NYT, pg. 1 tomorrow: In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics

[BeyondGeography]

Just getting started on this major feature; it runs five pages on the web...

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin

[Sulawesi]

1. It is a thoroughly sobering article.

It is posted below, but should be posted and re-posted. It is a frightening thing, that not only is she unqualified, she is aggressively so.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Sorry for the dupe

Then again, not so sorry. :D

[H2O Man]

3. Tighten your seat belt, Sarah,

your ride is about to get kind of bumpy.

[Olney Blue]

4. You're doing a heck of a job, cronies!

[andym]

6. Maybe it should be: You're doing a "hack" of job, Sarah

[chascarrillo]

5. YOU ARE SO AWESOME!

[kurth_]

7. Running the government like her high school cheerleading club

Sad. Pathetic. Disgusting.

[pdxmom]

8. This article is one of the scariest things I've heard about her. What she

doesn't know about the issues is disturbing, but face it, a lot of that can eventually be learned. But this is about her character and her personality and it is so obvious that she is another Cheney/Bush. We've had enough of this.

[BeyondGeography]

12. This article reminds me of the look on her face when Gibson stumped her with the Bush Doctrine

It was a cross between, "does that mean I can't be a member of the club now?" and "I'll kill you."

[applegrove]

9. Very important Americans know she is for cronyism and bullying. JUST LIKE BUSH.

[dchill]

10. K & R.

:kick:

[ClarkUSA]

11. Let's see Cheney quote the New York Times now...

The Palin honeymoon is OVER.

[malletgirl02]

13. It Keeps Coming

On top of everything else she commits patronage.

[berner59]

14. Obama campaign needs to broadcast this....

Another perfect tie in to more of the same...like Bush's cronies...

This is a pretty damning article...nice job NYT!!!!

[PA Democrat]

15. It sounds as though Palin will do ANYTHING, and I do mean ANYTHING to get ahead.

I was also shocked that she had spent more than 300 days at her Wasilla home since taking office. That's worse than Bush's record.

[Abacus]

16. The more I learn about Palin,

the less I think she can win but the more I think we're completely screwed if she does. I never thought I could think something like this, let alone utter it, but she makes Bush seem appealing.

[tanyev]

17. Looks like you're either with Sarah or against Sarah.

[prolesunited]

18. She sounds like the female version of Bush

on steroids.