Handy Guide to Sarah Palin's Ever Growing Scandals, Pitfalls and other Mishaps

[zulchzulu]

This can be a daunting task to actually try to cover all the scandals, pitfalls and other mishaps that Sarah Palin has committed or is alignment with. Palin is not a DC outsider. She is a power-mad, far-right extremist with a very tenuous background. Add that she is one heartbeat away from a 72 year-old man who has had four bouts with cancer and you have the recipe for ineptness, incompetence and disaster.

New unvetted information is coming out hourly on Palin, but this is an attempt to cover the dizzying account.

As has been stated recently, some think that examining Sarah Palin's record is deemed "sexist". In return, it could equally be responded with that ruse to examine Obama's record is "racist".



Troopergate or Wootengate

Palin fired Public Safety Commissoner Walter Monegan out of the blue using budget reasons when in fact it was over her
abuse of power to try to send a message that she would get her way. The ex-husband of her sister were in a bitter custody battle and she fired the commissioner of public safety becuase he would't fire Wooten.

Gov. Sarah Palin appointed Walt Monegan as commissioner of public safety shortly after her election in 2006. On Friday, Palin's chief of staff told Monegan he was being replaced.

The news came "out of the blue," said Monegan, a former Anchorage police chief.

"If the governor was upset with me for one thing or another, it had never been communicated to me," he said in an interview Saturday evening.

The big question -- why? -- went largely unanswered Saturday.

Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said the governor is now at the halfway point of her term and it's natural for her to make changes.


http://www.adn.com/politics/story/463340.html

It turned out that there was another reason why Monegan was fired:

Reports arose that Palin had fired Monegan because, despite pressure from her, her family, and her staff, he had refused to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten, the ex-husband of Palin's sister, Molly McCann. Monegan told The Anchorage Daily News that "for better than a year," his office had received phone calls and other inquiries from Palin's office and even her husband, Todd, about why Wooten hadn't been dismissed. At the time, he was embroiled in a custody fight with McCann. Todd said he had set up a meeting with Monegan in December 2006, just after his wife took office, to discuss Wooten, but insisted that he never told Monegan to fire the trooper.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/29/a-tick-tock-of-the-big-palin-scandal.aspx

What's even more interesting is that she ended up hiring someone who had a history of sexual harassment who served for only two weeks and recieved $10,000 as severance pay.

After the allegedly improper firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) appointed former Kenai Police Chief Chuck Kopp to the post.

Kopp served just two weeks this summer as the head of law enforcement in Alaska, resigning on July 25, after a past complaint of sexual harassment and a subsequent letter of reprimand surfaced in news reports.

But Palin made sure he had a soft fall from grace, giving him a $10,000 severance package for just two weeks served.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palins_post-scandal_appointee_served_just_two_weeks.php

Oil Industry Connections

Sarah Palin had to suddenly resign from her job with the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission.

Sarah Palin, the outspoken chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, is stepping down from her job, she said Friday.

Her decision was fueled partly by the flap over another commissioner accused of performing Republican Party work on state time and a state law that requires her to be silent about it, Palin said. The resignation is effective Tuesday.

It comes two months after former commissioner Randy Ruedrich, who is also the state Republican Party chairman, abruptly resigned from his $118,000-per-year job amid allegations he was performing GOP work on state time.

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/011804/sta_palin.shtml

Her husband worked for British Petroleum.

He earned hourly wages as a production operator in a BP-run facility that separates oil from gas and water. Palin was making between $100,000 and $120,000 a year before he went on leave in December to make more time for his family and avoid potential conflicts of interest. London-based BP is heavily involved in the gas pipeline negotiations with his wife's administration.

http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/story/8924080p-8824177c.html

She vetoed alternative energy proposals while Governor:

A new energy research center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is looking for alternative funding after Gov. Sarah Palin last week vetoed a $1.5 million state and federal appropriation for the center.

The Alaska Center for Energy and Power formed in January and is focused on developing new technologies to lower the cost of energy in rural Alaska and attract energy-intensive industry with cheap renewable resources.

Lawmakers included $500,000 in state funding in the operating budget they approved last month, but Palin cut the funding.

Gwen Holdmann, the group’s director, said Tuesday the $500,000 in state funding was needed as a match for federal grant money.

“It really cripples us in our ability to bring federal funding,” she said of the governor’s veto.

http://www.newsminer.com/news/2008/may/29/palin-cuts-money-energy-research/

Very Superstitious

Palin supports creationism and is anti-science.

In October of 2006, the Anchorage Daily News reported that Palin said the following about creationism at a debate:

"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information....Healthy debate is so important and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject -- creationism and evolution. It's been a healthy foundation for me. But don't be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/08/sarah_palin_on.html

Campaigning with a young Downs Syndrome Child

While this is a private concern, it is somewhat questionable that someone would run for very public office while such a child (Trig Palin) is in great need of support. Other issues regarding how the child was born in April 2008 are another matter.

You need to come to the office so we can talk about it." With those words, Alaska governor Sarah Palin knew that her fifth child would be somehow different from her previous four. Steeling herself, the 44-year-old asked to be told over the phone that day in December, when she was four months along. The diagnosis? Down syndrome.

I've never had problems with my other pregnancies, so I was shocked. It took a while to open up the book that the doctor gave me about children with Down syndrome, and a while to log on to the website and start reading facts about the situation.

http://www.celebrity-babies.com/2008/05/gov-sarah-palin.html

Is she really the mother? There's lot of speculation:
http://www.gossiponsports.com/is-sarah-palin-trigs-grandmother-or-mother/

Palin calls Hillary Clinton a whiner

You can watch Palin call Hillary Clinton a whiner for saying that she is being treated unfairly as a female and that the scrutiny is "sexist".

http://www.newsweek.com/id/156190

For the Bridge To Nowhere Before She Was Against It

Palin and McCain (and the Republican echo chamber) have implied that she was against the "Bridge to Nowhere". Actually, she was for it:

When John McCain introduced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, her reputation as a tough-minded budget-cutter was front and center.

"I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere," Palin told the cheering McCain crowd, referring to Ketchikan’s Gravina Island bridge in Alaska.

But Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.

The Alaska governor campaigned in 2006 on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them "nowhere." They’re still feeling pain today in Ketchikan, over Palin’s subsequent decision to use the bridge funds for other projects - and over the timing of her announcement, which they say came in a pre-dawn press release that seemed aimed at national news deadlines.

"I think that’s when the campaign for national office began," said Ketchikan mayor Bob Weinstein on Saturday.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1116208&srvc=2008campaign&position=12

Speaking of money spent, Mayor Palin proved to be a careless spender while mayor of the tiny village of Wassilla:

Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla — that amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12987.html

More specifics on her love of pork:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor, according to an analysis by an independent government watchdog group.

There was $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and $15 million for a rail project -- all intended to benefit Palin's town, Wasilla, located about 45 miles north of Anchorage.

(snip)

As mayor of Wasilla, however, Palin oversaw the hiring of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Alaska's most senior Republicans: Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July on charges of accepting illegal gifts. The Wasilla account was handled by the former chief of staff to Stevens, Steven W. Silver, who is a partner in the firm.

Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla in 1996 on a campaign theme of "a time for change." According to a review of congressional spending by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, Wasilla did not receive any federal earmarks in the first few years of Palin's tenure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/01/AR2008090103148.html

Palin is not even sure what the plan is in Iraq

Palin has stated that she doesn't "know what the plan is to ever end the war":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7niokOXyjs

Heavyhanded politics when Palin became mayor of Wassily

Being mayor of Wassily, Alaska (pop. 5,000 when she started term) was considered a non-partisan position that would deal with making sure operations and services were under control. She brought in the abortion agenda from the Christian Right in her mayoral conquests. She fired all those who disagreed with her or were in her theocratic path:

hile Palin often describes that race as having been a fight against the old boys' club, Stein says she made sure the campaign hinged on issues like gun owners' rights and her opposition to abortion (Stein is pro-choice). "It got to the extent that — I don't remember who it was now — but some national antiabortion outfit sent little pink cards to voters in Wasilla endorsing her," he says.

Vicki Naegele was the managing editor of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman at the time. " figured he was just going to run your average, friendly small-town race," she recalls, "but it turned into something much different than that." Naegele held the same conservative Christian beliefs as Palin but didn't think they had any place in local politics.

"I just thought, That's ridiculous, she should concentrate on roads, not abortion," says Naegele.

St. George worked on Stein's campaign at the time, and while he says he has no reason to dispute Stein's recollection of events, he doesn't remember Palin's conduct being beyond the pale. "Our tax coffers were starting to grow," he says. "John was for expanding services, and Sarah wasn't. That's what the race was about."

One thing all sides agree on is that the valley was in flux. The old libertarian pioneer ethos was giving way to a rising Christian conservatism. By shrewdly invoking issues that mattered to the ascendant majority, Palin won the mayor's race. But while she may have been a new face, says Naegele, she was no maverick — not yet. "The state party gave her the mechanism to get into that office," says Naegele. "As soon as she was confident enough to brush them off, she did. But she wasn't an outsider to start with. She very much had to kowtow to them."

