I have officially joined the Board of Directors for the PCI Security Vendor Alliance (SVA). I look forward to serving the PCI SVA to help extend and enhance security within the PCI community.

The Seattle Times has documented more on how Sarah Palin is unable to handle the truth:

Palin put in place what the local paper called a gag order, prohibiting top city employees from talking to reporters unless she cleared it first.

She did this because popular opinion was not kind to her. She was a puppet of money who wanted to get rid of people who took time to discuss and debate issues. It apparently was easy to buy her, but impossible to work with her.

After Stambaugh and the museum director were fired, two of the four remaining department heads quit. One, the public-works director, accused Palin of undermining him by meeting secretly with contractors and employees.

When three women who worked at the city’s museum were asked to decide among themselves which one should be let go, all three quit.

As I have mentioned before, executives tend to bring change. The wise ones do so without impacting services and quality. The inexperienced ones are unaware of consequences, so they sometimes foolishly fire with abandon. This creates turmoil and leads to higher costs, reduced efficiency and a decline in security:

Palin tried to fill two vacancies on the City Council herself, even though an ordinance said that wasn’t her prerogative. It was the council’s. After the city attorney stopped Palin, the mayor said she’d merely engaged in a ploy. “It was brilliant maneuvering I had to do to deal with the impasse,” she told the Frontiersman.

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to see that she is completely detached from reality. Why? In her world, negative thoughts are forbidden. She relabeled her mistakes as “brilliant maneuvering”.

This is a dangerous practice. A leader who forbids ANY negative thoughts or comments, in a clear attempt to hide negative data, will be ignorant of actual risk.

If Sarah Palin made automobile dashboards, she would allow no warning lights. If an engine ran low on oil or started to overheat, the Palin-board would only report positive information until too late — the engine explodes. What then? She surely would say the failure was divine. No fault from ignorance or negligence.

Step one: always look on the bright side of life
Step two: gag dissent, discredit critics
Step three: cook the books
Step four: declare any failures that can not be hidden to be a result of intelligent design

“Staff, I believe if we look for the positive, that is what we will ultimately find. Conversely, look for the negative and you’ll find that, too. … Wasilla has tremendous assets and opportunities and we can all choose to be a part of contributing to the improvement of our community … or not. I encourage you to choose the prior because the train is a’moving forward!”

“I realize this is an added chore, but at least it’s a positive one!” she wrote.

She would never be able to pass a Sarbanes-Oxley test, now required for executive leaders of public companies in many countries around the world.

In other words, she has told her staff to avoid looking for anything negative to avoid finding it and having to deal with it. Police should ignore crime (that would be looking for the negative), citizens should ignore faults. Just believe. And when things collapse, smile a lot.

The message from Palin’s pen was clear — either ignore risks and help cook the books to falsely report positive results, or prepare to be run-over by her “train”.

This woman represents the opposite of good governance. She is the epitome of fraud, bad management and insecurity. Under her, important data will be ignored, and any success will be based on false calculations.

It seems to me that her entire platform is a mirror of the Bush campaign. She was just a young politician copying from the big playbook. She probably thought Enron was actually really successful. Today, she offers little more than a continuation of Bush’s philosophy:

The Frontiersman ran blistering editorials, condemning Palin’s philosophy “that either we are with her or against her.” The newspaper accused Palin of mistaking the 616 votes she received as a “coronation.”

“Wasilla residents have been subjected to attempts to unlawfully appoint council members, statements that have been shown to be patently untrue, unrepentant backpedaling, and incessant whining that her only enemies are the press and a few disgruntled supporters of Mayor Stein. … Palin promised to change the status quo, but at every turn we find hints of cronyism and political maneuvering. We see a woman who has long since surrendered her ideals to a political machine.”

“Surrendered” is right. Palin is a true good-old-boy who has run on the same platform as Bush because she is the same as Bush. She is a white-flag Republican who will continue the status-quo that has made America less secure. The last thing America needs is another corporate crony who gags critics and is completely out of touch with the reality of security.

I suppose the title is a bit of a pun (“pale in threat”) but the more I read about the fundamentalist puppet Palin, the more I see her as a continuance of the very worst aspects of the present administration.

Incidentally, thank you to those who wrote me personally to say you find my comments on Palin insightful. Here are some more you might find of interest.

First, The Washington Independent reports that the GOP’s top pick for VP has tried to ban books in libraries and fire anyone who disagrees with her.

…Palin acted in a way that eerily foreshadows her recent actions while governor. Early in her tenure as mayor, the city council threatened to recall her over accusations that she fired the city’s police chief, Irl Stambaugh, and the library director, Mary Ellen Emmons, without warning. She accused them in a letter saying: “I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla. Therefore I intend to terminate your employment” (The Anchorage Daily News, via nexis)

Ultimately, Palin let the library director have her job back; though Stambaugh’s position was not returned. The police chief took the matter to court, where a judge sided with Palin, saying city law allows the mayor to fire the police chief without cause.

When questioned by the Anchorage Daily News at the time, Palin refused to give details on how Stambaugh had not supported her, saying only: “You know in your heart when someone is supportive of you.”

To be fair, weak executives tend to replace their staff with cronies and even strong executives favor staff that understand and follow their objectives without delay. However, Palin is no executive and her secrecy and deception do not represent an executive mindset. She has a fundamentalist mindset — when she makes a decision, if you disagree you are the enemy. She clearly does not understand the very concept of democracy and she will use whatever power given to her to make rash decisions along with a veil of secrecy to avoid dialogue until it is too late to change course. This is exactly like Cheney’s infamous secret energy policy meetings. Remember how Bush said there was no time to discuss war with Iraq, war was imminent? Palin represents more of the same shoot-first, remove foot from mouth later, miscarriage of justice.

Second, I was sent an email called “The Real Sarah Palin” by Anne Kilkenny. Here are some choice excerpts:

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a fiscal conservative. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food.

[…]

She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million.

What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later–to the delight of the lawyers involved!

Perhaps some realize that Bush did almost the exact same thing when he grabbed land for a baseball stadium in Arlington, Texas? According to the NYT he raised money from investors to pay for land he did not own or have a clear title, but claimed it a victory when he made money. Seems like fraud to me, but the Times cautions that there is a very slight difference:

The challenge is not catching criminals but injecting public scrutiny into a culture of cronyism in which executives, accountants, regulators and ”independent” board members all ooze empathy for each other.

Palin is thus not a law-breaker, but another cronyist who will bend rules to their limit to advance a minority agenda. Back to the letter…

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas orcompromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or herstaff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

[…]

Sarah complained about the old boy’s club when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal–loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

[…]

Experienced: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

Political maverick: not at all

Gutsy: absolutely!

Open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

Has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

A Greenie: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

Fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

Pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

Pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents

Pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.

In sum, despite the suggestion from the NYT, it seems one word can be used to describe the Palin-threat:

Fraud

Palin appears by all counts to be a fraud who will hurt those who disagree with her or try to maintain a free and fair society. Her blinded fundamentalism will seriously weaken the security of this nation if elected. People wonder how they could have ever supported a hypocrite like Bush and left him in office. They will have no one to blame if they do it again. Fool me once, shame on you…

The Daily Show reveals the many faces of Palin: