[Vision2020] And the Hits Just keep On Coming . . .

[Andreas Schou]

Jeff --

What you're saying is that "yes, what you're saying is true true" but
also that "yes, I also plan to smear you."

So, let's start with the smears and implicit threats. Really, Doc
Harkins? You plan on reporting me to the Dean of Students? Over the
fact that I had been pointed in the right direction to find primary
resources? Look, I'm not apparently not so so good at this -- could
you get me the ABA citation rules for writing a bibliography for an
email argument?

So, why don't you just do that, Doc. The appropriate person to contact
would be Richard Seamon. Richard at uidaho.edu. Why don't you see how it
turns out. I'd certainly be interested. It's certainly more than
slightly ridiculous for a tenured academic to tilt at this particular
windmill, when what's at stake is fifty people's opinion of the
Republican vice presidential candidate.

Having disposed of that, let's go back to the beginning. I started out
by reading Tom's post, though I'd been aware of the issue for a while
before. I think I first read about it on the American Prospect's blog.
Later the same day, though only incidentally, I read about the same
issue on the Washington Monthly's blog -- there's a Hilzoy post there
and on Obsidian Wings. In the comments section in (I'm relatively
sure) one of the two places, someone had dropped in a link to the
Document Center and cut+paste and page numbers from the .pdfs, as well
as Mayor Palin's signature line. I double-checked the '98 and '95
reports in order to confirm that I wasn't being fed a line of BS. You
too can double-check the '98 line item on page 65; that's the one I
still have on my desktop.

In other words, yes, I knew page numbers from the very beginning, and
from secondary sources. I neither scooped nor claimed to scoop anyone.
If the confession you're looking for is that I did not troll through
300 pages of financial disclosures in order to write a three-paragraph
response, I can only respond that there is a difference between due
diligence in checking your facts and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

-- ACS

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 10:00 PM, Jeff Harkins <jeffh at moscow.com> wrote:
> Yes, the internet is a wonderful research tool.  And I certainly agree with
> using the primary sources - avoids the problem of bias in summarized digests
> of info.  It also alleviates all those messy citations.
>
> So, I had no problem getting to the Document Central and in particular the
> historical operating and capital budgets as well as the  audited financial
> statements.  But I was somewhat skeptical when I began to review the budgets
> and, as would be normal, the budgets were all summarized by function - so I
> could pick out the Police budget, but not the detailed expenditures.
>
> Same story for the Audited Financial Statements.  They were all there, but
> it would have been surprising for the financials to be reporting
> expenditures at the sub-object level.  The details of expenditures were not
> there.
>
> Then it hit me - how did you obtain all those names and details from
> financial reports?
>
> so - a few nanoseconds on Google and up pops an article on the Huffington
> Post.
>
> Below is an excerpt from the story by
>
> Jacob Alperin-Sheriff
>
> and here is the full citation:
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-alperinsheriff/sarah-palin-instituted-ra_b_125833.html
> However, I was able to eventually track down Irl Stambaugh, police chief of
> Wasilla from the founding of the department until Sarah Palin fired him for
> "not fully supporting her efforts to govern." Stambaugh sued for breach of
> contract, but lost when a federal judge ruled that "police chiefs serve at
> the behest of the mayor unless otherwise specified." He later served as the
> executive director of the Alaska Police Standards Council.
> It turns out that Wasilla did not bill sexual assault victims for the cost
> of rape exams while Irl Stambaugh was chief of police. As chief, he had
> included a line item in the budget to pay for the cost of such exams. He had
> only just heard about the Mayor Palin/Chief Fannon policy today, and was
> just as shocked to hear about it as I was.
> Checking the budget confirmed former Chief Stambaugh's claim. He had
> included a contingency of $15,000 in his budget for the department's 1st
> year of existence (1993-1994), $5,000 for 1994-1995 and 1995-1996, and
> $13,000 for his final year as police chief in 1996-1997, spending $11,625.
>
> Duwayne Charles Fannon, his replacement, halved the budget request in
> 1997-1998, with a request of $7,298, spending $3,454. However, it seems he
> began the "victim pays" policy in the 1998-1999 fiscal year. That year, he
> requested $3,000 but spent only $205. This data can be found in the Document
> Central section of Wasilla's website. I am to understand that you are
> studying law (first year?).  You have some explaining to do.
>
> You stated that you obtained information from a primary source.  That does
> not appear to be substantiated by the facts.
>
> It does appear that you plagiarized the material and you misrepresented the
> basis for your report (that is, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, a gross
> misrepresentation or lie).  Perhaps you have an explanation that I have
> overlooked something.
>
> I have no interest in any further dialogue with you.  But, I would hope
> that, should my rationale be correct, you have enough honor to apologize to
> all the posters on the viz and, if you are indeed a law student, that you
> report your actions to the Dean of the Law School. Remember, this is a
> public forum so your comments will remain in perpetuity.
>
> This has been a great disappointment!
>
> At 06:38 PM 9/12/2008, you wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 11:44 PM, Jeff Harkins <jeffh at moscow.com> wrote:
>> Because you don't know the context of Wasilla and it residents, hence a
>> potential for bias on your part.  And no, Palin, as Mayor, could not
>> dictate
>> a budget policy - that can only be done by the Council.
>>
>> Read the statute for municipal government in AK.  By the way, for the most
>> part, Idaho municipalities are subject to the same laws.
>>
>> Both states require public oversight of budget creation and budget
>> implementation.
>
> Jeff --
>
> We live in the era of the Internet.
>
> So let's just move past all the secondary sources and take a look at
> primary sources, shall we? The City of Wasilla has kindly published
> all of its budgets for the years when Sarah Palin was governor, so we
> can all see what happened. In the '93-'94 fiscal year, Irl Stambaugh
> requested (and received) a $15,000 contingency line item for sexual
> assault exams, a $5,000 contingency line item for the '94-'95 fiscal
> year, and a $13,000 contingency line item for the '95-'96 fiscal year.
> He spent around $10,000 of that money over the three years (if you're
> interested, again, you can total it up).
>
> Then Sarah Palin fired him.
>
> The new police chief halved the line item request, to $7,298, and
> spent around half of that. The 'victim pays' policy was instituted the
> next year, under Sarah Palin's watch, and only $205 of the $3,000
> allocated was spent on sexual assault exams--though I'm not quite sure
> what that $205 was spent on, as it's not enough to cover the cost of a
> whole sexual assault exam. That same year, the law was enacted to
> prevent Wasilla--the only municipality in Alaska to have that
> policy--from continuing as it had. (Incidentally, that policy
> endangered statewide VAWA funding.)
>
> The facts essentially go like this: Sarah Palin fires the old police
> chief and hires a hand-selected new police chief. That new police
> chief requests a rape-exam line item, and continues to request rape
> exam line items throughout his career. However, despite the money
> being allocated, the new police chief refuses to spend it. The issue
> in Wasilla is sufficiently bad that it alerts the legislature, which
> starts to pass a law to prevent Wasilla to continue with its policy;
> furthermore, the issue is raised in statewide media. If Palin was not
> aware of her handpicked police chief's policy--a policy which was on
> her desk as a specific budget line item, the subject of statewide
> legislation, and the subject of statewide media coverage--then she is
> merely an incompetent executive, rather than a heartless supporter of
> 'a la carte' law enforcement.
>
> -- ACS
>
> * Anyone who's interested in trolling through budgets to confirm what
> I said can find those budgets here:
> http://www.cityofwasilla.com/index.aspx?page=136. If only Moscow had
> something similar.