AP, Erie Times-News distort findings on Palin inquiry

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The AP (Asinine Press) today published yet another distorted article, mauled further by the Erie Times-News's inaccurate headline over an article out of Alaska on the findings of a so-called "independent investigator" appointed to investigate an ethics claim against Alaska Governor Sarah Palin,

The headline states: "Investigator rules against Palin in ethics probe"

In fact, the investigator," Thomas Daniel, an Anchorage attorney who works for the law firm that represents President Barack Obama and other leading Congressional Democrats, Perkins Coie,did not rule against, nor implicate Palin, merely finding that "she may have violated" a state ethics law, an unsurprising finding from an attorney who works for the nation's top Democrats. Whether or not she did remains to be determined by the state Personnel Board which will consider the investigator's findings. This is a pro forma process.

The "investigator" released his findings to Palin 's political foes in violation of state law which requires all matters in an investigation to be held confidential until the Personnel Board issues its ruling.

The AP Story was initiated in Anchorage by its only daily newspaper, The Anchorage Daily News, the largest in Alaska, which is owned by McClatchy Newspapers in California, the second-largest newspaper chain in the U.S., a leftwing federation. Along with it stepchild, the Daily News, it has been critical of Palin since she was nominated for Republican vice president and has become an international celebrity.

The Associated Press says Palin "is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters."

These are false and unproven allegations, though presented as factual by the"independent investigator", and Palin and her attorney have denied them.

According to the AP, the investigator,the Obama hireling, said "there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the Alaska Fund Trust as the "official" legal defense fund."

In fact, Palin neither authorized nor controls the trust fund, which was established without her express consent by supporters based in Washington D.C. and has received no money from it. It was formed by her supporters to help her pay for her defense against a barrage of ethics complaints filed under Alaska law against her as governor by Obama supporters for which Alaska, unlike other states and the federal government, does not provide funding.

The complaints, so far 19 of them, which have all been dismissed or resolved without any finding of guilt, have incurred half a million dolars in legal costs for Palin.Most of them have been found to be trivial or without merit.

According to the AP, "The practical effect of the ruling on Palin will be more financial than anything else, although the fate of the tens of thousands of dollars in the fund is unclear, said Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein. The report recommends that the complaint be resolved without a formal hearing before the board. That allows her to resolve the issue without a formal ethics reprimand," another veiled but false implication.

There would be no "formal ethics reprimand" unless the Personnel Board finds that allegations filed by the "investigator," an Obama henchman, are true. Palin posted an entry on Twitter in which she said the "matter is still pending," a statement echoed by her attorney.

The fund aims to help Palin pay off debts stemming from multiple ethics complaints against her, most of which have been dismissed. Palin says she owes more than $500,000 in legal fees, and she cited the toll of the ethics probes as one of the reasons she is leaving office on Sunday.

Kristan Cole, the fund's trustee, said organizers have frozen the fund pending the personnel board's review. Many federal politicians, including Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and others are routinely allowed to have such funds to pay off legal bills, but quirks in Alaska law can present ethics issues.
Van Flein said the potential loss of money from the fund had absolutely no bearing on Palin's decision to resign.

He said Palin received the report 11 days after her July 3 announcement that she was leaving office. He also noted that the investigator recommended the governor seek reimbursement from the state for the cost of fighting ethics complaints that have been dismissed.

"It's cheaper for the people of the state of Alaska to have the bills paid for through the trust fund," Van Flein said. "But if that can't be done, then it looks like the state of Alaska could pay."

The investigator, Thomas Daniel, suggested that Alaska lawmakers may need to create a law that reimburses public officials for legal expenses to defend complaints that end up being unfounded.

Palin's friends and supporters created the Alaska Fund Trust in April, limiting donations to $150 per person. Organizers declined to say how much it has raised, and had hoped to raise about $500,000. A Web-a-thon last month brought in about $130,000 in pledges.

The ethics complaint was filed by Alaska resident Kim Chatman, a longtime Palin critic and Obama supporter shortly after the fund was created, alleging Palin was "misusing her official position and accepting improper gifts," both untrue.

John Coale, a Washington lawyer who helped set up the fund, called the probable cause finding by the "independent investigator" "crazy," adding that if upheld, it would mean that no governors of Alaska could ever defend themselves against frivolous ethics complaints.

"Anybody can keep filing ethics complaints and drive someone out of office, even if you're a nut," Coale said.

Unlike other states, he said, Alaska has no legal counsel's office devoted to defending the governor from allegations brought against her in her official capacity.


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Watch your language, Pat Howard

While I fully concur with the sentiments expressed in Sunday's column by Managing Editor Pat Howard in the Erie Times-News, I can't resist dinging him for his clumsy opening line syntax, which would earn grammar school students an F in sentence construction. He wrote:

"Despite HIM BEING one of the rare political figures to achieve statewide success from this corner of Pennsylvania, you could argue that BEING from Erie hurt former state Superior Court Judge Michael T. Joyce when it came time to pay for BEING a crook (my emphases)."

