I’ve got a book coming out (I think) that goes into the details, so I won’t talk here about the so-called “TrooperGate” and the bizarre political theatre being acted out in Juneau.
I do wonder though if Alaska will be worse off for Palin’s absence. It looks as if there was yet another “good old boy” network that needed to be cleaned out–the state troopers and their union who think ten days suspension of one of their own for a series of offenses including illegalities is too severe and get it cut in half. It would be interesting to try to research what sort of behavior the Alaskans have been trained to expect from their state troopers.
The more I hear about public service unions, the scarier I find them. Just this week here in town we had a girl hit (though not too seriously injured) by a city bus driver who had been returned to his job after being fired for KILLING a cyclist. A few years previous to the accident with the cyclist, he had struck and seriously injured a woman.
Of course unions have a legitimate role in protecting their members from mistreatment, and public service employees may be more vulnerable than others in some ways. But it does no one, including their members, any good when the thing they become known for is helping people to keep their jobs who really ought to be doing something else for the sake of public safety.