Palin Administration Mired in Secrecy and Revenge

[Joanne98]

An excerpt from the International Herald Tribune (click to read full article):

WASILLA, Alaska: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

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

Havemeister was one of at least five high school classmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding what they had made in the private sector.

When Palin had to cut the 2007 Alaska 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.

Last May, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to find an assistant to the governor on the line. “You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now.”

Palin now walks the national stage of the United States as a small-town foe of “good old boys” politics and a champion for 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 Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never ran anything.

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

Throughout her 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.

Still, Palin has many supporters. As mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of Alaska’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Palin declined to grant an interview for this article and she did not respond to written questions. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and on that of her husband, while referring other questions to the governor’s spokesmen, who did not respond.

Interviews show that Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she sued the U.S. government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Steiner that it would cost $468,784 to process his request.

When Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages - through a federal records request - he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in trouble, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Steiner said.

Continued>>>
http://zalandria.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/palin-administration-mired-in-secrecy/

[yourout]

1. A small time version of the current White House.

[knowbody0]

2. bottom line:

she won her 80% approval rating by paying all citizens their $1,200 per capita.