Alaska Fund Trust – Who Knew?
Well, the dust-storm kicked up yesterday by the leaking of the investigator’s findings regarding the Alaska Fund Trust is still raging. Presumably taken off-guard, the Palin administration and the Alaska Fund Trust have been scrambling. A three-page, single-spaced, 10 pt. type press release just came from Kristan Cole, the Trustee of the Alaska Fund Trust. This is serious stuff. The usual Palin melodrama is present in the first sentence of the release, citing “the unusual letter that was leaked yesterday, the contents of which are unprecedented in the history of our country.” This unusual letter is an investigator’s report regarding…
Sarah Palin is the Easter Bunny.
“A thorn in Governor Palin’s side.” That’s how the latest article in Vanity Fair describes Andree McLeod. In government ethics, you can be on one side or the other – the side of the government, or the side of the people. Governments tend to want to conceal, and the governed tend to want to find out what is being concealed. It’s human nature. Considering the apathy of most people when it comes to holding their government accountable, we should all be raising a glass to Andree McLeod. In many ways, she’s doing our job. That’s not to say that…
Alaska Fund BUST. The Governor’s (Il)Legal Defense Fund.
[Read this story at The Huffington Post and Buzz it Up!] The Alaska Fund Trust, the most hubristically-named piece of legal defense fundraising in the state of Alaska, has felt the sunshine of scrutiny, and it isn’t holding up too well. It seems as though the Associated Press got its mits on some interesting information involving an ethics complaint against the governor’s office that was dismissed as frivolous by the administration. After the investigation into the legality of the fund itself was completed, appearances seem to indicate that it was, indeed, a valid complaint that uncovered some unsavory legal fund…
New Ethics Complaint Filed Against Sarah Palin
Yup, it’s another one. I can hear the right wing side of the “chattering class” now. “What’s the matter with these people? She’s gone now! Haven’t they done enough damage? What more do they want? She’s stepped down from the governorship! Give it a rest!” Which leads me to respond to these accusations that perhaps it wasn’t about Sarah Palin after all. Maybe…just maybe…it was about the principle of the thing. (Holding my breath and waiting to hear a little ‘pling!’ as a lightbulb goes off over the collective heads of Palin supporters everywhere) (still waiting) Didn’t think so. Well,…
Wasilla’s Toxic Cloud and Why We Need ‘the Feds.’
To listen to Sarah Palin talk about “the feds” and how Alaskans don’t need them mucking around in our business, you’d think she’d have a pretty clean back yard. If you don’t need the feds, it must mean that your state and local government are doing a bang-up job, right? Any additional meddling from the government is just going to mess up the good thing we have going on a state and local level. We can handle things just fine, thank you very much. In the case of Alaska, not so, and a case in point is Sarah Palin’s own…
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…
First Term Quitters Hall of Fame
A number crunching Mudflatter sent the following: On a hunch, I reviewed online lists of all the men and women who’ve been elected governor of their state since the year 1900. Pored over them for a few hours. Over 1200 politicians have taken that first-term oath of office. Some soon died in office. Many resigned to accept other positions in government, including Spiro Agnew who was “tapped” by Nixon after being the Governor of Maryland for about five minutes. On a handful of occasions, a first-termer was dragged off to the slammer or impeached. One was incapacitated by a nervous…
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,…
The Voice Speaks – Van Flein Whiffs
The source of all the RUMORS about strange dealings with the Palin family, the Wasilla Sports Complex and the Palin house in Wasilla that was built by Todd Palin and some contractor “buddies” all sourced back to an article last October that appeared in the Village Voice. Well now….the Voice speaks. (I love that) There reflections on the latest Palin flailin’ is an article entitled: Palin’s Team Takes Swing at Voice, Whiffs. Sarah Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein spent his July 4 in Fairbanks, Alaska, issuing a four-page statement warning news organizations not to investigate allegations printed by the Voice last…
Shannyn Moore in Palin’s Crosshairs.
[A similar piece is up on The Huffington Post. This one is just for Mudflatters] Just when you thought you’d seen the back end of him, he returns; one of our favorite characters here at the Mudflats. I refer, of course, to Sarah Palin’s personal attorney, and the man in Alaska with the most dastardly sounding bad guy name ever: Thomas Van Flein. I put his last name in bold italics to remind you to pronounce it with a dastardly accent. I still don’t actually know what he looks like, but for our purposes in the past, we have imagined…