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On Closing the White House
So the White House is closing its doors to the public today. Budget cuts related to the sequester are the blame.
The WH tours are closed after a decision by the Secret Service that it could not afford to maintain security. The savings for shuttering the WH comes to a measly $2m over the next seven months. I'm thinking this is a bullshit move by Obama; he's trying to get the public hostile toward Republicans. If the visitors to D.C. who are disappointed in not being able to visit the WH actually knew the facts, they would be mad at Obama, not the Republicans.
The Secret Service budget for 2013 is $1.67b. The $2m savings from closing the WH comes to 0.12% of the budget for the Secret Service, it's equal to 0.00005% of total spending. Closing the WH is a dumb way to save some money. Some other places where the $2m could have been absorbed:
Information Technology Portfolio - $200m
Transformation Initiative - $50m
Oregon and California Grant Lands - $113m
Payments to States in Lieu of Coal Fee Receipts - $128m
Lower Colorado River Basin Development Fund - $254m
Upper Colorado River Basin Fund - $92m
Surveys, Investigations, and Research - $1,075m
Operation of the National Park System - $3,000m
Mineral Leasing and Associated Payments - $2,144m
Salaries and Expenses, United States Attorneys - $1,972m
Capital and Debt Service Grants to the National Railroad Passenger Corporation - $958m
Grants for Specified Energy Property in Lieu of Tax Credits, Recovery Act - $3,671m
Foreign Military Financing Program - $6,344m
Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund - $850m
Assistance for Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia - $631m
Commodity Futures Trading Commission - $206m
Corporation for Public Broadcasting - $445m
Tennessee Valley Authority Fund - $445m
If you don't find anything on that list (there are thousands of other line items to choose from) consider saving the money to keep the WH open from these big accounts:
Military Procurement - $100B (50,000 Xs the cost of keeping the WH open
Military R&D - $87B (43,500 Xs the cost of keeping the WH open
The problem with the sequester is that it is a meataxe approach to cutting. It's a dumb way to go about the process. The Secret Service is facing cut backs, it will be forced to pare back $84m of expenses. But to have those cuts centered around the public access to the White House is just for show.
All of D.C. is going to look dumb before this is over. Obama might get the award for deliberately mismanaging the process. Let's hope so.
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No "cost-saving measure" could ever possibly make as much SENSE as putting our "Federal representatives" into the same health-care and pension programs the average citizen has.
It would save hecka more than $4million a year and would help educate the politicians about real issues facing the electorate.
As a result, it will probably never be proposed in committee.
Not just representatives, the entire pool of "public servant" blood suckers.
We could get rid of the FDA. Apparently a 15 year old kid with 40 bucks a month internet connection is more effective than the current FDA Pharmaceutical complex:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/15-year-old-kid-devel...
I'm quite sure the FDA will regulate his find to a point where it will cost $300 to take the test...big pharma has to make money to pay for the boner commercials!!
Did like his comment about wasting the internet on sending photos of duckface....
....but why stop there. Dept of Ed has reduced US education from best in the world to not even noteworthy.....again, 95% of it could be accomplished on $40 a month internet connection. $80B right there...
ditto for postal service.
So....you're blaming the FDA because the labs which could develop and sell this sensor aren't interested...
Why?
(That sounds kinda crazy. You may as well blame AT&T for all their involvement.)
You missed the point. The FDA is not doing their job protecting Big Pharma. Otherwise the kid would be in Camp Getmo by now.
I thought to myself yesterday "Why didn't them terrible Muslim terrorist take out DC on 9/11" I had this thought while pondering ways to really begin saving some serious money and solving the nations problems once and for all.
Then I realized that the answer to my question came in two parts...
A). Because if you really wanted to destroy America then leaving DC unscathed is essential.
B). The 'terrorist' didn't want the hassle of needing to relocate.
Correct on Realisation A.
Wrong on Realisation B ... Correct answer is "Professional Courtesy."
too bad they didn't cut back on his highness' personal protection, just sayin..........................
Indeed just a side show. The real tradegy is the Kabuki Theater that keeps Dems and Repubs fighting with each other as if there is ANY significant difference between them. The "The country is going to Hell, and it is because of Obama!" arguements is just as lame as the "The country is going to Hell because of Bush" fantasy was. As long as they can keep this idiocy alive they can keep the masses distracted from the real issues. Yes, Bush tore up the Constitution, Obama used the pieces for toilet paper. It is almost gaurenteed the next Pres, REGAURDLESS OF PARTY, will fish it out of the sewer and burned the scraps.
