Sarah Palin's Own Style Of Travelgate

– guest post by Denis Campbell, editor of VadimusPost.com

Gov. Sarah Palin, you have some explaining to do, as Ricky Riccardo would say to Lucy.

It seems Mr. and Mrs. Alaska charged the state for travel to bring their progeny to events. Gov. Palin charged the state for her children to travel to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

Remember the first year of the Clinton Administration in 1993? How quaint the Republican Party attack and smear machine now looks trying every trick in the book to stop or slow the new President’s agenda? The relentless attacks from fear against former House Judiciary Committee counsel, then First Lady, now US Senator Hillary Clinton’s attempt to craft a national healthcare program?

Remember the silly kafuffle over the White House Travel Office’s ‘Travelgate’ probe and Republican calls for an independent prosecutor to look into the Administration’s use of that office – which led nowhere? How about the Whitewater Development investigation, where the feds spent hundreds of millions of dollars to investigate a failed real estate investment development that lost money for the Clinton’s?

And then trying to say the terribly sad suicide of family friend and political advisor Vince Foster during the furore was not a suicide, ascribing all sorts of ludicrously nefarious conspiracy theories?

Ah, those were the days.

They were the salad days of the Republican Party’s new foray into a brand of politics from a young Bush 41 advisor named Karl Rove. Say anything enough times and it becomes true whether or not it is. It’s why there was all of that right wing frothing at the mouth over nothing for the first 18-months of the Administration.

Well, you just never know when payback time comes around! The only thing you do know is that it always does.

Expensing Her Life

The charges racked up by Gov. Palin included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days in a luxury hotel. Hey, Mommy bonding time is probably what was needed to keep Bristol from getting in trouble, right?

Palin charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since taking office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor’s children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business.

As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor’s schedule.

Uninvited Guests

But organizers of some of these events say they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to insistent requests by the governor to allow the children to attend.

Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. Palin claimed the trips enabled her to spend more time with her children.

Of course, this presumably does not include any of the 300+ travel per diems totalling some $17,000 she claimed for state travel when working from her Anchorage home.

How much do you want to bet the MSM ignores this story?

Denis Campbell is editor of www.VadimusPost.com.