The Obama family costs taxpayers more than every
European royal house put together.
By Mark Steyn
From the New York Daily News:
“Snooki Gives Kate Middleton Advice on Being a New Parent.”
Great! Maybe Kate could return the favor and give Snooki and her
fellow Americans some advice. About fiscal prudence, for example. Say
what you like about a high-living, big-spending, bloated, decadent,
parasitical, wastrel monarchy, but, compared to the citizen-executive of
a republic of limited government, it’s a bargain. So, while the lovely
Duchess of Cambridge nurses her baby bump, the equally radiant president
of the United States nurses his ever more swollen debt belly. He and
his family are about to jet off on their Christmas vacation to watch
America slide off the fiscal cliff from the luxury beach resort of
Kailua. The cost to taxpayers of flying one man, his wife, two
daughters, and a dog to Hawaii is estimated at $3,639,622. For purposes
of comparison, the total bill for flying the entire royal family (Queen,
princes, dukes, the works) around the world for a year is £4.7 million —
or about enough for two Obama vacations.
According to the USAF, in 2010 Air Force One cost American taxpayers
$181,757 per flight hour. According to the Royal Canadian Air Force, in
2011 the CC-150 Polaris military transport that flew William and Kate
from Vancouver to Los Angeles cost Her Majesty’s Canadian subjects
$15,505 per hour — or about 8/100ths of the cost.
Unlike a republic, monarchy in a democratic age means you can’t go
around queening it. That RCAF boneshaker has a shower the size of a
phone booth, yet the Duchess of Cambridge looked almost as glamorous as
Snooki when she emerged onto the steps at LAX. That’s probably because
Canada’s 437 Squadron decided to splash out on new bedding for the royal
tour. Amanda Heron was dispatched to the local mall in Trenton,
Ontario, and returned with a pale blue and white comforter and matching
pillows. Is there no end to the grotesque indulgence of these
over-pampered royal deadbeats? “I found a beautiful set,” said
Master-Corporal Heron. “It was such a great price I bought one for
myself.”
Nevertheless, Canadian journalists and politicians bitched and whined
about the cost of this disgusting jet-set lifestyle nonstop throughout
the tour. At the conclusion of their official visit to California, Their
Royal Highnesses flew on to Heathrow with their vast entourage of, er,
seven people — and the ingrate whining Canadians passed the baton to
their fellow ingrate whiners across the Atlantic. As the Daily Mail in London reported,
“High Fliers: Prince William and his wife Kate spend an incredible
£52,000 on the one-way flight from LA to London for themselves and their
seven-strong entourage.” Incredible! For £52,000, you couldn’t take the
president from Washington to a state visit to an ice-cream parlor in a
Maryland suburb. Obama flew Air Force One from Washington to
Williamsburg, Va., requiring a wide-bodied transatlantic jet that holds
500 people to ferry him a distance of a little over 100 miles. And,
unlike their British and Canadian counterparts, the American media are
entirely at ease with it.
Just for the record, William and Kate actually spent an “incredible”
£51,410 — or about $80,000 — for nine business-class tickets on British
Airways to Heathrow. At the check-in desk at Los Angeles, BA graciously
offered the Duke and Duchess an upgrade to first class. By now you’re
probably revolted by this glimpse of disgusting monarchical excess, so,
if it’s any consolation, halfway through the flight the cabin’s
entertainment consoles failed and, along with other first-class
passengers, Their Highnesses were offered a £200 voucher toward the cost
of their next flight, which they declined.
By contrast, in a republic governed by “we, the people,” when the
president of the United States wishes to watch a film, there are two
full-time movie projectionists who live at the White House and are on
call round the clock, in case he’s overcome by a sudden urge to watch
Esther Williams in Dangerous When Wet (1953) at two in the
morning. Does one of them accompany the first family on Air Force One?
If the movie fails halfway across the Pacific, will the president and
first lady each be offered a $2 million voucher in compensation?
In his recent book "Presidential Perks Gone Royal,"
Robert Keith Gray, a former Eisenhower staffer, revealed that last year
the U.S. presidency cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion. Over the same
period, the entire royal family cost British taxpayers about $57
million. There’s nothing “royal” about the current level of
“presidential perks”: The Obama family costs taxpayers more than every
European royal house put together.
In the American republic, even the dogs cost more. The Queen is a
famous corgi lover and has been breeding them since she was a young
girl. Now in her late 80s she’s slowing down and only keeps four. The
president has one pooch, a photo-op accessory called Bo, who unlike the
corgis requires a full-time handler. In contrast to the stingy
remuneration offered by the royal household, the presidential dog-walker
is one of 226 White House staff earning over $100,000 a year. For many
centuries, the King had a courtier whose somewhat intimate duties were
reflected in his title: the Groom of the Stool, a position abolished in
1559. Now, after two and a third centuries, the American presidency has
evolved to the point that it has a full-time six-figure Groom of the
Canine Stool. Will he be accompanying the president on Air Force One to
liaise with the Keeper of the Privy Flatscreen over screenings of Lassie?
In 2003, the advance team for President Bush informed Buckingham
Palace that he would only be able to stay there if they took out all the
windows and replaced them with blast-proof glass. The Queen, keeping a
straight face, politely refused, and the president was forced to spend
three nights in an insecure palace. Happily, in Hawaii, the
flood-the-zone “security” can proceed unimpeded by cheeseparing monarchs
who feel the job of head of state entails assuming a modest amount of
risk or at least a passing acquaintance with reality. So local residents
who will never catch a glimpse of their hermetically sealed-off sultan
are expected to put up with walled-off neighborhoods, closed beaches,
and residential streets clogged by 40-car motorcades. The Secret Service
is installed in luxury hotels, no doubt with their Colombian hookers,
and their hookers’ Colombian glaziers, fresh from installing bombproof
windows on Bo’s kennel.
The fish rots from the head down, and so do republics. A $1.4-billion
president has a defense secretary with a private plane to fly him home
every weekend, and a chair of the “White House Council on Women and
Girls” with her own Secret Service detail, and all of them ever more
detached from the rhythms of American life. In the wake of the Cartagena
hooker scandal, the Secret Service with predictable obtuseness imposed a
new rule prohibiting agents from having “foreign nationals” in their
rooms. The salient fact surely wasn’t that they were “foreign” but that
they were hookers. Yet now, at the luxury Moana Surfrider resort, Obama
staffers passing through the lobby and bumping into minor princesses and
arch-duchesses staying in the cheap rooms on the lower floors won’t
even be able to ask them up to their federally mandated ocean-view
suites for tips on deficit reduction. In the Brokest Nation in History,
it would be unreasonable to expect the president to pretend to have a
regular all-American family Christmas for less than five million bucks.
As Ben Franklin famously said: “A republic, if you can keep it in the style to which it’s become accustomed.”
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn
Back in 2010 when The Muffin, David Cameron, and 11 of his ministers flew to Washington to meet President Obama for talks about the global economy, THEY flew business class on British Airways with the hoi polloi. 12 round trip business class tickets from London to DC costs around $50,361.08 or 27.71% of what Americans pay to operate Air Force One for ONE FLIGHT HOUR. - Sophie
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