See other (s)Elections Articles
Title: AP INVESTIGATION: Alaska funded Palin kids' travel
Source:
news.yahoo.com
URL Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081022/ap_on_el_pr/palin_family_travel
Published: Oct 21, 2008
Author: BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE
Post Date: 2008-10-21 22:42:43 by Ferret Mike
Keywords: None
Views: 338
Comments: 24
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business. The charges 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 and four nights in a luxury hotel. In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took 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. But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend. Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children. "She said any event she can take her kids to is an event she tries to attend," said Jennifer McCarthy, who helped organize the June 2007 Family Day Celebration picnic in Ketchikan that Piper attended with her parents. State Finance Director Kim Garnero told The Associated Press she has not reviewed the Palins' travel expense forms, so she could not say whether the daughters' travel with their mother would meet the definition of official business. On Aug. 6, three weeks before Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain chose Palin his running mate, and after Alaska reporters asked for the records, Palin ordered changes to previously filed expense reports for her daughters' travel. In the amended reports, Palin added phrases such as "First Family attending" and "First Family invited" to explain the girls' attendance. "The governor said, 'I want the purpose and the reason for this travel to be clear,'" said Linda Perez, state director of administrative services. When Palin released her family's tax records as part of her vice presidential campaign, some tax experts questioned why she did not report the children's state travel reimbursements as income. The Palins released a review by a Washington attorney who said state law allows the children's travel expenses to be reimbursed and not taxed when they conduct official state business. Taylor Griffin, a McCain-Palin campaign spokesman, said Palin followed state policy allowing governors to charge for their children's travel. He said the governor's office has invitations requesting the family to attend some events, but he said he did not have them to provide. In October 2007, Palin brought daughter Bristol along on a trip to New York for a women's leadership conference. Plane tickets from Anchorage to La Guardia Airport for $1,385.11 were billed to the state, records show, and mother and daughter shared a room for four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House hotel, which overlooks Central Park. The event's organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. Alexis Gelber, who organized Newsweek's Third Annual Women & Leadership Conference, said she does not know how Bristol ended up attending. Gelber said invitees usually attend alone, but some ask if they can bring a relative or friend. Griffin, the campaign spokesman, said he believes someone with the event personally sent an e-mail to Bristol inviting her, but he did not have it to provide. Records show Palin also met with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs representatives and visited the New York Stock Exchange. In January, the governor, Willow and Piper showed up at the Alaska Symphony of Seafood Buffet, an Anchorage gala to announce winners of an earlier seafood competition. "She was just there," said James Browning, executive director of Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, which runs the event. Griffin said the governor's office received an invitation that was not specifically addressed to anyone. When Palin amended her children's expense reports, she listed a role for the two girls at the function — "to draw two separate raffle tickets." In the original travel form, Palin listed a number of events that her children attended and said they were there "in official capacity helping." She did not identify any specific roles for the girls. In July, the governor charged the state $2,741.26 to take Bristol and Piper to Philadelphia for a meeting of the National Governors Association. The girls had their own room for five nights at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for $215.46 a night, expense records show. Expense forms describe the girls' official purpose as "NGA Governor's Youth Programs and family activities." But those programs were activities designed to keep children busy, a service provided by the NGA to accommodate governors and their families, NGA spokeswoman Jodi Omear said. In addition to the commercial flights, the children have traveled dozens of times with Palin on a state plane. For these flights, the total cost of operating the plane, at $971 an hour, was about $55,000, according to state flight logs. The cost of operating the state plane does not increase when the children join their mother. The organizer of an American Heart Association luncheon on Feb. 15 in Fairbanks said Palin asked to bring daughter Piper to the event, and the organizer said she was surprised when Palin showed up with daughters Willow and Bristol as well. The three Palin daughters shared a room separate from their mother at the Princess Lodge in Fairbanks for two nights, at a cost to the state of $129 per night. The luncheon took place before Palin's husband, Todd, finished fourth in the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race, also in Fairbanks. The family greeted him at the finish line. When Palin showed up at the