{"id":1119,"date":"2018-08-25T09:22:27","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T13:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2018-08-25T09:22:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T13:22:27","slug":"i-want-an-audit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/08\/25\/i-want-an-audit\/","title":{"rendered":"I Want an Audit"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Want an Audit<\/p>\n

Donald Trump as President of the United States is paid $400,000 a year.\u00a0 He also receives a $50,000 expense account, a $100,000 travel account, and a $19,000 entertainment budget.\u00a0\u00a0 And of course, he gets to live in provided government housing, with a full staff, and round-the-clock protection.\u00a0 He gets the use of Air Force One, Marine One, and a fleet of armored vehicles.<\/p>\n

I know, this President \u201cdonates\u201d his $400,000 to charitable causes.\u00a0 But it\u2019s my money, in part, and if he doesn\u2019t want it, he can give it back to the government to defer other costs.\u00a0 I pay taxes, and so do you, and we ought to have some say in how it\u2019s spent, or donated.<\/p>\n

And I know that the job, \u201cPresident,\u201d is not an hourly, punch-the-clock, \u00a0job.\u00a0 It\u2019s salaried.\u00a0 But even a salaried job needs to have some bounds for how much time is put in on the work of governing the United States, and how much time is spent doing \u201cother\u201d things.\u00a0 So let\u2019s look at the amount of other things the President is doing, beside the hard work of being the leader of the United States (can\u2019t say the leader of the free world anymore, we\u2019ve clearly abdicated that position.)<\/p>\n

In the last three days, the President of the United States has started a minor international crisis with South Africa.\u00a0 The basis for this crisis, is that the President was watching Tucker Carlson, a commentator on Fox News.\u00a0 Carlson parroted a report about the majority black government of South Africa taking over large farms owned by whites, and killing the farmers.\u00a0 Carlson\u2019s sources, South African right-wing commentators, proved to be inaccurate<\/a>, but the President continued to pursue action by calling for an investigation by the US State Department.<\/p>\n

The President of the United States has multiple intelligence gathering agencies, among them the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the State Department\u2019s on the ground embassies and headquarters analysts.\u00a0 He can ask any of those agencies for information about anything, from what\u2019s in Area 51, to the location of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.\u00a0 But instead, he watches Fox News.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to pay for that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 8:52 am on Saturday morning right now.\u00a0 The President has tweeted three times already this morning (it\u2019s a nice day in DC, I wonder if he\u2019s tweeting from a golf cart.)\u00a0 Yesterday he tweeted twenty-one times.\u00a0 This President has lifted twitter to the same high standard as the Gettysburg Address and the Fireside Chat, but he needs to focus on something more than just tweeting at his base.\u00a0 Twenty-one times:\u00a0 I know teenagers who tweet less than that! I don\u2019t want to pay for that either.<\/p>\n

Speaking of golf, this President has played golf 139 times since he entered the White House.\u00a0 He\u2019s been in office for 580 days, that means he averages a game of golf every four days; spring, summer, fall and winter.\u00a0When he can\u2019t play in Washington, he flies to Florida and Mara Lago.\u00a0 When he doesn\u2019t want to stay in DC to play at his National Golf Course in Virginia, he flies to his club in New Jersey.\u00a0 And when he goes to Europe, he spends some time at his golf course in Scotland.<\/p>\n

Once every four days:\u00a0we aren\u2019t talking about a thirty-minute workout here, we are talking about eighteen holes of golf.\u00a0 That takes hours.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a website dedicated to the President\u2019s golf addiction; they estimate that the price tag for his golf (including travel and security) is over $75 million. \u00a0While the website is embroiled in an argument about the costs of auxiliary aircraft that travel with Air Force One, the point is obvious \u2013 it\u2019s a whole lot of money.\u00a0 That\u2019s not coming out of his salary or his personal account, it\u2019s coming out of my taxes (and, since I\u2019m not paying $75 million in taxes this year, probably your taxes as well.)\u00a0 I surely don\u2019t want to pay for that.<\/p>\n

So I want an audit.\u00a0We have outstanding auditors in the government, but I want an audit from outside the executive branch.\u00a0 I vote for the Congressional Budget Office, they do a great job in determining costs, estimated expenditures, and telling the hard truth, without a lot of political influence.\u00a0 I want them to audit the amount of time the President actually does the job of President, and how much we are paying for recreation, tweets, and watching Fox News.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m perfectly happy to pay for that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Want an Audit Donald Trump as President of the United States is paid $400,000 a year.\u00a0 He also receives a $50,000 expense account, a $100,000 travel account, and a $19,000 entertainment budget.\u00a0\u00a0 And of course, he gets to live in provided government housing, with a full staff, and round-the-clock protection.\u00a0 He gets the use … Continue reading “I Want an Audit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nI Want an Audit : Our America - 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