State Probing Palin's Troopergate

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

State Probing Palin's Troopergate

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/03/cbsnews_investigates/main4413750.shtml

State Probing Palin's Troopergate

WASILLA, Alaska, Sept. 3, 2008
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(CBS) CBS News Investigative Producer Laura Strickler and Intern Kim Lengle wrote this story for CBSNews.com.

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Alaskans refer to it as “troopergate” but the McCain campaign is convinced the investigation into Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s attempts to fire her ex-brother-in-law, state Trooper Mike Wooten, will show no wrongdoing. Palin allegedly demanded that Wooten be fired from his job while Wooten was in the midst of a bitter divorce with her sister. The results of the investigation will be released a few days before the November election.

The focus of the investigation will surround whether Palin abused her power as governor by pressuring Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, to fire Wooten. After Monegan declined to fire Wooten, Palin asked him to step down. Investigators will try and figure out if the two incidents are related, Palin says they are not.

A senior official from the McCain campaign close to the vetting process says they were "convinced there was no impropriety" after thoroughly researching the firing. The source also said they "spent a lot of time" looking into it.

John Cyr runs the Public Safety Employees Association that represents Wooten. Cyr’s organization is planning to file a new round of ethics complaints against the Palin administration related to the fring of Monegan. He says the national spotlight on the four-year-old issue is quite a change, "I don’t have a strategy, I am the executive of a little union at the fringe of the earth," Cyr told CBS News.

And Cyr notes that according to his records, Wooten has not had a formal complaint filed against him in his eight years as a trooper with the exception of the raft of complaints from the Palin family. He says his office handles about 40 serious trooper complaints each year.

According to The Associated Press, the Palin family accused Wooten of drinking a beer while in his patrol car, illegal hunting and taser-ing his 11-year-old stepson. They also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father.

“He is 6 foot 5 and goes 285 - which is not bad if you are an Alaska state trooper, but it doesn’t make you exactly sympathetic in the eyes of the public,” Cyr told CBS News.

But while Wooten has support of the union, one Alaska trooper who did not want to be named tells CBS News in his opinion the accusations against Wooten reflect negatively on all troopers, "Wooten had been making extremely poor decisions and I would never want to work with the guy.”

Wooten is currently on the job as a trooper in the Mat-Su Valley region of Alaska which includes the town of Wasilla, Palin's hometown. The region he patrols is the size of the state of West Virginia, Cyr says.

By Laura Strickler
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Reasons to Oppose Sarah Palin

*lied about her position on Bridge to Nowhere in her first public appearance as VP Nominee. She kept the money and used it on other projects.

*lied throughout her Nomination speech

*abused her power as Mayor to fire city librarian who would not ban books

*embarrassed her daughter internationally by failing to consider that her pregnancy might become a news item

*practices cronyism. "Heck of a job, Palin!" Hired high school chum to head the State Department of Agriculture. Her experience? She liked cows as a child. Responsible leaders appoint the most qualified people.

*increased city of Wasilla's debt from ZERO to $26 Million dollars. That's not "conservative", that's neo-conservative.

*slacker! Hired a city manager so she would not have so much to do. Made the city buy her a white Suburban, which people called the mayor-mobile.

*insider who claims to be an outsider and a reformer while doing exactly what Bush has done
*supports the indicted Senator Ted Stevens
*raised taxes on oil producers so she could perform a cheap political stunt by providing a one-time rebate to taxpayers. Alaska has the lowest rate of high-school graduation of any state. Should have made schools more effective.

*said that the City of Wasilla would not fund "rape kits" for victims of rape, and made the victim pay

*religious extremist whose Pastor told parishioners that a vote for John Kerry would send them to hell.

*Joel's Army is a group dedicated to taking over the US Government for religious reasons. Her church supports Joel's Army.

*defies the law by denying native Alaskans subsistence fishing rights

*opposes scientifically sound policies whenever possible, including fact-based sex education, and is a global-warming denier.

*cheats taxpayers. She charged the state of Alaska for over 300 nights that she spent in her own home, to the tune of $17,000.00.

*opposes women's autonomy. Wants women to carry pregnancies resulting from rape and incest.

