Shining a Light on the Palin Administration? Linda Kellen Biegel's Own Transparency Is Questionable

Shining a light on the Palin Administration.
The fight for government transparency.
I want an open and transparent government!
Of benefit to the public interest.

Linda Kellen Biegel, aka Celtic Diva, has called on the help of her readership to shine “a light on the Palin Administration” by asking for donations to the tune of more than $5,500 to fund a request for the email records of six members of the Office of the Governor, dating back more than 10 months.

Kellen Biegel thinks that radio talk show host Eddie Burke and ADN columnist Sheila Toomey have been participating in a smear campaign against Andree McLeod.

She believes that this campaign is being orchestrated by the unsolicited release of inside information/ documents to Burke and Toomey by a member(s) of the Palin Administration.

She hopes that email records, invoices, etc will provide the evidence to support her allegation that information has been released to Burke and Toomey, rather than being the subject of a records request by Burke and Toomey.

Once she has sufficient funds she intends, therefore, to request:
1. all email contact to/from Governor Palin, Linda Perez, Mike Nizich, Bill McAllister, Kris Perry, Sharon Leighow that are to/from Eddie Burke and/or Sheila Toomey,
2. all emails to/from the Governor and the named employees that discuss Burke or Toomey,
3. all records requests submitted which target emails to/from Andree McLeod,
4. all fee breakdowns, invoices or any other documents which assess the cost of retrieving the McLeod emails, and charges made,

The date range for the request is July 1, 2008 to May 11, 2009 – more than 10 months.

Kellen Biegel is promoting her request as part of what she calls a “fight for government transparency”, which appears to imply that she thinks there is some sort of struggle going on with that aspect of government in Alaska.

“I want an open and transparent government,” she says.

She tells her readers that her actions will be “of benefit to the public interest” – though she has given no indication of how any benefit to the public will be measured, or of how she came to conclude that her action will be of benefit to the public, or of how she herself knows that there is a public interest in her perception that government in Alaska lacks openness and transparency.

Reading her current rhetoric it may be that some will form the impression that Ms Kellen Biegel is an influential figure in political circles in Alaska; perhaps so, in her own mind.

Admittedly, as a Democrat she has been photographed attending a function at the home of Senator Mark Biegich. There is also a photograph on her website of Ms Kellen Biegel standing alongside gubernatorial candidate Bob Poe, and correspondence from Ethan Berkowitz, also a prospective gubernatorial candidate. She was also the official Alaskan blogger for the DNC during the last election.

To the uninitiated, such materials could give the appearance of how connected Kellen Biegel is (at least in Democrat circles). In an overwhelmingly Republican (ie. red) state, that is an appearance possibly supported by the fact that Kellen Biegel calls her website a blue oasis, whereby she emphasises what she sees as the richness of her own political persuasion and the paucity of that of most other Alaskans. But that would appear to also invite the opinion that since she doesn’t share the views of most of her fellow Alaskans few Alaskans will have reason to care two hoots for hers.

How much interest in Kellen Biegel do the people of Alaska really take?

Well, she runs a website (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis) which in recent months has been receiving approximately 1000 visits per day, though traffic flow varies. For example, on 31st May only 486 visits took place, whilst on 18th June (the day on which her appeal for donations was made) there were 1565 recorded visits. In May as a whole, site traffic for the Blue Oasis is recorded at 33,690 visits.

To try to give some sense of perspective on those figures, on 10th May alone 30,047 visits to C4P occurred (999 for Blue Oasis).

From this it would be reasonable to conclude that, whatever her rhetoric, interest in Kellen Biegel’s website, and thereby her views, is marginal. Fractional.

What proportion of those visiting the Blue Oasis are from Alaska?

It’s not an easy thing to determine. Even if all her visitors on any given day were from Alaska, that would still amount to an extremely small proportion of the state population, not accounting for repeat visits.

At the time of writing, Feedjit indications for the last 100 hundred visits to the Blue Oasis showed 36 as being from Alaska, approximately 30% - further reducing the impression of how many Alaskans are actually concerned about what Kellen Biegel does or thinks, and suggestive that many of those who do provide donations to her will not be Alaskans, much less Alaskans who are concerned about the nature of their state government.

So the point I am pursuing here is that the rhetoric which Kellen Biegel’s presents about a predominant concern shared by lots of other Alaskans isn’t truthful. It is a manufactured outrage, a minor issue, of virtually no interest within Alaska itself, a distraction to the business of government, self aggrandising.

Who pays?

Visitors to the Blue Oasis are being invited to pay Kellen Biegel’s costs. The taxpayers of Alaska, have already paid for Kellen Biegel’s bogus ethics complaint. The Palins have legal fees in excess of $500,000, those named employees whose reputations have been impugned by Kellen Biegel continue to pay an emotional cost, and, of course, those who have donated to The Alaska Fund Trust also pay.

But perhaps a more pertinent question would be to ask who doesn’t pay?
The answer appears to be, Linda Kellen Biegel.

In fact it would be appropriate to ask a number of other questions about the whole business, since they do not yet seem to have been addressed:

• Is there any independent supervision of the fund?
• How much has Kellen Biegel herself donated to her fund?
• Where do the donations go? No separate account has been created for the donations. Biegel says they are being paid into the general Blue Oasis blog account.
• How are donations to be kept track of within a general account? What accounting procedures have been put in place? Can we expect a detailed list of who the donors are and how much they gave? Can we also expect a detailed list of expenditures to show how she used the money?
• What will happen to the money donated if the target total isn’t reached? Will funds be returned? How?
• What happens if the target total is exceeded? Will surplus funds be returned? How? Keep in mind that it can be a form of fraud to raise money under one pretense but spend it on another.
• She is not a trust or a non-profit, so it would seem that the money is taxable. Is she planning on reporting it as income to the IRS?
• What is the actual purpose of this exercise? Kellen Biegel has already stated on a number of occasions that, for example, the Office of the Governor is staffed by people who behave like the SS; and she has already decided in her own mind that an orchestrated backlash campaign has been launched. Her mind is made up, so what’s the real purpose of the exercise?
• What happens if/when the records she receives reveal no evidence? What then for the people whose money has been wasted?

Under the falsehood that this is a “VERY IMPORTANT” matter which occupies the thoughts of many Alaskans, what do those who are donating really know about this woman?

What do they know about the background of the person to whom they are being asked to give their money?

Has she been open and transparent?

Can she be trusted?