Palin abused power in firing

D

deleted15807

Guest
No surprise at all. For her fans the report will probably make them love her even more.
 

edonline

LPSG Legend
Joined
Feb 25, 2007
Posts
18,879
Media
23
Likes
170,858
Points
543
Location
United States
Sexuality
90% Gay, 10% Straight
Gender
Male
The McCain/Palin campaign have already issued a statement saying that the report was biased since the panel consisted of Obama supporters. Of course, they overlook the fact that the vote was a unanimous 12-0.
 

kalipygian

Expert Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2005
Posts
1,948
Media
31
Likes
139
Points
193
Age
68
Location
alaska
Sexuality
100% Gay, 0% Straight
Gender
Male
Some people have things a bit confused, there was no 'panel'.

The report was ordered by a unanimous vote of the Legislative Council, back in July, that is 12 members of the Legislature who deal with business between sessions. It was done by an appointed investigator, it was ordered released by another unanimous vote of the Legislative Council. They have not yet voted to endorse it, which will likely have at least some R's voting not to.

I don't know if the trooper concerned did what the Palins claim or not.

The Anchorage Daily News' story is a bit clearer than some others referenced, and perhaps closer to firsthand.(I worked for them back in my college days)

Troopergate report: Palin abused power: Walt Monegan firing | adn.com
 
Last edited:

Industrialsize

Mythical Member
Gold
Platinum Gold
Joined
Dec 23, 2006
Posts
22,237
Media
213
Likes
31,757
Points
618
Location
Kathmandu (Bagmati Province, Nepal)
Sexuality
100% Gay, 0% Straight
Gender
Male
Oh my god she abused her power as governor by trying to fire someone who tasered her nephew WHAT A BITCH!!!
YUP....using her office of Governor, which is a public trust, to intervene in a FAMILY matter is an ethical violation. Plain and simple.
 

B_cigarbabe

Experimental Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2006
Posts
3,872
Media
0
Likes
24
Points
183
Location
Boston,Mass.
Sexuality
60% Gay, 40% Straight
Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers By SERGE F. KOVALESKI
Published: October 10, 2008
Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. The inquiry found, however, that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper’s boss.
Enlarge This Image
[URL]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/10/us/11trooper3_190.jpg [/URL]Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Gov. Sarah Palin at a rally at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., on Wednesday.

Related

Palins Repeatedly Pressed Case Against Trooper (October 10, 2008)

Text of Report (pdf)

Blog

Enlarge This Image
[URL]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/11/us/politics/11trooper2_190.jpg [/URL]Al Grillo/Associated Press
Supporters of Gov. Sarah Palin on Friday in Anchorage.


A 263-page report released Friday by lawmakers in Alaska found that Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, had herself exerted pressure to get Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, as well as allowed her husband and subordinates to press for his firing, largely as a result of his temperament and past disciplinary problems.
“Such impermissible and repeated contacts,” the report states, “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 that displeasure.” The report concludes that the action was a violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.
What now lies ahead is not fully known at this point. Ms. Palin could be censured by the Legislature, but that is unlikely.
Ms. Palin, who had been elected governor in 2006, was tapped as Senator John McCain’s running mate in late August, about a month after an inquiry was opened into her firing of Mr. Monegan. Her political ascendancy took what was essentially a state personnel matter and elevated it into a national issue, one that has been simmering in the background of an increasingly heated presidential race.
In the report, the independent investigator, Stephen E. Branchflower, a former prosecutor in Anchorage, said that Ms. Palin wrongfully allowed her husband, Todd, to use state resources as part of the effort to have Trooper Wooten dismissed.
The report says she knowingly “permitted Todd Palin to use the governor’s office and the resources of the governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.”
Further, it says, she “knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.”
Three years ago, Trooper Wooten and the governor’s sister, Molly McCann, were locked in a harsh divorce and child-custody battle that further turned the Palin family against him. The couple divorced in January 2006.
As a result of several complaints against Trooper Wooten, he was suspended from the state police force for five days. However, Mr. Branchflower’s report found numerous instances in which Ms. Palin, her husband and her subordinates tried to press for harsher punishment, even though Mr. Monegan and others told them they had gone as far as the law and civil service rules would allow.
Ms. Palin has denied that anyone told Mr. Monegan to dismiss Trooper Wooten, or that the commissioner’s ouster had anything to do with the trooper, who remains on the force.
Mr. Monegan has said that he believes he lost his job because he would not bend to pressure to dismiss Trooper Wooten. On July 28, the Legislative Council, a bipartisan body of House and Senate members that can convene to make decisions when the Legislature is not in session, approved an independent investigation into whether the governor abused the powers of her office to pursue a personal vendetta.
Mr. Monegan said in an interview Friday night that he felt relieved.
“I feel that my beliefs and opinions that Wooten was a significant factor, if not the factor, in my termination have been validated,” Mr. Monegan said, adding, “I was resisting the governor from the very beginning on the Wooten matter to protect her from exactly what just happened to her here, being found to have acted inappropriately.”
The report was released after Alaska lawmakers emerged from a private session in Anchorage where they spent more than of six hours discussing the ethics report and what portions should be made public. The legislative council ended up voting unanimously to make part of the overall report public.



