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March 19, 2024

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Thursday, August 3, 2023

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Monday, March 21, 2022

Putting the goober in gubernatorial -

Friday, January 28, 2022

A Year of Sarah Palin. What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.

[This article is cross-posted at The Huffington Post] What a difference a year makes. A year ago today, after being stunned by McCain’s VP pick, I had finished writing a piece called “What Is McCain Thinking? One Alaskan’s Perspective.”  It’s hard to imagine a time when the country was asking “Sarah Who?” but it was only one short year ago. One of the selling features of Sarah Palin was her astronomically high approval ratings in the state of Alaska. After all, how could a governor have positives in the high 80s or low 90s and be anything less than an…

Palin’s Millllions – Take 2. A Closer Look.

As we all know, one of Sarah Palin’s reasons for stepping down had to do with, as Palin said, ”that huge waste that we have seen with the countless, countless hours that state staff is spending on these frivolous ethics violations and the millions of dollars that Alaskans are spending, that money not going to things that are very important, like troopers and roads and teachers and fish research.” When pressured to explain exactly where this “million of dollars” came from, Palin’s office released a .pdf file of the breakdown of it’s claim of $1.9 million that should have been…

Palin’s Milllllions of Dollars!

Part of Palin’s reason for quitting the governorship, so she says, is financial.  Why should the state be spending “million of dollars” in dealing with “frivolous ethics complaints” and frivolous lawsuits and just general…frivolity?  Heck, according to the governor, the frivolity takes up 80% of the administration’s time these days.  And that’s a lot!  Think for a moment what we could be doing with that money.  We could be funding the State Troopers!  No, we haven’t really done that before, but we could do it now.  We could fund teachers!  OK, we wanted to cut that stimulus money for education,…

Numbers Shmumbers…

“In the past two years, the state of Alaska has spent millions of dollars processing ethics complaints, public records requests, and related lawsuits.” That was the claim coming from the office of Governor Sarah Palin, who likes to use the phrase “frivolous ethics complaints.”  That was nine days ago. Today, we learn that “millions of dollars” is in fact, actually $296,000, as far as ethics complaints go.  Numbers shmumbers. The complete breakdown is not yet available, but we do know this about the three spendiest ones: $187,797 stemmed from the Troopergate investigation, a good chunk of which Palin initiated herself….

Breaking News – Three More Ethics Complaints Against Palin, and Then Some?!

Alaska Report has breaking news!  According to the site, there are three (count ’em…THREE) ethics complaints against Governor Sarah Palin coming down the pike. Mention is also made of a “long simmering embezzlement/IRS scandal” that is still being looked at by the feds. Wow. I have no more news than that, folks.  Check it out at the link above, and use this thread to… I don’t know…. speculate I guess! Have at it.

Ethics Complaints and the Power of Precognition

The Daily News in an op-ed piece yesterday said something interesting. Alaska citizens have a right to file ethics complaints against their elected representatives. State law guarantees it. But when Alaskans use the ethics law to score political points, they abuse that right — and may put it at risk. Score political points?  Abuse their rights as citizens?  Wow.  That’s a fairly strong accusation.  And it makes the assumption, of course, that the complaints are frivolous, and without merit.  It sounds like something we ought to know.  But how do we determine if the complaints are indeed frivolous?  Well, we could…