PrintAugust 2, 2008
Pelosi Jets out of Town Leaving Energy Bill Hanging
As Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats jetted out of town negligently neglecting to deal with the urgent energy situation I'm reminded of the unseemly scandal over her use of military jets that erupted shortly after she was sworn in as Speaker of the House.
Pelosi demanded that the military ferry her around in an airliner-based executive jet. Until, 9/11 a military transport was not made available to the Speaker. For security reasons the Pentagon began to make a Gulfs
tream G 550 available to then Speaker Dennis Hastert. The story, originally broken by Washington Times in early February 2007, became fodder for Republicans to paint Pelosi as an elitist hypocrite especially after proclaiming that global warming the most grave threat to the planet.
Predictably, the drive-by-media circled the wagons with stories mocking the Republicans for making an issue of it and perpetuating the lie that the plane Hastert used did not have enough range to fly to California. Her hometown paper the San Fransisco Chronicle took the lead writing the false narrative.
Picked up by among others the Los Angeles Times and NPR, the stories falsely reported that G 550 did not have the range to fly from Washington to San Fransisco, a distance of 2442 miles.
In fact the G 550 has a range of 6300 miles, enough to fly non-stop from Washington DC to Tokyo Japan.
The fact challenged Los Angeles Times wrote that G 550 "requires ideal weather conditions to make the cross-country trip without stopping to refuel." and that the "military passenger plane that can make the flight in any weather and also provide the communications necessary to stay in contact with the White House is the bigger and costlier C-40 – described by the Air Force as an “office in the sky” with beds, two galleys and business-class seating."
Ideal weather? Ha that's a bunch of baloney. VIP transport including operation of Air Force One is carried out by the Air Force's 89th Airlift Wing.
With costs exceeding $12,000 an hour to fly a 737, a round trip to San Fransisco costs the taxpayers 120,000. The 89th air wing has an active duty strength of more than 1,100 personell. This equates to a payroll of more than 180 million and that does not include contractors.
As someone said recently, they're spend money like drunken sailors -- except at least drunken sailors spend their own money.
