Four Kinds of Findings

I don't normally address political issues in this blog. Sometimes, however, something catches my eyes which may have greater applications beyond their mundane frame. In this case, it's the Branchflower Report (colloquially referred to as the 'Troopergate' Report).

Friday, 10 October 2008, will probably be remembered (if at all) as the day on which the Palindromic Crusade bit itself in the tail. Mrs Sarah Palin, Alaska's Governor and Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate in 2008, was under an ethics investigation. Branchflower and his Republican-heavy (8 to 4!) committee voted 12-0 to release the findings as planned. Overall, the consensus was that Palin had violated state ethics law by trying to have her brother-in-law fired as state trooper.

The interesting thing, to me, was the release of the report with four main findings, which I am summarising below:

1. Governor Palin abused her power as a public officer by exerting efforts to benefit her personal interest in firing the trooper.
2. However, the firing itself was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional authority. This is because it is the right of the Governor to hire and fire state employees.
3. The trooper received all his entitlements, so no wrongdoing was done after the fact.
4. The state Attorney-General's office failed to comply with Branchflower's request for information pertinent to the case.

It's the same in any political arena. Given the right to hire and fire, since the dawn of time, some people have taken this right to be an absolute and untrammelled power. With such an attitude, no justification or reason needs to be advanced. To the Palins of the world, findings 2 & 3 are full excuses for the abuses stated in findings 1 and 4.

But the point of the report is a simple one: it was an abuse of power, and hence a violation of ethics; it was not an abuse of authority. Some people must learn the difference between power or force (Greek dünamis or bia) and authority (Greek kratos). Whereas the latter can be taken mostly as granted by legal structure and terms of appointment, the former always requires moral checks and balances.

This is especially true in the education circles that are more familiar to me. But I've blogged about that before.