As the Joe Miller Looney Tunes Express chugs toward Tuesday, somebody needs to point out the obvious: No rational person, nobody in complete command of his or her faculties could possibly vote for Miller. Nobody. A vote for him, after all, is a vote for the bottom of the barrel, the dregs in our political system.
Without meaning to, this guy has told Alaskans who he is. What do we know about him at this point? Let's see: He desperately needs us to believe he is a war hero. He is secretive. He is an admitted liar. He lied about Lisa Murkowski's record in the Senate. He lied about receiving farm subsidies. He lied about using Fairbanks North Star Borough time and equipment for political purposes -- and who knows what else?
Miller games the system like a petty crook -- for an education, for state benefits, for loans, even for an indigent fishing license. He even managed to get a cheap state agriculture loan on land never used for farming. He has property at Caswell Lake in some kind of supposed trust that still does not show up on his U.S. Senate candidate disclosure report. Neither does his Fairbanks house. He is slow -- five months slow -- to file any Senate financial disclosure. He will say anything, he will do anything, even having an online journalist handcuffed, to dodge questions. Then there are the questions about his Federal Elections Commission filings.
Exactly how is he flying around the state on his campaign trips?
Alaskans still do not know the whole story about Miller, a guy who thinks three ideas, a smile and a line of bull are enough to win a ticket to Washington, D.C. We still do not know his complete employment history. His military medical record. His reason for getting out of the Army a few years early. Is he getting disability pay, as some have claimed? He has had dealings with the Veterans Administration. A Valley blogger says Miller told him he was on veterans' disability. If so, for what? How would that affect any loans or benefits? Moreover, we do not know why he routinely hides things. Who could blame him, though, for being a little secretive. He is just like his pal, Sarah Palin: The more you get to know him, the harder he is to stomach.
This past week, Alaskans finally found out, thanks to a judge and an awakened news media -- what would have happened if they had wised up to Palin early instead of defending her? -- the extent of Miller's lies about using Fairbanks North Star Borough government computers for raw political skullduggery.
Miller, at the time a part-time lawyer for the borough, was helping Palin, his mentor and tea party Svengali, in her quixotic quest to oust Alaska GOP chief Randy Ruedrich from his post. Miller, mind you, was less than forthcoming during the campaign about the computer shenanigans and his subsequent suspension and probation, but former borough Mayor Jim Whitaker outed him earlier this month. Borough documents released last week are informative.
"I lied about accessing all of the computers. I then admitted about accessing the computers, but lied about what I was doing. Finally, I admitted what I did," Miller wrote in a March 17, 2008, e-mail to Fairbanks North Star Borough Attorney Rene Broker, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
Last week, Miller told a CNN interviewer the episode was no big deal because he did it on his lunch hour.
It gets worse: Miller deleted all his borough e-mails before he quit in September of last year in a beef over leave and possible conflicts -- after asking detailed questions about how the borough's computer servers worked. Some of the dumped information involved a borough case involving trans-Alaska oil pipeline property taxes.
The Miller campaign balked at questions about that or anything else regarding his employment. But it was quick to say the news media has disproportionately scrutinized Miller's personal life. That is his modus operandi -- dodge, lie, get caught, blame somebody else.
Unfortunately for Miller, the key issue in this campaign is not the national debt, or spending, or the Constitution. It is character.
If it were $1 million an ounce, Miller could not muster cab fare.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.
Paul Jenkins
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