Stray Dog
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 Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 6:11 pm Post subject: Re: Sarah Palin>s Toxic Paradise |
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See below...
On Fri, 10 Oct 2008, everonlynice@yahoo.com wrote:
[quote]Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:23:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: everonlynice@yahoo.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics, alt.culture.alaska, alt.politics.usa, us.politics,
alt.politics.economics
Subject: Sarah Palin>s Toxic Paradise
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=96470ac7-2c43-4643-9703-ec3776ba5b10
They say her environmental policies are worse than GWBush>s.
[/quote]
Here is more news on Sarah Paladin (besides the latest finding that she
abused her power in Alask):
[quote]McClatchy Washington Bureau
Here>s the story about Palin>s book-banning try as mayor
Rindi White | Anchorage Daily News
last updated: September 05, 2008 07:48:14 AM
WASILLA -- Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin
asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring
library books should she be asked to do so.
According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would
definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the
librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she
was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a
reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons
didn>t fully support her and had to go.
Emmons had been city librarian for seven years and was well liked.
After a wave of public support for her, Palin relented and let Emmons
keep her job.
It all happened 12 years ago and the controversy long ago disappeared
into musty files. Until this week. Under intense national scrutiny,
the issue has returned to dog her. It has been mentioned in news
stories in Time Magazine and The New York Times and is spreading like
a virus through the blogosphere.
The stories are all suggestive, but facts are hard to come by. Did
Palin actually ban books at the Wasilla Public Library?
In December 1996, Emmons told her hometown newspaper, the
Frontiersman, that Palin three times asked her -- starting before she
was sworn in -- about possibly removing objectionable books from the
library if the need arose.
Emmons told the Frontiersman she flatly refused to consider any kind
of censorship. Emmons, now Mary Ellen Baker, is on vacation from her
current job in Fairbanks and did not return e-mail or telephone
messages left for her Wednesday.
When the matter came up for the second time in October 1996, during a
City Council meeting, Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla housewife who often
attends council meetings, was there.
Like many Alaskans, Kilkenny calls the governor by her first name.
"Sarah said to Mary Ellen, 'What would your response be if I asked you
to remove some books from the collection?" Kilkenny said.
"I was shocked. Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along
the line of, 'The books in the Wasilla Library collection were
selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of
this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.'"
Palin didn>t mention specific books at that meeting, Kilkenny said.
Palin herself, questioned at the time, called her inquiries rhetorical
and simply part of a policy discussion with a department head "about
understanding and following administration agendas," according to the
Frontiersman article.
Were any books censored banned? June Pinell-Stephens, chairwoman of
the Alaska Library Association>s Intellectual Freedom Committee since
1984, checked her files Wednesday and came up empty-handed.
Pinell-Stephens also had no record of any phone conversations with
Emmons about the issue back then. Emmons was president of the Alaska
Library Association at the time.Books may not have been pulled from
library shelves, but there were other repercussions for Emmons.
Four days before the exchange at the City Council, Emmons got a letter
from Palin asking for her resignation. Similar letters went to police
chief Irl Stambaugh, public works director Jack Felton and finance
director Duane Dvorak. John Cooper, a fifth director, resigned after
Palin eliminated his job overseeing the city museum.
Palin told the Anchorage Daily News then that the letters were just a
test of loyalty as she took on the mayor>s job, which she>d won from
three-term mayor John Stein in a hard-fought election. Stein had hired
many of the department heads. Both Emmons and Stambaugh had publicly
supported him against Palin.
Emmons survived the loyalty test and a second one a few months later.
She resigned in August 1999, two months before Palin was voted in for
a second mayoral term.
Palin might have become a household name in the last week, but
Kilkenny, who is not a Palin fan, is on her own small path to Internet
fame. She sent out an e-mail earlier this week to friends and family
answering, from her perspective, the question Outsiders are asking any
Alaskan they know: "Who is this Sarah Palin?"
Kilkenny>s e-mail got bounced through cyberspace and ended up on news
blogs. Now the small-town mom and housewife is scheduling interviews
with national news media and got her name on the front page of The New
York Times, even if it was misspelled.
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