Faul Play and More Faul Play With Even More Faul Play

"I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that." -- Sarah Palin, phone interview with Alaska reporters, October 11, 2008.

Sarah Palin has insisted that a formal investigation into the "Troopergate" controversy in Alaska has exonerated her of "unlawful or unethical" activity. The Republican vice-presidential pick has told critics to read the report by an investigator appointed by the State Legislative Council to determine whether she had abused her power as Alaska governor to push for the firing of a state trooper formerly married to her sister. But the report's finding that Palin breached the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act is very clear.

The Facts
Within weeks of becoming governor of Alaska in November 2006, Sarah Palin began putting pressure on state officials to fire her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, who was embroiled in a bitter child custody dispute with Palin's sister Molly. She made her wishes clear in e-mails to her newly installed public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan. Monegan resisted the pressure from Palin and her husband to fire Trooper Wooten, and was dismissed in July 2008 on the grounds of poor performance and not being "a team player."

On August 1, the Republican-dominated Alaska legislature hired an independent investigator, Stephen Branchflower, to look into the matter. The Branchflower report, published on Friday and available in full here, concluded that Palin had the legal right to fire Monegan. However, it also concluded that Palin had "abused her power by violating Section 39.52.119(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act," which is worded as follows:

The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.
The Branchflower report concludes that Palin "knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired." It adds that she and her husband Todd attempted "to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family related reasons." Subordinates were placed in the situation where they had to choose whether to "please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure," a clear conflict of interest.
According to Branchflower, the Palins declined to cooperate fully with his investigation. The governor's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, has depicted the Branchflower report as a partisan attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo." Van Flein argues that Branchflower's findings are flawed because Palin received "no monetary benefit" from her actions.

The Pinocchio Test
Whether or not the Branchflower report -- which was launched by a bipartisan committee -- was a partisan smear job is debatable. What is not debatable is that the report clearly states that she violated the State Ethics Act. Palin has reasonable grounds for arguing that the report cleared her of "legal wrongdoing," since she did have the authority to fire Monegan. But it is the reverse of the truth to claim that she was cleared of "any hint of any kind of unethical activity."

.

Obama Expands Economic Plans

Senator Barack Obama on Monday expanded his economic platform, including proposals to spur new jobs, to give Americans penalty-free access to retirement savings to help them through the downturn, to urge a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and to lend money to strapped local and state governments.
“We need to give people the breathing room they need to get back on their feet,” Mr. Obama said in an afternoon speech here at the Sea Gate Convention Centre before a crowd of more than 3,000 people.

Mr. Obama called on Congress to double by another $25 billion the government loan guarantees for automakers and to temporarily eliminate taxes on unemployment benefits.

Campaign advisers said those steps and several others could be taken before January through current laws or by the Democratic-controlled Congress acting in a lame-duck session.

Mr. Obama outlined his revised plan in Toledo, a struggling city that is representative of the economic crisis and the battle for industrial-belt swing states that could determine the winner of the Nov. 4 election. He is spending three days in northwestern Ohio, sequestered with an advisers to prepare for the third presidential debate on Wednesday.

In a 30-minute address here, Mr. Obama also called on Americans to embrace a new “ethic of responsibility.” His speech was supplemented with visions of optimism, but conceded that tough times faced the nation in the coming months and years.

“I won’t pretend this will be easy,” Mr. Obama said. “George Bush has dug a deep hole for us. It’s going to take a while for us to dig our way out. We’re going to have to set priorities as never before.”

Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, also gave an economic speech in Virginia Beach, Va., with no new policy prescriptions, having rejected his advisers’ options over the weekend as too gimmicky, according to one Republican close to the campaign. He offered a glum sense of the nation’s economic outlook, bracing people for the challenges ahead.

“These are hard times, my friends,” Mr. McCain said. “Our economy is in crisis. Financial markets are collapsing. Credit is drying up. Your savings are in danger and your retirement is at risk. Jobs are disappearing.”

