Palin's office at the state capitol - evidence of cronyism, corruption

[Ah Xoc Kin]

September 14, 2008
Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of Alaska's Division of Agriculture, Palin appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Havemeister was one of at least five high school classmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding what they had made in the private sector.

When Palin had to cut the 2007 Alaska 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.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she sued the U.S. government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Steiner that it would cost $468,784 to process his request.

When Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages - through a federal records request - he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in trouble. "Their secrecy is off the charts," Steiner said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/14/america/palin.php

It didn't take long for Governor Palin to get into trouble...