The Arrogance of Change We Were Taken In By

Barack Obama and the democrats in congress kept telling the American people that passing the stimul(osaur)us bill was imperative and must be done immediatley. They kept saying that times were dire and every day was bringing the country closer and closer to an economic depression from which we might never recover. That was the reason the bill had to be passed without giving members of congress or the American people time to read the bill – to at least see what was in it. That being the case then why did Obama not sign the bill into law immediately after its passage on Friday night February 13, 2009? Why did he choose to wait until today Tuesday February 17, 2009 to sign the bill in Denver?

Obviously signing the bill was not more important than returning to Chicago for social reasons and a supposed Valentine's Day date with his wife. Obviously time was not of the essence (at least not enough) so he could make a political statement by signing the bill in front of a Colorado plant that manufactures solar panels. (Solar panels using current technology don't even make economic sense – but that is a discussion for another day).

So it got me thinking about a couple of things. In the midst of this economic crisis how much the trip was going to cost – on several levels. The following statistics come from a report prepared for representative Henry A Waxman (democrat from California) of the Committee on Government Reform.
If you read the full report at this location

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20060316113550-47530.pdf

it becomes evident Waxman's intentions were not only to try to embarrass the Bush administration, but to try to see if there was anything that might be used to prosecute that administration.

Cost of Presidential and Vice Presidential Flights Per Flight Hour

This report assumes that flight operating costs are $56,518 per hour for Air Force

One and $14,552 per hour for Air Force Two. These figures are based on the per-

hour cost figures cited by GAO for fiscal year 2000, adjusted for inflation.7

According to the Congressional Research Service, the President’s domestic travel

also involves the use of accompanying cargo planes. This report assumes one

cargo plane accompanies the President on each trip at an operating cost per hour

of $6,960. This figure is based on the per-hour cost cited by GAO for fiscal year

2000 for the C-17 cargo plane, adjusted for inflation.

Lets do some quick figuring. In the middle of the economic crisis the president Obama took a round trip flight to Chicago this past weekend and is taking a trip to Denver today. I think he is going to Phoenix after that but we will discount that here for the sake of simplicity.

Estimated round trip flight time to Chicago from Andrews AFB outside Washington, DC is
four hours. Estimated round trip flight time to Denver from Andrews is 8 hours.
So for these two trips since the bill was passed we have flight time of twelve hours

Air Force One costs 12 X $56, 518.00 = $678,216.00
Accompanying Cargo plane cost 12 X $ 6,960.00 = $ 83,520.00

Total Costs $761,736.00


This doesn't even take into account the cost of anything incurred by state and local governments for increased personnel hours for additional security, etc.

But I guess as Chuckie Schumer said in his speech last week in the senate (while he was berating republicans for not getting on board with stimul(osaur)us bill because of a few porky amendments), “Who wants to quibble over a few (hundred) million?”

Now, since president Obama is going to Denver to make a point about alternative energy usage which will reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere the next thing we need to do is calculate the carbon footprint of these two flights. Now as best as I can figure the total air miles for these two round trips is 4,128 miles. For the sake of easy figuring we will drop the insignificant 128 miles (after all that could easily be offset by a medium sized neighborhood's lighting if they replaced all their regular bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs).

From the best figures I could find for a 747 (and we will use the same figures for the C-17 cargo plane)

For every one thousand passenger miles flown calculating an average passenger load the carbon emissions equal .485 tons. If we figure (conservatively) 300 passengers per each aircraft then that would be 145.5 tons CO2 per one thousand miles flown. If we multiply that by 4 for the two round trips we come up with the total CO2 emissions for the two flights of 582 tons.

If you took the average family of 4 who drove cars that got 15 MPG (very low -darn gas hogs)driving 1,200 miles per month, recycled nothing, all ate meat, and used 1600 Kw hours of electricity per month (very high for a family of four) then the household emissions of CO2 would be just about 32 tons per year. To offset that amount the family would have to plant 134 trees per year. I estimated all usages on the very high end to be fair to Monsieur le President.

If you do the division then the two jaunts in the last five days have equaled the annual total carbon emissions of eighteen really non-green families. Multiply that by 134 and Mr. Obama and his Climechangling administration would have to plant 2,412 trees to offset the carbon emissions for a Chicago date and Denver political photo op.

As an addendum I guess Nancy Pelosi and four of her democratic house cohorts took off for Italy to meet with high ups in the Italian government and have an audience with the pope. I don't know what the hell the speaker of the house is doing engaging in activities that should be under the auspices of the State department (but don't feel bad Barack and Hillary she did the same thing in the middle east when George W was in the white house). I also am somewhat ashamed as a catholic that the pope is going to meet with a woman (who describes herself as an ardent catholic but is an ardent supporter of abortion) who has led (and won) the fight to fund – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars – abortion not only in this country but around the world. And not only is she being granted an audience with the pope but the Vatican announced because she is third in line for the presidency as Speaker of the House she will be treated as a "head of state". Shameful

But let's get back to the carbon stuff. Pelosi and pals took a government aircraft so let's assume that it was a 767 because of the transatlantic flight. Even if we scale back the emissions to one-half (low) of the 747 due to two engines instead of four and lets say an average passenger load of 200 (low) it would still come out to a total 48.4 tons per one thousand miles flown by the plane. Multiply this by nine (round trip between DC and Rome is 9000 air miles) and you get 435. 6 tons of carbon emissions for the trip to beautiful Roma on business she shouldn't even be doing. Divide that by our non-green family standard of 32 tons per year and we'll round down to the carbon output of 13 families. That would mean planting 1,742 trees to offset the trip.

Between Obama and Pelosi Al Gore's companies are going to have to clear a slum somewhere around San Jose, Costa Rica or Rio to make room for all those offset tree plantings – 4,154.

Now as to the cost of the trip – I'll be generous and cut the airplane operating cost by forty percent – making it $33,910 per hour. The round trip flight hours from DC to Rome would be about nineteen. That would make the total cost of the flight $644,290.00. Knowing the cost of first class accommodations and first class food in Italy then figuring in local transportation I think we can say $1,000.00 per day per person is in the ballpark. (The aircrew is probably staying at Aviano so we'll let their per diem slide). So five people would be $5,000.00 per day times five days would be $25,000.00 bringing the grand total to $669,290.00 for the trip.

Add that to Barack's hops and the taxpayers get to pay a bill for $1,431,026.00 for a five day period that accomplished nothing in the way of the people's business - nothing. Still I am sure our friend Chuckie Schumer would call this “chump change”.



But again it's all just about the intellectual arrogance of politicians. Do as I say not as I do because what I am doing is so important I can ignore the rules I tell you to live by.