Released Palin e-mails
raise further questions
The more we learn of the administration of former Gov. Sarah Palin, the less there is to like.
NBC and msnbc.com pried loose about 3,000 pages of e-mails - or 1,200 emails - from the state of Alaska under the public records law. Something like 243 remain secret because of claims that Todd Palin was an unpaid adviser to the governor.
Msnbc.com says the records “draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor's husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial informations marked “confidential” from his oil company employer to a state attorney.”
No wonder state government has been less than forthcoming about e-mails the news media and activists have been seeking. However, things may be changing. Msnbc.com reports it was charged only $323.58 for the records released this week. As Palin was running for vice president with John McCain, the state was quoting as much as $15 million for e-mails.
Msnbc.com said the address lines of the e-mails not released show Todd Palin’s influence reaching into countless areas of state government and politics: “potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production, marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, ‘strategy for responding to media allegations,’ staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, ‘strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy,’ potential cuts to the governor's staff, ‘confidentiality issues,’ Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. Transportation secretary.”
The lengthy msnbc.com account gives Alaskans another view of what went on in the brief time Palin, or her husband, governed Alaska, and not all of it is good. Everything from coaching her staff about disguising the amount of electrical work needed at the mansion to hook up her new tanning bed, to her stewing over the state Public Safety Department’s refusal to provide a plane so the children could fly to Todd's family's home in Dillingham, to Sarah Palin saying the decision was “outrageous,” prompting an aide to say it provides "a great excuse to privatize" the governor's jet service, all leave a bad taste.
Much of the information, we are sorry to say, adds a new layer, a new level, of cheesiness to the Palin legacy.
Read the story for yourself here, msnbc.com and tell us what you think.
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