As Americans face a fiscal cliff, the Obamas make do with 54 Christmas trees

Hey, CBJ7! Here's that link for you.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenf...ars-last-year/

Where is the hue and cry from the green-weenies about "deforestation" and its contribution to "global warming"?

Hey, CBJ7! Here's that link for you.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenf...ars-last-year/ Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

didnt notice my link eh old fart ?


Gray told The Daily Caller that the $1.4 billion spent on the Obama family last year is the “total cost of the presidency,” factoring the cost of the “biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever,” a 50 percent increase in the numbers of appointed czars and an Air Force One “running with the frequency of a scheduled air line.”
Gray doesn’t say where he came up with this number, but one presumes it comes from the Federal Budget. It’s a lot of money, of course, and it’s caused no small degree of outrage on conservative blogs. There’s just one problem, Gray’s assertion that costs associated with the Presidency have “tremendously” increased since Obama took office simply isn’t true.
To establish that, we need only look at a paper produced by the Brookings Institution’s Bradley Patterson [PDF] in which, in one chapter, he lays out the question of what it costs to run the White House. The first point Patterson notes is that this isn’t an easy question to answer:

What are the annual dollar costs, for a typical year, of operating the modern presidency—of running the White House, the whole White House? One of the reasons that question has never been answered (and perhaps never even asked) is because the pathway to the answer is so complicated. One may start with the tab “White House Office” in the annual congressional budget submission of the Executive Office of the President, but that is only an initial fraction. In addition, twenty-two other budget accounts, thirteen of them in other departments, or parts of departments, pay the expenses, and the salaries, of men and women who are in fact members of the White House staff family. Not only are those costs scattered through those twenty-two other budgets, but in at least nine of them the dollars are not in any fashion identified as White House. Realistic estimates have to be made

Patterson attempted to do that for the Fiscal Year 2008 budget and came up with a figure of $1,592,875,254. This does not include classified outlays for things such as Air Force One. One assumes that the figured that Gray came up with also omits these classified figures. The first thing that jumps out, of course, is that the cost that Patterson came up with for Fiscal Year 2008, when Bush was President, is more than the figure that Gray provides. Since we don’t know exactly how Gray calculated his figures, we can’t say that this ends the debate since he could have left off items that Patterson included, which would be odd since he seems to have started out with the assumption that the President dramatically increased the cost of the Presidency. Nonetheless, it seems rather obvious from comparing these two figures that the assertion that the costs to the taxpayer associated with the Presidency have increased “tremendously” under President Obama are, quite simply, wrong.

There is, perhaps, a decent argument to be made that our Presidents live in far too much luxury, and far too much of a pampered bubble of privilege. Things have been that way, however, for many decades now both because of the manner in which the increase in the power of the Presidency has lent the office a more regal air and because of the security bubble that has enveloped the Presidency and anyone associated in the wake of the Kennedy Assassination and the various assassination attempts that have taken place since then. These are legitimate issues worthy of discussion, but trying to frame this in a partisan manner simply doesn’t conform to the facts. We spend a lot of money on the Presidency, we have been doing that for quite a long time, and there’s no evidence at all that this is a phenomenon unique to the Obama Administration.


Seems like King George had a little more flying time ... like the Olympics in China for instance.

Aw well, as usual youre shit is skewed. Go figure.

Damn, that Obamatron is still working, and you still have the downlink. Impressive, CBJ7!

You will even defend 54 Christmas Trees, and dog ornaments. You are devoted, that's for sure. A true Obamaton.

four more years of seeing you go nuts over Obie will be a blast.

Four more years of watching you and your ilk defend whatever he does will be even funnier! I'm not going nuts over Obama, I'm enjoying your ignorance.

Damn, that Obamatron is still working, and you still have the downlink. Impressive, CBJ7!

You will even defend 54 Christmas Trees, and dog ornaments. You are devoted, that's for sure. A true Obamaton. Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

I just saw one of those 54 trees (in a news clip) in the WH you mentioned .. it was sitting on a table and might have been 3 feet tall ...

OH the fuckin shame of it all ..

I'm enjoying your ignorance. Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

StupidOldFart, not nearly as much as I am enjoying yours!

If the old adage is true (ignorance is bliss), StupidOldFart must be a blissful MoFo!

Four more years of narcissistic, corrupt, dishonest and incompetent leadership. You would think that was fun, Doove.

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

No, four more years of you thinking that having a bunch of table-top Christmas Trees in The White House makes Obama narcissistic, corrupt, dishonest and incompetent.

You never did mention, just how many is the right number to have?

You never did mention, just how many is the right number to have? Originally Posted by Doove

That would require StupidOldFart to actually make a decision. His comfort zone is bitching and moaning about anything and everything, unencumbered by accountability!

I can't help but wonder if his grandkids call him Grandpa StupidOldFart. If they don't, they should!

I know this article and thread are bullsh*t, Muslim communists don't celebrate Christmas!

Obama won't be there to enjoy the sight of the trees. He is going to Hawaii on our dime for a couple of weeks. The price is estimated to be around $4 million.

Four more years of watching you and your ilk defend whatever he does will be even funnier! I'm not going nuts over Obama, I'm enjoying your ignorance. Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

I am enjoying the right wingers obsession...

Obama won't be there to enjoy the sight of the trees. He is going to Hawaii on our dime for a couple of weeks. The price is estimated to be around $4 million. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

your tiara is on a little crooked