PALIN:I Travel from Room to Room at HOME
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| Wed, 09-10-2008 - 2:53am |
Report: Palin Tapped Travel Allowance While at Home
Published: Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 9:10 p.m.
WASHINGTON | Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has charged her state a daily allowance, normally used for official travel, for more than 300 nights spent at her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
An analysis of travel statements filed by the governor, now John McCain's Republican running mate, shows she claimed the per diem allowance on 312 occasions when she was home in Wasilla and that she billed taxpayers $43,490 for travel by her husband and children.
Per diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. State officials told The Post her claims - nearly $17,000 over 19 months - were permitted because her "duty station" is Juneau, the capital, and she was in Wasilla 600 miles away.
Palin spends little time at the governor's mansion in Juneau and instead prefers to live in Wasilla and commute to her office in Anchorage.
Palin's spending and record in office are coming under intense scrutiny as she is presented to the nation as a champion of ethics reform and frugal use of tax dollars - a leader who put the state jet on sale on eBay and drives herself to work.
The Post's analysis shows her husband Todd and their daughters were reimbursed by taxpayers for many trips between Wasilla and Juneau as well as for a variety of other travel that was also listed as state business. Palin's aides said travel by Alaska's first family is part of the job.
But it's not clear when children's travel expenses should be covered. State finance director Kim Garnero told the paper the government covers the travel costs of anyone conducting state business and, "I can't imagine kids could be doing that."


Palin bills state for nights at home, kids’ travel
Officials defend reimbursements, but trips with children raise questions
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26616212/
Palin’s record in Alaska
Sept. 9: NBC News investigative correspondent Lisa Myers looks at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s record in her home state.
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Joint venture
Sept. 8: Instead of splitting off from Sen. John McCain to campaign on her own, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has stayed with him to take advantage of the post-convention overflow crowds. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.
Nightly News
By James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick
updated 7:52 a.m. ET, Tues., Sept. 9, 2008
ANCHORAGE - 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.
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.
Questions remain on Palin vetting
By DAN JOLING
updated 11:29 a.m. ET, Sat., Sept. 6, 2008
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - John McCain's presidential campaign did not speak with the Alaska House speaker and other leading Republicans before McCain tapped Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
The low-profile vetting allowed McCain to spring Palin onto the national scene uncolored by media scrutiny. But it has left the campaign open to criticism that McCain did not fully explore her qualifications.
"I haven't heard of anybody being contacted, not that that's bad," said John Harris, speaker of the state House of Representatives. "I just haven't heard of anybody."
The subject is now closed, said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.
"Gov. Palin was fully vetted as previously described and we are no longer commenting on the vetting process," Bounds said Friday. "She was selected, is qualified and is ready to serve."
Attorney Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., who led the review for the McCain campaign, and told The Associated Press earlier this week that Palin underwent a "full and complete" examination.
But Harris, state Senate president Lyda Green and Alaska Republican chairman Randy Ruedrich said no one called them in advance to talk about the governor.
"I've not heard of one person who was talked to," said Green, who lives in Palin's hometown of Wasilla and has feuded with the governor.
Palin also has had a rocky relationship with Ruedrich, whom she tried to oust as party chairman.
It was the same story at one of Palin's previous elected offices. Mary Bixby, executive assistant to Wasilla Mayor Dianne Keller, said no one contacted the office for information about Palin before her selection. Since the announcement, the only attention had been from reporters.
"Nobody has been here," Bixby said.
Culvahouse said Palin's review, like others, began with two dozen people sifting through information from public sources: speeches, financial records, tax information, litigation, investigations, ethical charges, marriages and divorces.
For Palin, the team studied online archives of the state's largest newspapers, including the Anchorage Daily News.
Palin answered a personal data questionnaire with 70 "very intrusive" questions, Culvahouse said, and was asked to submit years of tax returns. Culvahouse conducted a lengthy interview.
"They obviously felt like they did enough research and were comfortable," Harris said.
Henry Brady, professor of political science and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said Friday that campaigns should be more diligent about examining the record and background of lesser-known candidates than well-known ones.
"Any sensible due diligence would include not just looking at the public record, not just looking at the newspaper, but also talking to people," he said.
