The New Testament of Sarah Palin: Spring 2010
Writing is hard. I struggle. Being a mom is hard. It's worth the hard work. Being a wife is hard. I wasn't good at it. Being a governor is hard. I've seen few really good at it. Campaigning is hard. As good as you can strategize and frame your message; sometimes you still don't get elected.
Just how competent is Sarah Palin? She hasn't been able to juggle everything to date...and now a new "ball" is up in the air.
Harper Collins just signed the Governor of Alaska to a book deal. In a time tight budgets and economic chaos, they managed to find a great sum to trade for the memoirs of a girl from Wasilla, Alaska. The book is due next spring. It was reported she was getting an $11 million advance. She denied the amount. It flies in the face of having a legal defense fund.
That's fantastic! Great! Get a laptop and a bottle of Adderall...you'll be fine. If you get stuck...well, make it up. It's worked so far.
The governor said about her new book, "There have been so many things written and said through mainstream media that have not been accurate, and it will be nice through an unfiltered forum to get to speak truthfully about who we are and what we stand for and what Alaska is all about." Who is "WE?" How in the ham and cheese can Sarah Palin know what "Alaska is all about?" No one can sum this place up; that's what I love about it. We are too mavericky to have one voice define us.
Palin added, "The idea is to focus on the content of the book and what's coming in terms of me being able to tell my story unrestrained and unfiltered." Well, that's precious! The idea of being governor, traveling around, and making promises for votes, is to FOCUS on the State you were elected to represent.
"It will be nice to put my journalism degree to work on this and get to tell my story, Alaska's story. There have been so many unauthorized books and publications that have spoken to somebody else's opinion of who I am, what my family represents and what Alaska is all about." AGAIN, SARAH, what 41.6% of Alaskans, according to last weeks poll numbers, think Alaska represents, is NOT YOU. Tell your family story, your story, but not ours.
For all the reasons it took her three weeks to sign a bill to support the emergency funding for the Alaska Territorial Guard, Sarah sure found her pen today.
But there is a problem.
Remember all the ethics Palin was touting during her un-holy national tour on the Strait Jacket Express? They include specific statutes:
S 39.52.170. Outside Employment Restricted.
(a) A public employee may not render services to benefit a personal or financial interest or engage in or accept employment outside the agency which the employee serves, if the outside employment or service is incompatible or in conflict with the proper discharge of official duties.
(c) The head of a principal executive department of the state may not accept employment for compensation outside the agency that the executive head serves.
Rest easy, I'm not going to file an ethics complaint over this. The system has been wildly abused, including the one Sarah filed on herself. Ethics are not something you can legislate; either you have them or you don't.
Alaska has a citizen legislature. They are expected to have employment outside of the 90 day session. The governor and her cabinet are considered full time employees. I'm not an attorney, but, after reading the details of the statutes, they seem specific and unambiguous; the governor can't be paid for other employment.
Sarah Palin is living the dream. People want to read about it. Some Alaskans are living a nightmare, and she needs to do her job.
Since the governor's return to Alaska, not much has progressed. Our legislature couldn't even pass the bestiality bill dubbed "Ididadog." Groundhog Day is now Marmot Day. We have a new state dog. Our minimum wage won't be the lowest in the nation. Sarah's pet projects crashed in committee. Her AG and cabinet appointments were rejected by the Republican majority legislature. Some of that I'm good with, I don't want the uterus police in my business or a bigot as Attorney General.
Palin hasn't been able to perform her duties as governor without a book deal. What ever she writes, Rush Limbaugh will consider it a pop-up book. Now that she has a contract, it won't take an ethics board to figure out Alaskans lose again.
Any guesses for a title?
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The governor is likely an "elected official," not an "employee" in the usual sense. I doubt that federal or state public employment restrictions apply to the governor. That would mean the legislature could box in a governor beyond what the state constitution provides for.
The test of Governor Palin's ethics decision really has to be at the ballot box.
You are implying Palin or any Alaskan governor is above the law. That's not true. Palin was sworn to uphold the constitution, not defy or ignore it.
No I'm not implying a governor is above the law. The article cites public employment statute concerning outside income generation - political candidates raise and use outside income in the form of campaign funds at the start - the governor is obviously bound to uphold the state constutition and to execute the governorship according to law.
Elected officials are not employees in the usual sense for a variety of reasons. The governor can be bound by laws that the legislature passes, with the governor's signature or with an override.
My point is narrow. The governor is unlikely to be subject to "state employee" standards. Her office is outside the reach of those regulations
Good point... If the Gov. is such a bad Gov. than she will be voted out...
Our discussion is moot for the simple reason that the Law Department made its decision weeks months ago.
http://media.adn.com/smedia/2009/05/13/15/Document.source.prod_affiliate.7.pdf
Sorry, dude, you are wrong.
The Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act specifically applies to governors, lieutenant governors, heads of departments, heads of divisions within departments and officials responsible for managing the state's finances. Look at the law. It says "governor."
I do live in Alaska, by the way.
I'm surprised at you, Ms Moore, doncha know that the rules do not apply to Sarah Palin? wink wink
Anymore than they apply to any Republican......
Is writing a book outside employment. We like for the constitution to be intreprted for various things. I believe the outside employment was meant you should not be a stockbroker, banker, waitress, or delivering mail.
If you are jealous of the upfront money then you could run for office and cause a great scandal or whatever floats your boat.
The law states the following.
"S 39.52.170. Outside Employment Restricted.
(a) A public employee may not render services to benefit a personal or financial interest or engage in or accept employment outside the agency which the employee serves, if the outside employment or service is incompatible or in conflict with the proper discharge of official duties."