Governing was no less contentious than campaigning, at least to begin with. Palin ended up dismissing almost all the city department heads who had been loyal to Stein, including a few who had been instrumental in getting her into politics to begin with. Some saw it as a betrayal. Stambaugh, the police chief and a member of Palin's step-aerobics class, filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination, alleging that Palin terminated him in part at the behest of the National Rifle Association, because he had opposed a concealed-gun law that the NRA supported. He eventually lost the suit. The animosity spawned some talk of a recall attempt, but eventually Palin's opponents in the city council opted for a more conciliatory route.

At some point in those fractious first days, Palin told the department heads they needed her permission to talk to reporters. "She put a gag order on those people, something that you'd expect to find in the big city, not here," says Naegele. "She flew in there like a big-city gal, which she's not. It was a strange time, and came out very harshly against her."

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html

Ties to an Alaska secession group could be considered treason

Palin and her husband have been tied to the Alaskan Independence Party:

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she and her husband were once member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United State.

(snip)

After refraining from commenting on the charge for a day, the McCain campaign on Tuesday asserted that Palin was never a member of the AIP, and

Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, told ABC News on Monday that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.

Palin's Preacher Is An Anti-Semite

Just a couple weeks ago, Palin was present when her preacher gave these anti-Semitic remarks:

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

http://commonmistakes.blogspot.com/

Palin believes that abortion should be illegal, including even if rape or incest is involved

Only exception for abortion is if mother's life would end. (Jul 2006)

http://www.ontheissues.org/Sarah_Palin.htm

A nice list:

* Against stem cell research
* Doesn't believe in global warming
* Before selection, questioned role of vice president. (Sep 2008)
* Miss Congeniality in statewide beauty pageant in 1984. (Aug 2008)
* Fired controversial state trooper for threatening family. (Aug 2008)
* Voted "Miss Wasilla" in local beauty contest; eloped at 24. (Aug 2008)
* Husband left oil job to avoid conflict; now works for BP. (Aug 2008)
* Husband is part Eskimo; won Iron Dog snowmobile races. (Aug 2008)
* Investigated for firing ex-brother-in-law in custody battle. (Aug 2008)
* Religion: non-denominational Bible-believing Christian. (Aug 2008)
* Independent prosecutor probing Cabinet firing. (Jul 2008)
* Replaced Public Safety commissioner based on lack of results. (Jul 2008)
* Denies all allegations in Department of Public Safety affair. (Jul 2008)

More to come indeed with Sarah Palin, but this is a start... Feel free to add to this ever growing list.

[JuniperLea]

1. First rec!

Thanks for the tidy package!

[zulchzulu]

4. Thanks! n/t

[sandnsea]

2. Disregard for the law

Failed to report car wash business, failed to properly register car wash business, failed to obtain proper permits to operate a fishing business.

Oh, and headed Ted Stevens' 527 that got him in so much trouble. Was endorsed by Stevens to win in 2006. Hired the lobbyist to get money for Wasilla.

Her nutty church and praying for everything from a pipeline to an Iraq War exit strategy.

The list goes on and on.

[zulchzulu]

3. That pretty much sums it up... n/t

[JuniperLea]

5. Above the law...

She fits right in, doesn't she?

[myrna minx]

6. Thank you for putting this together! K &R n/t

[myrna minx]

7. ANother kick n/t

[zulchzulu]

8. Add: Palin got her passport to leave the US LAST YEAR!

And no, she didn't visit Ireland like she said she did...

[BlooInBloo]

9. As always with anti-choicers, I want to know what the penalty should be to the mother....

who, according to anti-choicers, is calling for a "hit" on her own little baby from an *assassin*.

Tell me what the fucking penalty for a mother ordering a hit on her own "baby" should be, Palin.

[zulchzulu]

10. Troopergate emails now exploding... not good for the Palin crowd

This is going to get good.

"This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he's been promoted," said the Feb. 7, 2007, e-mail sent from Palin's personal Yahoo account and written to give Monegan permission to speak on a violent-crime bill before the state legislature.

"It was a joke, the whole year long 'investigation' of him," the e-mail said. "This is the same trooper who's out there today telling people the new administration is going to destroy the trooper organization, and that he'd 'never work for that b****', Palin'.)

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/new_emails_suggest_holes_in_pa.php

[zulchzulu]

11. Alleged affair story being hotly defended by McCain camp

Me think they doth protest too much...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/mccain-camp-battles-natio_n_123696.html

[zulchzulu]

12. AP analysis of Palin's lies and distortions in VP acceptance speech

Here are some of the lies and distortions exposed on Sarah Palin's VP acceptance speech:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform _ not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
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Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state _ by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right _ change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington _ throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/04/ap-attacks-praise-stretch_n_123771.html?view=print