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Palin "Failed To Act"
Here's a key excerpt from the Trooper-Gate report about the nature of Sarah Palin's abuse of power, in regard to her failure to rein in her husband's efforts to pressure state employees to fire Mike Wooten:
[Sarah Palin] had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act.Such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees, who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure and the possible consequences of such displeasure. This was one of the very reasons the Ethics Act was promulgated by the Legislature.
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Josh
Zachary
What Troopergate Tells Us About a (God Forbid) Palin Vice Presidency
http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=3908
October 11, 2008 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
On this entire Muckracker page with a half-dozen articles about Trooper-Gate, nowhere is it reported that the report states clearly that Palin's actions were an UNLAWFUL abuse of power. Please report the COMPLETE story.
October 11, 2008 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lat's get this straight. Palin, members of her administration, and the first "Dude" all tried to pressure Walt Monegan into illegally firing a civil service employe and then fired him when he refused to perform an illegal act for them.
Just what we all need in the White House - more of the same as we have had for the past 8 years.
Monegan has shown a remarkable level of honesty and integrity for someone who works in any US government.
October 11, 2008 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. Toketee:
Here's the first sentence of my first post on the report:
The just-released Trooper-Gate report finds that Sarah Palin abused her power in the firing of Walt Monegan, by violating an Alaska law holding that "each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."
I think that's clear enough.
October 11, 2008 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. Toketee: The article you just blogged on clearly stated the answer to the question you are asking. Boy, don't you look silly? I hope you're only a "Dr." on the internet.
October 11, 2008 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Dr. Toketee rather than the ten-year-old above.
The simple finding, which is not reported in the article above, should be reported in each article so that readers don't get lost. The author dismissively claims "that's clear enough", but this is not helpful if someone doesn't read the first article. It might seem redundant, but it will only help clarify things, and there's no space limitations.
More important, the author seems to have botched the findings. The finding was that of an unlawful ethics violation in pressuring Monegan to fire Wooten, and not, as the author suggests above, in the actual firing of Monegan. The ethical violation involved the extensive pressure prior to the firing. The firing itself was legal given Alaska's authoritarian state rules.
This reporting is simply wrong and it really should be corrected.
The article above is too brief and emphasizes the idea that "Palin failed to act". This is problematic because it converges with the misleading republican spin that Sarah had nothing to do with violation and that all the pressure was applied by Todd. As "guest" points out above, the report states that Sarah, Todd, and other officials were all involved in applying the pressure (the source of the ethical violation), and not just Todd as this article suggests. This is an absolutely critical distinction given the upcoming spin campaign. Again, the reporting seems sloppy and misleading.
October 13, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink