You Will Anyway: Why Is This OK?

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Why Is This OK?

It's fine if Melania wants to live in New York, but why should NYC pay anyhting toward it? The WaPo reports the figure at $500,000 per day.

And while we're on the subject, how many ex-presidential family members get lifetime taxpayer protection?

In 1994, Congress passed a law limiting Secret Service protection to 10 years for former presidents who entered office after Jan. 1, 1997.

On Jan. 10, 2013, Obama signed into law the “Former Presidents Protection Act of 2012” which reinstated Secret Service protection for life for all former presidents and their spouses. That includes former Presidents Jimmy Carter; George H.W. Bush; Bill Clinton; George W. Bush and their wives.

Sun Times

HR. 6620, the "Former Presidents Protection Act of 2012," also gives Secret Service protection to former First Ladies and guarantees agents will continue to shadow children of former Presidents until they become 16 years of age.

ABC

It's bad enough when they're actually in the White House.

Obama had some expensive vacations – a single family trip to Hawaii alone cost taxpayers more than $4 million.

Red State

The federal government covers the costs of offices and a small staff for former presidents, plus a pension and other compensation for travel, an acknowledgement of the role — albeit not official — former presidents serve after they are no longer in office.

For example, according to the General Services Administration, in FY2015, former President George W. Bush received $796,000 to cover health benefits, travel costs, office space, telephone costs, postage, printing costs, other services, supplies and materials, and equipment.

Sun Times

Of course, families can decline protection. When President George Herbert Walker Bush walked away from the inaugural ceremonies of his successor Bill Clinton, his wife Barbara Bush said farewell to her agents on the Capitol steps, and moved back to Texas without them.

ABC

Shit yeah. Nobody in their right mind would mess with Babs. And if anyone did take her, who would want her back?

Meow.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

------
ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

------
GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

------
GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

------
PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.