A new ethics complaint against Palin and/or her office was filed by the Police Union, that Palin and/or her staff, wrongfully leaked personnel information of her ex-brother-in-law in “Troopergate.”
The complaint alleges that the governor or her staff may have have improperly disclosed information from Wooten’s personnel records. The complaint alleges “criminal penalties may apply.”
John Cyr, director of the union that filed the complaint, told NBC News, “It seems obvious to us somebody has improperly accessed [Wooten's] personnel file.”
According to Zachary Roth, it appears that Palin’s husband was the digger into Wooten’s divorce proceedings, who then passed on info to Sarah’s aide, which was then used to try to have Wooten fired. As Zachary notes:
That may or may not be legal, but it doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of ethical, reformist approach to government that Governor Palin claims to stand for.
Actually, it sounds a lot like Cheney and Plamegate to me, only on a smaller scale.
And the scenario off using someone’s personnel records also sounds quite credible after reading the circulating email by Anne Kilkenny, which you can read in full here (if you haven’t read it already). Here are some highlights:
…She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just “puts things out there” and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.
…During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.
…Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
…While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.
…As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects–which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance–but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.
…She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.
As they say, read it all.
