McCain campaign lays heavy influence on state politics

McCain-Palin campaign accused of co-opting Department of Law

And after the announcement, officials said Colberg hopped on a plane to Kansas for a vacation.

"It appears that the department is in complete disarray," said Sen. Bill Wielechowski. "It appears that the McCain campaign is co-opting our Department of Law and basically calling the shots and I think that's pretty clear from some of the actions we've seen over the past couple of days."

In a letter to Colberg Wednesday from Elton, Elton accuses Colberg of compromising the investigation.

"In four paragraphs, you've broken a deal that was accepted by your office and received by Mr.Branchflower after the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas," Elton writes. "Further your brand new position eviscerates weeks of comments on the record by several parties, including the governor."

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By Corey Allen-Young, CBS 11 News Reporter
Article Last Updated: 09/19/2008 08:27:29 AM AKDT


With Governor Palin in the mix of the national presidential election, many want to know answers to issues right here in Alaska. But with reports of state inquiries being directed to the McCain political campaign, it seems the local media is getting the snub.
A team of McCain operatives has arrived in Anchorage where they have become the one source to answer questions about Alaska's governor and her administration. This was set up to for any media that was not permanently based here in Alaska.

The problem is locals aren't having any luck either. So how easy is it to get an answer or reply from key departments of our state and our governor?

In efforts to contact the office of the governor, the attorney general's office, and the department of administration, CBS reporters were given statements of no comment, e-mails referring to new spokespeople and no messages returned.

This is a noticeable contrast to the way the administration was run prior to Palin's VP nomination.

Now to get an answer about any state business, we are routinely referred to McCain campaign officials.

State lawmakers are beginning to express their own frustrations.

"We are seeing the executive branch of the state government wilt like old flowers when it comes to addressing what should be state business," said Representative Jay Ramras, a republican from Fairbanks.

"The McCain camp has come into the state and taken over essentially the state political system on this Troopergate investigation," said Representative Les Gara, a democrat from Anchorage.

Ramras and Gara both agree that any state business including the investigation of the governor should not be in the hands of outsiders.

"I am going to demand that john McCain stop obstructing justice in our state. Go do your campaign in the lower 48 that's fine but stop obstructing justice here," said Gara.

"The executive branch needs to reassert their propriety rights here and stand up for state rights and for the fact that the state of Alaska has business to conduct," said Ramras.

Many attempts have been made to contact state officials, but the only replies given were from the department of administration's commissioner Annette Kreitzer. However, Kreitzer would only refer inquiries to the governor's spokesperson Sharon Leighow.

Leighow has yet to have returned any phone calls.

In a dangerous world

It was bad enough that Sarah's performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, not on clarity of the conservative message but by denigrating experience, sound judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Sarah Palin without even knowing her record. You're so excited to follow her as she calls “the mission”, most of you don't know what the mission is. Sarah's abuses and unethical behavior made none of so-called conservatives blink, they won’t even pause for reflection, reason or prayer — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a presidential team who knows that real strength requires serious thought, preparation and proper decision making skills.

Sarah appoints Friends and Family

This article is by Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell. [NYT]


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!”

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Alaska Lawmakers Vote To Subpoena Todd Palin

Alaska lawmakers voted Friday to subpoena the husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, in a move that transformed a messy state personnel issue into a national campaign controversy.

The lawmakers acted at the request of Stephen Branchflower, who is in the midst of an investigation into the governor's dismissal of the state's director of public safety.

Branchflower said he also wants to interview the governor, but omitted her from the 13-person list of subpoena targets he presented to the lawmakers overseeing his investigation.


Branchflower said Todd Palin is "such a central figure. ... I think one should be issued for him."

Thomas Van Flein, a private attorney hired to represent the governor, did not immediately return calls for comment.

Two Democrats and one Republican voted for the subpoenas, rejecting attempts by the other two Republicans on the panel to delay them until after the November election.

Sen. Charlie Huggins, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla, appeared in camouflage pants on a short break from moose hunting to cast his vote. He lamented the political maneuvering that he saw as trying to interfere with the investigation.

"I see all this duck-foot action under the water," Huggins said. "Let's just get the facts on the table.

The Legislature hired Branchflower to examine whether Palin ousted her public safety commissioner in July because he had refused to fire state trooper Mike Wooten. Wooten went through a messy divorce from Palin's sister, and the investigation essentially is looking at whether Palin used her power to try to settle a personal score.

One member of Palin's administration was caught on tape discussing personal information about Wooten, raising questions of how he knew those details.

The investigation -- known as "Troopergate" -- began before Palin was chosen as Sen. John McCain's running mate. Since then, Palin's supporters have argued that the investigation is politically motivated, and urged lawmakers to turn the matter over to the three-member State Personnel Board, which is appointed by the governor and charged with handling ethics complaints.

