Here’s a federal budget cut: Air Force One and all other presidential travel services. The prez doesn’t need to travel. Keep the Executive Entourage in Washington, DC.
This struck home to me when I saw video of police in full riot gear, called up specifically to keep Tea Party people from gathering to greet the president at an event in Quincy, Illinois.
The cops marched around and repelled the Tea Party folk, moving them back, away from the president and his admirers.
President Obama’s Secret Service and crowd control experts are carrying on the tradition of George W. Bush. I haven’t heard Orwellian talk of “free speech zones,” but that doesn’t mean that free speech or the mere waving about of signs is encouraged by the president.
Presidential outings and speeches are tightly controlled. They are now mere political events, designed to shore up the president’s party.
So there’s no reason, in the age of mass media, for American taxpayers to continue to pay for them. The president can speak in front of the camera, on radio and the Internet, and he can speak on the White House steps. But spending one more cent on presidential roamings to rally partisan troops just isn’t very American. Not if all sides aren’t allowed to participate.
What was unacceptable under Bush remains unacceptable under Obama. But I doubt if we’ll hear many on the left protest this marginalization of dissent.
Wrong crowd, I guess.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.