The media dogs chasing a new Trooper’gate bone of contention…

I swear, I’m not sure why I’m wasting my time, or yours, with this post. Took about 24 hours off to be with my granddaughter, and re’entered the news world to find the media and Palin hater dogs are off, chasing a new bone of contention on the Trooper’gate/Monegan angle.

First, let me say this in no uncertain terms. I don’t care if Sarah Palin didn’t like which side of his head Monegan parted his hair… she had a right to terminate him for any reason she wished because he served at will.

Now, is this a scandal that she fired him for some personal vendetta, or not? And apparently, it’s becoming more than clear that it’s not. So now the media is off on another entrapment tangent, trying to play the “gotcha” game as to even her legitimate reasons for firing an appointee for sundry differences.

Case in point, Justin Rood at ABC news, whining over Monegan’s planned lobbying endeavor to the beltway to secure funds for an anti-sexual violence program. ABC triumphantly lauds it as “new doubt”…

And what’s the new bru ha ha? Is it related to Wooten? But no….

Instead it is questioning one of Palin’s reasons – citing an event that happened 4 days before she fired him, and his refusal to take another position.

Palin called it an “unauthorized lobbying trip”, and the liberal/progressives, desperately seeking anything to tank Palin’s numbers, point to a travel authorization signed by one of Palin’s staff, Mike Nizich. The authorization states the purpose of the trip is “to attend meeting with Senator Lisa Murkowski.”

Now all you “gotcha” types out there, I wouldn’t get too excited. Let’s follow once again the timeline.

The Palin campaign released many emails… and one of them, dated July 7th (pre’Veep era), from the Governor’s Special Counsel, John Katz, cited two great reasons why the lobbying trip in question would not have been approved by Gov. Palin:

In a July 7 e-mail, John Katz, the governor’s special counsel, noted two problems with the trip: the governor hadn’t agreed the money should be sought, and the request “is out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Sen. Stevens.”

The travel authorization is dated June 19th, and a noted purpose only to meet Sen. Murkowski… Monegan had to have known Palin was not seeking the money, nor sanctioned a lobbying trip for that purpose.

It appears that Monegan may have been trying to pull a fast one to advance a pet project, over Palin’s objections.

17 days later the General Counsel sent the email recommending *against* any lobbying trip, (this is still pre’Palin Veep). Obviously written after they found out Monegan’s purpose for the travel was more than stated on the authorization.

What was it Palin said? “Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.” Certainly appears that, despite the Palin’s lack of support for a lobbying trip, Monegan “persisted” in putting in a travel authorization request anyway with a vaguely stated purpose. Hummm… so far, looks like she was right.

The plot thickens in that this was an attempt by Monegan to mask his true intent for the beltway visit… as Hot Air’s Allahpundit points out, the date of Nizich’s signature is June 18th. But the travel authorization is actually dated a day later… June 19th.

Either Nizich did not know what day it was, or he signed a blank authorization document for what he believed was a standard visitation to an Alaskan Senator. So why would he do that? Apparently, the purpose of meeting Murkowski was not made clear on the authorization (if he just dated it wrong), or the verbal intent gave him the impression it would be a generally authorized trip.

According to Ruaro, Monegan asked for — and received — approval for the travel without telling Palin’s staff his reason for going. “As a matter of routine, the travel was approved by Mike Nizich … weeks before the actual purpose was made clear by former Commissioner Monegan,” Ruaro wrote.

“When you receive permission to travel, it does not mean that you receive blanket authorization to discuss or do whatever you would like on that trip,” he added.

BTW, Nizich is one of those on the Legislative Council’s…. er Steve Branchwater’s… list of witnesses. And he is also one of those who will be cooperating with a Personnel Board investigation, and enjoying the Alaskan AG’s office advice that showing up (for the Legislative inquisition) is not mandatory…

In fact, with these released emails, Thomas Van Flein has used them as further evidence in his plea to the Personnel Board to find “no probable cause” for further investigation. Per an AP/Google article:

The e-mails made clear that some Palin staffers believed Monegan and the Department of Public Safety worked outside normal channels. One was written in May by Randy Ruaro, then a special assistant to Palin, to the governor’s budget director, and concerned efforts to pay for and build a crime lab.

“I FEEL YOUR PAIN! DPS is constantly going off the reservation,” he wrote.

In February, Monegan signed a public letter of support for a $3.6 million project designed to keep troubled teens off the street in Anchorage — even though the governor had vetoed the project last year and hadn’t included money for it in her budget this year.

“I am stunned and amazed — do you know anything about this?” budget director Karen Rehfeld wrote to two other high-level staffers when she learned of the letter.

“Think about that:one of the governor’s own cabinet members publicly contradicting her veto decision,” Stapleton said.

Monegan acknowledged he shouldn’t have signed the letter, because it put the governor in the awkward position of defending her veto decision. But he said he thought of the letter as simply making another run at getting funding for a worthy project.

Uh… now how was it Palin described Monegan? “rogue mentality” and “outright insubordination”. Apparently, quite fitting a description.

This latest media nonsense, suggesting Palin lied about her reasons for firing Monegan is nothing more than a bait and switch – parsing words to muddy the scandal’s origins. Remember, this whole mucky muck started with Monegan publicly complaining (with Andrew Halcro’s dutiful aid) about being fired because of retaining Trooper Wooten, Palin’s ex-brother in law. This despite being on the record, under oath, plus in other media reports stating:

“For the record, no one ever said fire Wooten. Not the governor.
Not Todd. Not any of the other staff….”

former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan
Anchorage Daily News, Aug 30, 2008

Let me also remind you that it is Monegan and Halcro who have been smearing Palin since day one on this supposed personal vendetta. Yet battles over policy and budget between Monegan and Palin are not new emergences of info. In fact, even her staunchest critics have pointed to the battles between Monegan and Palin, prior to her Veep pick.

One criticism is that Gov. Palin had not been more explicit in her reasons for firing Monegan upfront. As I’ve mentioned before, on Aug 13th (again, pre’Veep pick) Alaskan Pride, most definitely no fan of Palin, said:

Palin has been under heavy criticism since firing former Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. However, she also disclosed three reasons why she fired Monegan (I listened to the press conference in part on KFQD and specifically took down this information).

- He was not making headway on achieving key goals such as resolving the trooper shortfall.

- He was not making satisfactory progress on resolving alcohol issues.

- He was not a team player in regards to budget issues.

But recognizing his previous experience in dealing with alcohol issues, particularly in Bush Alaska, Governor Palin did not want to remove Monegan from the administration altogether, but to place him in charge of the Alcoholic Beverage Control board, where he could combine his rural expertise with a full-time focus on alcohol issues. Nevertheless, Monegan elected not to accept the post, and left the administration instead. Monegan continues to maintain he was pressured by Palin’s family and the administration to fire Trooper Wooten. You can view all previous posts on Monegan’s firing HERE.

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Opinion: Sarah Palin could have saved herself a lot of grief if she had simply told us why she canned Walt Monegan last month instead of serving up some New Age Oprah-style drivel about “new energy” and “new direction”. There seems to be a disturbing aura of New Age influence within the Palin Administration.

Even Palin’s most vocal critic, Andrew Halcro, documented the the budget battles between Monegan and the Governor back on July 18th, prior to Palin’s pick as Veep.

Walt Monegan got fired for all of the wrong reasons. Walt Monegan got fired because he had the audacity to tell Governor Palin no, when apparently nobody is allowed to say no to Governor Palin.

Monegan said no, he couldn’t cut his budget because his State Troopers were already being stretched to the limit and public safety suffering. He said no, he couldn’t cut his budget because fuel costs for planes, boats and patrol vehicles soaring, while crime in rural Alaska was putting more demands on the Troopers transportation system.

