July 2, 2009 9:30am
And like the lady that I used to work with would say, “What’s wrong with being black?”
Remember the congressional hearings on the troubles of the big three automakers? Do you recall how Members of Congress showed disdain for the CEOs that testified? Many in Congress were upset because all the CEOs traveled to Washington in private corporate jets. They complained that these CEOs came to DC begging for a public handout while wasting tens of thousands of dollars on the private planes.
Well guess what Congress is doing while the US goes bankrupt? They’re traveling around the world on our dime. In fact congressional spending on private travel has doubled in just the past two years since Democrats took over the House.
All this and more can be found in a column written by Brody Mullins and T.W. Farnam in today’s Wall Street Journal. I’ve included an excerpt of it below, and you can read the rest of the article here.
‘In mid-June, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii) led a group of a half-dozen senators and their spouses on a four-day trip to France for the biennial Paris Air Show. An itinerary for the event shows that lawmakers flew on the Air Force’s version of the Boeing 737, which costs $5,700 an hour to operate. They stayed at the Intercontinental Paris Le Grand Hotel, which advertises rooms from $460 a night.
The lawmakers were invited to a dinner party at the U.S. Embassy and had cocktails at a private party at the Eiffel Tower. Mr. Inouye attended a dinner sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association, a U.S. trade group. Another senator on the trip, Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, took a cruise on the River Seine with defense-industry executives and elected officials from Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
Mr. Inouye and Mr. Shelby declined to comment.
Often, lawmakers combine trips to war zones with visits to more tranquil spots. In February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Democratic lawmakers to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a day. Before landing in Kabul, the eight lawmakers and their entourage of spouses and aides spent eight days in Italy, spending $57,697 on hotels and meals.
A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi says that she was working in Italy, meeting with U.S. troops at Aviano Air Base, laying a wreath at the Florence American Cemetery, giving a speech to Italian lawmakers and visiting the Pope, among other things.’
This all goes back to the question of why big business was blamed for all the economic mess that we are in right now, and government, which is just as culpable in our current situation, gets a pass. The mainstream media loves to look at big business with a jaundiced eye, but when it comes to looking at the workings of Congress, the media puts on the rose-colored glasses.
Wake up people!!
Here’s one of my all time favorite slow songs, John Conlee singing Rose-Colored Glasses. I couldn’t find the video because its from ‘79, but here’s the song anyway.
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I came here via a link left in comments section at Gateway Pundit. Thanks for the link. I’ll definitely be visiting this site again.
About the skeezers in WA and their hypocrisy, their mad, corrupt spending doesn’t mean it was okay for the auto execs to spend wildly while at the same time asking for a handout from the taxpayers. The whole damned bunch of them – the auto execs and the crooks on The Hill – have screwed us over and should be fired. It’s absurd that their employers – us! – should be in unemployment lines because our employees, who still have their jobs, robbed us.
Thanks for the input. I couldn’t agree more with you!!