luncheon with not just Piper but also Willow and Bristol, organizers had to scramble to make room at the main table, said Janet Bartels, who set up the event. "When it's the governor, you just make it happen," she said. The state is already reviewing nearly $17,000 in per diem payments to Palin for more than 300 nights she slept at her own home, 40 miles from her satellite office in Anchorage. Tony Knowles, a Democratic former governor of Alaska who lost to Palin in a 2006 bid to reclaim the job, said he never charged the state for his three children's commercial flights or claimed their travel as official state business. Knowles, who was governor from 1994 to 2002, is the only other recent Alaska governor who had school-age children while in office. "There was no valid reason for the children to be along on state business," said Knowles, a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. "I cannot recall any instance during my eight years as governor where it would have been appropriate to claim they performed state business." Knowles said he brought his children to one NGA event while in office but didn't charge the state for their trip. In February 2007, the three girls flew from Juneau to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines. Palin charged the state for the $519.30 round-trip ticket for each girl, and noted on the expense form that the daughters accompanied her to "open the start of the Iron Dog race." The children and their mother then watched as Todd Palin and other racers started the competition, which Todd won that year. Palin later had the relevant expense forms changed to describe the girls' business as "First Family official starter for the start of the Iron Dog race." The Palins began charging the state for commercial flights after the governor kept a 2006 campaign promise to sell a jet bought by her predecessor. Palin put the jet up for sale on eBay, a move she later trumpeted in her star-making speech at the Republican National Convention, and it was ultimately sold by the state at a loss. That left only one high-performance aircraft deemed safe enough for her to use — a 1980 twin-engine King Air assigned to the public safety agency but, according to flight logs, out of service for maintenance and repairs about a third of the time Palin has been governor.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
Gimme a break - if you can't screw the proles, why would you be in politics? It's fun, it's simple, they bend over so easily.
Let's see, Obama hangs out with a racist preacher for over 20 years, spends three years on the same floor of a very small building with an unrepentant terrorist, admits he has done coke, smokes, and can't produce something as simple as a birth certificate and the press is more concerned about Sara's travel expenses? Rodents everywhere are shitting themselves over the prospect of Sara Palin being President of the USA soon. Got to love it!
God is always good!
How many people travel with Nancy Pelosi at taxpayer expense on a HUGE 757 private jet??? Staff and family EVERY weekend back and forth from D.C. to San Fransicko on a 757. Everybody bow down to Pelosi the Queen of Charter Jets. Sarah Palin has nothing on the Democratic Speaker of the House.
How many abortions has Uncle Sap paid for you / your ilk, you lying sack of World Socialist shit?!
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
Just because the only traveling your kid does is between the crack house and the police station, is no reason to be jealous
It's the second mouse that gets the cheese
My hometown, Eugene, Oregon ;-D I am against abortion. Easy question to answer; none. I have a son, and have saved two lives by talking women I know out of doing that option, neither regretted not killing their babies.
He is an RN and works in trauma medicine in North Carolina. I lived in N.C. for several years when I was a paratrooper at Ft. Bragg.
Mike - were you in any of these shots? Thanks. Just curious...
Just because the only traveling your kid does is between the crack house and the police station, is no reason to be jealous Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. A male nurse? ROTFLMAO I'm sure he's a real "happy" guy.....poofta!
It's the second mouse that gets the cheese
WTF would you go off on male nurses? That's just dopey.
I am against abortion. Easy question to answer; none. I have a son, and have saved two lives by talking women I know out of doing that option, neither regretted not killing their babies. Good for you! Of course everything you say is straight up and honest injun. Did you know that Barrack Hussein Obama, apparent illegal alien in our country, is the Grimmest of Reapers??
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
I have been quoted in the local newspaper, the Register Guard as being against abortion, and have consistently been against it since I started posting online in 1995. In the profile article on me when I ran for city council here in Eugene. Frankly, believe what you want. I don't pander in regard to this important position at all. And as it is a very divisive issue, I don't shut down dialog on this issue by labeling Roe v. Wade supporters, murderers. Any right winger who is pro capital punishment undermines the sanctity of human life and compromises the fight to end abortion. So it's not just pro-abortion people who are part of the problem here in this issue. There is plenty of hypocrisy in regards to being pro-life to go around. It would behoove Americans to work to an agreement that ends this barbaric practice, and this won't happen by polarizing both sides and everyone in between on this issue.
