“TRICKLE-DOWN SLEAZE”
by Paul R. Hollrah, ©2012
(Apr. 27, 2012) — Sir James Porter’s Observations on the religion, law, government, and manners of the Turks, published in 1768, tells us, “The Turks have a homely proverb… they say ‘the fish stinks first at the head,’ meaning that, if the servant is disorderly, it is because the master is so.”
How could the Turks have known about Barack Obama so many centuries before he was born?
From the day he announced his intention to seek the presidency, we knew that Obama was just another Democratic political thug from the streets of South Chicago with no more background and experience for the presidency than the average man on the street. And now, just three years into his faux presidency, we find that he has fostered a culture of corruption that could only have been conceived at the feet of Marxist mentors, polished as a Saul Alinsky community organizer, and honed to a fine edge in the corrupt precincts of Chicago Democratic politics.
In recent days the Obama brand of corruption has been exemplified by the serious misbehavior of a White House advance team in Cartagena, Colombia, as they made preparations for Obama’s participation in a regional summit conference. More than a dozen members of his Secret Service advance team and 10 military personnel were recalled for excessive drinking and for consorting with prostitutes. Several Secret Service personnel have been either discharged or suspended.
In recent weeks we’ve learned of profligate spending by top officials of the General Services Administration (GSA). The scandal focused principally on the agency’s 2010 conference in Las Vegas. Reports indicate that the GSA spent around $830,000 in taxpayer funds on the three-day internal conference. One GSA official allegedly paid the special $93 government rate for an additional night’s stay in his $1,000 room, but then charged taxpayers for the full amount and pocketed the difference. Three senior officials have been fired, including GSA Administrator Martha N. Johnson, and five others have been suspended. Fifty GSA employees received $500 to $1,000 bonuses for their role in planning the conference.
Since moving into the White House in January 2009, the Obamas have demonstrated a total lack of “class,” taking advantage of their position much like a group of unsupervised teenagers with a no-limit credit card and the keys to the family car.
For example, in August 2010, Michelle Obama, daughter Sasha, and 40 “close friends” spent four days at the Hotel Villa Padierna on Spain’s Costa del Sol, where they occupied 60 or 70 rooms at a cost of $500 to $2,500 a night, each. According to a report by Judicial Watch, taxpayers picked up a $199,323 tab for the use of an Air Force 757 aircraft (Air Force Two), $26,670 for a chauffeur-driven tour of the Costa del Sol, and $50,078 for a tour planner. Housing costs came to approximately $95,000 for some 70 security personnel, plus the cost of transporting a dozen or more automobiles for the First Lady’s motorcade. The total tab picked up by taxpayers for Michelle’s four-day vacation came to approximately $500,000.
Andrea Tartaros, writing in The New York Daily News, referred to the First Lady as a “modern-day Marie Antoinette.”
In March 2012, the Obamas sent their 13-year-old daughter, Malia, a student at Washington’s Sidwell Friends School, on a class trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, escorted by 25 Secret Service agents. Within hours of the first mention of the trip by Politico and the Huffington Post, White House operatives were on the phones and all details of the trip were scrubbed from the Internet.
No president in history has spent as much time traveling on official business, on partisan political junkets, and on vacations. At an estimated cost of $181,757 per flight HOUR… plus the cost of transporting the Marine One helicopter, bullet-proof limos, the Secret Service, and local police overtime… Obama has spent at least $100 million flying around on Air Force One, plus another $100 million transporting his enormous entourage. According to Mark Knoller of CBS, during calendar year 2010 alone, Obama made 65 domestic trips over 104 days and six trips to eight foreign countries over 22 days… plus six vacation trips over 32 days.
The only thing that would make Obama’s appearance more appropriate to his extravagant lifestyle is a change of fashion. If it is true that “clothes make the man,” then what he needs in order to make an honest fashion statement are some pastel-shade polyester suits, white patent leather shoes, a white leather belt, and a heavy gold watch chain.
Now, as Republicans appear to have decided on who will have the honor of being November’s “Exterminator in Chief,” the American people are made aware of just how closely the Obama administration has duplicated the methodology of Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich.
In a recently discovered speech by EPA Region VI Administrator, Al Armendariz, we are given a rare glimpse inside the hearts and minds of those whom Obama has chosen to assist him in his goal of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” In a videotaped speech, Armendariz described his “general philosophy” toward regulating the oil industry under the Obama administration. He explained, “It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years… It’s a deterrent factor.”
In the weeks and months after Armendariz explained the Obama administration’s approach to environmental enforcement, the EPA initiated smear campaigns against natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming, insinuating that the new hydraulic fracturing technology used by natural gas producers resulted in water contamination… a claim that has been found to be totally without merit. And while Armendariz has been forced to apologize for his intemperate remarks, when considered in context with the administration’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking project, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds, they were not especially cruel or brutal.
Was the appointment of Mr. Armendariz a fluke, a simple mistake? Not likely. From what we
know of the Obama administration’s hiring criteria, he is quite typical. To quote Vice President
Joe Biden, “Way back in the transition period, before we were sworn in, when Barack Obama and I were literally sitting at a desk in a high rise in Chicago, beginning the plan on how we would try to get this economy out of a ditch, literally, the first guy I called was (former Senator, former New Jersey Governor) Jon Corzine. It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke. First of all, he’s the smartest guy I know in terms of the economy and on finance, and I really mean that.”
Now, just over three years later, federal investigators are still trying to find some $1.2 billion of depositor funds that Corzine “misplaced” while serving as CEO of MF Global.
Is it any wonder that, when the man at the top of the power structure is so without honor, so without redeeming values, the men and women of the rank-and-file, the peons of the Obama administration, would also feel it’s okay to behave like college kids on spring break and to squander taxpayers funds willy-nilly?
As Inauguration Day approached in January 2009, one wondered how the non-political White House staff would react to Obama. Would they show him the same level of respect they’d shown Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush? Would the members of the president’s Marine detachment choose to serve an illegitimate president, or would they request transfers to other duty… such as combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Is there a serviceman or a veteran alive who does not cringe every time they see news film of Obama bounding down the steps of Marine One on the south lawn of the White House, while the young Marine standing at the foot of the steps comes to attention and salutes him? How will those young Marines ever explain to their children and grandchildren the shame they felt each time they saluted Barack Obama, a man who masqueraded as commander in chief of U.S. Military forces, while lacking the personal courage to ever wear a U.S. military uniform?
What is critically important, but what is being totally glossed-over in the mainstream media… including Fox News… is the extent to which lack of respect for Obama within Secret Service, FBI, and active duty military ranks has contributed to a general breakdown in morale, good order, and discipline. Is it even a remote possibility that Secret Service agents and White House military personnel would have drunk to excess and consorted with prostitutes while advancing an overseas mission for Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush or George W. Bush? The answer is no; it would have been unthinkable.
It comes as no surprise that it took the bogus Obama Administration, which soils everything it touches, to soil the reputation of the Secret Service, a squeaky-clean organization whose motto has always been, until now, “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.”
So let me be among the first to suggest that it is, in fact, a lack of respect for Obama within military and civilian ranks that has led to the many scandals that now wrack his administration. Just as Ronald Reagan’s “trickle down” economics gave the American people the greatest period of economic growth in the past century, providing both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton with an era of full employment and near-zero inflation, Barack Obama’s “trickle down” sleaze will make the Obama experiment of 2008 our nation’s most dangerous historic gamble. As the Turks understood, a fish does rot from the head.
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Editor’s Note: The Post & Email reported on Malia Obama’s trip to Mexico, was not asked by the White House to remove the story, nor would we have done so had we been asked. We also archived articles published on other websites about the topic.