Charles Piller writes in today's edition of the Los Angeles Times, that "Palin appointed friends and donors to key posts in Alaska..."Piller notes that Palin has been quick to "tout" her reformist credentials as governor of Alaska.
At the Republican National Convention, Palin told the group assembled, "I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau when I stood up to special interests and the lobbyists and the big oil companies and the good old boys ... [I] shook things up, and in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people."
Well, maybe not.
The LA Times went a-hunting, and while they didn't shoot a moose, they did discover some interesting artifacts lurking amid the Alaskan records:
1) More than 100 appointments to state posts -- nearly 1 in 4 -- went to campaign contributors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
2) Palin filled 16 state offices with appointees from families that donated $2,000 to $5,600 and were among her top political patrons.
3) Several of Palin's leading campaign donors received state-subsidized industrial development loans of up to $3.6 million for business ventures of questionable public value.
4) Palin picked a donor to replace the public safety commissioner she fired. But the new top cop had to resign days later under an ethics cloud. [He was paid $10,000 in 'severance pay.] And Palin drew a formal ethics complaint still pending against her and several aides for allegedly helping another donor and fundraiser land a state job.
Palin is a fraud in more ways than one. This is a devastating report and again makes obvious the fact she was not properly vetted, and that the Palin choice nothing more than a stab in the dark to cozy up to the extremist Christian right who didn't have much use for McCain in the first place.
Read all the gory details here.
1 comment:
She is not a truthful person, is she?
Bob
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