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

Jeff Harkins jeffh at moscow.com
Sat Sep 13 07:23:01 PDT 2008


You can try to justify what you have done, I don't care what you 
do.  No, I am not going to contact the Dean of Students - that is 
your responsibility.

I have not threatened or smeared you.  These are your actions, not mine.

Do what you want to do, but our conversation is ended.

At 01:17 AM 9/13/2008, you wrote:
>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.



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