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Would You Pay $10,000 for Sarah Palin's Emails?
How much would you pay for access to the emails Sarah Palin has sent and received as governor of Alaska? Would you part with $10,000 for them? That's basically what her office is asking.
During the general election, I filed an open records act request for all emails that had gone to and from Palin in her official capacity. And Alaska citizen watchdog Andrée McLeod, who had long been peppering Palin's office with similar requests, did the same. At a time when Palin was on the hot seat as Senator John McCain's vice presidential running mate, her office replied that it would cost over $65,000 to round up all of Palin's emails and that Mother Jones would have to cover this cost.
The problem: Palin had used at least two nonofficial email accounts (such as a Yahoo account) to conduct her state business. Given that the governor's office did not have access to those accounts, its information specialists had concluded that the only way to gather all her emails would be to search the state email accounts for about 70 people who worked within the executive offices of the governor and look for emails to and from Palin's nonofficial email accounts. Palin's office estimated it would cost almost a thousand dollars for each search of these 70 or so official accounts.
It seemed absurd and unfair for Palin's office to pass the cost of this search on to those who had requested Palin's emails. After all, she should have been using her state email account for state business. In a letter to her office, I maintained that requesters should not be forced to pay for Palin's inappropriate use of nonofficial accounts. Palin's office eventually agreed, deciding it would not charge fees for the extensive search operation that would be necessary to compile Palin's emails. In early October, it informed me that it would begin reviewing Palin's official emails and gather the emails related to state business that were sent to and from her nonofficial accounts. All for no charge.
But there was a rub: this whole process could be expected to take weeks. That meant that none of her emails (from either official or nonofficial accounts) would become public prior to the November 4 election. Because Palin had used these nonofficial accounts for official business, arguably in violation of Alaska state open records rules, she had managed (wittingly or not) to orchestrate the functional equivalent of a cover-up--at least, a temporary one.
On December 5, Linda Perez, Palin's administrative director, sent me a letter noting that Alaska's Department of Administration had completed the job of assembling Palin's emails into a single account. "The account is now available for records production purposes," she wrote. In all, there are approximately 25,700 emails in this account, the letter reported.
But they are not yet ready for release, and now here come the real fees.
Each email, Perez wrote, has to be opened and printed separately in a "fairly time-consuming" process. The cost for doing this: $3,955.23. The calculations: a staffer paid $15.39 an hour could review about 100 emails per hour. And Perez said that Mother Jones and McLeod would have to pay for this.
The process, though, would not end there. Once these emails are printed out, the records would then be sent to the state's Department of Law (which is headed by a Palin appointee) for "privilege review." That is, individual emails could be withheld on the basis of various exemptions. (When the Palin administration responded to an earlier email request from McLeod regarding two Palin staffers, it withheld over 1100 emails, relying on questionable exemptions.) So there's no guaranteeing how many of these emails will be released.
And there's more. Once the legal review is finished, the emails deemed appropriate for release will have to be copied, and Palin's office will charge a duplication fee. In earlier correspondences, Palin's office indicated the fee could be over 25 cents a page. If about 25,000 emails (a page each) are cleared for release, the copying fee could top $6,000.
Ten thousand dollars to see Palin emails reviewed by Palin's legal department? Is it worth it?
Other media outfits have submitted requests for some of Palin's emails (based on subjects). It may be possible to create a consortium of groups to share the costs. I will be talking to representatives of these other organizations to determine if we can work together. And there may be other options.
So stay tuned. Palin has certainly not retreated to Alaska. She recently campaigned for Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, during the special election Chambliss ended up winning. "I can't overstate the impact she had down here," he said afterward. With Palin acting as if she is interested in remaining a political player on the national stage, her emails--if the legal reviewers do not censor them for political purposes--might still make interesting, and perhaps important, reading.
Cry me a river. Quit whining you baby. They went from about five requests a week to hundreds in a day. They've obviously reviewed their procedures and tried to come up with a better, faster, and less expensive way and done their best to work with you and all the other reporters. You can make an argument about whether or not she should have used private email. Fine. But don't cry to me about them not doing their job when it's obvious that they are.
Cry me a river. Quit whining you baby.
Posted by: red on 12/11/08 at 11:23 AM Respond
You know, G-d forbid we should expect an elected official to follow the law and be honest and forthright about her communications.
Any programmer worth half a piss could write a code in 20 minutes that could batch print any selection of emails. They are just dragging their feet and making up charges to try to get FOIA requesters to back off and go away. Does every single blog on the planet need access to these e-mails? No. Does somebody with the space to host them and let the public make up their own minds need to receive these? Absofuckinlutely.