When Democrat Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, she was not fully vetted, Brady said. Questions about her husband's financial holdings and tax returns became a central issue in that election, won in a landslide by Ronald Reagan.
Since the Palin announcement, snippets of potentially damaging information have dribbled out — Todd Palin's youthful intoxicated driving conviction, the pregnancy of the Palin's unmarried teenager daughter, Palin's lack of international traveling, reality vs. hype on her effectiveness as a governor.
"The question is whether all these other little shortcomings are going to accumulate into a not-such-a-great picture," Brady said.
The process does, however, reflect on McCain's decision making. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in March, giving him plenty of time to investigate potential running mates. Barack Obama did not clinch the Democratic nomination until June after battling Hillary Rodham Clinton in an extended primary campaign.
"You've got months to make this decision," Brady said.
He called it astonishing that with so many unknowns about Palin, more was not done. Brady said he suspects McCain did not seriously consider Palin until just before he picked her.
Still, he said, "This is one where there was time to do it right."
In the end, it may not matter, Brady said.
"She's worked out pretty well," he said of Palin. "She gave a heck of a speech."
___
Associated Press writers Matt Volz and Gene Johnson contributed to this story.
(((When Democrat Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, she was not fully vetted, Brady said. Questions about her husband's financial holdings and tax returns became a central issue in that election, won in a landslide by Ronald Reagan.
Since the Palin announcement, snippets of potentially damaging information have dribbled out — Todd Palin's youthful intoxicated driving conviction, the pregnancy of the Palin's unmarried teenager daughter, Palin's lack of international traveling, reality vs. hype on her effectiveness as a governor.
"The question is whether all these other little shortcomings are going to accumulate into a not-such-a-great picture," Brady said.))))
Staying quiet so long makes McCain look as if he has something to hide.
They've Got To Be Kidding
How can smart people say such dumb things about Sarah Palin?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008, at 12:03 AM ET
Rudy Giuliani
At times like these, I'm relieved that I don't cover elections. There's bum DNA in my heart, and the agita might send me keeling over.
How else to react to the sight of sophisticated people saying, with impressively straight faces, that Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president—even president—because she's been the mayor of a town of 6,000 residents (the population of Wasilla when she served there in a job that even she admitted was "not rocket science") and the governor of Alaska, which has only 100 times as many people and a legislature that meets a mere 90 days a year?
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is only the most preposterous figure to recite this party line. On ABC TV Wednesday morning, he went so far as to claim that her "executive experience" would have enabled her to handle 9/11 with ease—far more so than Barack Obama or Joe Biden who, he said, have "the least executive experience of any presidential candidate in 100 years."
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Well, not quite: John F. Kennedy had no executive experience before running for president. Neither, by the way, has John McCain. By this logic, Palin should top the ticket, with McCain as her No. 2.
More to the point, Giuliani could not possibly believe what he was saying. This is the man who, toward the end of his second and final term as mayor in December 2001, lobbied to repeal the law that barred third terms and, when that failed, tried to persuade Mark Green—who everyone thought was going to be the next mayor—to accept a co-mayoral arrangement, with the two men working side by side, for at least six months.
In other words, this is a man who believed that nobody else, not even a seasoned New York pol, could handle the demands of post-9/11 governance. There are block associations in Manhattan with more people than in Wasilla. There are as many people in Staten Island as in all of Alaska. Giuliani—like most lifelong New Yorkers, a big-city chauvinist—couldn't possibly take someone of her provenance seriously.
I remember, as the Boston Globe's New York bureau chief, interviewing Giuliani in his office at City Hall while the 1996 Republican Convention was going on in San Diego. I asked him why he wasn't there. He said that he didn't go in for that kind of politics, that he had more in common with moderates in both parties than with extremists in either. That was then. I would have figured that, after tanking so disastrously in the GOP primaries—spending $59 million and winning a single delegate for his trouble—Rudy would have given up trying to placate the yahoos and gone back to raking in the big bucks. My guess is he's angling for a job in the McCain administration, either attorney general or director of homeland security. (Watch out!)
It was more flustering still to watch Newt Gingrich reading from the script about Palin's executive experience, especially when it comes to foreign policy. I have disagreed with Gingrich about many things over the years, but he is a serious scholar of diplomatic and military history; he has a strategic mind. And it's truly dismaying to see him beaming at the prospect of someone a heartbeat away from a 72-year-old president who's had cancer—forget everything else about Palin for the moment—who shows no sign of having any knowledge of strategic issues, of ever having cracked a book on the subject, of showing enough curiosity even to travel abroad. (She reportedly acquired her first passport just a year ago.)
