by Ghost of John Brown
A few months ago, I started calling Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, "Princess Pelosi". I did that because I thought it was catchy. While I had my suspicions, I had no idea to the extent that our dear Speaker thinks of herself as a princess.
Judicial Watch filed FOIA requests to determine the costs of the trips that Speaker Pelosi has taken over the last two years. The summary of their findings can be found here and a listing of the documents that were gathered can be found here. What this FOIA request uncovered was that our dear Speaker has spent over $2 million in the last two years traveling around the country and the world. The sad thing is, that is not the most infuriating part. Doug Ross has a excellent roundup of the excesses that were found, in addition to what Mr. Ross points out, here are some other interesting little tidbits.
- Please go to the document listing found in the second paragraph above. Click on any one of the documents and just scan some of the receipts and the travel expenses. For just about every trip, Speaker Pelosi had several bottles of wine and numerous bottles of hard liquor. What happens to all the liquor? Not to sound crass, but most of the people on the trips are past middle age, and it is not normal for them to pound down liquor (although that might explain a lot). Does the left over liquor just go to them?
- If you look at the receipts, for each trip, an Air Force staffer is traveling around from store to store. I can picture a young airman spending all day running around from store to store just so some congressmen and women can tip back an adult beverage.
- Doug Ross' piece talks about all of the trips that included Nancy Pelosi's children and grandchildren, even trips where her family traveled all by themselves without any Congressmen or women. These are planes that cost $18,000 per hour to operate and we have the Air Force essentially acting as a taxi service for the Speaker's family.
- Winner of the Grand Hypocrite of the year award is Paul Pelosi, Jr., the Speaker's son. The younger Mr. Pelosi is a "green" advocate. He is the President of the San Francisco Environmental Commission. While Mr. Pelosi talks about taking the electric Muni buses in San Francisco, supposedly doesn't wash his clothes in peak times, and speaks all over the world about environmental conservation, he jets back and forth on Air Force jets. One of the trips chronicled in Doug Ross' piece shows that Paul Pelosi, Jr. was the ONLY PASSENGER on the plane. I wonder what kind of carbon footprint that had?
- Like mother like son, Speaker Pelosi also gets an award for Hypocrite of the year. If you read HER OWN WEB PAGE, Democrats in Congress are committed to ending government waste. I hope you were not drinking coffee while you read that, or else you might have spewed it all over your screen at the shock. The Speaker wants to claim that she is ending government waste, but travels all over the world, ferries her family around, eats and drinks lavishly and has the unmitigated gall to say that she is against government waste? You see, Bush was bad and wasteful, but Nancy is righteous. The Speaker even established a "Truth Squad" in 2006 to shine a light on all the waste in the Bush Administration. While I am all for truth squad to ferret out government waste, I think that a truth squad should probably be committed to their own mission and be free of waste themselves.
- The Speaker gets another hypocrite award for the purchase of foreign wines and liquor while she advocated a "Buy American"clause in the stimulus bill passed earlier this year. While on these trips, the Speaker had the Air Force staff buy Johnnie Walker (Scotland), Grey Goose Vodka (France), Bailey's Irish Cream (Ireland - naturally), Courvoisier Cognac (France) and Bombay Sapphire Gin (England). You see, if we are going to buy steel, then we have to by it in America, but if a Congressman wants to get drunk, then of course we have to get the finest from across the ocean. If you look at the details of many of these trips, once they got to their destination, they often times had to have a staffer go out and get even more booze. Man, how do I become a Congressman? This sounds like a sweet gig!!! Tax all day, party all night.
- On numerous occasions, the Speaker thought it necessary to bring an attending physician on board the trip. Heaven forbid if she needed another botox injection and there were no doctors around. While the Speaker laments about the unavailability of affordable medicine for the masses, she confiscates a physician all to herself and a few other Congresspeople for trips.
- On practically every trip, the Speaker and/or other members of the delegation would have room service sent to them, generally totaling hundreds of dollars. I think in my entire life, I might have ordered room service once, and I was ashamed as can be to get the $10 hamburger. These folks are living off your tax dollars and spending hundreds of dollars each night for room service.
- On numerous trips, the Speaker would fly all by herself. Well, kind of. She was the only "important" person on the plane, but she was accompanied by two Capital Hill police and two Air Force "escorts", generally Air Force Majors. You see, instead of having police protect the streets of Washington, DC or having Air Force Majors protecting the skies above Baghdad, we need four of them collectively to protect Nancy Pelosi, our greatest national treasure. (For an example, see page 35 of this document - caution, large file size).
- These flights are not on your average, every day planes. Often times, Speaker Pelosi used C-37 aircraft - see page 59 of the document referenced in the previous paragraph). A C-37 is the generic term for a Gulfstream V. Click here for more details. This is probably the same type of aircraft that those evil corporate tycoons from GM used to travel to Washington, DC when they were begging for money. Nancy didn't like it when they flew in on corporate jets.
I'm glad all of us stupid taxpayers can give the fair Princess the type of luxurious lifestyle that she so richly deserves.
