Way back in 2010, I savaged Prince Charles for being the ultimate Limousine Liberal. He lives off the taxpayers while traveling on private jets so he can pontificate about the need for ordinary people to live bleaker lives in order to appease the environmental gods.
And if someone asked me about the taxpayer cost of maintaining England’s royal family compared to the equivalent numbers for President Obama and his family, I would have guessed the royal family was more expensive.
I would have been wrong. Here’s an excerpt from a story in the Daily Caller.
Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on everything from staffing, housing, flying and entertaining President Obama and his family last year, according to the author of a new book on taxpayer-funded presidential perks. In comparison, British taxpayers spent just $57.8 million on the royal family. Author Robert Keith Gray writes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that Obama isn’t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in. 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.”
I hope that these numbers are wrong. Indeed, it wouldn’t be fair to add the policy staff of the White House (even though I’m sure it could be cut in half) when making comparisons of the care and upkeep of the Obamas and the royal family.
“Send out the Sheriff of Nottingham to collect more tribute”
But there’s definitely a big kernel of truth to the charge that politicians are leading lives of privilege and elitism compared to the peasants that finance their pampered existence.
To add insult to injury, they exempt themselves from the laws they impose on the rest of us, such as the decision that some White House vehicles will be exempt from Obama’s directive that the federal government purchase only green cars.
Keep in mind, though, that it’s not just Obama. The Bush White House also was guilty of extravagance, albeit perhaps at a lower level.
But the big numbers, in terms of the burden on taxpayers, come from the giant army of overcompensated federal bureaucrats. And you need to consider the mass of lobbyists and consultants that also are part of the corrupt Washington machine.
No wonder, as shown in this map, most of the richest counties in America are those surrounding Washington.
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Let’s not forget that “the giant army of overcompensated federal bureaucrats … lobbyists and consultants” wouldn’t be there if politicians simply refused to sell certain people/companies/industries government favors in return for campaign cash. If government was limited to only dealing with situations in which one party harmed another, it wouldn’t be selling government favors either.
The prior requires moral politicians (this seems unlikely when government can pick winners/losers in the economy). The later requires that government be limited, which those benefiting from government theft, don’t want.
People who are upset about this, need to be angry with the politicians selling the favors, not the greedy 1% asking for them.
After all, the more power the government has to pick winners and losers, the more advantage the 1% rich will have over the rest of us. And the politicians doing the picking get rich too.
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Both major parties are this way:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/political-conventions-in-the-era-of-the-national-security-state/
“Political Conventions In The Era Of The National Security State
And yesterday, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat made this observation on Twitter:
‘Not sure when a republic crosses line into empire, but the militarization of security at party conventions is probably a leading indicator.’
Is all this really necessary? Probably not, much as much of the absurdity the TSA forces us to put up with probably isn’t necessary. Much of it is security theater, there as much for show as for any real need.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/security-at-the-rnc-george-orwell-meets-a-call-of-duty-cityscape/261644/
“Security at the RNC: George Orwell Meets a ‘Call of Duty’ Cityscape
. As a newbie, it feels like an Orwellian police state”
Presidents are treated like royalty, allowed to push tens of thousands of mere peasants aside to avoid the slightest momentary inconvenience, closing major highways for hours in a show of “security theater” to ingrain how important they are compared to we who must bow down before them and scurry out of their way. They no longer view themselves as public servants elected to do our bidding, to be treated the same as other citizens.
http://blog.skipoliva.com/2012/08/
“had lunch yesterday at Henry’s, a venerable family-owned restaurant on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. A sign on the door said the restaurant would be closed Wednesday (today) “due to road closures and logistics in the area surrounding President Obama’s visit.” All roads surrounding the Mall will be closed to traffic for most of the day in order to accommodate the Secret Service’s copious demands.
This affects not only small businesses–which, let’s face it, aren’t important to a president of the United States–but also the government’s sacred public schools. Charlottesville officials will close schools early today because of fears the downtown traffic disruptions will make it impossible to get children home later in the day. The city’s roads will likely be impassable for several hours.”
Article on the American Monarchy from a history site:
http://www.historytoday.com/frank-prochaska/american-monarchy
“Even Jefferson, the scourge of American royalists, felt that the spirit, if not the letter of monarchy, had persisted. He feared an eventual tyranny of executive power in Washington, which he believed to be a feature of Federalist politics As he wrote to James Madison in 1789: ‘We were educated in royalism; no wonder, if some of us retain that idolatry still’. ”
More on the topic from a book by a Brown history prof:
http://tinyurl.com/8tupjoz
“Yet these American presidents were monarchs, admittedly of a new breed, increasingly attended by courtiers, scarcely resembling those once characteristic of royal Europe…
The pomp and ceremony attendant on European power seemed virtually absent in the United States visited by Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce in the nineteenth century. Even following the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield, admission to the White House was never impeded by a small contingent of armed guards fearful that so horrendous a crime might be attempted a third time. Simplicity, the theme of the nineteenth-century American republic, made the president the first citizen among equals, but these practices gave way in the twentieth century to a new kind of presidential office that vaunted itself on its simplicity but showed unmistakeable signs of having assumed the trappings traditionally bestowed on European heads of state..
Until there is some understanding of how much the presidency changed between the time Theodore Roosevelt came to the office and Bill Clinton left it, it is difficult to appreciate the “silent revolution” that occurred in the course of the century. .. This was no longer the presidency of Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt, dependent on miniscule White house staffs”
This is the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Command-Office-Deception-Transformed-Presidency/dp/product-description/046502758X/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
“”Command of Office: How War, Secrecy, and Deception Transformed the Presidency, from Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush
George W. Bush thus assumed an office whose powers are exponentially greater than anything envisioned by the Founding Fathers, subject to correspondingly limited checks and balances
“
I know people who work for the State Department, retire at a young age and begin collecting pension benefits, and then continue to work for the State Department as an independent contractor to essentially double dip. The system is disgusting.
The “capital of takers”….. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/09/capital-takers?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/thesplendourofempire
Robert Keith Gray seems to suggest that Obama has kicked up the cost of the White House.
The cost in 2008 was $1, 592, 875, 254.
http://theintrepid.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-much-does-it-cost-to-operate-white.html
In addition, the British royal family have duties throughout all 54 countries of the Commonwealth, made up of over 2.1 billion citizens. Obama just has one country to run, of 315 million people. Thats 2.8 cents per citizen per year for the royal family, and $4.50 per citizen per year for Obama. The royal family fly helicopters in combat and search-and-rescue operations, sneak up on the Taliban as forward air controllers, and raise billions for charity every year. The Obamas tell you your kids are too fat. Who is getting better value for money? 🙂
Since he appears to be heading for reelection, we apparently don’t care how he has turned the Presidency into a personal playground for him and his friends.
Prince Charles may have some odd views, but he and his family contribute more than GBP160 million in profits for the Exchequer each year, over and above the salaries they are paid. Watch this for an explanation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw