Dude, remember when Bush appointed Michael Brown as head of FEMA because he did such an awesome job dealing with horse liposuction issues at the International Arabian Horse Association (but had absolutely no experience whatsoever actually managing, ya know, emergencies)? And then Hurricane Katrina came along and he earned his listing as one of the most incompetent government officials ever because all he cared about was how he looked on TV (“I am a fashion god”) and going back to DC to get good Mexican food (IDIOT ALERT! such a thing doesn’t exist in DC!).
Well, looks like we might get a few more years of that cronyism out here in good ol’ DC:
Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
You know what I loved when I was a kid? Space exploration. Had a lot of books on it. A few models of the Space Shuttle and Apollo 11 and whatev. Hell, I even went to Space Camp. Surely that qualifies me to be the head of NASA, right?
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
[...]
As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.
Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.
Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.
“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”
The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.
I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait* for the incoming McCain-Palin administration. Incompetent and unqualified government officials give me so much material to rant about on my blog!
(*Uh, just kidding, I’m not looking forward to a McCain-Palin administration)
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