Sorry...off topic, but I need to vent.

Sorry for the length of this but I got on a roll....

Ok, I think we have seen enough. I think it’s pretty evident that there is nothing new at that house in Washington DC besides a different family living in it. The house you and I own and pay for and maintain but aren’t allowed to live in…the White House and all the perks that go with it if you are President of the USA.

We all know that campaign rhetoric is all talk and broken campaign promises are nothing new. It’s just that this time there seemed to be so much more hope. He seemed so sincere and smart and young and energetic. The majority of the people bought into it and even though I didn’t vote for him, I thought that maybe, just maybe, he might make a difference... might do some things to show the American people that there is a chance that we can take back our government… a chance that we might have someone at the helm who might, just might “get it”. Just might “do the right things”. Just might keep what is in the best interest of the citizens of this country at the top of the priority list. I had high hopes just like the rest of the country. We always have high hopes when a new president is elected but this time there is so much more at stake with the economy in the tank and so many folks just struggling just to stay afloat. Now more than ever, we needed someone to take control in Washington and start “doing the right things”…to look out for us first.

It’s a real simple concept. “Do the right things.”

The first disappointment didn’t take long. I cheered when our new President signed an order banning lobbyists from working in his administration on matters they'd previously lobbied on. Alright, a campaign promise kept! Then a very short time later we saw the appointment of previous lobbyists to top positions in the administration: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's chief of staff and the White House director of intergovernmental affairs. Crap.

Ok, I thought. That’s just one. He’s new. We need to give him a chance. Plus, it is so nice to listen to him speak….so eloquent and humorous and a master of the English language even if it is off a teleprompter. A case of, “What did he say?” “I don’t know but it sure was pretty.”

Next was another hopeful move in the right direction to “do the right thing.”

To reduce hurrying bills through where it is in not uncommon for even members of Congress to vote on them without reading them (huh?) the President promised he would post these bills on the Whitehouse website for five days and allow public comment on them before deciding to sign them or not.

But the first bill Mr. Obama signed into law as president — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — was not posted. Hardly an emergency, the law was passed in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2009, passed in the House on Jan. 27, and signed by the president on Jan. 29… only two days passed between the bill's final passage and the signing and the legislation was not posted to the White House Web site.

Unfortunately it was not a fluke… not a case of “whoops we missed one”. Just hours after Congress approved a renewal of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, extending health-care coverage to $11 million low-income children, Obama signed the bill into law. What happened to the 5 days for public review and comment Mr. Obama?

Is this the change we were looking for? So far not much has changed at all.

These next examples are really the ones that I believe most Americans are fully disgusted with as they directly hit us where we are already injured, our personal finances, and will hurt our kids and probably our grandkids.

At the first presidential debate in Oxford, Miss., Obama declared, "We need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

We all know how that turned out. In February Mr. Obama passed his $787 billion stimulus aimed at trying to jumpstart U.S. economy. Before a joint session of Congress, the president declared: "Now, I'm proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks."

Huh? What? Did I miss something here? No pork in this thing? Maybe it had so much lipstick on it that I couldn’t recognize it.

Even Democrat Claire McCaskill of Mo. said, "There was just a roar of laughter – because there were earmarks.”

There were at least eight earmarks in his stimulus bill.

Then came the $410 billion omnibus bill for 2009 which Mr. Obama signed. It included more than 9,000 earmarks totaling an estimated $7.7 billion. It’s not all democrats though. The republicans were responsible for 40% of them.

Among the pork are the following:
• $1.8 million to research “swine odor and manure management” in Ames, Iowa.
• $41.5 million to upgrade presidential libraries of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and John F. Kennedy.
• $2.9 million to study how to breed and raise shrimp on “shrimp farms.” Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) reports that since 1985 the federal government has allocated $71 million to the study of shrimp science.
• $209,000 to improve blueberry production in Georgia, according to CAGW.
• $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, Calif.
• $5.8 million for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate in Boston.
• $6.6 million for Formosan subterranean termites.

The Democrat-controlled Congress crafted this bill after the election, but the president claimed the added pork was just "unfinished business" from last year.

Are they “doing the right things”?

Are American households looking at their financial situation and saying,” Well, we are in such deep doo doo that it really doesn’t matter how we spend our money.. what the hell.. let’s throw out our priority list and just splurge on things that will make us feel better.” No… we are looking at our budgets and cutting out all the stuff that is not a priority and accounting for our pennies, nickels and dimes.

Why isn’t our president and congress doing the same? Maybe they just “don’t get it”.

