Should limits be imposed on "business" expenses?

I chose to blog about this story from the Poynter website, which discusses Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's large expenses on "business" trips. Since we have been talking about Palin a lot in class, the headline caught my eye. According to Al Tompkins, Palin charged $43, 490 in travel expenses to the state because her "duty station" is in Juneau, Alaska but she often works out of Anchorage so she can claim any spending in Anchorage as a business expense. I thought this might be a good article to talk about in class because Tompkins also addressed this trend as a common problem throughout the country, not just for Palin. Palin simply gets all of the bad press for it because she has been suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, but governor's in New York, Texas, and Wisconsin were all claiming similar travel expenses on their business trips. I was plesantly surprised to find out that the title ("Palin Claims Per Diems While Staying Home") wasn't entirely fitting and that the article actually provided some valuable information about our country's state executives.

With the amount of time we have spent in class talking about the amount of publicity Palin has been getting (good and bad), I thought that this article, which covers the entire spectrum of an issue people have been chastising Palin about, would be a good point for discussion. Also, on an unrelated note, I thought the end of this post would be a good place to plug my blog in for anyone interested in Michigan football or Detroit sports.