Thread: Wasting more taxpayer money

Obama Goes to Africa, Finally
George E. Condon Jr. 21 hours ago

When President Obama makes his long-awaited trip to sub-Saharan Africa this week, he will be welcomed by crowds eager to show love for this son returning to his father’s land. But as genuine as that affection may be, it will be trumped by the palpable disappointment Africans feel over his detachment and disengagement with their continent.

The president arrives in Senegal Wednesday night, beginning the second-longest foreign trip of his presidency, one that will take him from the infamous slavery debarkation point in West Africa to the economic powerhouse of South Africa.

It also will bring him to Tanzania in East Africa, where Chinese investment in mining has risen dramatically – one of the many places across the continent where Beijing’s role and influence can be both seen and felt.

Indeed, before returning to Washington, Obama aims to signal that the United States is not going to leave China, India, and Brazil unchallenged on trade and investment in Africa.

He also plans to hail burgeoning democratic movements, appeal to the high percentage of the population that is under 25, and, in unquestionably the saddest part of the trip, pay tribute to the legacy of Nelson Mandela as the South African leader nears death.

But, overshadowing the specifics of his itinerary is the African fascination with how long it has taken for the grandson of Onyango and Habiba Akumu Obama of Kenya, the son of Barack Hussein Obama Sr., to come to his ancestral home for a high-level visit. They know that he visited as a senator and they know that he made a 22-hour stopover in Ghana in 2009. But they expected much more. At the least, they expected as much White House attention from Obama as they had received from George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The White House says the president had hoped to pay more attention to a region with 1.3 billion potential customers for American goods, and a continent with bases that play a role in counterterrorism operations. But, administration officials say, he hasn’t found time.

“Frankly, Africa is a place that we had not yet been able to devote significant presidential time and attention to,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said last week.

Rhodes spoke of “the importance of our commitment to this region” and said Obama’s trip should be “a very important signal for the president to send that we take this region very seriously.”

Africans need to be persuaded, after what many of them see as more than four years on the American diplomatic back burner.

“On the policy side, Africans have been largely disappointed,” said Mwangi Kimenyi, the founding executive director of the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, and now an Africa expert at the Brookings Institution.

Looking at all the high-level attention from China, Brazil, Turkey, and other competitors, he said, “They have a feeling that President Obama is still not in tune with the emerging continent.”

Obama also suffers among Africans who compare him unfavorably to his two predecessors. “Most of the Africa-U.S. relationship today is defined by the Clinton and Bush programs,” Kimenyi said, adding, “Africans still consider Clinton their president.... He is a hero, even today. I don’t think President Obama is going to approach the level of President Clinton at all in terms of respect.”

Jennifer Cooke, a veteran of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa who is now director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there was “euphoria’ in Africa at Obama’s election. In part, that was because of his African heritage. But it also was because they thought he would build on the momentum of Clinton and Bush.

But then, when Obama took office, she said, “There was a sense of stall.” Africa, she said, "just seemed to fall away in terms of excitement, energy, and momentum.”

Witney Schneidman, who was Clinton’s deputy assistant secretary of State for African affairs, blamed the inattention on the economic crises that demanded Obama’s time in the first term, as well as on the political realities that came with the “birther” controversy.

But with Obama staying away and rarely talking about Africa, the contrast with a more assertive China became acute. By Kimenyi’s count, the Chinese president and vice president have visited 30 African countries in the last five years. President Xi Jinping has visited 17 African countries, while Obama as president has been to only one sub-Saharan country. (Adding Egypt to the Ghana visit, his count for the whole continent rises to two.)

“When I travel in Africa, I frequently hear, ‘Where are the Americans?’” said Schneidman. “China’s there. Bill’s there. Everybody’s there.” He said Africans hope “this trip begins to sort of reverse that” and that the programs Obama addresses during the trip "provide the underpinning for a deeper engagement.”

No one expects this trip to mark the launch of any major initiatives, at least nothing on the same scale as what Clinton and Bush championed in their trips to Africa, said J. Stephen Morrison, who started the Africa Program at CSIS and now heads the Global Health Policy Center there.

“It’s more a matter of stewardship and reengagement,” he said, with Obama’s main message this week being, “Yes, we care, and we’re coming back.”

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-goes-afr...060030944.html

100 million trip to Africa. $450K Warsaw tab. Almost $670K Moscow Hotel Bill. Americans are struggling financially, but not to worry. Obama and Biden are still living the high life on the taxpayer dime.

http://bit.ly/10rnrDB

High Cost of VIP Travel: Biden's $665,545 Hotel Bill in Moscow,
Obama's $450,000 Warsaw Tab
In Copenhagen, $430,285.70 for hotel and $200,629 for limousines.
June 29, 2013 • By JERYL BIER

The Washington Times reports that the cost of Obama's Africa trip, estimated as high as $100 million, is overshadowing President Obama's agenda. If past VIP trips are any indication, lodging and local transportation would represent only a fraction of the $100 million, yet those costs would likely still dwarf those of the average citizen traveling abroad. In late March, Vice President Joe Biden's $321,000 limo bill and $585,000 Paris hotel bill for his trip to Europe earlier this year were revealed.

While the amounts spent were deemed fairly ordinary by government insiders, the fact that the closely-held information was found on a publicly available government website had some speculating that perhaps the postings had been inadvertent. Wolf Blitzer, who spent seven years reporting from the White House, even called it "an extremely rare glimpse." However, further investigation has revealed that the information is not as rare as previously supposed.

For example, Vice President Biden's trip to Moscow in 2011. The contract was awarded to the Moscow Ritz-Carlton on February 24, 2011 and , according to the accompanying Justification and Approval (J&A), the estimated cost for 1,778 room nights was $665,545. As has been noted before, contracts for travel for high level government officials are not subject to the same requirements for competitive bidding as other government contracts due to security concerns:



The vice president's visit to Moscow lasted two days and was said to focus on economic issues and missile defense concerns.

Although Vice President Biden's foreign travel costs have received most of the attention lately, some details for at least two of President Obama's trips from his first term are available online. The first was a trip to Warsaw, Poland in May 2011. The J&A estimated the cost for 2,114 lodging room/nights at the Warsaw Marriott at $450,000. Due to the special needs of the president and his entourage, the costs included extras such as "Removal and storage of furniture from standard rooms":



The stop in Poland was part of a week-long swing through Europe that included stays in Ireland, Great Britain, and France. Details of lodging arrangements for the other stops on the trip were not available The president spent one night in Warsaw.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...ab_738138.html

What are the Obamas Doing in Africa?
by Joel B. Pollak 30 Jun 2013

President Barack Obama's trip to Africa has largely been ignored by the U.S. media, and for good reason: it seems to have no real purpose.

While attention to Africa is long overdue, the president is announcing no new strategy, concluding no significant agreements--merely announcing a new investment in African power generation, which African companies are arguably capable of funding and carrying out themselves.

Much of his trip to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania consists of sightseeing with his family --and an entourage of 1,000, at a cost to taxpayers of $60 to $100 million.

Consider the reason Obama gave reporters about why he is visiting Cape Town on Sunday:
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Ne...sland-20130630

His schedule on Sunday begins with a flight to Cape Town and then a helicopter ride to the museum on Robben Island.

Obama visited when he was a senator but this time is bringing his family. He said he's eager to teach them about Mandela's role in overcoming white racist rule, first as an activist and later as a president who forged a unity government with his former captors.

He told reporters on Saturday he wants to "help them to understand not only how those lessons apply to their own lives but also to their responsibilities in the future as citizens of the world, that's a great privilege and a great honour".

So a significant part of the trip is devoted to the education of Obama's own family. Could such a trip not have waited until after his term in office, or been taken at the Obamas' own expense, without the trade delegations, diplomats, advance teams and valets--to say nothing of the cost to local law enforcement in South Africa?

The only newsworthy aspect of Obama's visit to the Rainbow Nation has been the revelation that the new U.S. ambassador to South Africa will be White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard--a long-time left-wing activist notable for having served on the board of the Working Families Party, a far-left organization connected with ACORN. The cronyist appointment captures Obama's continued fealty to the left--and to the low priority the Obama administration will continue to assign to sub-saharan Africa, even after the president's lavish visit.

