Obama’s February, March 2015 Golf Vacations and Fundraisers Cost Taxpayers Over 4 Million in Travel Expenses Alone

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There’s nothing I love more than being lectured by sanctimonious liberals on, for instance, not “taking action on climate change,” or the importance of energy conservation, or the sins of profligacy, et cetera.

I love it even more when I’m being lectured by sanctimonious liberals who are simultaneously engaged in high hypocrisy:

Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that Barack Obama’s February and March 2015 travel for golf vacations and fundraisers totaled $4,436,245.50 in taxpayer-funded transportation expenses. The documents regarding the Obama travel expenses came in response to two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by Judicial Watch.

To date, the Secret Service has not provided requested information, as required by FOIA, regarding security costs.

Using the Air Force’s official cost estimate of $206,337 per hour, the newly released records obtained by Judicial Watch show:

Obama’s February 14, 2015, golf outing to Palm Springs required a five-hour flight, costing taxpayers a total of $1,031,685.

Transportation for Obama’s February 19 day trip to Chicago cost taxpayers $619,011.00.

Transportation for Obama’s March 2015 fundraising trip to Los Angeles cost taxpayers $1,980,835.20.

Obama’s March 28, 2015, golf outing to Palm city required a 3.9-hour flight, costing taxpayers $804,870.3
In Palm Springs, Obama played golf at the luxurious Sunnylands country club, located on the former estate of the late ambassadors Walter and Leonore Annenberg. Obama reportedly spent the weekend on the exclusive, gated property, where he has twice stayed before.

Obama’s February trip to Chicago was billed by the White House as a non-political event to declare the Pullman Historic District a national monument. But, press reports indicated that the trip was heavily political. In a CNN story entitled, “Obama gives Emanuel re-election boost:”

President Barack Obama went to Chicago bearing gifts Thursday for his former chief of staff, Mayor Rahm Emanuel … But the day had all the trappings of a campaign – and Obama even made an unannounced stop at a Kenwood campaign office for Emanuel on his way out of town. “I’m glad he’s my mayor, and I’m glad he’s going to be my mayor for another four years,” Obama told volunteers.

Obama’s travel to California was solely to raise money for the Democratic National Committee and to show his support for fellow Democrats nationwide. His visit to Los Angeles began with an appearance on ABC’s late night comedy program “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and continued on to include a “roundtable discussion” fundraiser hosted at the Santa Monica home of ICM Partners cofounder Chris Silbermann and his wife Julia Franz. Guests paid up to $33,400 per couple for attendance, donations that will be used to aid DNC activities during the approaching 2016 election cycle. Obama’s March 12 fundraising trip to Los Angeles was his 32nd fundraiser in L.A. County since he became president.

In Palm City, Obama played golf at the “spectacular” Floridian National Golf Club, where members pay a $50,000 initiation fee and $15,000 in annual dues. According to the resort’s website, “This stunning, yet formidable par 71 will certainly impress. At 7,114 yards, the 18-hole course offers perfectly manicured rolling fairways and greens, demanding hazards, breathtaking views of the St. Lucie River, and is surrounded by natural preserve and native wildlife.”

“Taxpayers should be outraged that Barack Obama’s wastes 4.4 million of their precious tax dollars on golf vacations and political fundraising,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And to make matters worse, the Secret Service has simply refused to respond to our requests for documents about the security costs of these controversial trips. The Obama travel scandal is about abuse of office, abuse of the taxpayer, and contempt for the rule of law.”

Records released earlier this year by Judicial Watch showed that Michelle Obama’s 2014 trip to China cost more than $360,000 in air transportation costs. Judicial Watch uncovered an expensive combination of trips by the Obamas to Africa and Honolulu, which cost taxpayers $15,885,585.30 in flight expenses. The single largest prior known expense for accommodations was for Michelle Obama’s side-trip to Dublin, Ireland, during the 2013 G-8 conference in Belfast, when she and her entourage booked 30 rooms at the five-star Shelbourne Hotel, with the first lady staying in the 1500 square-foot Princess Grace suite at a cost of $3,500 a night. The total cost to taxpayers for the Obamas’ Ireland trip was $7,921,638.66. To date, the known travel expenses of the Obamas and Vice President Joe Biden exceed $61million.

(Source)

It’s good to be king and queen, n’est ce pas?

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Doctor Hal Scherz: Dear Patients — Vote to Repeal ObamaCare

Dr. Hal Scherz
Doctor Hal Scherz is a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. He also serves on the faculty of Emory University Medical School and is president of Docs4PatientCare. Just recently, he wrote that “because the issue this upcoming election is so stark — literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead — we are this week posting a ‘Dear Patient’ letter in our waiting rooms.” This is, in part, what that letter says:

“Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world.”

In this same letter, Doctor Scherz writes:

“Badly exacerbating the current doctor shortage [ObamaCare will bring] major cost increases, rising insurance premiums, higher taxes, a decline in new medical techniques, a fall-off in the development of miracle drugs as well as rationing by government panels and by bureaucrats like passionate rationing advocate Donald Berwick that will force delays of months or sometimes years for hospitalization or surgery.”

He also cites the brutal, unignorable, irrefutable facts of ObamaCare’s passage:

“Despite countless protests by doctors and overwhelming public opposition — up to 60% of Americans opposed this bill — the current party in control of Congress pushed this bill through with legal bribes and Chicago style threats and is determined now to resist any ‘repeal and replace’ efforts. This doctor’s office is non-partisan — always has been, always will be. But the fact is that every Republican voted against this bad bill while the Democratic Party leadership and the White House completely dismissed the will of the people in ruthlessly pushing through this legislation….

“In the face of voter anger some Democratic candidates are now trying to make a cosmetic retreat, calling for minor modifications or pretending they are opposed to government-run medicine. Once the election is over, however, they will vote with their party bosses against repealing this bill.”

The letter’s final lines are perhaps the most important:

“Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our healthcare system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever.”

In the Wall Street Journal, the following from Doctor Scherz is appended:

This message is going out to an electorate that is already frustrated over what they see happening to health care. Missouri voters rejected ObamaCare overwhelmingly in August, voting by a margin of 71%-29% to reject the federal requirement that all individuals purchase health insurance. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has assessed that ObamaCare is “a disaster” for Democrats. And around the country many little-noticed primaries have reflected voter rage—including the Republican primary victory of surgeon, political newcomer, and advocate of repeal Daniel Benishek in Michigan’s first district.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s damage-control efforts have fallen flat. The latest round of pro-ObamaCare television spots targeting the elderly and starring veteran actor Andy Griffith have not only failed to move the polling numbers. They have caused five U.S. Senators to ask for an investigation of the ads as a violation of federal laws barring the use of tax dollars ($750,000) for campaign purposes.

(Link)

Will Washington’s Failures Lead To Second American Revolution? — By Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Robbins

You say you want a revolution?

Well, just recently the following article appeared in Investors Business Daily. I reproduce it here in full because America is currently under the thumb of people like this:



From Investors Business Daily:

The Internet is a large-scale version of the “Committees of Correspondence” that led to the first American Revolution — and with Washington’s failings now so obvious and awful, it may lead to another.

People are asking, “Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?”

Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency.

Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion to make too many open-ended rules controlling too many aspects of our lives. There’s no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do.

Bill Clinton lowered the culture, moral tone and strength of the nation — and left America vulnerable to attack. When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily.

Barack Obama, however, has pulled off the ultimate switcheroo: He’s diminishing America from within — so far, successfully.

He may soon bankrupt us and replace our big merit-based capitalist economy with a small government-directed one of his own design.

He is undermining our constitutional traditions: The rule of law and our Anglo-Saxon concepts of private property hang in the balance. Obama may be the most “consequential” president ever.

The Wall Street Journal’s steadfast Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote that Barack Obama is “an alien in the White House.”

His bullying and offenses against the economy and job creation are so outrageous that CEOs in the Business Roundtable finally mustered the courage to call him “anti-business.” Veteran Democrat Sen. Max Baucus blurted out that Obama is engineering the biggest government-forced “redistribution of income” in history.

Fear and uncertainty stalk the land. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says America’s financial future is “unusually uncertain.”

A Wall Street “fear gauge” based on predicted market volatility is flashing long-term panic. New data on the federal budget confirm that record-setting deficits in the $1.4 trillion range are now endemic.

Obama is building an imperium of public debt and crushing taxes, contrary to George Washington’s wise farewell admonition: “cherish public credit … use it as sparingly as possible … avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt … bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there must be Revenue, that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not … inconvenient and unpleasant … .”

Opinion polls suggest that in the November mid-term elections, voters will replace the present Democratic majority in Congress with opposition Republicans — but that will not necessarily stop Obama.

A President Obama intent on achieving his transformative goals despite the disagreement of the American people has powerful weapons within reach. In one hand, he will have a veto pen to stop a new Republican Congress from repealing ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank takeover of banks.

In the other, he will have a fistful of executive orders, regulations and Obama-made fiats that have the force of law.

Under ObamaCare, he can issue new rules and regulations so insidiously powerful in their effect that higher-priced, lower-quality and rationed health care will quickly become ingrained, leaving a permanent stain.

Under Dodd-Frank, he and his agents will control all credit and financial transactions, rewarding friends and punishing opponents, discriminating on the basis of race, gender and political affiliation. Credit and liquidity may be choked by bureaucracy and politics — and the economy will suffer.

He and the EPA may try to impose by “regulatory” fiats many parts of the cap-and-trade and other climate legislation that failed in the Congress.

And by executive orders and the in terrorem effect of an industrywide “boot on the neck” policy, he can continue to diminish energy production in the United States.

By the trick of letting current-law tax rates “expire,” he can impose a $3.5 trillion 10-year tax increase that damages job-creating capital investment in an economy struggling to recover. And by failing to enforce the law and leaving America’s borders open, he can continue to repopulate America with unfortunate illegals whose skill and education levels are low and whose political attitudes are often not congenial to American-style democracy.

A wounded rampaging president can do much damage — and, like Caesar, the evil he does will live long after he leaves office, whenever that may be.

The overgrown, un-pruned power of the presidency to reward, punish and intimidate may now be so overwhelming that his re-election in 2012 is already assured — Chicago-style.

• Christian, an attorney, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Ford administration.

• Robbins, an economist, served at the Treasury Department in the Reagan administration.

Please remember: the revolution will not be televised, but it will be broadcast live right here. Stay tuned.

The Multiplier Theory


In the Concise Guide To Economics, author and economist Jim Cox correctly explains that the Multiplier is one of the major components of Keynesian policy.

For those who still don’t know it, Keynesian economics — named after John Maynard Keynes — are the economics that Barack Obama, as well as George W. Bush (et al), espouse in full.

The following explanation of the Multiplier Theory, though exceptionally clear and cogent, gets a bit technical, but please read through it. It is short, and it is also crucial that everyone understands the degree to which economic illiteracy grips the political leaders who have power over us.

The multiplier effect can be defined as the greater resulting income generated from an initial increase in spending. (For example, an increase in spending of $100 will generate a total increase in income received of $500 as the initial income is respent by each succeeding recipient–these figures are based on an assumption that each income receiver spends 80% of his additional income and saves 20%, the formula being Multiplier = 1 / % Change in Saving.)

Fundamentally, the multiplier is theory run amok, as Henry Hazlitt has explained in The Failure of the New Economics:

If a community’s income, by definition, is equal to what it consumes plus what it invests, and if that community spends nine-tenths of its income on consumption and invests one-tenth, then its income must be ten times as great as its investment. If it spends nineteen-twentieths on consumption and invests one-twentieth, then its income must be twenty times as great as its investment….And so ad infinitum. These things are true simply because they are different ways of saying the same thing. The ordinary man in the street would understand this. But suppose you have a subtle man, trained in mathematics. He will then see that, given the fraction of the community’s income that goes into investment, the income itself can mathematically be called a “function” of that fraction. If investment is one-tenth of income, income will be ten times investment, etc. Then, by some wild leap, this “functional” and purely formal or terminological relationship is confused with a causal relationship. Next the causal relationship is stood on its head and the amazing conclusion emerges that the greater the proportion of income spent, and the smaller the fraction that represents investment, the more this investment must “multiply” itself to create the total income! p. 139

A bizarre but necessary implication of this theory is that a community which spends 100% of its income (and thus saves 0%) will have an infinite increase in its income–sure beats working!

A further reductio ad absurdum is provided by Hazlitt:

Let Y equal the income of the whole community. Let R equal your (the reader’s) income. Let V equal the income of everybody else. Then we find that V is a completely stable function of Y; whereas your income is the active, volatile, uncertain element in social income. Let us say the income arrived at is:

V = .99999 Y

Then, Y = .99999 Y + R

.00001 Y = R

Y = 100,000 R

Thus we see that your own personal multiplier is far more powerful than the investment multiplier, it is only necessary for the government to print a certain number of dollars and give them to you. Your spending will prime the pump for an increase in the national income 100,000 times as great as the amount of your spending itself. pp. 150 -151

The multiplier is based on a faulty theory of causation and is therefore in actuality nonexistent. Keynesians today will often admit to this but cling to their multiplier by citing the fact that it has a regional effect. Without them saying so explicitly, what this means is that if income is taken from citizens of Georgia and spent in Massachusetts it will benefit the Massachusetts economy(!).

The multiplier is an elaborate attempt to obfuscate the issues to excuse government spending. It and Keynesian theory are nothing more than an elaborate version of any monetary crank’s call for inflation; Keynes managed to dredge up the fallacies of the 17th century’s mercantilist views only to relabel them as the “new economics”!

(Link)