Friday, October 26, 2012

A Lavish Lifestyle: A Struggling America's Haute Noblesse

The US is a nation struggling with economic uncertainty and cultural decline. While real unemployment is well above 10% and underemployment approaches 25%, America's new political nobility provides itself a lavish lifestyle in which previous president's and their families never thought to indulge.

President Obama has spent far more lavishly on White House state dinners than previous chief executives... current and former government officials said the documents obtained by The Examiner point to an unprecedented upsurge in White House spending on such events.

...A knowledgeable government official who made the documents available to The Examiner said the extravagant spending seemed unfair with so many Americans out of work.

"It just kind of takes your breath away to see the expenditure of money that has occurred since 2009," the official said.

Gary Walters, who ran presidential household operations for 21 years during Democratic and Republican administrations, before retiring in 2007, told The Examiner the costs reflected in the documents were "excessive. They are high." _Examiner
Not surprisingly, the government agency responsible for paying for these extravaganzas of the haute noblesse, is run by a US State Department official who also happens to be a business partner of the man who caters these exorbitantly costly events.

Of course, that is but one side of the story. The very costly vacations taken by the novo haute noblesse would make a billionaire blush -- if his vacations were taken at taxpayer's expense.

But to the novo haute noblesse, such costly pleasures are considered minimal perquisites, for the many duties required of them as official and unofficial figures of state. "If you cannot live well on other people's money, what good is becoming involved in government?" they are likely to ask.

And America drifts backward toward the autocratic rule which the founders of the original republic had tried to hard -- at such a high cost -- to escape. Welcome to the Idiocracy.

No comments: