You have said that you spent Monday mornings in meetings with Gov. Palin, yet you retired in 2006 and Gov. Palin took office on Dec. 4, 2006. So how many meetings could you have sat in to develope such a close up, first hand knowledge of Palin? She became the Governor the same year you retired.

…is part of the Alaska department of administration.

You shot your mouth off questioning my bona fides because I don’t share the devotion to the Cult of Sarah Palin, and now you further demonstrate your ignorance. What I said was no conceit at all, just a fact. I know pretty much everyone in the Country at the appointee level in state sector labor relations. Most of them are Democrats who work with Democrat governors and public employee unions to get over on the tax payers. There are only a half dozen or so who have ever worked for Republican administrations that actually had to deal with unions in the give and take of actual collective bargaining. During my tenure, the California director and I were the only state level directors of labor relations who were a part of a Republican administration. There are only a half dozen or so states with any significant level of public employee unionization that aren’t solidly and irredeemably Blue.

Since you’re compelled to demonstrate your ignorance; we were never sued by a union during the Murkowski Administration and I brought grievance traffic down to an almost boring level. The only time I ever actually put my name on the appearance line was in a dog of a grievance arbitration that was highly politicized. I wouldn’t ask my merit system staff to go take one for the team, so I represented the State in that one and lost elegantly. Prior to Murkowski, as a merit system employee I lived in arbitration and labor board hearings for almost twenty years and there are very few people in the Country with as many appearances. Ironically, most of the arbitration appearances were under the two Democrats I worked for, Cowper and Knowles. Most of the labor board stuff was under Cowper and Hickel.

I’ve had little to do with her since she quit the Murkowski Administration and played kiss and tell. Prior to that, she was with the AOGCC, which as Diogenes points out below was in the same department as my division and in which we were peers. Sarah Palin is the architect of the allegations of corruption against the Murkowski Administration. As I’ve said, my view of what happened with AOGCC is very different from hers. Only three members of the Administration ever faced any charges; the fellow Commissioner that Palin ratted out, the AG that Palin was instrumental in ratting out, and the COS who got caught up in the FBI investigation of VECO because he accepted a poll from them, something that nobody would have noticed had he been a Democrat. I don’t think I’ve even been in the same room with her since she became Governor and there is no way I’d work for her administration even if she wanted me too; there’s hardly enough room on this planet for me and for a couple of her appointees.

You obviously know nothing about labor relations and apparently little about politics either, you just had to shoot your mouth off the other night because somebody doesn’t worship Sarah Palin like you and some others here do. When she was the nominee, I rode for the brand. She’s not the nominee anymore and it is open season on her as far as I’m concerned. I and many others here have significant issues with her about the future or our state and that is far more important to me than how she might be regarded by a bunch of people who saw her only in a very controlled, even manufactured, persona. You and others can be propping her up for a run on the WH in ’12 or even the Senate in ’10 against Lisa Murkowski. But for now, she has a state to run and she can’t govern by throwing around money and big ideas anymore. Something has to actually happen with the Gasline and right now it is vaporware and the Canadians have a half billion dollars that we could use here in Alaska. She’s got a budget based on $73/bbl. oil and it was trading at less than $30 this week. That means she’s going to have one Helluva tussle with a Legislature that isn’t in love with her and also with her own bureaucracy, relativey few of whom were actually appointed by her or have any particular loyalty to her. If she has a credible opponent in the Governor Primary, I’ll support that opponent. If she runs against Sen. Murkowski, I’ll support Sen. Murkowski.

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is my email address jamdan 2 @ hotmail so just email me there!