While Americans continue to weather a recession he at least perpetuated, the Obamas are vacationing large in Hawaii and we have the privilege of paying for it.
According to the Hawaii Reporter, the bill for the trip included $63,000 on an early flight bringing Mrs Obama and the children to Hawaii ahead of the president, $1,000,000 on Mr Obama’s return trip from Washington on Air Force One, $38,000 for the ‘Winter White House’ the president has rented for his family on the beach, $16,000 to rent beachfront homes for Secret Service and Navy Seals, $134,000 for 24 White House staff to stay at the Moana Hotel, $251,000 in police overtime, $10,000 for an ambulance to be on hand at all times, and those tallies do not include the travel costs of Mr Obama’s staff and Secret Service, car rentals and surveillance operations in advance of the trip.
Enjoy your vacation, Mr. President, and you’re welcome.
The current administration is a disgrace. They permeate the attitude that they are royalty with all their excessive vacations and the enormous costs associated with each. Their removal from office won’t come soon enough.
Geeze, Ispent $4.000 for *my* trip (complete with my wife of 35 years), came there a week early to avoid the Spring Break pinheads, and nobody cared when I came or when I left. What’s the difference between him and me, other than I am apparently melanin-challenged??
Oh, I also didn’t have self-aggrandizing “reporters” chasing me around with a camera everywhere I went.
I’m thinkin’ I had a better time, too.
Igor
The Obamas aren’t accustomed to their every whim being catered to 24/7, so they’re going to take full advantage whilst they can (hopefully only until 1-20-2013). Whatever you want to eat anytime, you got it. Where ever you want to go, you got it. Whatever you want to buy, get Congress to go along (which they have, at least until now). New china, wallpaper, curtains, carpet, furniture, clothes? No prob. Trip to Spain with all your family & friends? No prob. Trip to Hawaii? No prob. All courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
At least the Clintons, the Bushes, the Reagans, the Nixons & the Carters, had all been governors before (excepting Bush 41, but he had been VP) and were accustomed to having staffs transport them, cook & clean for them and cater to their every need. So . . . when they reached the WH, it was no big deal for them to have staffs who bowed down and treated them like royalty. It is a big deal for the Obamas.
Go put your creed into your deed. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
His EPA is going to diminish our carbon foot print, while he and his family needlessly stomps out a monstrous carbon tread. We need to control spending and he doesn’t. A champion of the lower and middle classes while luxuriating in his high class style.
Does he believe in global warming? Does he believe in reducing government spending? Shouldn’t a dictator-in-training of the Proletariat live as the Proletariat?
Is he a successful mixture of liar and hypocrite?
A tremendous ride he’s taking us on…isn’t it? Every day, there is less evidence he’s ever shared the world with the rest of us. It’s been over two years since his election POTUS, and we still know less about him, than we know about “Joe the Plumber”! Doubt lingers, as to whether he could obtain a security clearance to serve as a Secret Service Agent.
Oh well…he could never “serve” anyone anyway…
Tallyman,
No. No.
Yes.
Yes.
Igor
Shouldn’t a dictator-in-training of the Proletariat live as the Proletariat?
No. The only difference between a capitalist and socialist economy is that in the latter the capital is controlled in theory by the state, but in practice by an “elite” group of individuals. The socialists are vehemently opposed to competition for their power and their wealth. And with largely an absence of effective competing interests, they are capable of controlling and dictating the opportunities afforded to individuals, by whatever standard that happens to suit them at any one time or place. Thus the many exemptions for their preferred interests.