Another Palin Scandal: Charged Taxpayers to Stay at Home!

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Monday September 08, 2008 · 9:36 PM PDT

2008/09/08 · 21:36

Looks like another mini-scandal for Sarah Palin. Here's the lede from a Washington Post investigation:

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.

This isn't the magic bullet, but it's yet another in the line of drip-drip mini-scandals that, framed correctly by the Democrats, should completely destroy Palin's claims of being a different kind of Republican. Note that former Alaska governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat, expressly warned his staff and employees against billing per diems to the state for nights spent at home.

Edit: More from the same article:

She wrote some form of "Lodging -- own residence" or "Lodging -- Wasilla residence" more than 30 times at the same time she took a per diem, according to the reports. In two dozen undated amendments to the reports, the governor deleted the reference to staying in her home but still charged the per diem.

Looks like Palin kinda caught on that this stunk later on.

I would add that this is the first Palin-related revelation that doesn't really touch on the Palin = Bush meme. The others have touched on various parallels, including the abuse of power (Bush: Unitary Executive, US Attorney firings etc.; Palin: Troopergate, Loyalty firings), record of fiscal incompetence, the flair for the casual lie, the crazy Christianist angle, the disregard for facts and expertise, etc. But however terrible Bush was, there's no allegation that he's out there lining his own pockets. So here's a scary thought: is Palin a poor man's Dubya? Not only an incompetent, fact-avoiding extremist, but personally corrupt as well?

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