Socialism For Palin Kids And Scrubbed Books To Hide It

Sarah Palin is going around to campaign rallies with this week's attack on Obama about socialism and that we don't need that in America. Well, since she has ties to the secessionist AIP, perhaps the socialism she does wants up in Alaska doesn't count in the lower forty-eight. I guess that's just being a hockey mom, you know, like all the other hockey moms that get to charge $150,000 on the RNC credit card to go shopping for new clothes.

From Newsweek (AP):

(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.

That money spent by Alaskans without their knowledge was used highly inappropriately for the only purpose of showing her girls a good time. She is free to do that, but pay for it on your salary just like anyone else would have to. As the AP notes, organizers from many of these events the girls attended didn't even know they were coming and there was no reason to have the state pay for their trips.

Now that is bad enough, but when Sarah Palin realized she'd be the VP nominee she knew this might come up. So what would any ethically challenged and corrupt Republican do? Well that would be to amend all the expense reports to validate her kids coming with her with such official duties as "raffle ticket drawer." Tax lawyers were awfully perplexed with the situation and now we have it all here on the AP to show just what a mavericky reformer Governor Palin is.

Now the McCain camp will have yet another story to lie about or deflect with less than two weeks to go in the race. It has been said over and over again but jeez McCain, didn't you think to vet this woman for at least two minutes? A little extra time back in August would have gone a long way in October. Of course, this is just one bad mark among many in his campaign that lost its bearings way back.