At a news conference Friday evening, a local McCain-Palin campaign spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, said that Mr. Branchflower’s abuse of power finding was the result of an “overreach” by the investigator who went beyond “the intent of the original” inquiry.
  • 1
  • 2
Next Page »
Karen Aho contributed reporting from Anchorage.
There was also an article released by the Palins office that cleared her of any wrong doing. It must be awesome to
investigate yourself and find that you did nothing wrong!
Kind of like LPSG!
What a novel concept!
cigarbabe:saevil:
 
Last edited:

Skull Mason

Expert Member
Joined
Apr 28, 2006
Posts
3,035
Media
6
Likes
110
Points
193
Location
Dirty Jersey
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
YUP....using her office of Governor, which is a public trust, to intervene in a FAMILY matter is an ethical violation. Plain and simple.

You are right, so among various other reasons why, this is the reason she should NOT be vice preisdent. CAN ANYONE BELIEVE WHAT SHE DID WHAT A BITCH!!!! Like no other politician has ever abused their power. I would love to hear the responses to this if it were a story about Pelosi or Biden or Obama.
 

Industrialsize

Mythical Member
Gold
Platinum Gold
Joined
Dec 23, 2006
Posts
22,237
Media
213
Likes
31,757
Points
618
Location
Kathmandu (Bagmati Province, Nepal)
Sexuality
100% Gay, 0% Straight
Gender
Male
You are right, so among various other reasons why, this is the reason she should NOT be vice preisdent. CAN ANYONE BELIEVE WHAT SHE DID WHAT A BITCH!!!! Like no other politician has ever abused their power. I would love to hear the responses to this if it were a story about Pelosi or Biden or Obama.
If this was about Pelosi, Biden, or Obama, the cry from the right wing would be deafening and it would be the lead and ONLY story on the news for days(except it ISN'T about them............I expect this story regarding Palin to die out in a few days, the report said she made ETHICAL violations, not LEGAL ones........but regardless, it probably won't help Mccain/Palin with the independents.
 

curious n str8

Experimental Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2005
Posts
913
Media
6
Likes
8
Points
163
Age
33
Location
The big AK
Sexuality
99% Straight, 1% Gay
Gender
Male
If this was about Pelosi, Biden, or Obama, the cry from the right wing would be deafening and it would be the lead and ONLY story on the news for days(except it ISN'T about them............I expect this story regarding Palin to die out in a few days, the report said she made ETHICAL violations, not LEGAL ones........but regardless, it probably won't help Mccain/Palin with the independents.
And Democratic out cries aren't deafening? BTW I'm not condoning what she did by any means.
 

mindseye

Experimental Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2002
Posts
3,399
Media
0
Likes
15
Points
258
Sexuality
100% Gay, 0% Straight
Gender
Male
Well, if anyone else wanted to try to connect Troopergate to the Keating 5 scandal, Washington Monthly beat you to it:

The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.
 

B_Nick4444

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 24, 2007
Posts
6,849
Media
0
Likes
104
Points
193
Location
San Antonio, TX
Sexuality
100% Gay, 0% Straight
Gender
Male
but regardless, it probably won't help Mccain/Palin with the independents.


unfortunately, won't hurt either, given the dearth of really good choices we have




Green Libertarian Economic and Military Supremacists Anti-Globalism Party will rule!
(once we manage to get on the ballots:biggrin1:)
 

Mensch1351

Cherished Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2006
Posts
1,166
Media
0
Likes
341
Points
303
Location
In the only other State that begins with "K"!
Sexuality
99% Gay, 1% Straight
Gender
Male
You are right, so among various other reasons why, this is the reason she should NOT be vice preisdent. CAN ANYONE BELIEVE WHAT SHE DID WHAT A BITCH!!!! Like no other politician has ever abused their power. I would love to hear the responses to this if it were a story about Pelosi or Biden or Obama.

Whoooops --- there goes the moral high ground in accusing Barak of who he's hangin' around with!
 

stratedude

Legendary Member
Gold
Platinum Gold
Joined
Jun 28, 2007
Posts
2,383
Media
16
Likes
1,075
Points
583
Location
Ohio
Sexuality
99% Straight, 1% Gay
Gender
Male

Well I'm going on the record as saying that I do not agree with the investigators 'opinion' and it doesn't matter whether she is a Republican or Democrat. The entire finding that she (or her husband) abused power by trying to get the trooper fired is based soley on his opinion that it was all personal.

I mean think about it. Is she to allow a trooper that she knows to be unstable and dangerous to keep his job as an ARMED man of the LAW just because he ALSO happens to be the husband of her sister in a nasty divorce? That is an obvious and complete collapse of logic.

The fact is that a guy like that should not have a badge and gun and it was Palin that knew it. The guy should have thought twice about acting the way he did knowing his sister-in-law was the Governor of the state.

I'll even go so far to say that if that was the ONLY reason she fired his boss, that she should be in her right to do that too.

The only thing I can think of to explain this finding is that this investigator either is either dumb, has something personal against Palin, or he is in the bag for Obama. And don't try to say I'm only defending her because she is the republican VP candidate - I am all about justice, and a democrat that acted this way would get the same reaction from me. It is a poor decision.
 

transformer_99

Experimental Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2006
Posts
2,429
Media
0
Likes
9
Points
183
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
Where do the Republicans go after this ? It's no surprise to me she was found guilty, more a matter of whether the Republicans as a national powerhouse would sweep it under the table and have it disappear. You do this kind of stuff when you are firing the dishwasher at your single proprietorship family run restaurant. Palin is finished politically if she doesn't get in on the ticket for VP. I don't even know what the full repercussions outside of resigning her Governor's position in Alaska. An appointee usually is fired in local and state government levels ? Or the pressure is such they resign ? For Palin it looks bad and has to hurt the party and it's run for the President, then again, they still seem to like her ?