Playing hooky pays off for Palin – Scott Lilly – Politico.com

Well, well, well. Not only is she not qualified to be the Vice President, she doesn’t even show up for her current job. We keep hearing “While I was in Alaska as governor….” Well, what exactly did you do with your 15% attendance record of going into the office. I’m sure the Flat Earth Society will quickly adopt 21st century ideas and jump on the telecommuting bandwagon. Yeah, that’s what she was doing, telecommuting. I mean come on, 15%? We’re talking about 15% in the office? And then she bills the state for expenses related to staying home 85% of the time. In a normal environment, as a normal employee, she would have been fired. But oh yeah, she’s qualified. And if you think about it, with that attendance record, she just may be because the White House has been vacant of any relevant common sense lately anyway.

She doesn’t even show up for her own initiatives, leaving her own party to ask, “where’s the Gov?” What’s really funny is that legislatures got so fed up with it that they even printed buttons saying, “Where’s Sarah” 

Let me guess, she was home preaching family values…

Despite all of the discussion of Sarah Palin’s performance as governor of Alaska, there has been little analysis of the simplest measure of performance: attendance. As Woody Allen said many years ago, “80 percent of success is just showing up.”

The Washington Post recently reported that, in her first 19 months as governor, Palin billed the state of Alaska per diem charges for 312 days she spent at her home in Wasilla. Palin’s staff has explained that it was appropriate to bill the state for expenses related to Palin staying in her own house because her “official duty station” was at the state capital of Juneau, where the governor’s official office and mansion are located. But that argument raises a different question: How much time did that leave for her to spend at her “official duty station”?

Nineteen months totals 578 days, but after subtracting weekends and holidays, it is only about 397 workdays. Assuming Palin did not routinely bill the state for staying in her own home on weekends and holidays, she would have spent no more than 85 workdays in the state capital over the course of her 19 months in office, even if she traveled nowhere else in Alaska or outside of the state. That compares with 168 days that the Alaska Legislature was in session during the same period.

Playing hooky pays off for Palin – Scott Lilly – Politico.com