*cut funding each year for support programs for new teen mothers

*fraudulently uses state money to support so-called crisis pregnancy centers that aim to force women to carry all pregnancies to term.

*political opportunist. Sees what public opinion is then takes that position rather leading.

Documentation for these claims is contained here in the Sarah Palin--Unfit blog.

On Sarah Palin's Judgment

On Sarah Palin’s Judgment

By: Deborah Lake
September 2, 2008

"I really hope McCain did his homework," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush. "I cannot stifle a growing sense of unease that he didn't."

I read a detailed article about the vetting process performed by the McCain campaign upon choosing Sarah Palin. I found myself, however, mesmerized by the photo that accompanied the article. Standing behind her jubilant mother was young Miss Palin, holding young Trig, and biting her lip. Young Miss Palin knew what was coming down the pike, but her mother was oblivious to the harm she might be causing her eldest daughter.

During a search today, I found an article about Palin and her children at the Jerusalem Post, which included comments about young Miss Palin’s pregnancy. I shudder to think of the shame that she must be enduring at this moment, with the impending birth of her child now an international incident.

This sorry mess illustrates why we should worry about Sarah Palin sitting a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States. A sensible mother would have declined the nomination, knowing how it might hurt her daughter. In particular, a mother who has taken a public political stand against fact-based sex education should have known that accepting a place on the Presidential ticket endangered her family.

Every parent knows that kids get into trouble. The issue here is not young Miss Palin. Rather, it is Sarah Palin’s failure to anticipate the consequences of her actions that should give us pause.

Furthermore, Sarah Palin has turned her daughter into a poster child for ending “abstinence-only” sex education. People, even teenagers, are capable of absorbing and analyzing information that helps them make good decisions. Palin’s inability to analyze led to these errors. If you tell a young woman that she has no safe way to end a pregnancy, and then give her no tools to avoid an unintended pregnancy, the results are a foregone conclusion. It almost seems as though people like Sarah Palin want to make others miserable. Should someone with such poor judgment have the potential to command the largest military force ever known to humankind? This goes for Palin, and it goes double for McCain.

What kind of “family values” do the Republicans stand for, is what I wonder. Is it ok to destroy a young woman’s privacy and anonymity in the quest for power, within the Republican family values? If this were a Democratic VP pick, you’re darn tootin’ the Republicans would be having a Grand Old Predator attack, pointing out how those evil liberals said one thing, and did the other. In actuality, liberals generally stand by their principles, rather than saying one thing out loud for public consumption and then doing the exact opposite in their private lives.*

I have to chalk it up to inexperience, and perhaps incuriosity, and perhaps the lust for power: the very traits most prominent in Palin’s emotional makeup.
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An earlier version of the article was captured at www.truthout.org
http://www.truthout.org/article/with-palin-revelations-mccains-gamble-is-clearer
The photo I include here has since been removed from the article and another, less revealing photo has been substituted.

The revised article here.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palinassess2-2008sep02,0,3826591.story

*Note that I said, generally. Liberal men still let other parts of their bodies do the thinking for them, I note, for example, Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards. But those are the exceptions to the rule, rather than the rule.

One of the most liberal states, Massachusetts, has the lowest rate of divorce in the USA. The South, the proclaimed Bible Belt, has the highest number of teen pregnancies. Therefore, I do not understand why conservatives think that they are more “moral” than liberals. I was raised by a libertarian Republican, and spent half of my life in rural America, so I have street cred. That makes it even more difficult for me to understand why conservatives think that they are more “moral” than liberals.

One website I dread to visit is http://www.armchairsubversive.com/. The webweaver lists the street crimes of members of the Republican Party and other right wing organizations.

The most prevalent crime is child molestation. When I ask a conservative Christian friend why they are not running a campaign against child molestation they give me a glassy stare. Otherwise, they claim that there is not much of a problem there.

I wonder about right-wing morals. They seem like a nice dress brought out for a special occasion. When the party's over, though, it's right back to the down-home values of molesting children, bullying people, practicing prejudice, and figuring out yet more ways to legally steal other people's money.

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Wednesday, September 3, 2008