Palin's Inner Circle Comes Back to Haunt

Sarah Palin arouses passion, from Republicans as well as Democrats. The governor of Alaska has accomplished a tour de force in driving John McCain up in the polls. But just as well, Sarah Palin has baggage. While she is already entangled in a matter concerning abuses of power, the New York Times reveals the by-product of the very personal management style of her administration.

She doesn’t make political omelets without collecting her eggs. Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and running mate of John McCain on the Republican ticket for the White House, knows a thing or two about that. The “Hockey Mom” raised the ire of the blatantly pro-Democrat New York Times, which revealed a potential scandal in its September 14th issue. According to the paper of the Big Apple, Sarah Palin had favored at least five of her friends, all former classmates, to get leading positions at the heart of her administration, earning salaries defying competition.

Hiring her friends then was Sarah collecting her eggs, and all in the same basket. You can govern from far away but manage up close. Maybe that’s the reason why Sarah Palin, Alaska’s native daughter, once elected governor of the largest state of the United States, has surrounded herself with close friends in order to better control her administration and secure a quasi-absolute loyalty from those close to her. While acting as the newly elected mayor of Wasilla, she had already dismissed six departmental heads.

“Troopergate” is launched

In addition to the revelations of the New York Times, she has actually been the subject of a federal investigation for having fired the head of police in Alaska for personal reasons on July 11th of last year. The affair already has a name: “Troopergate.” The man in question, Mike Wooten, had refused to let go of a police officer and was none other than Sarah Palin’s brother-in-law.

The marriage to the sister of the potential future Vice-President of the United States was going poorly and the couple was then entangled in a fragile divorce trial. Todd Palin, Sarah’s husband, and 12 other close friends have been summoned Friday to testify under oath about the matter in front of the state’s congress.

John McCain’s running mate has made no other comment save to reject these accusations about abuses of power. She had promised to cooperate fully with the investigation when it started at the end of July. But she wasn’t yet a vice-presidential prospect. Since then, several high-ranking officials of the Alaskan government and members of Sarah Palin’s cabinet have refused interviews with investigators.

Cow Love

In order to backup the charge of favoritism, presumably of a lesser degree than “Troopergate,” the New York daily provided witness accounts and official documents. Over sixty elected officials of the state, Democrats and Republicans, have been interrogated so far by the New York Times, who wrote: “Throughout all of her political career, Ms. Palin has sought revenge against her opponents, firing government officials who didn’t agree with her, sometimes conflating her personal problems and her official duties.” In 1996, the press in Alaska already affirmed in the columns of the Frontiersman: “Either you’re with her or you’re against her.”

The Times most definitely prefers Barack Obama, should its support be confused with defamatory accusations? The paper reveals that Palin hired a former classmate, Franci Havenmeister, to be the head of the state’s agricultural department, her sole qualification being a childhood passion for cows even though she up to now, has worked as a real estate agent. A little thick? Maybe. But the former beauty queen, who maintained that she went to Iraq on July 25, 2007, while CNN revealed on Sunday that she was content to only visit Kuwait, is no longer able to lie when it’s directed towards a friend.

Democratic phantasmagoria or derived from a Republican lost in the Northern frontier?