P.S. I'm glad to see 2nd graders have learned to post on the MoJo blogs.
"Cry me a river? Quit whining you baby."
Wow, a public official managed to obscure the transparency she campaigned on in the first place and we're supposed to admire that? As a citizen (assuming you are one), what's in it for YOU?
p.s. Learn to punctuate, baby.
Start a donation drive for the $10K. Put out a press release that Huffington Post will pick up and you will have the $10K by the end of business tomorrow.
Don't bother buying her junk mail. I'm sure her appointee will hide anything of any juicy content. You'll end up with thousands of boring emails about Alaska minutia.
Ignor palin and possibly she will disolve when Alaska does not reelect her.
SK nailed it. I'll pony up $10. Call the fuckers bluff. The problem is that they will go through them and delete everything inappropriate.
Speaking of which, the whole thing is totally inappropriate. Can every politician avoid being held accountable by using private resources? Sounds like a good future market for Halliburton! It would be like Nixon paying for his own tape recorder and using his own tapes and saying, "Oh, that belongs to me and not the government so you can't have it."
I say that she should use her own money to produce these e-mails. She screwed up, she broke the rules, she's been called out, she should cover that cost and not her state...oh, it is that too conservative? You know, holding people responsible? Or would it be just Sara-neo-con to make the state pay for it? Hard to tell anymore because people like her are so inconsistent.
And what ever happened to the cloths?
Transparency is something she is not. Keep up the pressure...ask for all the photographs and videos while you're at it.
Please check this site out.
http://www.palindeception.com/blog/
It's 2008. The idea of printing out all emails, rather than producing searchable softcopy (text or PDF), seems silly.
Uh, this is to Red, and all the other red-staters.
Cry me a river? WTF? It seems that everytime the name Sarah Palin comes up, there is a price tag attached. That used to be called prostitution.
What do you call her?
Dang. I paid for Palin e-mails and all I got is this lousy Prada t-shirt...
"red" almost sounds like SP.
I think Sarah Palin got the idea for a yahoo account from Jeb Bush, who John McCain had said he would appoint to run his Dept of Ed. (I am guessing Jeb planned to then become VP if McCain passed away.)
You should still try to get Jeb Bush's emails from when he was governor (Jan 2000-Jan 2007), as he, too, had a personal account from which he was doing government business.
His personal email address, well known, is jeb@jeb.org
(Go ahead and google it.)
It was also publicized in the WSJ that he used a pesonal email address on his business cards, while he was working as gov. See article URL below.
The only problem for Jeb, which no journalist seems to realize, including the WSJ, is that FL has the broadest public records law in the country (Sunshine Laws), and Jeb used his personal email address, it seems to me, to evade those laws.
The State of FL holds onto emails for 7 years. Jeb has just announced he's running for FL Senate in 2010. I say, try to get his emails now, before it's too late...
From the WSJ article "World Wide Jeb" --
CLICK HERE for article.
...Jeb Bush has stunned many Floridians over the last four years by passing out business cards with his personal e-mail address at public appearances, and then actually responding to their messages. I get perhaps 150 to 200 e-mails a day," he told The Wall Street Journal's editorial board this month.
(From the WSJ Opinion Archives
World Wide Jeb
The president's brother aspires to be the first "e-governor.")
Thursday, December 26, 2002 12:01 A.M. EST
I think Sarah Palin got the idea for a yahoo account from Jeb Bush, who John McCain had said he would appoint to run his Dept of Ed. (I am guessing Jeb planned to then become VP if McCain passed away.)
You should still try to get Jeb Bush's emails from when he was governor (Jan 2000-Jan 2007), as he, too, had a personal account from which he was doing government business.
His personal email address, well known, is jeb@jeb.org
(Go ahead and google it.)
It was also publicized in the WSJ that he used a pesonal email address on his business cards, while he was working as gov. See article URL below.
The only problem for Jeb, which no journalist seems to realize, including the WSJ, is that FL has the broadest public records law in the country (Sunshine Laws), and Jeb used his personal email address, it seems to me, to evade those laws.
The State of FL holds onto emails for 7 years. Jeb has just announced he's running for FL Senate in 2010. I say, try to get his emails now, before it's too late...
From the WSJ article "World Wide Jeb" --
CLICK HERE for article.
...Jeb Bush has stunned many Floridians over the last four years by passing out business cards with his personal e-mail address at public appearances, and then actually responding to their messages. I get perhaps 150 to 200 e-mails a day," he told The Wall Street Journal's editorial board this month.
(From the WSJ Opinion Archives
World Wide Jeb
The president's brother aspires to be the first "e-governor.")
Thursday, December 26, 2002 12:01 A.M. EST
I haven't done the research, but I assume (just as you hint) that there is something flagrantly illegal and contestable about what Sarah Palin's office is asking.
For $10,000 you might want to give the ACLU, EFF or another public interest lawfirm a call regarding your intent to file suit.
E-mails from the account of the Alaska Governor's official e-mail account ought to be made available to the public. If it is suspected that the governor used nonofficial e-mail accounts to conduct official state business in order to cover-up the conduct of her office during the 2008 election, then Sarah Palin's legal department should not be granted the sole authority to disseminate these e-mails to the public.
After everything her party has done to decriminalize government spying on personal e-mail accounts, she should not be given one bit of leeway.
I'm really keen to see you pursue this! This time around maybe the press will get a jump on the GOP's criminality so it's fair game by the next election cycle. Remember that mysterious fire in Dick Cheney's office?
The donkey's kick exists to preserve its well-being, regardless of how unpleasant those knee-jerk responses can feel to the recipient.
Palin has been associated for nearly 20 years with a group that advocates seizing the wealth, calling it "wealth transfer." See
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/11/5/13585/8320/
You are so right. Hopefully, only the weird Republicans can't see that Palin is ignorant. How do we stop this opportunist? She and her husband have plenty to hide. Maybe more than Governor from Illinois! string up Palin and get her out of the public eye.
I've actually been through a similar public records request.
You should request (insist) that the e-mails be exported to a file format and converted (if necessary) to a PDF format.
That avoids the (B.S.) charges to "open" the e-mail and print it.
You can challenge having to pay for the legal review process; but in any case, the review can use Adobe Acrobat (or other PDF reader) to simply delete pages that can be legally excluded.
The cost for what you're requesting should be about $2,000 or less.
-- PC
No one will even CALL HER ON TROOPERGATE, Palin says it's BEHIND HER. OH, OK, SARAH!
Anyhing of value in these emails has already been dumped. This is a CON ARTIST, thinking the relativly obscure state of Alaska is her playground.
The Palin's have set themselves up like a monarchy.
Instead of covering Blagojevich's scandals, Mother Jones dwells on Sarah Palin. And the article specifically on Blagojevich was actually more on one previous Fitzgerald's investigation: the Plame's leak.
Foxnews was doing a better job at covering Cheney's and Libby's crimes than Mother Jones is doing with Blagojevich's.
Is that possible that to Mother Jones, Sarah Palin's email policy is more important than Blagojevich's corruption?
Sarah Palin more important that Blagojevich... Sarah Palin more important that Blagojevich... Sarah Palin more important that Blagojevich... After writing that three times, I am starting to believe it. Thank you to Mother Jones for that lesson of "smart, fearless journalism".
I guess it's easier to go after Palin than to admit that a liberal, progressive, union-friendly Democrat might be at the top of the "Crooked Governors" list. Remember, Sarah Palin more important that Blagojevich... Sarah Palin more important that Blagojevich...
SP should pay the $10,000 fee. She has the $. She has a $500,000 house. She has her governo's salary. She should pay the $10,000 fee.
guess it's easier to go after Palin than to admit that a liberal, progressive, union-friendly Democrat might be at the top of the "Crooked Governors" list. Remember, Sarah Palin more important that Blagojevich... Sarah Palin more important that Blagojevich...
Posted by: Jean-Christophe Roux on 12/12/08 at 3:50 AM Respond
I think the difference to note here is that Gov. Blagojevich is essentially guaranteed to do hard time for his crimes. Sarah Palin, however, seems to be convincing people that her criminal issues are behind her. Sarah Palin has repeatedly broken the law, and not only is she somehow avoiding criminal prosecution, she seems to be successfully burying this before her next bid for re-election. Kudos to Mother Jones for keeping this fresh in people's minds instead of parroting the same 11 sentences that everybody else is saying about Old Blago.
What a hustle! Or are these state officials that tech illiterate? Technically, the paper email is a copy, so it should be given to MJ without someone feeding a copier. If Ms. Perez can't handle that, tell her to use '2' in number of copies setting for the printer when she produces the copies of the electronic emails. It can also sort them to come out on separate trays, one set for Perez, one for MJ.
I wouldn't pay 1.00 for Sarah Palin's emails. Come on people be logical.
This reminds me of an experience I had in Gwinnett County, Georgia trying to obtain legal records (public) and covered by the state's "open records act" the purpose of which is transparency in government and to make records readily available to citizens. Unfortunately, the authoritarians (read republicans) in power attempt to circumvent the intent of the legislature by making it prohibitively expensive to exercise by charging copying fees. When digital cameras came on the scene I tried to copy records by digitizing them with a camera at no cost but my time. The Court Clerks office prohibited me from copying with my camera. When I objected to Republican representatives in Georgia I got no where. E-mails could easily just be forwarded to whomever needs them without writing any code or save digitally to a disk, but hey that would be too easy and make the transparency in government that a democracy requires to survive a reality rather than just empty rhetoric not really meant to be exercised.
Screw Palin!!!!!
Did she ever release her medical records? Last I knew she had not and that is very suspecious. I think she is nutty myself.
No, no. Let's let the Republicans bury themselves in Palin worship. If they run her against Obama in 2012, it'll be the best thing that happens to Obama. It'll make his trouncing of McCain this time look like a close contest by comparison. The Republicans are in deep, deep denial and won't admit they're fundamentally wrong about nearly everything, not matter what happens over the next four years. Republicans are the party of of corruption and intolerance, and Palin is the appropriate standard-barer for them.
Let's all get real. Palin was a side-show. If she had a beard, she'd be in the circus. She had her flash in the pan and is over with. Thank God for small miracles. Now, the world's attention is rightfully on Hillary and Mrs. Kennedy.
This woman needs an indictment in the worst way. I agree with some posters that her minions will try to scrub her e-mails clean, but don't think they can do so completely. Out of those thousands of e-mails, clues will emerge that will signal some of her crimes--and I think they exist--and how the mail has been scrubbed.
Get together with several organizations, and begin digging. I await the good news of her indictment. Throw in the "First Dude" throwing a race, and I'll buy the champagne.
Did you open a tip jar to collect this money yet? Point to it please!
How about a Playboy centerfold for SP. A couple mil and she might go away.
Too bad it won't work for Bloggevitch and all the other corrupt politicians. It is impossible to underestimate the stupidity of the people who vote for these imbeciles.
I am going to www.gov.com and pull up Alaska's Senator and let him know what I think of Palin, the cheerleader who campaigned for the Senator from Georgia - Georgia is a Southern state full of bigots and continued discrimination against blacks so I never expect much from that state. The Senator voted against helping our auto industry. It is called anti-American worker and legislation should be passed to impeach any Senator that prefers Japanese automakers prior to our own. The Republicans are anti-union and pro-foreign products and this needs to end now. Write, call but contact your Senators and Representatives to demand better government and demand our factories return to our shores.
I was also wondering why the e-mails cannot just be converted to PDF and forwarded on a flash drive. By convertingto PDF, the copy is locked in it's original form and cannot be edited. If yo haven't already, MOJO should request this be done instead of printing copy upon copy. It will save the cost of more that $0.25/pg and it is better for the environment.
no.
Put em on Swoops!
Sarah Palin's emails ought to be translated into Arabic and Gitmo prisoners who are deaf should be forced to read them in lieu of being subjected to NIN music.
-Wexler
This should be brought to court, just to prevent such tactics from working in the future. Either Palin personally or her office is responsible for complying with applicable laws. Cost of compliance ought to be borne by the responsible party. They should be able to afford the actual (non-obstructionist) cost: A programmer could write a script that would print each email to PDF and post them for public view. If the State of Alaska does not employ anyone with sufficient technical skill to handle this, I'm certain the Obama team would be happy to lend some help.
Even the most basic email program allows you to print multiple emails at one time. If you haven't already figured it out, here are the instructions for Outlook:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2214362_print-out-emails-batches.html
ALSO, the retail cost of a case of paper containing 5000 sheets is around $50. I'd be shocked if the State of Alaska is paying retail for office supplies.
Yeah, here's the reason nobody needs to investigate Blago right now: Patty Fitzgerald, one of the most thorough and level-headed investigators we have-- one who is not prone to extremism or jumping the gun-- has investigated Blago thoroughly. This is essentially an open-and-shut case. There are tapes of the guy blatantly bribing and his press conferences make him look like a lunatic. He is going to jail and will lose his seat. The anchors on MSNBC even make fun of him!
Palin, on the other hand, isn't being called out by the MSM-- yes, that same allegedly liberal agenda-driven MSM. If they are so liberal, how come Bush held onto his seat in 2004? How come Palin's disgustingly fundamentalist religious beliefs weren't scrutinized like Obama's pastor was? That's why this is being investigated-- because Palin is every bit as unethical as Blago and nobody's saying a damn word about it.
i would not pay a dollar for
i would not pay a dollar for these emails. Palin just needs to hide and disappear.