The acient and worn out trick of "The other tribe is the enemy of our tribe" still works because people have still not evolved beyond the tribal stage.
It is like the cruise director of the Titanic staging a cockroach race to distract the passengers from the fact that the lifeboats are being taken by the crew. Of course the owners of the ship (Banks and Elite) were not so stupid as to get on board, knowing the ship was built so poorly. They did however make sure to tell the captain to loot the state rooms and fill any extra lifeboats with stolen goods rather than save any for paying passengers.
Amerikans are too stupid to care about this shit. Really
The wonderful thing is we will visit all these other possible reductions on the list too, because we still need to cut about $1 trillion a year. My current favorites are the air force band and the marine band and I suppose the army, navy, coast guard, etc have bands too. I read that the air force band is particularly enjoyed in Europe. If some little town in Europe wants to give it's city employees or schools the afternoon off for a concert, let them pay for it. I'd guess $250,000 for a weeks practice and travel, and that has to be low-ball with the pensions and travel involved, if they give them free accommodations and meals. Do you think any of the concerts would be paid for, anymore than our police actions and bases to "protect" them, even at one tenth the cost?
I love air shows, but I think they are cancelling them, good. Charge each person on the tarmac $50-$100 or whatever it costs or let them buy the DVD air show. The days of unlimited money and resources are obviously over.
I think we are finally going in the right direction. There will be some bad cuts, but there are soooo many cuts needed to be made that they can do better on the next round instead of backing up.
Good call. This is a PR stunt. A dumb one.
The closure of WH is not just a "...meataxe approach to cutting. It's a dumb way to go about the proces", this is in-your-face, see-what-the-republicans-have-done thing.
Yes, it's only 0.00005%of the total Gov't spending, this is less than a rounding error on the Fed's monetization leger. But it's not about the money. It's about politics.
Raise the ticket price on the Amtrak passengers. Most of them can afford it.
Mount Vernon tour $5
Monticello tour $18 winter, $24 summer
Buckingham Palace £18
San Simeon/Hearst Castle $22.50
Vanderbilt Estate Newport $8.00
Charge the Obama's rent to live there. Else take it out of Michelle's vacation fund.
Don't forget green fees
Charge a fee. If I want to tour Buckingham Palace or San Simeon, the British and California governments don't let me do it for free.
Unlike HM The Queen who owns Buckingham palace, WE The People own the White House. How can a President (who We The People have aloso hired) charge Us, the owners, to visit our own house?
Dude - you - we don't own shit in the Obummbers USSA. You are an asset or really a liability on the USAA Corporation balance sheet. You are a f***ing target for drones to shoot at.
Keep watching TV and Hollywood and supporting Obummer with your viewership while you drool and eat cron dogs and corn hole yourself. .
....drool and eat cron dogs and corn hole yourself.
Five points for Excessive Rudeness! Go Fight Club!
Freddies so mad he scraped off his Hope & Change bumper sticker.
Diane Feinstein: Mr and Mrs America, put the chains on. We already sold you.
Please spell the name right!
It's Feinswine.
sorry, but you're mistaken, nothing in DC is owned by the WE The People.
there will come a time when that harsh truth is revealed to everyone.
The National Park Service and various state agencies own many historical homes and properties. You can't tour them for free. The Queen does not 'own' Buckingham Palace. The "Crown" does. There is a difference as the Queen cannot 'sell' Buckingham Palace the way she might be able to dispose of other, purely private, properties she owns.
While it's symbolic of closing WH tours, it does send a signal. Nothing is free. Someone is writing a check.
There's so much stuff that can be cut I don't know where to start. How about the agriculture department.
Those poor millionaire farmers will have to deal with some market forces.
Yes. The signal it sends is "If you don't agree to pay more taxes so we can continue our profligate spending, then we will punish you by cutting services that don't really cost anything in the first place".
This is no different than states who run out and close their state parks and rest areas whenever they get into a budget bind. Even tho' there are plenty of other areas that can be cut, those would be the sacred cows of the politicians and thus are off limits.
i will give you a small benefit of the doubt and say that you must be confusing agribusiness execs with 'farmers' because your statement is ridiculous/ outrageous and FAR from the truth. you deserve Many down arrows. farmers, for their importance to us all, and their long hours and risk of capital, recieve Way less compensation than they should. i for one am glad that they do what they do. understand this...agribusiness and gmo and seed hybridization and other issues are separate from whether farmers are deserving
Blaming the farmers is like blaming the school teachers for the unfunded pension costs.
Eliminate the corn subsidy and the ethanol subsidy and watch industrial agriculture as we know it unwind furiously.
The dep of Ag is only a little more useful than the dep of Ed.
