Sarah Palin: The Welfare Queen from Wasilla
Submitted by meg on Wed, 10/22/2008 – 11:23am.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
We all know by now that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hates socialism. Unless it’s socialism for her family.
Palin, who loves painting herself as a self-reliant woman who likes to say, “Thanks, but no thanks” to unnecessary government spending, is always on the lookout for a freebie, even if it means playing it fast and loose with the law. While she ridicules Sen. Barack Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth” to people who actually need it, Palin is seeking more of the socialism for the wealthy pioneered by President George W. Bush. In fact, the motto of the GOP since Ronald Reagan has been “spread more wealth to the financially avaricious rich by pickpocketing the working class.”
New reports of Palin’s misspending government funds for personal financial benefit emerged from an Associated Press investigation this week. Palin charged taxpayers over $20,000 to pay for her daughters to travel with her to events to which they were not invited, including 64 one-way and 12 round-trip tickets, as well as the girls’ own expensive hotel rooms. In all, previous reports have estimated Palin charged taxpayers more than $43,000 in travel expenses for family members.
If that weren’t enough, it seems Palin lied on official reimbursement forms, saying the girls were invited when, according to organizers of the events, they were not. But it doesn’t stop there. Apparently, after she was tapped as Sen. John McCain’s running mate, Palin went back and amended the expense reports with language to make the travel sound like official business, as is necessary for reimbursement under Alaska state law. So on top of being a freeloader at taxpayer expense, she altered financial documents to misrepresent unjustified personal expenses paid for by “average Joes.”
If this rip-off occurred just once, one might be able to write it off as a lapse in judgment. Unfortunately for Palin, it comes on the heels of reports of other questionable “write offs,” adding up to what appears to be a pattern of abuse. In short, we are learning that Palin is not the self-reliant opponent of government spending that she claims to be. She’s more like the welfare queen from Wasilla.
The state is already looking into the possibility of the impropriety in $17,000 of Palin’s claim for per diem pay. The money was apparently paid to her for “travel expenses” incurred on nights she spent at her home in Wasilla, AK. The money is supposed to be used for when an official travels on state business, not for a commute from an Anchorage office to a home in Wasilla. Is it part of “the real America” to steal from the taxpayer? Palin receives a governor’s salary, from which she is expected to pay — like any average small town American — her home expenses. But she chose to have taxpayers pick up the tab.
It’s important to note that Palin is not continuing any Alaskan gubernatorial tradition of defrauding taxpayers. The only Alaska governor to have school-age children while serving in recent memory is Tony Knowles, Democratic governor of the state from 1994 to 2002. Knowles told the AP he had never charged the state for his children’s travel. Knowles also said that he prohibited Alaskan commissioners from charging per diem allowances when staying at home, no matter where their home was located.
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