be described as a beautiful city. It has a very small population, around 10,000 in 2008. In 2000 the population was even smaller: 5,469. Four years before that, Sarah Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla, a part-time position.
So started her "executive" career. Sarah Palin hired a city administrator to run Wasilla. She must have found it too much hard work and needed some help.
The duties of Wasilla's mayor are more circumscribed than those of many other mayors in the United States. The mayor of Wasilla supervises the police department, which was created three years before Palin took office, the public works department, the parks and recreation department, a planning office, a library and a small history museum. Firefighting and schools are handled by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough government, and the state government handles social services and environmental regulation, such as storm water management for building projects.
In 2008, the mayor of Wasilla Dianne Keller gave an interview:
Jason Jones: Do you think being a small-town Mayor prepares you to be president of the United States?Mayor Dianne Keller: An unequivocal yes.JJ: How?Mayor: How?JJ: Let's say you have a problem with the fire department? What would you do?Mayor: The city of Wasilla doesn't manage the fire department.JJ: Ok, fine. Let's say there's something wrong with the school system?Mayor: We don't do the school system.JJ: Just pick any social service.Mayor: We don't do social services in Wasilla...JJ: Um, what do you do?Major: What do we do in Wasilla?JJ: Take me through the Mayor of Wasilla's day.Mayor: (nod, nod, nod), Just different, different things on different days...um, well Mondays at 10 o'clock we always have a staff meeting, and then, um, um, (long pause) every Thursday is a check-signing day, so I sign all the checks for the city of Wasilla--pay the bills...
Whoever searched YouTube looking for a hot candidate to run with John McCain must have seen this video as well as the one with Janet Napolitano.
I love the way she explains how babysitting and waitressing gave her a good grounding on how to conduct herself in the world of politics. Her choice of books is fascinating... But hey, she jumps off the screen!
Did the internet search miss this video?
Sarah failed to say that the "couple" of legislators who were targetting her consisted of ten Republicans and four Democrats. They chose a VP candidate who didn't know what the VP does all day!
How did they miss this one? Or didn't it worry them enough?
Frightening...
Is being a member of the AIP a good or a bad thing?
This one is hilarious! ( H/T to Barb Dwyer). Please pay attention to the AIP guy towards the end. What did he say about Todd? OK, this one wasn't available during the vetting, but it's too good, a pleasure to watch.
Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line "Todd" to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message.
"Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that's cropped up all day today - two reporters, a protestor's sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd's involvement in an anti-American political party," Palin wrote. "It's bull, and I don't want to have to keep reacting to it ... Pls have statement given on this so it's put to bed."
Schmidt hit "reply to all" less than five minutes after Palin's e-mail was sent. "Ignore it," he wrote. "He was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america."
She responded with another e-mail, adding five more names to the "cc" box, all of whom traveled on her campaign plane.
"That's not part of their platform and he was only a 'member' bc independent alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan," Palin wrote. "He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed."
Clearly irritated by what he saw as Palin's attempt to mislead her own campaign and apparently determined to demonstrate that the ultimate authority rested with him, Schmidt put the matter to rest once and for all with a longer response to everyone in the e-mail chain.
"Secession," he wrote. "It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country
We will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where john has to adress this."
I made a screenshot of the Alaska voter registration form: Sarah was telling porkers... independent voters don't have box for "independent" to tick!
The Alaska Independence Party website have changed some of their rhetoric since I last visited. On their homepage and introduction, they now put less emphasis on secession than they did before... but they have an interesting Q & A section. Many questions reflect concerns regarding the loss of Federal money, loss of social security, federal pensions, etc. They seem to want the best of both worlds, but the answer to the question about citizenship is quite clear:
Q: Would I lose my U.S. citizenship?
A: Depending on the form of independence, several forms of citizenship would be possible, including the retention of U.S. citizenship or dual citizenship. However, considering the moral, educational, and economic decay of the U.S., Alaskans' who hold themselves to a higher standard might very well decide to at least maintain an arm's length distance from a country in decline.
Independent or not independent? They seem to want to keep all the balls in the air, but they lean towards secession...
And Sarah Palin is hopefully heading to the political scrapheap! More posts about Sarah Palin and the AIP on palingates.
Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska also thinks it's scandalous that Sarah Palin was considered vice presidential material. .
The executive director of the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce, Cheryl Metiva, had allegedly "inappropriately spent" money for personal expenses and without board approval.
Five board members resigned over the dodgy affair. (Some people have principles...)
The rest of the board, however, voted unanimously to keep Cheryl Metiva as executive director.
