Fired official: Palin talked to me about ex-brother-in-law


By Lisa Demer | Anchorage Daily News
ANCHORAGE — Alaska's former commissioner of public safety claims that Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's pick to be vice president, personally talked to him on two occasions about a state trooper who was locked in a bitter custody battle with the governor's sister.

In a phone conversation Friday night, Walt Monegan, who was Alaska's top cop until Palin fired him July 11, told the Anchorage Daily News that the governor also had e-mailed him two or three times about the trooper, Mike Wooten, though the e-mails didn't mention Wooten by name.

What role Palin played in seeking her ex-brother-in-law's dismissal is under investigation by Alaska's legislature and is the governor's first brush with scandal in a political career that has been premised on reforming Alaska's corruption-plagued Republican Party.

The controversy raises questions not only about whether she abused her authority as governor, but about her administrative abilities. Palin's replacement for Monegan, Chuck Kopp, was forced to resign just two weeks after he was appointed because of a sexual harassment complaint that had been filed against him when he was the chief of police in Kenai, Alaska.

Palin, in a news conference announcing Kopp's resignation July 24, said she was unaware that the Kenai city council had reprimanded Kopp as a result of the complaint. She wouldn't discuss how her staff had vetted Kopp before naming him to replace Monegan three days after Monegan was fired.

Palin apologized for the chaos that the Monegan dismissal and the Kopp resignation had caused. "This has been a tumultuous week in the Department of Public Safety, and as your governor, I apologize," she said at the news conference.

Monegan claims his refusal to fire Wooten was a major reason that Palin dismissed him. Wooten had been suspended for five days previously, based largely on complaints that Palin's family had initiated before Palin became governor.

Palin has acknowledged that a member of her staff phoned a trooper lieutenant in an effort that could have been perceived as pressure to have Wooten dismissed and that her husband and other officials also had contacted Monegan about Wooten.



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This is getting GOOD!

Yep the more that comes out the more we know this individual is not qualified to be Vice President.

There are several puzzles here crying out to be deciphered. Why would someone so frugal that she sold off the former Governor’s plane support a failing state-run business? Why would she then raise its expenses and, when the expected result occurred - a large loss – abruptly decide to shut the operation down? Was her intention all along to get rid of a white elephant? If so, why didn’t she simply go along with the original Creamery Board’s decision in the spring?

Sarah Palin is touted as a "clean government" reformer whose insistence on fiscal responsibility has been shaking up Alaska’s corrupt political culture.

The truth, as the Matanuska Maid story illustrates, is quite different, and far stranger.

Matanuska Maid was a failing, state-run dairy that had lost about $600,000 over two years when the state Creamery Board finally decided to shut it down in the spring of 2007.

Sarah Palin felt so strongly that Matanuska Maid should continue operating that she fired the entire state Board of Agriculture and Conservation, which appoints the Creamery Board, just to install new members who would reverse the Creamery Board’s decision and keep Matanuska Maid alive.

read it all -

http://robertow.dailykos.com/storyonly/200.../602/516/580193

Dairygate 2: More on Palin and the Matanuska Maid scandal

Matanuska Maid is no longer a mystery to me: it’s a scandal that shreds forever the myth of Sarah Palin as a government reformer and fiscal conservative.

I’m extremely indebted to Andrew Halcro, an Alaskan businessman, newspaper columnist and radio host. Below I link to the most pertinent of his blog entries and related local items. Or you can go to

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/31/13.../773/467/581251