TRIPS, CONFERENCES, CLOWNS…AND WHAT ELSE?
by Sharon Rondeau
(Apr. 12, 2012) — The head of the General Services Administration submitted a resignation letter on April 9, 2012, following news that her agency had spent close to $1,000,000 in taxpayer dollars on a conference in Las Vegas in October 2010 after Obama himself had recommended that Americans avoid the same location for economic reasons.
Two other high-level employees were fired and four placed on administrative leave.
In February 2010, Obama had said, ““You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritise. You make tough choices.”
Obama’s wife and daughters reportedly visited Las Vegas at the end of March on a “private family trip.” While one report about their sojourn now yields a “404 error” message, another written by a different news source is still available. A third reports that during “spring break,” “The Obama Women are in Vegas” and would then proceed to California. However, the week before that, on “spring break,” Malia Obama was in Mexico, where Americans have been warned not to travel. Reports of the trip were removed from the internet at the request of a White House spokesman.
The Washington Post is calling the GSA leadership exodus “a collapse” and an “embarrasment” for Obama.
Last June Michelle Obama, her daughters, mother and two nieces traveled to South Africa, during which daughters Malia and Sasha wrapped themselves in the South African flag. Judicial Watch, a public advocacy legal organization, stated that the trip cost taxpayers more than $400,000. Michelle Obama has been called a “Modern-Day Marie Antoinette” after her trip to Spain with one of her daughters, billed as another “private trip” by then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
Obama has vacationed on Cape Cod, where a “political historian” gushed over the family’s anticipated arrival last year; Aspen, CO for a skiing vacation; and Hawaii for Christmas vacation, the most recent trip there costing taxpayers $4,000,000.
Democrat Senator Richard Durbin has called the Las Vegas conference “absolutely outrageous” amid plans for House and Senate committees to schedule hearings on the spending.
A Hawaii employee of the GSA has recently “joked” about excessive government spending after winning a contest called “Top Hats” which provided “cash in reward points for about $200,000 in taxpayer funded giftcards, electronics and iPods.”
The purpose of the GSA is to “develop policies intended to minimize the cost of doing business with the federal government.”
Martha Johnson, who resigned on Monday, did not attend the Las Vegas conference, opting instead to go to Portland, OR to observe a training program “that taught women new job skills with stimulus money.” The stimulus bill cost an estimated $787 billion and was reportedly aimed at lowering unemployment, which currently is reported at 8.3% the Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that the recession which began late in Bush’s last term ended in “June 2009.”
The Obama regime placed Joe Biden in charge of reducing government spending last June, the same month Michelle and her relatives traveled to South Africa. Spending by government is currently estimated at 24% of the economy.
Obama awarded a loan in the amount of $535,000,000 to a now-bankrupt Solyndra out of “stimulus” money. The national debt has risen to $15.566 trillion under Obama, who may be guilty of identity fraud and constitutional ineligibility to hold the office of the president.
In a campaign statement, Obama said, “The gap between those at the very, very top and everybody else keeps growing wider and wider and wider and wider.” Today Obama has been “hammered” for taking vacations and being “out of touch” regarding Americans’ suffering from the current economic conditions.