Promoting your home state is one thing but having a personal jet and billing the state $500,000 for iffy travel is a bit much. He's all for cutting social programs in a state that survives due to more federal money than it pays into Washington, but somehow cuts don't apply to him. He has a lifestyle to maintain, economic crisis be damned. It's good to be da' king.
The flight logs obtained by POLITICO indicate that Mississippi has spent more than $500,000 over the past three years on Barbour's air travel. That total does not include security and other logistical costs associated with his trips. And through a quirk in Mississippi law, whenever the governor is out of state, Mississippi must pay the lieutenant governor a salary differential as acting governor.
Barbour has reimbursed the state for a handful of flights, but he has more often scheduled obscure official business to coincide with the business of politics, according to the manifest and logs, which were obtained from the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration under a Mississippi Public Records Act request by a Democrat who has worked in the state, who provided them to POLITICO.
Critics say the flights suggest that Barbour has continued to live the lifestyle of a highflying lobbyist as he's slashed his state's budget for government services across the board since taking office in 2004.
