Let the Games Begin-Hit Piece on Palin-Billing Practices

The Washington Compost ^ | freeplancer

[freeplancer]

Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home Taxpayers Also Funded Family's Travel By James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, September 9, 2008; A01 ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

[freeplancer]

God I hope this is not true in its contex.

[freeplancer]

Contex=Context. I bet no politician wants anyone to go through their billing records.

[stylin19a]

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official "duty station" is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

The governor's daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.

Gubernatorial spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Monday that Palin's expenses are not unusual and that, under state policy, the first family could have claimed per diem expenses for each child taken on official business but has not done so.

there's no there there.

[napscoordinator]

The travel to official functions is ok for the family, but per diem????? Let’s pray that is not true.

[sten]

if i wasn't supposed to care about what the clinton's did... why would i care here? per diem? you are kidding.

and no one is looking through(trumpeting) the obama housing issues... or drug dealing... or (insert any pick of 20 things that are bad and being ignored)

[John Valentine]

It is completely true, and more. Of course the MSM has not told the whole story.

You need to do some research. This practice is completely legal, audited, accepted, and authorized. It has to do with the fact that the capital of Alaska is Juneau and Palin’s home was in Anchorage, thousands of miles away.

This is a NON STORY minked up and sold as a scandal where there is none.

[ken5050]

In case you haven't noticed, there is only ONE charge that the MSM has so far failed to level against Palin..that she "lacks gravitas"

[hsalaw]

Palin's expenses are not unusual and that, under state policy, the first family could have claimed per diem expenses for each child taken on official business but has not done so.

[John Valentine]

Make the HUNDREDS of miles....

[VeniVidiVici]

Leighow noted that under state policy, all of the governor's children are entitled to per diem expenses, even her infant son. "The first family declined the per diem [for] the children," Leighow said. "The amount that they had declined was $4,461, as of August 5."

Are we reading the same article as you and Mr Context who started the thread? I fail to see what the issue is. Other than the fact, of course, that some stupid Democrat will make headlines concerning lawful behavior using research done by America's MSM who ALL have someone in Alaska now to dig up dirt on Palin. I'm just incredulous that such an ass probing wasn't done on anybody on the Democrat ticket.

[napscoordinator]

I’m just incredulous that such an ass probing wasn’t done on anybody on the Democrat ticket.

Well you are right...Fox News could do it. Conservatives could do it...but for some reason, conservatives are not one to investigate Democrats. I have no reason why.

[intenseracer]

*YAWN* Good grief, these presstitutes need to get a life. The reason she is LEGALLY able to claim per diem when at her home in Wasilla, is because as governor, her OFFICIAL duty station is in Juneau. Juneau is not accessible but by boat or plane year round. So in reality, if she is in Wasilla, especially during an active session she is, by law, not at her duty station, hence her ability to claim per diem legally while staying in her Wasilla home. Next please...

[bossmechanic]

You restated the facts well. The demos over at HuffPost are dwelling on this too. I tried to explain same way but it’s like trying to teach chemistry to a 10yo. They see the surface but miss the underlying principles. Takes patience to bore by this type of denial and I’ve run out of it tonight.

[Shery]

Per diem rates hardly cover the actual expenses, depending on what manner you travel. If she drives the vehicle that it was claimed she does in a previous article, getting 16 miles to the gallon, the per diem rates would not cover the actual expenses, only offset them. Most of these rates are based on an average sedan-sized vehicle, not according to each person’s vehicle. Her expenses do not seem high.

[LADYAK]

We have a legislative audit and I am sure her expenses were in alignment...we operate under policies and procedures here in Alaska...just not at the governor’s whims. She also wouldn’t be able to claim full per diem it would seem having a full-time residence in Wasilla and her duty station in Juneau.

