Obama Should Withhold His Vacation Dollars
Instead of Obama bullying Social Security recipients who have already paid their dues, why doesn't he ask his wife to shut down her $4.5 billion Let's Move program? How about scrapping the $350 million that goes annually to Planned Parenthood? In response to nationwide cheating scandals, Education Secretary Arne Duncan should hand over that $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund.
Sound good? How about revoking UN membership and save taxpayers over $2 billion in dues? NPR's member stations raked in over $430 million from the government coffers for fiscal 2011 according to The Wall Street Journal. Weren't its executives caught on tape saying that most of the stations would survive "if federal funding was revoked?"
Next, let's declare a moratorium on Presidential vacations. The Boston Globe reported the Obamas are returning to Blue Heron Farm in Chilimark on Martha's Vineyard in mid-August. The $28 million property, owned by timber merchant and Republican donor William Van Devender, costs between $35,000 and $50,000 per week to rent.
The Obamas are expected to spend 7 to 10 days on the island in mid-to-late August, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. Arrangements for White House staff members and Secret Service personnel who travel with the Obamas already have been made.
...the Obamas like Martha's Vineyard in part because of its natural beauty, beaches and food.
"And it's someplace that the president went before he was president and likes to go back because it's a comfortable place where he can rest and recharge the batteries a little bit," Bill Burton, Obama's deputy press secretary at the time, said.
President Obama will "recharge his batteries" at an unknown cost to taxpayers (estimates are in the couple hundred thousand range depending on number of Secret Service and staff). While he's enjoying the "beauty, beaches and food" with personal staff and family, 70 million Americans may be on the phone with the electric company begging them not to turn off their lights.
The President told CBS news Tuesday evening he cannot "guarantee" that seniors, veterans and the disabled will receive their monthly funds on August 3. So while the first family relaxes on a picturesque island eating lobster and ice cream Grandma can look for day-old goods at the local food mart.
If Obama holds up their checks, Social Security recipients could take a page out of the SEIU playbook. Who can forget when the purple rabble rousing organization bussed in 700 activists to protest outside the home of a Bank of America executive back in May 2010? The group asked the bank employee to deliver a letter to the CEO which read in part, "You've created a historic mess and have been unreceptive to very polite, very formal and very consistent requests to fix the problems..."
Perhaps, piling into a bus and descending on Martha's Vineyard might be the only way for Americans to receive their hard-earned benefits. Obama has not kept his promise to curb unemployment, reduce the debt or provide more affordable healthcare. Wow. He has created "a historic mess" spending trillions to no avail. He has fomented a class struggle pitting the rich against the poor; he is decimating the middle class; and he refuses to tell the progressives "I'm sorry we just can't justify your programs right now."
Instead, the president terrorizes people that have paid into the system all of their lives. They are the same ones who earned their pay producing goods and services -- not by palling around with millionaire's kids hustling grant money.
Martha's Vineyard is a lot cooler than Crawford, Texas this time of year and regular Americans are definitely more "polite" and "formal" than SEIU thugs.
Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams Report