The Alaska White Knights are waffling, and we have work to do -- THE MUDFLATS

[Blue_In_AK]

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/the-alaskan-white-knights-are-waffling-and-we-have-homework-to-do/

I have a couple questions.

What do you do when your Governor is accountable to your Attorney General, and your Attorney General is accountable to your Governor, and neither one of them will either acknowledge or administer consequences for bad behavior. It’s like a kid whose Mom says, “Go ask Dad,” and whose Dad says, “Go ask Mom.” Neither one of them wants to be accountable, and neither one of them has any intention of answering the question. They are hoping the kid will go away.

Now I have another question.

What do you do when the Legislature, the voice of the people who hired the Governor, also refuses to administer consequences for bad behavior, and simply stands mute? And what do you do when that silence then turns into statements that run not only counter to the expectation of the people, but to their job description, and the bounds of ethics and the law?

What do you do when your “voice” no longer speaks for you?

I have a small understanding about how people with Tourette syndrome, or muscular spasms must feel. It must feel like a betrayal of mind and body when the things that are meant, on the most basic level, to represent you (your voice, and your actions) are hijacked by unknown forces, leaving you making declarations and gestures that have no connection with your true intent.

When the Alaska Legislature starts talking about how we’re all weary of Troopergate, and Governor Palin, Attorney General Talis Colberg, and those who ignored legislative subpoenas should just be able to continue without facing any consequences for violating the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, and the law, I feel like shouting, “This is not me! I’m not saying this! I’m not doing this!”

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Call me crazy, but I think ethics really matters. If you polled voters and asked if they’d rather have an ethical politician or an unethical one, you’d get the obvious answer. And if you broke down the results of this poll by party affiliation, I don’t think you’d find much difference. Everyone wants ethical politicians. So, why, after a candidate has been elected, would anyone want to stop a process that was designed to find out if that politician is corrupt? Why would you budget $100,000 for an investigation to find out whether a politician violated the ethics act if you were going to ignore the finding? And why, if the findings showed that the politician had indeed violated the ethics act, would you decide to give them a free pass? And why, if witnesses, and perhaps the head of the Department of Law violated…..the LAW, would you be just fine with that?

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