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When Walt Monegan was appointed, he realized the deep problems at DPS including low morale, understaffed detachments and the lack of a funding commitment to a long term vision.

He also recognized, that along with the strategic plan his department developed and introduced just months ago, there needed to be a commitment of resources to follow through on the public safety needs for Alaskans.

“We want out employees to know that help is on the way; that we are planning to grow our staff to provide both the needed services for this vast state, and the appropriate training necessary to do it”, Monegan wrote in his 2008-17 Strategic Plan.

But the Palin administration wanted Monegan to go in another direction. They wanted him to cut corners on a budget that had already fallen behind over the last decade. Under Former Governor Murkwoski there was significant investment made to try and catch up with growing costs but Palin’s budgets have again started to starve the agency.

To make matters worse, the change to the state’s retirement benefit program adopted by the legislature in 2004 has had a negative effect on the departments ability to recruit new Troopers.

Since there’s ample documentation by even the most ardent nemesis of Palin, why did all this end up resting on Wooten? Politics… plain and simple. But they all forget that the Info Age leaves a trail of evidence. And there is ample evidence that Monegan and Palin were battling on far more important issues than a years ago divorced brother in law.

After tossing all this sheeeeet toward the fan, it’s hard to fathom why Monegan is “dismayed” about this assault on his performance. Alaskan Pride… again an anti-Palin outlet, but actually reasonably balanced in much of his coverage, described Monegan’s reaction:

Reached Monday at his Chugiak home, Monegan said he was dismayed at the attack on his record as Palin’s public safety commissioner. “In my mind, I’ve always been a team player,” he said. Monegan also said that the papers the governor’s lawyer filed are selective and he’s provided other documentation to the legislative investigator, Steve Branchflower, that will provide a more balanced portrayal of his time as commissioner.

Perhaps he should have thought about that before he started dragging Palin thru the mud -teaming up with Halcro to publicly accuse Palin of abuse of power by terminating him. If he went up against Palin’s governance even once, he was worthy of firing. But fact is, it matters not that they may have worked together 20 times… there is documented insubordination for more than one incident. Does he think those other times wipe out his behavior on these?

And oh, by the way… what does all this have to do with it being all about Trooper Wooten?? Isn’t that supposed to be the scandal? Evidently not, if we’re now having media arguments about Monegan’s performance.

Frankly, considering the sequence of events, and the length of time before Palin released emails highlighting the specifics of the Palin/Monegan internal battles, it appears the Governor went to great lengths to *avoid* dragging Monegan’s public record thru the mud.

Instead she was forced into publicizing all their policy, budget and enforcement disagreements… in self defense. Monegan begged for this… by his stubborn refusal to accept his termination, or the other position offered, with grace.

Over at AJ’s The Stratasphere, another commenter is researching the PSEA’s (trooper union) relationship with Palin’s nemesis, Andrew Halcro. While it’s interesting, I already have no doubts that Halcro is actually the one with the vendetta. And I truly have no desires to intentionally engage in smearing the AST’s union.

Without a doubt, with Palin shaving back the State budget, I’m quite sure that the PSEA was far from happy with Palin. But do I believe these disagreements would trigger them to engage in a Palin smear campaign? No… I don’t. In fact, strikes me as it would behoove them to see that Palin moves on to the Veep offices in the beltway.

Additionally, to the PSEA’s credit, they went the legal ethics complaint route by filing the paperwork with the AG for official review by the Personnel Board. So I personally don’t think there is some hidden conspiracy lurking.

I could be wrong… but I still say this is a local battle of the disgruntled (Halcro, Monegan, French, Elton and Lyda Green) against Palin. It is French who is determined to carry on with the witch hunt. And it is Halcro who continues to feed media scandal headlines with his theories.

But time will tell all…. a Personnel Board decision of probable cause, plus some incomplete Legislative Investigation that does nothing but muddy the political waters…. and that’s all it was ever intended to do.