Alaska's constitution doesn't distinguish or single out any occupations. The law is much more general. It forbids monetary income or barter from any source "outside the agency the employee serves." The agency being the executive branch of the state government and the employee being the governor.
If the word "employment" is a sticking point, the statement "A public employee may not render services to benefit a personal or financial interest" covers situations involving exchange of service for reward that may not be deemed as employment.
It will be interesting to see how Palin's lawyers get around this law. I wouldn't be surprised if this goes to court.
In a world that has trouble with the definition of is perhaps the word employment will be intrepreted differently. Is writing a book employment? There is no clock to punch.
How many arguments would change is Palin was a democrat or of a minority race.
As I understand it, Alaska's ethics laws forbid any high-ranking state official, including the governor, from using his or her public office to make money outside of his or her normal state salary. The idea is there is one employer at a time, and only one employer, and it is the people of Alaska.
I don't see how Palin's book deal is different, ethically, from the consulting contracts that certain former state legislators had with Veco. Those legislators would not have gotten the contracts had they not been legislators. Sarah Palin would not have this book deal if she were not governor.
If you can explain how Palin's book deal is different from those former legislators' Veco contracts, please enlighten me. I don't see an ethics problem if she were out of office, but as long as she is in office, shouldn't she stick to one employer?
P.S. - some of these former legislators who had consulting contracts with Veco are now in prison.
I think is has a strong chance of hurting her image as an "regular" person who doesn't make millions. It will be interesting to see what the figure is and how she handles it. I am not sure how many people will give it a fair chance outside of her current following. I think it is amusing and perhaps a little ironic that she is being criticized for writing a book during her term. I mean, President Obama wrote multiple books during his service in public office. Heck he wrote more books than laws and spent most of his term as a US Senator on the campaign trail. The good Governor is just following his lead, do less of your actual job and work more on your career and you too can be elected President!
Shannyn, I just saw you on Olbermann. I had a sort of good timing moment. I'd just clicked on Mudflats and she was announcing you'd be on - with a shout out to her site. And I turned to the tv and there you were. I stopped to watch instead of starting supper. Good interview and thanks for giving me a belly laugh. In your shout out to Mudflats you were talking about book titles suggested there. Wonderful:
"The Audacity of Hype" lol
And my favorite as Sarah has talked of her "voracious" reading (uh huh) and her like of C.S. Lewis so you treated us to "The Lyin', the Witch, and the ' Wardrobe' ". ha ha ha
This is one of my favourite' quotes, written by Sarah Palin herself (yes, she can write - sort of):
"I’m thankful for all my dad taught me and allowed me to do. I’m glad he dragged my butt out of bed early, early autumn mornings to hunt ducks with him before cross-country running practice. He taught me to bag a caribou, fillet a fish, dig buckets of darns, and find the plumpest blueberries. He wouldn’t put up with my wimpy reasons why I couldn’t thaw frozen fish egg bait in my mouth, like he does, when ice fishing. But he did understand when I looked up at him quizzically once upon his request to “please hold those” while he searched for something to put our freshly butchered moose’s eyeballs in so his students could observe them later that day. He graciously understood, and I didn’t have to hold those ungulate’s warm parts that morning in the alders."
http://web.archive.org/web/20051219065032/palinforgovernor.com/Articles.htm
Frightening and stomach-turning!
Sounds like she would make a first-class waterboarder but perhaps it's only animals she has no compassion for.
Here are some articles which were really written by Sarah Palin, and not by a ghostwriter.
The overall quality is.....fair.
;-)
http://web.archive.org/web/20060506014240/www.palinforgovernor.com/Articles.htm
Circulum Quadrare
Here are some articles which were really written by Sarah Palin, and not by a ghostwriter.
The overall quality is.....fair.
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The link is to a Sarah Palin website. Sarah Palin has shown she can't string a sentence together, but she doesn't mind - her "word salads" tend to confuse and frustrate reporters and everyone else expecting a rational and coherent response. To say she's qualified for National Public Office is a joke.
Shannyn Moore will be a guest on Keith Olbermann tonight....
a good title might be:
"How to scare friends and raise the ancient hate beast
(and how to ignore your State at the same time)"
Why do her ethics keep coming into question and yet she's not impeached yet?
Don't worry-- she can't write a sentence without a SPEECH WRITER or ghost writer. Therefore, any book in her name would really have been written by someone else, thus she would NOT be in violation of this law....
Sarah Palin...wish you the best, but time for you to say goodnight!!!
What's the title going to be?
The Liar, The Witch and The Wardrobe?
Hough Eye Gote Mi Jurnalysm Degree?
Pant's On Fire?
Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me and Todd?
How To Lose Friends and Alienate People?
Book I – The Journey by Gov. Sarah Palin
Book II – The Journey to the White House by Madame President Sarah Palin
Book title: Myself, in my very own words.
Now Palin has time to write a book, when she was too busy to visit (or even send a representative) to Native American villages when native Alaskans were freezing and suffering from food shortages because of Cheney's farewell oil price run-up late last summer. Did she ever get around to declaring a state of emergency so these people could qualify for emergency funds? Not that I've heard. Thank heavens for bloggers and nonprofits who pulled together and got emergency rations up there.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=45538795204
http://www.themudflats.net/2009/01/17/rural-alaska-in-crisis-the-real-tragedy-of-troopergate/#comments
C'mon people! Let her write her book and cash in on her fifteen minutes of fame. The woman has credit card bills to pay too.
And if she's got glossy pix of her inside the book, I'll even buy a copy.
GeneCar I'm a Fan of GeneCar I'm a fan of this user permalink
Governor Sarah Palin has written numerous articels and op-eds on a variety of policy issues, especially energy policy. She is a fine writer...........
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And I can cook moose chili and watch for Putin's plane from my back porch at the same time also and too.
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