Articles: When a Royal Invalid Comes to Town

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The term “public servant” is an absurd juxtaposition of words. Any encounter with law enforcement, the DMV, a building inspector, animal control, code enforcement, school-board official, tax agent, or nearly every other government operative leaves little doubt who is pubic and who is servant. To utter “public servant” to imply an obedient government is to utter nonsense.

At the apex of government, the notion of “public servant” breaks the boundaries of the nonsensical and approaches the Kafkaesque, where the royal invalids – the president, his wife, and the vice president – reside. No price is too high, no cost too onerous to ensure these rarefied individuals live lives as frictionless as possible.

In Free to Choose, Milton and Rose Friedman explicate four spending categories: 1) spend your money on yourself, 2) spend your money on someone else, 3) spend someone else's money on you, 4) spend someone else's money on someone else. Government at all level excels at category four. Who other than someone who couldn't give a damn would spend $2.6 million to encourage Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly?

Mastering category three, though, is the gateway to Cockaigne. This is what the government bureaucrat strives toward, and Cockaigne is what the royal invalids have achieved: Every need is attended to, every beck-and-call answered. They are the sociopaths with an endless line of credit they need not repay.
  
Unbridled profligacy is on full display when a royal invalid rolls into town. Just pondering the security entourage, per diem per entourage member, operational cost of the tricked-out jet, operational cost of the supporting military jet that carries the motorcade, and the operational cost of the motorcade itself, it's easy to conjure a lot of money spent, and it's likely more than you conjure.

In a response to Judicial Watch, the Air Force acknowledged that it costs $210,877 per hour to fly Air Force One, as it pertained President Obama's July 2014 trip to Denver. The Air Force's number accounted for fuel, flight consumables, depot level repairables, aircraft overhaul, engine overhaul, and nothing more. Judicial Watch received a log of the trip, which showed 3.3 hours. Multiply 3.3 hours by the hourly rate and the tally comes to $695,894.

But 3.3 hours is only one way. The president has to eventually return to Washington D.C., so the round trip tallies to $1.39 million. Keep in mind, these costs relate to Air Force One only; none of the ancillary costs are factored in.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/when_a_royal_invalid_comes_to_town.html#ixzz3EzdzHtgL
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