Board member Mike Gabel at a chamber meeting Tuesday said the board had voted unanimously to retain Cheryl Metiva as executive director in light of the results of an internal review.
He said it would be inappropriate to hold Metiva solely responsible for those expenses. He also said the total amount of the expenditures was "not significant" and was not to blame for the chamber's current financial crunch.
In an interview later, Gabel declined to provide the total amount of Metiva's expenses or give a ballpark figure. At the meeting, he asked three chamber members who are licensed financial professionals to volunteer to review the books.
It looks like Sarah Palin has taken the Valley code of conduct and extended it to the state. If we substitute the names and some words in the paragraphs above, they read exactly as some of the stories about Sarah Palin's ethics complaints... .
Five members of the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce's board of directors abruptly resigned Wednesday and at least three, including the former board president, are now calling for an outside audit to investigate how money has been spent by the group's executive director.
Former board president Cheryl Combs, in a written statement about her resignation, cited concerns that Executive Director Cheryl Metiva may have "inappropriately spent" money for personal expenses and without board approval.
Two board members said they decided to resign in part because of threats from Metiva's husband, Marty Metiva.
Susan Crowder said Metiva left a message Tuesday on her voice mail at work. In the call, which she played back for a reporter, Metiva demands the board give back $1,000 he gave to the chamber from the Polar Plunge charity event in February.
"Since you do not want the money that this was uh, uh and to use it for the purpose it was designated, I demand my check back..." he states. "And if you don't give you my money back, it will not be very nice for the Chamber of Commerce board of directors."
Crowder said the board decided to give the money to charity, including the United Way of Mat-Su and the Wasilla senior center, because the event was advertised as raising money for charity.
Marty Metiva, the event organizer, wanted the money to go to the chamber.
Crowder said she considered it inappropriate for Marty Metiva to give the money from the event to the chamber, which pays his wife's salary. But Metiva said the money was actually from his own pocket.
From the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce website:
Cheryl Metiva is the Executive Director of the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce. Her leadership has grown membership and community relationships during this exciting stage in Wasilla’s development. Metiva has a strong background in the tourism industry, retail sales and community activities. In addition to being Executive Director of the GWCC, Metiva also serves on the Board of the Mat-Su Convention & Visitor Bureau, and Mat-Su Resource, Conservation & Development, Inc.
Some quotes by Cheryl Metiva when Sarah Palin was tapped by John McCain:
"She's more woman than Hillary and she's more man than Hillary," said Cheryl Metiva, who attends Wasilla Bible Church with Palin. "She's a feminist on a mission. She's very much in touch with being a wife and a mother and a girlfriend to the women in her life."Boston.com
"This is her hometown," said Cheryl Metiva, executive director of the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce, which coordinated the so-called "Rally at the Valley." KTVA
"We like to call this the Bible Belt of Alaska," says Cheryl Metiva, head of the local chamber of commerce. Churches proliferate in Wasilla today, and among the largest and most influential is the Wasilla Bible Church, where the Palins worship.TIME
Cheryl and her husband Marty are the couple in the center of the photo, taken at Sarah Palin's Inaugural Ball.
Marty Metiva ran for mayor of Wasilla last year, but lost to Verne Rupright. The couple are on the Iditarod Trail committee, which has just lost sponsorship money from Wasilla as it was omitted from the city's budget at the direction of Mayor Verne Rupright. Iron Dog also lost Wasilla's sponsorship.
I found a couple of quaint videos as well. Please note Sarah's elaborate hairstyle...
Joe Schmidt and a few other known faces appears in the second one.
Unauthorized expenditure... it reminds me of Sarah Palin when she spent $50,000 redecorating her mayor's office without council approval: "I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't."
Birds of a feather flock together. Sarah Palin has been palling around with unethical people...
Alaska governor Sarah Palin has a lot in common with Rick Perry, governor of Texas. They're both against stimulus money, have secessionist tendencies and now they have another link: Texas is following in the famous mayor of Wasilla footsteps by charging victims for their rape kits.
Of course Sarah Palin denied that she approved of this practice when confronted with the facts that were surfacing during the vice presidential campaign, but she was the boss and had appointed the police chief who defended charging rape victims to the bitter end, even as it was being outlawed by the Alaska Legislature...
There's speculation about Sarah Palin's motives for condoning this insult to rape victims: the kits include the "morning after" pill and it goes against her anti-abortion beliefs. Don't forget that she believes that victims of rape and incest should bear and give birth to the offspring of their attackers. In her mind, only pro-life governors of state have the choice to forego an abortion, even if the baby is her husband's or not her baby at all.
