Friday, March 8, 2013

A Note To The Granddaughters: Closing the White House to Tours Due To Financial Hardship; 2% Cut in Spending

Updates

March 13, 2013: something does not ring true here. I would assume protecting the president is pretty high on the list of federal priorities. But the 2% federal spending cut -- due to the sequester -- means that the Secret Service had to furlough some folks. And by furloughing those folks, they had to cancel White House tours.

Then, on top of that, the president of the most powerful nation in the world does not have the "power" or authority, to either a) exempt the Secret Service; b) find other places to make the spending cuts; or, c) direct that White House tours will continue, though perhaps limiting them to five days/week rather than six. Something does not ring true here. The Weekly Standard is reporting:

President Obama says he's not the one who canceled the White House tours. He made the comments in an interview with ABC News.
"[O]ne more question about the spending cuts," said the interviewer from ABC News. "You’ve been takin’ a lotta heat for this cancellation of the White House tours. They get– the Secret Service says it’s costs about $74,000 a week. Was canceling them really necessary?"
"You know, I have to say this was not– a decision that went up to the White House. But th– what the Secret Service explained to us was that they’re gonna have to furlough some folks. What furloughs mean is– is that people lose a day of work and a day of pay," Obama said, in response.
"And, you know, the question for them is, you know, how deeply do they have to furlough their staff and is it worth it to make sure that we’ve got White House tours that means that you got a whole bunch of families who are depending on a paycheck who suddenly are seein’––a 5% or 10%– reduction in their pay. Well, what I’m asking them is are there ways, for example, for us to accommodate school groups– you know, who may have traveled here with some bake sales. Can we make sure that– kids, potentially, can– can still come to tour?"
Wanna bet the tours are back on by the end of summer?

March 10, 2013: There may not be enough money in the budget for White House tours, but there is apparently more than enough money for a 50th bash for vegan Michelle.

March 9, 2013: I just got back from watching Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Wow. It truly puts Obama's decision to close the White House to his fellow Americans in perspective. Wow, wow, wow.

Original Post

My younger granddaughter is working on synonyms and adjectives.

Arbitrary. Capricious. Mean. Petty. Short-sighted. Presidential. Unfortunate. Bizarre. Unthinking. Bunkeresque. Miserly. Idiotic. (We don't allow the granddaughters to use the word "stupid.")

The adjective I like best for this decision: audacity.

Mandatory 2% cut in spending at the White House resulted in only one change: White House tours canceled. Just in time for spring visits by school children.

The link is to a mainstream media outlet. It is not a link to a far-right fringe website. It was Bloomberg that noted that: the only change at the White House with the mandatory 2% spending cut: cancel White House tours.

One wonders what sophomoric staffer came up with that idea.

Someone noted that even during the darkest hours of the republic (an oft-cited cliche), President Abraham Lincoln kept the White House open during the Civil War. I suppose this will go down as another first for this president: closes "America's house to Americans.

I wasn't going to post this link, and then I saw the picture of the Waverly, Iowa, elementary students holding up a sign asking Mr Obama to reconsider.

My hunch is those Waverly, Iowa, students are learning some new adjectives and synonyms today, also. "Stinker" comes to mind.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

It is another coincidence that I am reading the final chapters of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. In the epilogue, Philbrick notes:
With the outbreak of the Civil War a few years later, the public need for a restorative myth of national origins became even more ardent, and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln established the holiday of Thanksgiving -- a cathartic celebration of nationhood that wold have baffled and probably appalled the godly Pilgrims.
Be that as it may, the fact that President Lincoln found a way to raise the spirits of Americans during the Civil War speaks volumes and speaks volumes why Lincoln will never be forgotten as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, presidents ever. When one reads that passage after reading the story of the Mayflower, the Pilgrims, the Pokanokets, King Philip's War as told by Philbrick, one just knows that Abraham Lincoln never, never would have closed the White House to Americans.

Wow, the more one thinks about that single act ... a sad day for America. I wonder if this is the first time the White House has been closed for purely financial reasons?

4 comments:

  1. 1. The mandatory 2% spending cuts necessitated this move, to close the White House to tours. This is not a big deal. Bringing up President Lincoln is another one of your "hey, look, over there" tactics.

    2. The employment numbers have improved immensely; the President should be proud. The Gallup poll suggesting 18% under-employment is contrived. Unemployment for teenagers of 25% is just one of those sad facts of life, and was just as bad under President Bush. No one said life was fair.

    3. All Bakken All The Time?

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  2. As Drudge noted, flashback: 54 Christmas trees at the White House.

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  3. The West Wing is getting totally renovated over the next two years. The Oval Office will due it's duties from the same building that the Vice President works out of. That might, might, have something to do with the lack of tours.

    Let's not pretend that ridiculous presidential spending started with Obama, The New Empire of Debt is a great book that covers the monster we've grown into. The opening of the book talks about by the Clinton and Bush years how many resources were thrown at a simple presidential visit.

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    Replies
    1. You are entirely correct about presidential spending and waste.

      What bothers me is this: his decision to close White House tours was said to be due to the sequester, nothing else. That was a capricious and arbitrary decision with no basis in fact. The cost of the tours was borne by Homeland Security, not the White House.

      In addition to being arbitrary and capricious, it had the feel of coming from an "angry" man who is miffed when he does not get his way.

      I admired Reagan, Clinton, Bush II because of their friendly, "let's work together" personalities to solve these problems.

      There was a nice story yesterday that even his party feels the president's refusal to compromise has gotten worse since the election (and that's only been a few months).

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