Bush, Giuliani and the Money-Wasting Mentality

Two things I read in the last few days put me over the top on how political insiders love to waste our money. First I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the service provided to "government dignitaries" on Air Force One and several other planes. Then I read about Rudy Giuliani using taxpayer money while he was mayor to support his extramarital trysts in the Hamptons, in what some call the Shag Fund.

I'll start with the planes. Basically, there are about 220 Air Force enlisted personnel, mostly based at Andrews Air Force Base, whose job is to provide better than First Class service to passengers on the roughly 17 "luxury planes." The 220 number does not include pilots or maintenance staff. Just flight attendants. The service includes: "plan menus, buy food and supplies, prepare meals, load luggage into the cargo hold and ... tend to powerful and demanding passengers."

One of the highlights is where a "distinguished visitor" had chosen steak or chicken, but "suddenly got a taste for salmon. So the plane radioed ahead and on a fuel stop in Ireland, attendants made a quick trip to procure salmon for 50 people." In another incident, six attendants shopped for a trip, filling "six shopping carts with everything from frozen onion rings to premade potato salad, baked beans, chicken, grapes, romaine lettuce ...."

The latter incident was for a trip for the defense secretary and former President Bush, among others, to College Station, Texas. The article doesn't give the date, but it might very well have been football season, which is about the only reason to visit College Station, the home of Texas A&M. Hmm. Gates used to work for Texas A&M. Okay, I suppose it's possible some locals had cornered a gas station attendant with some shotguns and Gates wanted to interrogate a potential Al Qaeda suspect.

It's bad enough that these socialist hacks get free flights for personal trips. But they get free flights in comfort way beyond First Class, with a staff of soldiers whose job is to pamper them. Considering the way our government has treated grunts for the past few years, Gates, Bush and Cheney should be slaving over a hot stove cooking for the troops on the ground in Iraq. That might just show they give a crap. We've got soldiers getting shot at in this stupid war started by two draft dodgers, and these idiots are spending wads of our money to fly to football games.

Enough of that. Let's turn to Rudy Giuliani and the Shag Fund. I read about it in the New York Times and many other sources. Just do a search for Shag Fund and you'll find plenty.

Anyway, this "conservative" was taking trips out to the Hamptons to visit his mistress. As part of these visits, he's got the taxpayers paying for security for him on these trips. But wait, there's more. He had aides come out to the Hamptons while he's there and their hotel is paid for by taxpayers. Rudy was also exploring a run for the US Senate, and his security detail had a number of expenses for travel to upstate New York. There were also security expenses for his then-wife, with police detectives protecting her, even on trips to California. There were even expenses for protecting his mistress.

Giuliani racked up over a million dollars in security expenses in a few years, with over $600K in 2001 alone. The auditors are still trying to track down all the spending because the expenses were hidden in various parts of the city budget.

These two stories tie together quite simply. There is a culture among the "VIP" crowd. All of this spending is appropriate in their eyes. They can't even imagine why it would be wrong. They have no sense of how much they're abusing the taxpayers. They believe they are entitled to enjoy this level of privilege.

People like Bush and Giuliani can talk a good game in a debate about being fiscal conservatives. But they sure don't deliver when it comes to how they waste our money.