Palin has said she fired the commissioner, Walt Monegan, over disagreements about budget priorities. Monegan said he received repeated e-mails and phone calls from Palin, her husband and her staff expressing dismay over Wooten's continued employment.

Branchflower also asked for a subpoena for the phone records of one Palin administration official, Frank Bailey. Bailey was recorded calling an Alaska State Trooper lieutenant and discussing confidential information about Wooten, including his job application and worker's compensation claim. In a deposition taken by Palin's attorney, he testified that he never saw Wooten's file, but instead received the information from Todd Palin.

Fact Check

Upon her arrival yesterday in Fairbanks, Governor Sarah Palin greeted a crowd of 2,000 people with a short speech. We've gone through the remarks and offer up some checks on facts and reality.

Comment:

Palin said she took on politics as usual in Alaska, and made the claim that the "old oil monopoly, undue influence there that had control of our state, it's broken."

Facts:

The only thing Palin did was raise oil taxes to one of the highest marginal tax rates in the world. She didn't break any monopoly as the only way you could possibly do that is by revoking their leases and gutting the ownership terms of the Trans Alaska Pipeline. Both of those actions would be illegal. She did nothing more than raise taxes.



Comment:

"And the ethical standards that had led to closed doors and closed door dealings, self-interest, it's gone."

Fact:

The ethics bill she passed had actually been proposed by Democrats in the legislature before she was even elected but didn't pass until the FBI raided several lawmakers office. Then and only then, did lawmakers who refused to take action under former governor Murkowski, agree to move the bill forward when Palin got elected and ethics had become too big of an issue to ignore.

In addition, her administration has hid behind a questionable claim of executive privilege and refused to release 78 pages of emails, totalling 1,100 communications even though many of these were copied to her husband who is not a member of the executive branch. And today, her administration has gone from telling Alaskans that they'd participate openly in the Monegan investigation to stalling and suddenly calling the investigation unconstitutional.

Comment:

Palin said people around the nation are saying "thank you, thank you Alaska," when they hear about the natural gas pipeline from the North Slope.

Fact:

The governor has completely over sold the pipeline plan she passed through the legislature. What the governor's gas pipeline plan does is grant $500 million to a Canadian firm to file paperwork without having the means to actually build the pipeline. Not only is there no guarantee it will be constructed by the Canadian firm, but their CEO has said repeatedly that they cannot order one piece of steel pipe until the major oil companies agree to pay the cost of the project.

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It's not clear or transparent, is this a Constitutional showdown?

Posted by Wesley Loy

Posted: September 11, 2008 - 11:55 am

From Wesley Loy in Anchorage –

Tomorrow morning we’ll see a big event in the ongoing Troopergate investigation and the growing clash between the governor’s office and the Legislature.

The House and Senate judiciary committees are meeting in Anchorage, and members might vote to issue subpoenas to compel members of Gov. Sarah Palin’s administration – but not the governor herself – to go for interviews with the Legislature’s investigator, Steve Branchflower.

But this week, the state Department of Law – representing Department of Administration employees – threatens in this seven-page letter to go to court to block the subpoenas, thus widening the conflict to all three branches of government.

The letter is signed by Michael Barnhill, senior assistant to Attorney General Talis Colberg, and is addressed to state Sen. Kim Elton, the Juneau Democrat who heads the legislative panel that initiated the Troopergate investigation.

Among its points:

• The governor is basically the boss over all executive branch employees, and she and her staff can legally look at confidential employee personnel files “in the course and scope of their official duties.”

A central question in the Troopergate case, of course, is whether the governor or her staff improperly perused personnel and other files of state Trooper Mike Wooten, who was involved in a rough divorce from Palin’s sister.

“At this point, the Department of Law knows of no evidence that suggests that any Department of Administration employees violated the State Personnel Act in handling Trooper Wooten’s personnel file,” the letter says.

• The letter accuses Anchorage Democratic Sen. Hollis French, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and “project director” for the Legislature’s Troopergate investigation, of making biased media remarks and suggesting state employees might even face criminal prosecution.

• The letter says that, even though legislators have said Branchflower’s investigation will wrap up by Oct. 10 rather than the end of October as originally planned, that’s still suspiciously close to the Nov. 4 election, in which Palin is standing for vice president.

The letter, which drops references to McCarthyism, “secret depositions” and “unchecked investigative enthusiasm,” ends on a note of questioning the legitimacy of the Legislature’s investigation.

“Bluntly and to the point, we think there is a legitimate concern that this investigation is no longer being conducted in a fair manner – and therefore is potentially violative of Alaska’s constitutional due process safeguards,” Barnhill’s letter says, adding:

“The eyes of the nation have now turned upon us.”

the real Constitutional issue

is whether voters in the United States have the right to be informed of a VP candidate's illegal activities and unethical actions -before they vote in November.

