h/t Larry Flynt/Hustler
Ouch. If it weren’t for bad news, Sarah Palin might not have any news at all. In the first Troopergate investigation, conducted by the Alaska Legislature, Palin was found culpable of abuse of power as Governor. On the morning of her deposition in the second major investigation, this one by the Alaska State Personnel Board, Sarahdipity woke up to a skewering by the LA Times for rampant hiring of incompetent cronies for critical state offices. Looks like there may be a lot Palin has to answer for in her deposition.
* More than 100 appointments to state posts — nearly 1 in 4 — went to campaign contributors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
* Palin filled 16 state offices with appointees from families that donated $2,000 to $5,600 and were among her top political patrons.
* 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.
* 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. 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.
Some of her appointments make "Heckuva Job Brownie" look like Einstein. Tavis Colberg, Palin’s childhood buddy, was installed as the Alaska Attorney General in spite of the fact that he was barely qualified to appear in local Wasilla courts on worker’s comp claims. Franci Havemeister, another of Palin’s childhood friends, was made director of the Alaska State Agriculture Division. Havemeister was previously a part time real estate agent who stated a childhood love of cows as a qualification for the job. In multiple cases, Palin installed both husband and wife of family friends to cushy, well paid state positions for which they were unqualified.
As the New York Times has previously stated, Palin’s Wasilla High School yearbook now doubles as a veritable directory of state government.
Turns out Palin is to nepotism what McCain is to narcissism.
And, when it came to her friends and donors, Palin was as loose and generous with Alaska’s public coffers as she was executive jobs.
In one case, Jae G. Lee, a former Los Angeles businessman who is the proprietor of Party Time, a rundown grocery store and bottle shop in Anchorage, sought a $2.7-million state loan to buy an aging strip mall in midtown Anchorage. It was on the market because of a glut of similar malls in the area, all of them losing customers to big-box stores.
Lee and his wife, who had contributed $3,000 worth of office space to Palin’s 2006 campaign, won the low-interest, state-backed mortgage although it was unclear how the old mall would add jobs. Lee said he did nothing to improve his acquisition, but with the cheap loan his profits have been robust.
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Two other state-backed loans with favorable terms and questionable development benefits went to Palin contributor and local dentist Scott Laudon and his partners. The investors got $1.2 million to refinance debt on Northern Lights Village — a gritty collection of shops including massage and tattoo parlors, a secondhand-clothing store and a video arcade. Its neighbors along a 1 1/2 -mile stretch of Northern Lights Boulevard in midtown Anchorage include a dozen strip malls.Laudon and other partners also received $3.6 million to buy two automated car washes in Anchorage. The benefit to Alaska, according to the approval documents, was the retention of five jobs — which would have remained without the subsidy.
John McCain habitually claims that Palin is the most qualified VP candidate in recent memory, and that she is a maverick reformer specializing in clean and efficient government. In spite of Sarah’s overwrought complaints that scrutiny of her acts and record are sexist, it sure looks like the nailin of Palin is imminently justified.