There's an excellent article about the Wasilla rape kits on alternet.org and another one on Feministe.
Sarah Palin blew the whistle on Randy Ruedrich in 2003, when she was ethics supervisor of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, accusing him of an ethics breach for conducting work for the state GOP on government time.
The following are excerpts from an article written in September 2008, by Jason Leopold:
Documents show that Sarah Palin used city computers in her mayor's office to manage her campaign for lieutenant governor and billed taxpayers for mailings, phone calls and literature. Palin also had her city secretary, Mary Bixby, print 75 thank-you notes to campaign donors and book a campaign related trip Ketchikan in May 2002 while on city time.
Former city officials said Palin and her campaign staff worked upwards of 10 hours a day using Wasilla City Hall as her campaign headquarters where campaign faxes were sent and received, and campaign staffers used city phones to solicit donations.
On Palin’s lieutenant governor candidate registration form with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, she used the e-mail the city gave her for “campaign chairperson” contact information and the Wasilla City Hall fax telephone number for "candidate information.”
Palin’s mayoral schedule for June 12, 2002 showed that she met with Herold Advertising Products in her office at City Hall. Soon after, the company faxed the city’s deputy administrator, John Cramer, "Sarah Palin Lieutenant Governor" artwork and an invoice for the work.
In July 2006, Paul Jenkins, an editor for the conservative Voice of the Times, confronted Palin about her own apparent ethical breaches four years earlier. Her response was to insist, without explanation, that her situation was different from Ruedrich's.
I find her double standards and hypocrisy quite scandalous. Ethics supervisor??? Ethics reformer??? Do me a favour! I wrote about this before, but this article is very clear and detailed, worth a read. It made my blood boil all over again.
Sarah Palin is a sick joke, ethics apply to everybody else, but never to her...
The following is a snippet from an article on ADN, published on February 11, 1997:
A recall of Mayor Sarah Palin is off the table, at least for now, according to a group calling itself Concerned Citizens for Wasilla.
The group of about 60 residents was formed Friday in response to Palin's controversial firing of Police Chief Irl Stambaugh. Members say they're concerned about the direction taken by Palin since her election last fall, and discussed a recall. But members of the group decided instead they first want to hear Palin's explanations in person. The group developed a list of 25 questions and plans to ask Palin to meet with them sometime before Feb. 21.
''In all fairness, we need to allow the mayor in her own words answer the questions we have for her,'' said Kathryn Rounds, the group's acting chairwoman. Among the questions: Why did Palin fire the police chief if she didn't have a better person in mind? Does the city have an ethics code? Would she resign to avoid a recall? The group also wants her to clarify her goals for the city. Palin was non-committal Monday, but seemed resistant to the idea. In an interview, she described her critics as the same ''few disgruntled citizens'' who have been against her since she was elected.
I looks like Sarah Palin started her collection of disgruntled citizens back in 1997. Now she has changed "citizens" to "bloggers". I suppose it sounds more "frivolous"...
What are bloggers if not citizens? Why can't citizen-bloggers challenge her statement "Hold me accountable"?
Image: Sarah Palin being sworn in as Mayor of Wasilla ADN article "Wasilla" post Recall Sarah Palin
When Sarah Palin was 24 years of age, God started to speak to her, urging her to enter politics. So it came to pass. By 1992 Sarah had won a seat in Wasilla's City Council, where she stayed until 1996, when she decided to run for mayor of Wasilla on a platform targeting wasteful spending and high taxes. She also introduced abortion, gun rights and term limits as campaign issues.
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator at a cost of $50,000 a year. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%.
Here are some highlights of Sarah Palin's time as mayor of Wasilla:
Asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from some top officials, including the police chief, public works director, finance director and librarian.
She required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters.
Inquired two or three times what the procedure would be to remove books from the library, citing the concerns of some voters about language in the books.
Fired the city's librarian. Reinstated librarian following public outcry. Librarian had enough and decided to quit.
Fired the Police Chief stating that she did not feel he fully supported her efforts to govern the city.
Appointed Charles Fannon as Police Chief. Fannon gained some notoriety for charging victims for the cost of rape kits.
Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.
Spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office without the council's authorization. 'I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.'"
Built a $15 million sports complex which loses money every year to this day. It cost an extra $1.7 million in legal fees because building started before securing the title to the land.
Blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits when her house was being built on Lake Lucille by Todd and his "buddies".
She had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Hired a lobbyist for Wasilla at a cost of roughly $140,000 over four years.
Inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million.
That's what the people of Wasilla had to put up with for six years. They are still paying for it. Alaskans still have about two to six years of Sarah Palin ahead of them.