That's what this is all about -preventing the nation from seeing the real dirt on Palin and her two-bit staff conducted themselves on the Wooten affair.

I think it at the very least violates the spirit of the Right to Vote -when you use the court system to prevent full disclosure to the voting public.

Palin, is facing yet another ethics investigation

The GOP candidate for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, is facing
yet another ethics investigation back in her home state of Alaska. An
ethics complaint obtained by NBC News was filed Wednesday by the
police officers union in Alaska, requesting a probe into possible
wrongdoing by the governor or her office. It was brought on behalf of
state trooper Mike Wooten, an ex-brother-in-law of Palin who is at the
center of the "Troopergate" scandal.

The complaint alleges that the governor or her staff may have have
improperly disclosed information from Wooten's personnel records. The
complaint alleges "criminal penalties may apply."


John Cyr, director of the union that filed the complaint, told NBC
News, "It seems obvious to us somebody has improperly accessed
[Wooten's] personnel file." Governor Palin is that somebody.

Oh Boy

OK - the Palin baby speculation is inescapable at this point. The left-leaning Daily Kos posted an item Friday called "Palin faked "pregnancy"? Covering for teen daughter?"

It's a version of a rumor - long simmering in Alaska -- that Palin's daughter Bristol was pregnant and the governor somehow covered it up by pretending to have the baby (Trig) herself.

Here's a story we wrote soon after the birth. At that point, the questions were all about whether Palin should have flown back to Alaska to give birth. In the story, Palin's doctor talks about the labor and addresses questions raised at the time about Palin's decision to board a jet and fly to Alaska from Texas when she showed signs of early labor.

"The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation," said an Alaska Airlines spokeswoman. The doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, said she induced labor once Palin was at the hospital.

What's the McCain campaign say? Nothing so far. They've been called and e-mailed for an on-the-record response, but haven't heard back.

What's Palin's in-state spokesman, Bill McAllister say?

That it's not true. "The answer to that is no," he said.

"But beyond that, I don't know, why should we even have to say anything," he said.

McAllister was an Anchorage TV reporter before working for Palin. He said Palin once approached him - before people knew she was pregnant - assuming he'd been hearing rumors.

"She said it's not true about Bristol," McAllister said.

At the time, the rumor would have been that Palin's daughter was pregnant.

How does McAllister know it's not true?

Meantime, this is all a plotline straight out of a recent season of Desperate Housewives.



Picture from March 14

(The day of birth was April 18.)



Here is a picture from March 14:



The Same Picture is Available Here:


Sarah Palin does not look remotely pregnant.

Read What Alaskans are Saying

Concerns about Possible Retribution for Speaking Out

Due to the valid concerns about possible retribution for speaking out and the prospect that some may feel intimidated not to speak out at all, I'm publishing the content of the email here on my website so the governor can be advised accordingly without putting any of the guardsmen at risk of being identified.

Craig Campbell, the Commissioner of DMVA and the Adjutant General of Alaska made a policy that there would be no Alaska Air National Guard promotions to Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel or Chief Master Sergeant without his personal approval.


The intent is to "motivate" these senior leaders to recruit more new people into the ANG. This policy has frozen the advancement of some very deserving individuals who have already earned the right to be promoted. As the Adjutant General, he has the right to institute any plan he wishes. This edict was tolerated by our loyal Guardsmen until the hypocrisy became overwhelming.


Evidently, General Campbell is receiving an unprecedented and undeserved promotion to three-star rank on Sept 7. The Guardsmen found out about this travesty when a call went out for volunteers to fill the room for his ceremony. The response was almost non-existent.


Adjutants General of the 50 States are authorized Major General (two-star) rank and in all but rare circumstances are granted Federal Recognition as Major Generals. This means they are "real" Major Generals with all the respect that comes with such high rank.


General Campbell's promotion will be a "state" promotion. He will be a three-star general only while on State business. In a very rank-conscious environment, this distinction will not be lost on the other Flag Officers. He will look the part of a three-star general but will not be regarded as one by the very people he needs to work with and influence.


This promotion will only benefit General Campbell who will trumpet his new rank. It will not be help further the cause of the Alaska National Guard or its loyal and now outraged members.


No one can be promoted to the top ranks because of perceived leadership deficiencies but even with his obvious leadership flaws, he has no reluctance whatsoever to accept a cosmetic promotion.


I believe the Governor's office will receive substantial correspondence urging her to reconsider this insult to the men and women of the Alaska National Guard.


I also have no doubt most of that correspondence will be anonymous due to the genuine fear of retribution and retaliation if the Governor does the right thing and cancels this hypocrisy