Only in your twisted world.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
I was at the Eugene Tree Riot which is shown in the Picture Eugene video of the falling trees, but he didn't use any of me. Pretty much the only still of me any paper carried of me there was the Eugene Weekly showing someone flushing pepper spray out of my eyes. Tim has good video of me in city and forest trees. Some of that will be posted sometime this Winter. I'll post it as soon as Tim Lewis does.
Not at all. A consistent position that all human life is sacred would have reduced or ended abortion by now if people had had the moral courage not to pander to non-solutions such as blood revenge. The right has allot of growing up to do, more so then the left. And the people know this, and the polls show it.
Male nurses move beyond stereotypes Even in the midst of the counter-cultural 1960s, those who encouraged Mervin Helmuth in his vocational path must have known he was something of a pioneer. When Helmuth entered nursing school after completing a term in alternative service to the military draft, he was a very unlikely student: a person of Amish background pursuing education and training outside typical community expectations, and the first male to be accepted into a nursing program in the city of Fort Wayne, Ind. Helmuth had been asked by the director of nursing in the tuberculosis hospital where he fulfilled 1-W service whether he thought about continuing in nursing; he told her that he did not finish high school. After completing his assignment at the hospital, he stayed on an extra year, and completed requirements, including a GED, to allow him to get his foot in the door at a nursing school. Even after local publicity died down over his entrance to the School of Nursing at Parkview-Methodist Hospital he faced unique challenges. Without a formal high school education, he hadn’t developed consistent study habits. He also had to take a chemistry course, and arrange for different housing than his female counterparts. His family, however, was accepting; nursing, like school teaching, was viewed as “a legitimate reason to go on to school,” Helmuth said. In 1966, when Helmuth graduated second in a class of 75 and received his diploma in nursing, men represented less than one percent of the professional nursing population nationwide. In the decades since, the number of men who have chosen to enter the field has risen to 5.4 percent; of Goshen College’s 1,627 B.S.N. graduates to date, 68 male nursing graduates nearly reflect the national trend. Helmuth worked at Parkview Hospital as a nurse, but then decided to enroll at Goshen to earn a bachelor of science degree in nursing. He wasn’t the first male nursing student in GC’s program, but nursing professor Orpah Mosemann, with exceptional vision for the future of the program, asked Helmuth whether he would be interested in earning a master’s degree in order to teach at the college level. “Orpah saw men coming into the program, and wanted to encourage more to enter nursing, and felt they needed male role models in order to see men functioning in nursing,” said Helmuth. “I give her credit – she was the wisdom behind the nursing program, and she was a mentor for many people.” Helmuth went on to earn a master’s degree at the University of Florida (Gainesville) and returned to Goshen to join the teaching faculty. The reasons men are now choosing to go into the nursing profession are similar to those cited by women who go into the field: an interest in caring for sick individuals and promoting wellness, providing a needed service, relating closely to patients and families, endless opportunities for specialization and job variation. Nurses are also in demand, providing options and stability for graduates. “Economics and gender and cultural biases are [some] of the reasons that men have not come into nursing, but recently there has been more interest. And there are more males from other countries who are starting to look at nursing, and I find they don’t have the same hang-ups about men being nurses – largely centered around the stereotype of nurses being female,” said Helmuth. “Many of our male nursing students are also older than traditional-aged college students. It’s not very kosher yet for male high school seniors to tell people ‘I want to be a nurse,’ so consequently, even today, they don’t come to us straight from high school. They need to understand themselves a little better to go into a highly female profession. Then they are successful.” GC senior Jared Beasley completed an undergraduate degree in economics at another college before he realized, in part through experiences during training for and working as a technician in a hospital emergency room, that he wanted to pursue a vocation in nursing. His decision to go back to school to earn a B.S.N. was due in part to a “cost-benefit analysis” and also because “there is a lot about nursing that is wonderful. Stability: there’s a lot of job security in nursing. Opportunities are almost endless in this field … I did research and talked to people, and you can go anywhere with this degree: administration, hundreds of different clinical fields, home health, public health, school nursing. The pay is good, the benefits are good. I have never been so absolutely sure about a career move before.” There are some areas where men may face discrimination during their education, Helmuth said; some nursing programs do not allow men to go on to an obstetrics unit, for example, for clinical experience after they’ve done the same preparatory coursework. While women were most influential in Helmuth’s life as he chose his profession, he sees male nurses as providing excellent role models for young men whose gifts and interests would suggest a call to nursing. “The reasons men and women come into nursing are probably very similar. If people have this kind of desire to be able to help someone get well, or give them information that will help patients keep themselves well, then nursing is a good choice,” said Helmuth. “I find men to be just as caring as females. They just need to continue to overcome stereotypes and to know their own strengths.” ++++++++++++++++++ I personally have male friends who are RNs. Men who choose that profession seem to gravitate to ER/trauma which often includes working on helicopters to transport critically ill and critically injured patients. In that regard, like EMTs, men's physicality is probably better suited to that specialty than is women's.
Do You Know What Freedom Really Means? Freedom4um.com
Here is a video Tim posted on the Tree Riot in Eugene June 1st 1997.
Palin is a sacred cow to some here.
Here are two Zionist rodents who just love Palin. They know she's as dumb as a post and easy to manipulate: www.huffingtonpost.com/20...in-will-win_n_132222.html www.weeklystandard.com/Co.../000/000/015/500wrhjq.asp As ridiculous as Reverend Wright is, he's no worse than these guys.
There is a huge moral difference between killing an innocent unborn child and executing a murderer. What you're doing is equating the killing of a person just because you find him inconvenient or not to your liking, versus killing somebody in self-defense.
Do you believe then that a fertilized egg at conception is a child? Do you believe in the commandment "Thou shall not kill?" Do you agree with the mass slaughter of 1 million Iraqis? Do you agree with capital punishment?
#2. To: rodents everywhere (#1)
#3. To: Ferret Mike, All (#0)
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#4. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
#5. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
#6. To: RickyJ (#2)
--
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
#7. To: Rotara (#4)
"How many abortions has Uncle Sap paid for you / your ilk, you lying sack of World Socialist shit?!"
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
#8. To: Flintlock (#5)
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
#9. To: Ferret Mike (#6)
#10. To: Flintlock (#5)
Lord Acton
#11. To: Ferret Mike (#8)
He is an RN
#12. To: Flintlock (#11)
#13. To: Ferret Mike (#7)
"How many abortions has Uncle Sap paid for you / your ilk, you lying sack of World Socialist shit?!"
#14. To: Rotara (#13)
(Edited)
"Of course everything you say is straight up and honest injun."
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
#15. To: Ferret Mike (#14)
pro capital punishment undermines the sanctity of human life and compromises the fight to end abortion.
#16. To: lodwick (#9)
"Mike - were you in any of these shots?"
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
#17. To: Rotara (#15)
"Only in your twisted world."
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
#18. To: Flintlock (#11)
(Edited)
A male nurse?
Merv Helmuth, center, teaches students in the clinical settings as classroom. Helmuth was instrumental in establishing the annual student-run mock convention, helping future nurses engage in professional development and leadership.
#19. To: lodwick (#9)
--
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
#20. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
#21. To: RickyJ (#2)
(Edited)
Rodents everywhere are shitting themselves over the prospect of Sara Palin being President of the USA soon
#22. To: Ferret Mike (#14)
Any right winger who is pro capital punishment undermines the sanctity of human life and compromises the fight to end abortion. So it's not just pro-abortion people who are part of the problem here in this issue.
#23. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#22)
#24. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#21)
As ridiculous as Reverend Wright is, he's no worse than these guys.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest