Sarah Palin is Ol’ Boy Politics Herself and is Corrupt – NY TIMES
In a piece running this morning in the New York Times, the paper alleges that as governor and mayor Sarah Palin hired unqualified people just because they were her friends. Additionally Sarah Palin practiced cronyism and fired people for disagreeing with her.
Governor Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
When Ms. Palin had to cut her first 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.
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.
“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.
Related Posts:
- Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics as Usual
- Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics as Usual
- Sarah Palin Dishonest? Or at Least not as Honest as She Claims
- Events in Iraq Likely to Be Key Theme for McCain
- Republicans Use 12,000 Flags at Convention Rescued From Democratic National Convention
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