Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on Obama family last year | The Daily Caller

By Alex Pappas

09/26/2012

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.”

 

“The most concerning thing, I think, is the use of taxpayer funds to actually abet his re-election,” Gray, who worked in the Eisenhower administration and for other Republican presidents, said in an interview with TheDC on Wednesday.
 

“The press has been so slow in picking up on this extraordinary increase in the president’s expenses,” Gray told TheDC. (RELATED: Five shocking truths about Michelle Obama)
 

Specifically, Gray said taxpayer dollars are subsidizing Obama’s re-election effort when he uses Air Force One to jet across the country campaigning.
 

When the trip is deemed political, it’s customary for the president to pay the equivalent of a first class commercial ticket for certain passengers. But Gray says that hardly covers the taxpayer cost of flying the president and his staffers around on Air Force One.
 

“When the United States’ billion-dollar air armada is being used politically, is it fair to taxpayers that we only be reimbursed by the president’s campaign committee for the value of one first-class commercial ticket for each passenger who is deemed aboard ‘for political purposes?’” Gray asks in the book.
 

“And is that bargain-price advantage fair to those opposing an incumbent president?” (SEE ALSO: Millions of taxpayer dollars used for Disney World conference)
 

In the book, Gray admits Americans want their president to be safe and comfortable but argues the system should be reformed to stop the amount of unquestioned perks given to the president.
 

“There is no mechanism for anyone’s objection if a president were to pay his chief of staff $5,000,000 a year,” he told TheDC. “And nothing but a president’s conscience can dissuade him from buying his own reelection with use of some public money.”

 

Aside from a salary, the president gets a $50,000 a year expense account, a $100,000 travel account, $19,000 entertainment budget and an additional million for “unanticipated needs,” he notes.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/26/taxpayers-spent-1-4-billion-on-obama-family-last-year-perks-questioned-in-new-book/#ixzz284DSWjHO

VP DAN QUAYLE says campaign run by David Schweikert is the most Despicable he has ever seen!

 

Photo courtesy of Brian Kelly

The former Vice President of the United States DAN QUAYLE was the Special Guest last night at the 5th Anniversary Party for Politics on The Rocks!

I spoke with the Vice President and he wanted this message to be seen by the readers of PM:

"Please tell your readers that the campaign being run by my son's opponent (David Schweikert) is the most Dishonest & Despicable campaign he has seen in all his years in politics"!

We couldn't agree with you more Mr. Vice President!

Here are a couple of stories that PROVE David Schweikert is a LIAR and a FRAUD:

GOP sources: Politico skinny-dipping ‘scoop’ was likely Schweikert-on-Quayle primary attack

By Matthew Boyle

August 22, 2012

Three different high-ranking Republican staffers on Capitol Hill have told The Daily Caller of a growing consensus that at least part of a Sunday article by Politico’s Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan was planted by Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert in order to damage his primary opponent, Rep. Ben Quayle.

Schweikert’s office denies the charge, but a campaign spokesperson would only say that the congressman never “gave” or “provided” the entire story to the Virginia-based news outlet. Quayle’s involvement in the saga, while embarrassing, was relatively minor.

The story itself contained significant inaccuracies pertaining to both an alleged FBI investigation and Quayle’s involvement in what became a one-day mini-scandal. Politico reported that several freshman GOP members of Congress on an official trip to Israel went on an alcohol-fueled swim in the Sea of Galilee.

The Politico story disclosed that Kansas Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder went skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee. Yoder has apologized.

Other GOP lawmakers and staffers, according to Politico, joined Yoder for the swim — among them Quayle, Florida Rep. Steve Southerland, New York Reps. Tom Reed and Michael Grimm, and California Rep. Jeff Denham. Politico reported that those details were confirmed by unnamed GOP sources.

Sherman and Bresnahan also charged that the FBI investigated the event. “The FBI looked into whether any inappropriate behavior occurred,” they wrote, ”but the interviews do not appear to have resulted in any formal allegations of wrongdoing.”

Sherman, Bresnahan and Politico drove the story Monday, getting higher- and higher-ranking politicians to comment on the incident, including Speaker of the House John Boehner, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, all of whom criticized the congressmen involved. MSNBC featured the story on “Morning Joe,” where Mark Halperin slammed the GOP congressmen’s antics.
But late Monday, Ryan Reilly at the left-leaning publication Talking Points Memo discovered that there was no such FBI investigation, despite Politico’s reporting to the contrary.

“The FBI is indeed interested in a trip that House Republicans made to Israel last summer,” Reilly wrote. “But it’s not because Kansas Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder took his pants off and jumped into the Sea of Galilee after a night of drinking. Law enforcement sources — noting that skinny-dipping usually doesn’t fall under the FBI’s purview — pointed TPM to a New York Times story from earlier this month about a trip to Cyprus that Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) made following his August venture to Israel alongside several colleagues.”

The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times have also confirmed that the FBI was not investigating what happened that night, but was looking into Grimm’s financial disclosures. Grimm has never been charged in relation with those financial disclosures, and he has denied any wrongdoing.

Sherman and Bresnahan relied on a quote from the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to support their reporting that the FBI investigated the Sea of Galilee skinny-dip.

“Last year, a staffer was contacted by the Bureau [FBI], which had several questions, the staffer answered those questions and that appears to have been the end of it,” Cantor deputy chief of staff Doug Heye told Politico.

Heye did not, however, discuss the purpose of the FBI’s involvement. And Sherman and Bresnahan stopped short of alleging that Heye’s statement confirmed their assertion about an FBI investigation. But late Tuesday morning, after The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Talking Points Memo criticized his article, Sherman


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/22/gop-sources-politico-skinny-dipping-scoop-was-likely-schweikert-on-quayle-primary-attack/#ixzz24IFJ8Z8U

and this from former AZ Governor Fife Symington:

David Schweikert deserves to lose this election

Aug. 22, 2012 12:00 AM

I've contributed to Ben Quayle's campaign for Congress, but because I've known David Schweikert since he first entered the state Legislature nearly 25 years ago, I had intended not to endorse or otherwise speak up in their Republican primary race. The events of the past week, however, move me to send this letter.
 

Last week, two sitting senators -- both Jon Kyl and John McCain -- joined to condemn the dishonest campaign of a sitting House member from their own party. This is extraordinary and surely unprecedented in American politics.
 

I then began to review Schweikert's entire body of voter-contact material -- mail, TV and Internet -- and watched carefully Schweikert's conduct in the media the past two days. I must say that the senators' condemnation was too mild. Schweikert's campaign has been perhaps the worst case of distortion and outright lies that I have ever seen in a Republican primary contest. It is beyond the pale and disgusting.
 

The David Schweikert I knew as a young state legislator was not the same man who now clings pathetically to a seat in Congress. His years in politics have diminished him, and he demeans himself far more than his opponent with his antics and false attacks. He is no leader.

His interests are ironically now aligned with the voters, for the best thing that could happen to David would be his defeat.

-- Fife Symington, Paradise Valley

The writer was governor of Arizona from 1991 to 1997.

 

and this Bull Shit coming from KYFI & Schweikert Knee Padders Barry Old & Muffy Lee Larson:

      According to Jason Rose, the race for CD-6 is over! KFYI is running this crap like it's a news story. We thought David Schweikert didn't like Pink Tacos?