Otherwise, the highlight of Obama's trip has been a memorable clash with the President of Senegal over the issue of gay marriage. He was unable to visit former President Nelson Mandela in hospital, so he had to make do with meeting Mandela's somewhat problematic family. Meeting with current South African President Jacob Zuma, no friend of a free press, Obama had the temerity to scold American journalists trying to ask questions: "Behave" he told them. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journal...-media--Behave

As he has done on foreign visits elsewhere, he spoke to students, reassuring them that the U.S. does not want to expand its military presence around the world, just two short years after U.S. forces helped remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya. Otherwise, his visit has been more noteworthy for the protests and controversy it generated than for anything it accomplished.

Before leaving Africa, Obama will visit Tanzania, where First Lady Michelle Obama and former First Lady Laura Bush will participate in the African First Ladies Summit. Neither is an African First Lady, but Mrs. Bush, at least, has undertaken the trip on her own. Overall, the Obamas' itinerary in Africa is one that smacks of self-indulgence--something to which some of the African First Ladies can, no doubt, relate quite well.

The trip is also a way to avoid the real responsibilities of office. On the way to Africa, President Obama tried to dismiss concerns that the U.S. had not yet convinced other nations to hand over fugitive Edward Snowden, whose leaks about the NSA and its Prism program triggered an international scandal and national security crisis. While Obama described the controversy as a "made-for-TV movie," intelligence officials worried that the damage of Snowden's alleged espionage is compounded every day that he remains on the run overseas.

Perhaps the U.S. media is largely ignoring Obama's trip because reporting what he is actually doing--waxing poetic about his early political life, shuttling his family around by helicopter, greeting adoring crowds (and dodging angry protests)--would be a great embarrassment. It would reveal, as Ed Klein noted, that Obama has little interest in governing but "clings to the narcissistic life of the presidency"--at a time of political and economic turmoil, when leadership is sorely lacking.

One hopes, at least, that the expensive memories will last.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2...oing-in-Africa

Obama Praises Marxist Speech in South Africa
07/03/13

Obama's first college speech was sponsored by Marxist elements. And he praised that speech while in Africa.

From Gateway Pundit: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013...-marxist-group

Barack Obama spoke this afternoon at the University of Cape Town. He told the African students about his first public speech on apartheid at Occidental College. Obama said he was glad there was no tape of this speech. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-...sity-cape-town

But, Barack forgot to mention that speech at Occidental was sponsored by Marxists and Weatherman terrorists. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2008...an-terrorists/

Barack Obama’s first public speech was at an Occidental College event sponsored by theStudents for Economic Democracy a branch of the Campaign for Economic Democracy [CED]. Far Left radical Tom Hayden who met with Marxist officials several times during his antiwar career chaired this fringe group in the late 70′s and early ’80′s. Several of the CED principal activists were also veterans of the Hayden-campaign and of the very radical group,Students for a Democratic Society.

Hayden was an important anti-American figure in the Students for a Democratic-Society a militantly leftist organization. 60′s radical Tom Hayden played a pivotal role both as founder and as principal author of this student group’s basic manifesto, the “Port Huron Statement.” This document condemned the American political system as the cause of international conflict and a variety of social ills — including racism, materialism, militarism, and poverty.

Barack Obama does not include his time at Occidental College on his resume but old friends and former teachers remember his role in protesting college investments in firms doing business in South Africa during the apartheid era.

http://www.reagancoalition.com/artic...arxist-sa.html

Have they even unpacked from their $100 MILLION dollar vacation to Africa yet?
Nothing like a perpetual 5-star vacation on our dime...

President Obama and his family will return to Martha’s Vineyard for vacation, the White House confirmed Friday.

A White House official confirmed the President and the First Lady will travel to Martha’s Vineyard on Saturday, August 10. They will remain on the Vineyard until Sunday, August 18, when they will return to Washington, D.C. The White House said there are no public events scheduled at this time.

The official announcement confirmed the rumors that have swirled around the Island for months. On an Island where word gets around, it was no secret that the Secret Service had begun laying the groundwork for the return of the First Family.

Houses were rented, inquiries were made and there was talk — plenty of it — about where the president intends to stay now that he has lost his favored beach rental to a wealthy Englishman.

Mr. Obama and his family have vacationed on the Island every year since his 2008 election with the exception of 2012, when he was campaigning for re-election.




http://www.mvtimes.com/2013/07/12/wh...ineyard-16422/