And to those who say that “these earmarks are only 1/10 of 100th of a blah blah blah”. To you I say SHUT IT! It all adds up and there are many, many, examples of this so in the long run it really adds up....but more to the point....is that it is not the “right thing to do” at this time. Maybe to those highfalutin fat cat millionaires in DC a couple billion dollars here and there isn’t much, but to us average Americans who work hard as hell to provide for the essentials for our families, if we are lucky to have a job, it’s a hell of a lot of dough and it is OUR DOUGH!!!

We have all seen and heard about this latest thing with AIG and the huge bonuses paid to the same people that screwed it all up to begin with. I always thought bonuses were performance based? Boy did these people perform well…they brought the company to its knees. Then the people we elected to represent us passed a bill that took money out of our wallets and gave it to these people. $165 million all together with the highest being $6.4 million. Nice work. These were so-called retention payments that were deemed needed to persuade these “experts” to stay at this particular financial products unit of AIG.

What is wrong with that picture?

These people drove the company into ground but we want to pay them huge bonuses in hopes of persuading them not to quit? All I can say is WOW. Show them the freakin door! I really have to believe with so many people looking for jobs these days that I don’t think it would be very hard to find highly qualified financial experts that would be happy to be working for $100,000 a year or so and accept performance based bonuses.

Again to those who say, “Hey, this $165 million is only 1/10 of 100th of a blah blah blah”. SHUT IT!

$165 million is $165 freaking million dollars…and it’s OUR MONEY!!

Just “do the right thing” from now on!

Back to our new president. Our new president has been enjoying the hell out of his new digs and the perks that go with his title. I'm surprised that we haven't seen the White House on a MTV Cribs episode yet. In their first six weeks the Obama’s have hosted concerts by major recording artists as well as numerous cocktail parties and dinners where the guests have been treated to wonderful meals including Wagyu steak, which can cost up to $100 per pound. This beef comes from a particular breed of cattle who receive a vegetarian diet and a daily hand massage in to produce the tenderest beef possible. Cow massages!

I didn’t get a thank you card from the Obama’s for picking up these tabs, did you?

Air Force One, Marine One and support aircraft that go with it are necessary to protect the President of the United States when he travels outside DC. I am sure most presidents have always enjoyed this aspect of their high office. I would love to have Air Force One and the helicopter service that goes with it at my disposal. Who wouldn’t want that luxury? It’s a necessity for security reasons, but it is also a privilege granted to the president by the American people. We pay for it. Attached to that privilege is the responsibility to not abuse it… especially in these strapped financial times.

In 2006 the House of Representatives prepared a report on the cost of presidential and vice presidential travel. Based on fiscal 2000 numbers, it costs $56,000 per hour to operate Air Force One. But there is always a back up plane that goes along which is about the cost of Air Force Two which comes to about $14,500 per hour. A cargo plane also accompanies Air Force One wherever it goes in order to carry the limousine and other travel necessities. The cargo plane costs $7,000 per hour to operate.

These costs don’t include all the other costs associated with presidential travel like the use of Marine One to get back and forth from the White House to Andrews, holding other planes in the air while the president lands, ground costs which include local and state police escorts and all the other behind the scenes costs that can add up when the president lands in a city.

In 2009 one would have to believe that these costs would be higher but let’s cheat on the conservative side and totaling up just the aircraft listed above we come up with a low ball of $77,500 per hour.

At a time when the American people are scrimping, scraping, and scratching for every dollar you would think a president who actually “got it” would be very disciplined and sensitive to when, where and why he would use Air Force One.

Well, our new president does not “get it” nor is he “doing the right things.”

First, to those who say,” Oh, what’s a $200,000 - $300,000 trip in the grand scheme of things”…well by now you know what I say to you. SHUT IT. It’s our money… money we don’t have ourselves.

Back in February the president decided that instead of signing his $787 billion economic stimulus bill at the White House where most bills are signed, he decided he would rather hop on Air Force One and sign it in Denver. Why go to Denver? Was he going to spend a couple hundred thousand of our dollars with our best interest in mind? I don’t think so. A senior administration official cited that the reason was a desire to get "away from the politics of Washington." Hmm… so Obama runs for office for 3 or so years, gets elected, then after only about a month he spends a crap-load of tax payer money by signing a bill in Denver instead of DC because he wanted to get away from Washington politics?

Uh, Mr. President… that is your freakin job!!!!!...to be in Washington and take care of our business and dealing with DC politics is part of your job. After a month you need a break?!?! Maybe we picked the wrong person for the job.

Elected officials traveling on the taxpayers dime when doing the peoples business is part of running the government and totally legit. But in these days when money is so tight and we have such a huge deficit there needs to be responsible decisions made about when travel is necessary.

Again we see our employees, yes they do work for us, not being responsible and doing the wrong things. First, we have Nancy Pelosi demanding the big military planes that you and I pay for just so she doesn’t have to stop and refuel on her way home to SF and then throwing a fit when they are not available. Poor thing… can you imagine her having to land once before getting home. How horrible. Then there’s her 8-day trip to Italy paid for by guess who…you and me.

But this next one really takes the cake… an example of our president at his most insensitive, elitist, snobby self. A man who is truly disconnected from the reality of the hardships the American people are going through right now.

What did you do for Valentines Day this year? Did you decide not to take your sweetie out for dinner and a movie this year because money was so tight? Did you decide not to get that little piece of jewelry she wanted but that hopefully next year it might be something that you can afford? Did you decide you couldn’t afford to get your guy those Lakers tickets you were planning to get because they were just too much?

Well, our president decided he wanted to do something special for his First Lady. He decided he would fly her and the kids and his mother-in-law to Chicago for a Valentine's Day dinner on Air Force One.… on you and me. How nice and thoughtful of him. I guess there just aren’t any restaurants in DC that are nice enough for his honey.


It’s about two hours to fly from Washington DC to Chicago so the round-trip cost to us came to about $310,000. That is a lot lower than the “real” cost of course.

Perspective for those who say it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the whole picture….. If you divide the Obama’s $310,000 Valentines trip to Chicago by $147.76, which is what the average American earns each day, it comes out to 2,098 average Americans working an 8 hour day. Another way to look at it is equals 8.4 years of an average American's salary. Hmmm …the money earned by a single American during the entire Bush administration would not quite cover the travel costs of the Obama Valentine's Day dinner in Chicago, yet he didn’t think twice about going.

"But $300,000 is just small potatoes compared to....." SHUT IT!

Has Mr. Obama brought with him to the White House the “change” you were expecting to believe in?

This president who flew his family to Chicago for Valentines Day on the taxpayer’s dime is the same guy who said, "We all need to take responsibility. And this includes executives at major financial firms who turned to the American people, hat in hand, when they were in trouble, even as they paid themselves customary lavish bonuses. As I said last week, this is the height of irresponsibility. It's shameful. And that's exactly the kind of disregard for the costs and consequences of their actions that brought about this crisis: a culture of narrow self-interest and short-term gain at the expense of everything else."

This is the same guy who ripped CEO’s for their private jets and their taxpayer paid Las Vegas plans saying that “the party is over”.

This is the same guy who told us all that we were in a “new age of personal responsibility”

This is the same guy that told us that we can no longer live the lifestyles we’ve been living, we need to cut back, not waste or overspend…. that we need to get “skin in the game” and make sacrifices.

Mr. Obama… the American people are making huge sacrifices and have been for some time now and will continue to make these sacrifices in the foreseeable future. It’s obvious that you are disconnected from the rest of us and just don’t “get it”. You said all the right things to get elected. You are still saying all the right things but you need to realize that the campaign is over. You won. You don’t need to be traveling all over the place selling yourself to us anymore. No more town hall meetings or appearing on late-night TV shows and cracking jokes and picking winners in the NCAA basketball tournament. The majority of the American people bought into your brand of youth, energy and charisma and elected you….now its time to deliver the product. We want you to stay home and do the job that we elected you to do. We want you to buckle down and get to work to do what we elected you to do….to put our economy back on the right track… to put people back to work….to make us energy independent…. to quit wasting taxpayer money.

It’s a very simple concept. Start “doing the right things”.

There is so much more that needs to be addressed. The above are just few of the things that are absolutely making me steam right now.

Have you seen this yet? Its called the GIVE Act which stands for the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act sponsored by Reps. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y, and George Miller, D-Calif.

The House has already passed it and it is now headed for the Senate.

The bill, House Bill 1388, was introduced on March 9, 2009

This a section in the bill:

TITLE VI–CONGRESSIONAL COMMISSION ON CIVIC SERVICE
SEC. 6104. DUTIES
(b) Specific Topics- In carrying out its general purpose under subsection (a), the Commission shall address and analyze the following specific topics:
…
(6) Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.

Uh… excuse me.. wouldn’t that qualify as slavery?

Amendment 13 - Slavery Abolished. Ratified 12/6/1865.
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. (emphasis added)

It’s interesting to note that Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel coauthored The Plan: Big Ideas for America that calls for compulsory service for Americans ages 18 to 25:

Here’s how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They’ll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we’re hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities’ most pressing needs.

The Obama/Biden campaign also ran on the idea of required community service for our youth and claimed they would set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year, and will establish a new tax credit that is worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year.

This is getting scary folks…

You would think that all this venting would make feel a little better....but it didn’t. It only made me a little more incensed and raised my blood pressure a few notches.