Whatever else one thinks of Obama and Biden, they have clearly thought a lot about these issues (in Biden's case, for decades). At committee hearings, their questions tend to go to the heart of the matter (though, admittedly, Biden often takes the long way around). And asking the right questions is the vital first step to making sound decisions. (In the secret tapes that he recorded during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy's knack for doing just that—while his expert advisers flailed about in cliché—was what stood out about him, and what probably saved the world from catastrophe.)
Some of the most hawkish Republican neocons, to their credit, have refused to go along with this charade. Columnist Charles Krauthammer called the Palin appointment "suicidal" because it undermined McCain's argument that Obama lacked experience. David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter who coined the phrase "axis of evil," denounced McCain's decision as "cynical" and "risky," and asked, "If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?"
Their fellow ideologue Frank Gaffney must not have got the memo that dissent was permissible. In an uproarious essay, Gaffney wrote that Palin had learned more about foreign policy than Obama and Biden "by osmosis," because Alaska lies "along the trajectory of ballistic missiles launched eastward out of Stalinist North Korea."
This strikes me as unlikely. I live under the flight path of nearly every domestic flight that lands at LaGuardia and JFK. Yet that random fact doesn't supply me with the slightest wisdom, by osmosis or some other mystical means, about the operations of the airline industry.
As for the equally bizarre claim that Palin knows about foreign policy because Alaska borders Russia, via the Bering Strait, again, I don't get the connection. Has she ever dealt with a Russian? Do the Russians plan to invade Alaska? Or is this another case of learning through osmosis?
Let's get real. If a Democratic candidate had picked such an off-the-wall running mate, the Republicans—Giuliani, Gingrich, and Gaffney among them—would be howling with derision. And rightly so.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26315278/for/cnbc
McCain and Palin castigate the earmarks she seeks
By JENNIFER LOVEN updated 2:05 p.m. ET Sept. 10, 2008 Font size: FAIRFAX, Virginia - Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, equated lawmakers' requests for funding for special projects with corruption on Wednesday, even though Palin herself has requested nearly $200 million in so-called "earmarks" for her state this year.
Campaigning in Virginia, McCain blamed earmarks — the practice of lawmakers slipping special requests for money for home-state projects into Congressional spending bills — for high food and gasoline prices and the trouble that many homeowners face in making mortgage payments. He vowed again to veto any bill that contains such funding.
"I got an old ink pen, my friends, and the first . . . earmark, big-spending bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. You will know their names. I will make them famous and we'll stop this corruption," McCain said during a rally at a park in suburban Washington, D.C.
Palin has sought $197 million worth of earmarks for 2009, down about 25 percent from the $256 million she sought in the 2008 budget year. As mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, she hired a lobbyist to seek federal money for special projects. Wasilla obtained 14 earmarks, totaling $27 million, between 2000-2003, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama hasn't asked for any earmarks this year. The Illinois senator sought $311 million in such funding last year. McCain, an Arizona senator, doesn't seek earmarks for his state.
Undaunted by his running mate's ties to earmarks, McCain said: "I've fought big spenders in both parties who spend your money on things you don't need, and things you don't want."
Palin said she was ready to join McCain in Washington "so we can end the corrupt practice of abusive earmarks after all."
The practice of earmarking is a longtime target for politicians running for office. Many find that, once in office, requests from constituents for help on a particular project is too tough to resist and support bringing that kind of money home to their states and districts.
The campaign said McCain and Palin drew the biggest non-convention crowd of his campaign, with local officials reporting an estimated 23,000 at the event.
The enthusiasm seemed driven primarily by the presence of Palin, who has electrified both McCain's campaign and the party since he announced her as his running mate almost two weeks ago.
Whether that fervor sticks to McCain will be tested when Palin splits off from her running mate for the first time to return to Alaska for a few days.
McCain was traveling to Philadelphia for an afternoon roundtable with women business leaders in a diner. He was to spend Thursday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and New York for events marking the milestone before returning to Washington on Friday evening.