There are many more graceful ways of writing that sentence. Here's just one suggestion:

"Despite being one of the rare political figures to achieve statewide success from this corner of Pennsylvania, one could argue his Erie roots hurt former state Superior Court Judge Michael T. Joyce when it came time to pay for his crooked ways.

Tabloid time at the Erie Times-News

Cementing its growing reputation as a broadsheet newspaper flaunting tabloid sensationalism of the National Inquirer ilk,the Erie Times-News ran a page one story Sunday above the fold at the right top of the page with a 42 point headline explicating a seedy sex triangle involving a low-level administrator at the North East Borough office.

In the meantime, the newspaper's editors and reporters ignore other far more important local governance stories in which top-level part-time, paid borough officials with roaring conflicts of interest routinely stiff North East, state and federal taxpayers of millions of dollars for gold-plated utility projects in order to pad their own professional fees.

Here is Times-News Sex Reporter Gerry Weiss's lead paragraph, straight out of STAR-type-tabloids:

"The North East Borough manager is being investigated by state police on allegations of criminal trespassing after his former girlfriend accused him of having sex with his estranged wife in the lover's apartment." It only gets worse

I ask you, could Weiss's lead have been more titillating? Or more irrelevant? While the subject of the piece is indeed the borough manager, in North East Borough's mercenary pecking order, his responsibilities and salary are barely above the level of a clerk typist.

With mind-numbing detail, Weiss quotes directly from a search warrant, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

Putting out Sunday's newspaper on Saturday post meridian, the slowest news day of the week, is always a challenge for news editors. But the Weiss sex-fest represents a new low in Times-News annals where the norm usually scrapes the bottom of the barrel.

AP distorts Gov. Palin's decision to resign as Alaska governor

Once again, the AP, acronym for Asinine Press, distorted Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's decision to resign as governor, fabricating a "possible 2012 Presidential run" in an article carried in the Erie Times-News today.

Palin has neither said nor in any way indicated she plans to run for president in 2012. She has given many reasons why she decided to resign, which the AP ignored, while publishing one she did not give, nor for which there is any objective evidence, once again substituting opinion for fact.

Read Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's reasons for resigning, not the news media's fictional creations

Don't expect the mainstream news media, including the AP story in today's Erie Times-News, to give Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's unfiltered version of the reasons why she decided to resign as governor effective July 26.

They have all concocted fictional and speculative scenarios which place her decision in a bad light based on comments from her natural enemies both inside and outside Alaska, such as Democrats who fear her national popularity and crooked Republicans whom she has bested in ethical jousts.

For Palin's own words, go to http://www.adn.com., the website for the Anchorage Daily News, which is owned by the left-wing McClatchy chain based in Calfornia, the second largest-newspaper chain in the country, a strident critic of Palin.

Biden, Obama & Broadband

Dan Galena astutely observes that the Erie Times-News and the Pittsburgh Tribune differ on the number of folks who attended VP Joe Biden's chat at Seneca High School in Wattsburg. The Times-Snooze said 500 attended. Here's the Trib's report:

Biden fails to draw crowd in Erie

Wattsburg, Pa. — "Vice President Joe Biden visited a small town on the outskirts of Erie today to talk to rural folks about federal stimulus money that can be used to expand broadband access to the Internet for rural areas that typically have poor connections.

"Apparently stimulus money and broadband are not all that interesting to the local folk here: Only around 100 or so people have showed up so far to hear Biden talk at noon at Seneca High School off Route 8 in Wattsburg.

"The room looked so sparse that about 30 or so chairs were removed by volunteers to give the illusion of a full house.

"The effect didn't exactly work.

"Pittsburgh native and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper are also on hand to talk about access to high speed internet as an essential tool for success in business and in school in our struggling economy."

It's ironic that Biden should address school kids, and be lavishly praised in the local media by his old school chum Jim Lanahan of Mercyhurst North East in light of the fact that Biden was publicly disgraced for cheating at law school.

Does anyone really believe the Obama administration's push for universal broadband in the boondocks is altruisticly motivated when one considers that the president raised most of his election campaign funds via the internet in mostly urban centers, but did poorly in rural areas. This may be the first signal for his reelection aspirations.

The Erie Times-News and Open Records filings

In an editorial published today, the Erie Times-News celebrated the new transparency in the commonwealth's operations fostered by the recently-enacted open records law which went into effect last January.

According to the editorial, some 500 requests for public records have been filed with the state's Open Records office during the six months since it's been in business. Guess how many requests have been filed by the Times-News's inquiring "investigative journalists."

Zip. Zero. Nada. None.