[bossmechanic]

Ya know? Her expenses were less than the prior gov’nor.
And there certainly aren’t out of line compared to most elected officials of her station.
Now someone has to do a comparison on this - no doubt finding that demo’s regularly soak their ever expanding expense budgets. Bearing in mind transportation in Alaska is a bit more tedious than we experience down here in the lower 48, I don’t begrudge her a bit of slack.
But I’ll bet there will be no comparisons to the remaining demo hacks cause they are doin’ worse - just guessin’

[torchthemummy]

This has been posted before and shows that Gov. palin not only didn’t do anything wrong but actually spent 1/10 the amount that her predecessor did. This is a non-story attempting to imply something nefarious where there is no there there.

[AlaskaErik]

It has to do with the fact that the capital of Alaska is Juneau and Palin’s home was in Anchorage Wasilla, thousands hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

Fixed it for you. As a Wasillian myself I take offense to people saying I live in Anchorage.

[freeangel]

Oh, for crying out loud—how much do we spend on pelosis jet?and her friends that fly on that jet, —you know— and she’s only 2 heartbeats away from the presidency.

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

Expense reimbursement is a prime place to do "opposition reaearch" on a candidate.

A successful, billionaire-financed campaign to flip the Colorado legislature to the Democrats in 2004 gathered reams of data from expense account reports, and twisted them to make fairly honest politicians look like crooks.

For instance, our GOP ex-mayor lost a state senate run that should have been easy to win, given that he had been a popular mayor, re-elected by large margins several times, and the senate district's boundaries were nearly identical to our city's boundaries. But a tiny group of liberal (and mostly gay) billionaires set up a 527 to swamp local media and mailboxes for months in the spring & summer, and long before the main campaign got underway, his name was mud on everyone's lips. And our district was just one of ten or so that were targeted for flipping by these fatcats.

Their main charge against him was that while he was on the City Council, he wasted more taxpayer $$ on travel than the other 6 members combined. Technically true, but the fact that he was the only CC member who also happened to be the mayor, made this charge into a big "Duh!" Only the mayor typically is invited to represent a city at mayoral conferences. Our entire 7-member CC is seldom sent off somewhere to a conference. So it's only natural for him to do more traveling than the other 6 combined. I figured this out on my own, but the average city resident doesn't pay enough attention to how the city runs to realize this to be a non-issue. And since he didn't have any gay billionaires spending media megabucks on his behalf to refute this ridiculous charge, it stuck.

Another charge was that he often stayed at hotels for 2 or 3 days, even though a conference was only one day, and billed the city for the whole "junket". Technically true. But as he explained it to me when I asked him about it, these mayors would all be staying in the same hotel for those 2-3 days. Only the first day consisted of a large "official" meeting where everyone was in the same room. The other 2 days, the mayors met in small, informal groups on an ad-hoc basis, sometimes in small conference rooms, sometimes in dining facilities, etc, and compared notes. It was at a meeting on one of these "extra days" that he heard from another mayor about an obscure federal program sending $$ to cities, that our city govt had never heard about. He looked into it, found our city was eligible, and the $$ flowing in saved our city somewhere in the 7 figures. So these "extra days" really were not "junket" time, but work time, and at least one of them saved our city $$ bigtime.

The fatcats' legions of dirt-diggers, combing through every expense report he had ever filed, also came up with yet another angle to attack him on: The times he ate from a hotel room refrigerator were all toted up and spun into an ad purporting to show how wasteful of tax $$ he was, since these kinds of food & beverages are more expensive than if you bought them elsewhere. In reality, this was totally normal, because he would often arrive late at night, saving taxpayers the cost of another dinner, by the way. This was a ridiculous level of nitpicking! He also told me that he usually ate at cheap fast food places, trying to save taxpayer $$.

But when one side has the megabucks to spin their web of deceit, and the other side is on the typical shoestring budget most statehouse campaigns have, the full story never gets out, and the target in the gunsights of the fatcats looks like crap to the average voter by the time election day arrives.

The bottom line here is that I'm sure there will be a ton more of this kind of garbage thrown at Sarah. One thing very attractive about dollar figures to mudslingers is that, just like statistics, they can be manipulated any way you want to prove anything you want. .