PrintOctober 22, 2008
AP: Sarah's Kids Traveled With Her!
Who says journalists don't investigate any more? The AP is getting to the bottom of Sarah Palin's children traveling with her on state business. No news yet on Barack Obama's dealings with Rezko or Ayers, or how his wife nearly tripled her six figure income at a hospital when became a US Senator and then got earmarks for it. But first things first, I'm sure.
The AP report has three names in the byline: Brett J. Blackledge, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo. From the story's timeline, the AP had requested her expense reports prior to August 6. Brett, Adam and Matt must have been part of that army of lawyers and journalists who descended on Wasilla within days of McCain announcing Sarah as his VP pick.
Their story is comprehensive, if you go by word count. My computer says its over 1,400 words. If you can wade through the article, they seem to describe every single trip any of Sarah's kids took with her -- juicy stuff. In all, we're talking $21,012. Twenty one thousand dollars! Michelle Obama would have to do community outreach for three or four weeks to haul in that much cash.
Oh. They are not yet sure if it was OK to do that. Or maybe it was OK for some trips but not others. It kind of depends on Alaska's rules, and no one can give a solid reading of the law of expense reports for a governor's children just yet. It seems murky. Apparently, in all of Brett's, Adam's and Matt's investigations, they have yet to find out if a law was broken or, short of that, if something improper was done. So, what the heck, let the readers decide.
Let's see, their investigation started before August 6. Their story ran October 21. Three reporters, 11 weeks? That's over 1300 man-hours plus air-fare, lodging and per diem, if they were full time on that. How much did that cost? Over $21,012? (I easily estimate three times that, but maybe they weren't all full time.)
Frankly, I think Sarah's guilty. I'd bet only half of that $21,000 was really allowable expenses. The other half, about $10,000, was Sarah's greedy need to be with her children while away from home on state business. Remember her other scandal involved trying to get a guy fired who tasered her 10-year-old nephew. There's a definite pattern at work here. If my guess is right, she sometimes kept her children out of school when they really weren't sick just so she could play in the snow with them.
But I'll let the lawyers sort that out.
In the meantime, it's nice to know that Brett, Adam and Matt are now getting freed up from that intensive dive into the darkest secrets of Sarah's past so they can get back to the Rezko, Ayers, wife's job investigations thingies they must have been pulled from temporarily.