Oh come on. What are you farming? Rocks? Every farmer I know is filthy rich, even the guy with only 200 acres of corn. These aren't agribusiness execs, either.
A combo of ye-faith in macro/ballsinger indices, 2 parsecs away POV, anecdotal crunching+zero first account xp with farmers (and every cog-distortion) may explain the disconnect in ur post.
..."every farmer I know...200 acres of corn ...fithy rich"...(?)
How many "every" farmers "you know" /w 200 acres of corn are filthy rich? From that admission you know lots of the mega farmers perma-attached sucking funksantos n coz teat. I haven't been (physically) proximity wise close to any mega-farmSters, razor wire, security check points and armed sec. works well as a deterrent from the investigation peek-a-boo.
Shoot up some links, why don't ye...I'd love to show the dozens of farmers I know, some blood related, who were "persuaded" by "ass holes" and "threats" to their "life" to either "trade" their land for a few fiats/acre or (come on, this shit is old news) join the ranks of what appears to be your erroneous and shit take on the matter. Getting hot-action from a robo-desk shorting agri-commodities? Short the scruple, it's all the same. The few of the 200 acre-ish filthy rich farmers I know, the ones who are on food-stamps, who are WWII vets+lived thru the dust bowl/depression would love to hear your wisdoms.
asshole
Every farmer I know is filthy rich
I don't think you know the meaning of the phrase "filthy rich."
Go down the Forbes list of the richest people on Earth and come back with the percentage of "farmers" sometime.
maybe that is what he meant..
...or every farmer is filthy.
dunno...
easy way to resolve this argument : cut the corn subsidies and see who's still a "farmer" then...
Wha??? There's no "argument." haloweenie just doesn't know what "rich" means.
I don't know what "redoubtable" means, so I don't use that word. ;)
sorry sam for the confusion, response wasn't in reference to you necessarily, just following the thread.
nevertheless, filthy is in the eye of the beholder, no?
filthy is in the eye of the beholder, no?
Filthy may be, but RICH certainly isn't. Unless ya want to get all hippy-dippy philosophical and say there are "rich" workers in Chinese textiles factories because they still have their HEALTH. (Ha, ha.) I like to think we can try to share a vocabulary, though, in this environment.
Still, a $75,000/year salary (with bennies!) maybe qualifies as "rich" from the perspective of some asshole pulling his ignorant ass out of a trailer park in Alabama, so I can sympathize if there's *really* any confusion.
I never met a real live Ukrainian until I moved to NYC. Everyone has stuff to learn.
"Everyone has stuff to learn."
This is so true. I'll help you out with that confusion over the word "redoubtable". Redoubtable means "worthy of being doubted more than once." Now I'll use it in a sentence: The first time I read Eric Holder's letter to Rand Paul I doubted his sincerity, so then I read it again and redoubted him. Eric Holder is utterly redoubtable; he has drones.
Dayam, you're a real fart smella. I'm updating my rhyme sheet now...
Did you learn that on the innerwebz?
(+1)
Go ahead, cut the subsidies. I am all for it because then we get to find out who can actually feed themselves, fucking bring it!
haha, thought you'd like that one.
The probelm is DC and the only way it ever gets in line is a revolution of the people. But how many people read this type of news. Almost none in comparison to those watching Honey Boo Boo. Nobody cares is the problem
As of this weekend, Customs and Immigration staffing at cruise ports (Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale for sure) is down to two agents per ship. 2-3 thousand disembark to usually 5, 6 or more agents. Some pretty pissed cruise passengers missing connecting flights, etc.
Retards take cruises and watch TV/Hollywoods shit. No one in their right mind would take a cruise after what happened to those Carnival passengers about a month ago or Carnival's Costa lines sinking. Cruises are for morons - the ships are a giant petri dish of bacteria and feces.
OK, I confess...I DID NOT take a cruise and have no plans to. Cooped up with several thousand people - many of which I probably would nto liek and vice versa - in close quarters...nah. I picked up some people who did though. Fortunately they were not contaminated...as far as I know.
The point was...Obama's max pain initiative will get the cruise lines, air lines, and cruise passengers all whining about sequestration cuts.
Fewer customs agents might mean a good time to get yourself and PM's out of the country.
This tactic is trotted out by governments everywhere when projected increases in spending are lowered. Make cuts to the most obvious and painful items. It's a joke.
To paraphrase the great Beppo Grillo: we cannot move forward until the ENTIRE political class have been REMOVED.
Obama spent 1 million of taxpayers dollars just to go to play golf with Tiger .......I don't know what else they did down there though