While the Obama campaign billed the speech here as a major economic address, about three-fourths of the proposals had already been announced. But the handful of new plans were intended to highlight how he would immediately help middle-class Americans — if not his own political standing by reassuring voters he is on top of the crisis.
“At a time when the ups and downs of the stock market have rarely been so unpredictable and dramatic,” Mr. Obama said, “we also need to give families and retirees more flexibility and security when it comes to their retirement savings.”
Mr. Obama reprimanded his audience when people started jeering at the mention of Mr. McCain’s name, declaring: “We don’t need that. We just need to vote.”
Mr. Obama praised Mr. McCain’s proposal to waive the rules that penalize retiree withdrawals from 401(k)’s, saying: “I want to give credit where credit is due.”
Before Mr. Obama spoke here, aides announced the highlights of his speech. They did so after word had spread on Sunday evening that Mr. McCain would not be presenting new economic proposals, as had been suggested by some aides.
The Obama campaign was attempting to maintain its hold on the economic message that has lifted the Democratic candidate in recent weeks.
“We have the advantage of sharing ideas that are consistent with the ideas we have shared before,” David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist, said in an interview. New polls suggest mounting economic anxieties among voters are fueling Mr. Obama’s growing lead in many polls against Mr. McCain.

The main new proposals would:

— for the next two years, give businesses a $3,000 income-tax credit for each new full-time employee they hire above the number in their current workforce;
— allow savers with tax-favored Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k)’s to withdraw 15 percent of those retirement savings, up to a maximum of $10,000, without paying a tax penalty as the law currently requires for withdrawals before age 59 and a half;
— bar financial institutions that take advantage of the Treasury’s rescue plan from foreclosing on the mortgages of any homeowners who are making “good-faith efforts” to make payments;
— direct the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to create a temporary facility for loans to state and local governments, similar to the Fed’s new arrangement to loan corporations money by buying their commercial paper, which are the I.O.U.s that help businesses with daily operating expenses like payrolls.

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Mr. McCain, criticized the Obama plan as one that would raise taxes on Americans, which he said would have “a devastating effect.”
“Interestingly, Barack Obama called a moratorium on foreclosures, which is a policy he had previously labeled disastrous when it was proposed by a political opponent,” Mr. Bounds said, referring to a plan proposed by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Proving yet again that Barack Obama’s positions on the issues are tied to elections, not solutions for the American people.”
During his remarks here, Mr. Obama gently scolded all Americans for “living beyond their means — from Wall Street to Washington to even some on Main Street.” His audience of supporters applauded as he said it was a moment in the nation’s history to pull together and sacrifice.
“We’ve lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to take out as many credit cards as possible, to take out as many credit cards as possible, to borrow instead of save,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, I know that in an age of declining wages and skyrocketing costs, for many folks this was not a choice but a necessity just to keep up, I understand that.”
“But we now know how dangerous that can be,” he continued. “Once we get past the present emergency, which requires immediate new investments, we have to break that cycle of debt. Our long-term future requires that we do what’s necessary to scale down our deficits, grow wages and encourage personal savings again.”

.

Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan: Firework!

.

McCain will CUT 1.3 TRILLION out of MEDICARE!

See also the Wall Street Journal

.

Less Hilarious: The Rape-Kit Story

Writing for the Huffington Post's Off the Bus, and crossposting at Daily Kos, (Jacob Alperin-Sheriff, a 20-year-old blogger and junior at George Washington University) posted by far the most specific and factual analysis of the rape kit story in terms of Palin's role as mayor and the final say she had over the budget.

Combing through Wasilla's budgetary documents, which are posted online, Alperin-Sheriff showed that Palin had clearly signed off on a fiscal-year budget that reduced by three-quarters the amount of money the town set aside annually for rape-kit costs and that the rape-kit reduction was spelled out before the fiscal-year 2000 budget was approved by Mayor Sarah Palin on April 26, 1999.

And yet the corporate media says nothing. Of course, perhaps if Palin offered a little more access to the media, they'd be able to ask more questions about this disturbing fact. Until then, there are many in the independent media, like the filmmakers at the Wasilla Project, who are asking: If someone's home is burglarized, the tools of investigation are not paid for by the victim; why was rape considered different in Wasilla?

.

"Look! I Can See Russia!"

In her first interview on the national stage, Palin claimed, with a straight face, that she was qualified to make complex foreign policy decisions because she could "see Russia from Alaska."
Lots of people in the McCain campaign, also with straight faces, echoed Palin's claim that Alaska's proximity to Russia gave her an adequate understanding of international affairs.
Here's a fun coda to one of the McCain campaign's most embarrassing ploys to whitewash Palin's inexperience: It turns out that Palin has never actually seen Russia from Alaska. The only place in Alaska from which Russia is visible is an island called Little Diomede -- an economically depressed town with a 40 percent poverty rate that Palin has never, ever visited.

Unlike Palin, CNN's Gary Tuchman went to the island, where he interviewed townspeople who had barely heard of the Alaska governor.

About Sarah Palin's experience in foreign affairs can be said:
The first passport of her entire life is less than two years old.

.

McCain to Unveil New Voodoo Economic Plans

As part of a plan to reinvigorate his flagging campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is considering additional economic measures aimed directly at the middle class that are likely to be rolled out this week, campaign officials said.
Among the measures being considered are tax cuts – perhaps temporary – for capital gains and dividends, the officials said.
Pointer's comment: Of course tax-cuts. What else do you expect from McCain? You know how it works: The flow of capital stops, businesses close. You lose your jobs and your incomes and then there are tax-cuts. Congratulations!

“The market’s the focus,” a McCain adviser said. “You want to stop the fleeing.”

No more bailout money is being contemplated, the adviser said. “We’ve written a check to everyone in sight,” the adviser said. “We’re not in that game.”
McCain advisers hope that by being specific, he can pose a contrast to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has been benefited from taking a vague but consistent approach to policy during the economic crisis.
Top McCain supporters have been agitating for a more robust economic package. It would give McCain something fresh to talk about on the stump, and dilute the perception that he’s relying mostly on attacks in the final stretch.
The McCain team is trying to stave off panic at a time of trouble for the nation - and for the campaign. He's doing this with an issue that has tormented him, as he has taken a patchwork approach to addressing the top issue on voters’ minds.
McCain has careened from stance to stance on the economy, starting with saying the fundamentals are sound, focusing on earmarks, applauding new powers for the Treasury Department, then advocating a bailout for homeowners.
In a matter of weeks, McCain has gone from being a conventional tax-cutting conservative to a big-government interventionist.
Officials could not say what the package might include because more than 30 ideas have been put in front of McCain during the current crisis, and they said he has to choose what to unveil and when.

“That’s up to McCain,” one official said. But we all know that McCain said he doesn't know as much about economics as it should have to be.

Among the ideas that have been considered are a bigger tax deduction for middle class mortgages, and more a more robust loan program for small businesses. But officials said the front-burner ideas all dealt specifically with markets.
McCain’s new package would amount to a do-over from the hasty introduction of McCain’s mortgage buy-up program, which was widely criticized by conservatives and was seized on by Obama as a fresh target.
So top McCain advisers want him to throw more out there, hoping it’ll stick.

McCain and his inner circle will consider the possibilities at a meeting Sunday, officials said.
The measures being considered are aimed at jump-starting the economy by helping the middle class and bolstering trust and confidence in financial markets, the officials said.

But Pointer is sure of this: when McCain's election chance becomes a little more serious, the market will respond with a total collapse. We are at 20-25% down now, in the Great Depression it came to 40% down. That record can easily be broken when McCain's star is above the horizon again.

On Friday, without fanfare, McCain during remarks in LaCrosse, Wis., proposed that Congress suspend the current U.S. Tax Code requirement that seniors begin selling their retirement assets at age 70 ½.
“Current rules mandate that investors must begin to sell off their IRAs and 401Ks when they reach age 70 and one half,” McCain said. “To spare investors from being forced to sell their stocks at just the time when the market is hurting the most, those rules should be suspended.”

That's fine, my friend...

.