Obama and the jets
I didn’t watch President Obama’s press conference yesterday. But many of those who did noted his continuation of the class war that is one of his very favorite ploys, as well as his hypocrisy, and his discomfort at answering questions that contain any sort of challenge at all.
Jim Geragty, for example, wrote:
Today [Obama] mentioned a tax break for corporate jets six times. He didn’t mention that he signed legislation preserving the tax code provision into law, or that the grand total of the savings of ending that tax break would be about $3 billion over ten years.
The man who flies anywhere he wants, anytime, cost-free, complained at great length that other people’s private jets are insufficiently taxed. Tomorrow, Obama will fly on Air Force One to Philadelphia, Pa., to attend two DNC fundraisers, where he will probably again denounce the current tax rates on corporate jets, without anyone remarking on the irony.
What I think this reveals is that Barack Obama is not used to being challenged.
Anyone who has followed Obama for any time should be completely unsurprised by all of this. So color me unsurprised.
As for Obama and the those jets—let’s have a little traveling music:
[ADDENDUM: Commenter “CV” has an even better idea for the title of this post: “Barry and the jets.”
Now, why didn’t I think of that?]
Mark Halperin was suspended from MSNBC for saying that Obama “was kind of a dick” at the press conference.
I think that’s Obama’s nature to the core. It’s why he can turn on his friends so easily.
Regarding the suspension one guy tweeted: “Mark Halperin Destroyed by Unmanned Predator Drone”
Not bad.
I claim no special insight, but it reduces to either Obama is evil or a 12-year old.
Who’s to say….
One of these days Obama’s picture will appear next to the word demagogue in the dictionary. Count on it.
Of course he must also ignore the jobs that go with those corporate/private jets: pilots, mechanics, FBO operators, and never mind the manufacturers, part suppliers, etc. Bugs Bunny has it right… what a maroon!
If a business decides that the best way to GROW it’s business is with face time and the best use of an executives time is via corporate jet rather than Southwest…..
and that growth is imperative to a company.
or maybe even survival as it looks for new business partners in other countries or other states.
why should this business expense be on the chopping block over a building or a fleet of cars or a mainframe computer or a crane or a solar panel array on the roof.
Dear Obama the business idiot,
Don’t act like you understand business expenses better than the business. You are the president not the socialist in chief.
Baklava
“”She’s got electric boots, a mohair suit You know I read it in a magazine Ohh..””
Ok. Who besides me will admit they been singing the wrong words to Benny and the Jets for 36 years?
AS physicsguy pointed out, lots of people make their living in aviation. Twenty years ago the Democrats went after yachts, private aircraft, and luxury cars with an excise tax. Thousands of people became unemployed and the government lost money. George Will explains what happened. Obams knows squat about business.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will102899.asp
OBAMA=CHAVEZ
2012 will merely tell us whether America is over or not.
Obama is the representative of a diabolical force that may (or may not) have already defeated America from within.
I was shocked by his boldness; and in near despair that the R leadership was not in his face with documents and denunciations within 10 minutes and all day continuing.
They are feeble and feckless.
We need heroes. I am praying for Joan d’Arc.
Great headline, but even better:
Barry and the Jets 🙂
Wow, corporate jets, eh?
Somehow I don’t think this one will work out. No doubt a crafty writer floated this up to the president (mentioned SIX TIMES ?!?), but in the area of “Americans don’t hate the rich, they (largely) aspire to be them” nothing beats the fantasy of flying on your own terms (i.e., avoiding the major airline and TSA indignities). This should be familiar to anyone who flies — which is pretty much the whole country — and to effectively say “we’re demonizing your aspirations” doesn’t seem terribly bright. Of course the hypocrisy is so thick you can cut it with a knife. But I think it’s remarkably stupid politics as well.
Impressionistic of course, but I’ve been checking some left-wing sources today on Obama’s presser and except for the diehards the reaction appears fairly close to Mr. Halperin’s.
SteveH Says:
June 30th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
I thought it was “He’s”, not “She’s”, but otherwise I had it right. What did you think they were?
physicsguy Says:
June 30th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Tonight Mark Levin opened his show by reading Leonard Read’s classic 1958 essay I, Pencil./a href>
Afterwards he said, “That’s just a pencil. Now imagine a corporate jet and all that goes into it.”
Ack, screwed up the HTML; but the link works, at least.
If any one has ever worked with the Western Red Cedar of which I believe is the cedar of the great pencil, they have been enriched. The straight grain, the smell, the beauty of the big trees in the old growth, ahhhhhhh… there’s something.
What a great essay.
A friend called me about an hour ago from the flight deck of his airplane at Philadelphia Int’l. He wanted me to alert FNC that Air Force One had traffic tied up at this major airport for 45 minutes because Obama was there for a FUNDRAISER. I sent an email to Hannity; I know it was a meaningles exercise, but he asked me to.
It is about 135 miles from the White House to Philly. It would take maybe an hour to fly there by helo. I presume the helo went up there EMPTY, while Barack Hussein Obama flew up in our huge 747. I used Boeing fuel figures and tried to estimate the fuel usage on such a ridiculously short flight. I estimate a minimum of 10,000 gallons.
My wife asked, why didn’t he just fly up in the helo? Who knows? Was he carrying a bunch of fat cat donors in our airplane? Or does this little person needs a great big airplane to feel like somebody?
This guy is a piece of work.
I see why he avoids press conferences. Without a speechwriter and teleprompter to keep him focused, he can’t hide his arrogance, immaturity, and bizarre sense of entitlement.
Oldflyer, that’s the same excrescence who buzzed Battery Park in New York City with Air Force One ( you know damn good and well that the Jackass was on board — no way the AF guys just took it for a joy ride on their own!!).
He is unspeakable. Yes, he hates this country. Yes, he hates white folks. Yes, he loathes business: shafting the general aviation industry is just ( ) and giggles for him.
Sorry, Neo, I can’t be temperate about the guy.
“I see why he avoids press conferences. Without a speechwriter and teleprompter to keep him focused, he can’t hide his arrogance, immaturity, and bizarre sense of entitlement.”
His bizarre sense of entitlement is not bizarre to BHO; it is his due. This strange narcissistic fellow has lived a life of entitlement from a very early age.
“or that the grand total of the savings of ending that tax break would be about $3 billion over ten years.”
If that because people will change behavior in response to the tax code. If you charter private jet flights; you can take 100% write off that year… no need to deprecate anything.
Overall fewer jets will be sold and that will hurt some people; but we get to feel really smug. Go Obama!
Baklava Says:
“If a business decides that the best way to GROW it’s business is with face time and the best use of an executives time is via corporate jet rather than Southwest…..”
I wouldn’t go that far. In many / most cases I think it probably is a status symbol… but we can’t complain that business people are just accumulating productive resources (money making enterprises / capital / cash and/or ‘the rich control X of the national wealth’) without spending and then jump on them… for spending. Throw big parties, buy cr*p, do stuff. It doesn’t bug me when people enjoy their wealth. It employs people when they do.
I’d love to see some protesters at these fundraisers. Poster ideas:
10 thou of our money so he he could ask you for 10 thou of yours. Suckers!
Obama supporters don’t end up on Air Force One;
They end up under the bus. Suckers!
A few months ago, I had to plan a trip from LA to Philly with a side trip to Binghamton, NY. It’s about 150 miles, IIRC. You can drive it in about three hours. You cannot get from PHL to Binghamton in less than 6 hours by commerical jet. Sometimes it requires an overnight stay. In a private plane, it would take an hour or less. Is it any wonder businesses use them? BTW, the vast majority of business aircraft are piston or turboprop propeller-driven aircraft.) Pound sand, Barry!
Parker, agreed. He acts like a king.
It just occurred to me… private jets and their passengers are generally not subject to (unionized) TSA security screening. Yet another reason for Obama to demonize them.
I’d like to hear some of the Republican candidates speak out on the increasing abuses of passengers’ rights and dignity by the TSA (patting down children, making a 95-year-old remove her adult diaper). TSA has an $8 billion budget. And I don’t believe they’ve actually apprehended a single terrorist. Their latest failure: “A Nigerian immigrant made a mockery of federal air security when he managed to board a flight from JFK to LA with a stolen, expired boarding pass — and then walked free, even after the flight crew discovered the breach and called the FBI, officials said yesterday.”
At one point in my checkered career I worked for a Bizjet manufacturer, and did demos for customers.
Everything said is true. They are a status symbol, they are a luxury, and they can be a very useful tool.
I flew for several days for a company–I will name them, SteelCase Office furniture–while one of their jets was laid up due to a possible manufacturing defect. They used their aircraft for ONE purpose; to fly potential customers in to tour their plant, then return them home the next day. Most of the people we flew during those few days had never been on a business jet; they were purchasing agents, and other employees, for companies of varying sizes. They were thrilled and very impressed with Steelcase, to say the least. If a Steelcase company executive needed to travel, they hooked onto an airplane going in their direction, or traveled by other means.
This was one of the most effective uses of a jet that I saw. There were others. There were also blatant abuses (many of them by executives in my foreign owned company).
I have seen several incompetent people who rose to the top of their heap. Every one of them was smart enough and well dressed enough to have so risen, but a part of them inside knew that they were frauds. In my assessment, they all vacillated between blind hubris and hoping no one knew how lost and empty they were feeling inside. Very occasionally they were in the zone of competence, but it was never leadership; for them, being in the zone was always just a moving-with-knowing how the procedures work in the organization that lifted them to the top. They eventually get moved out to pasture.
Every group wants a leader. That is how a group survives.
It is a sick and disgusting person who’s willing to see ordinary people suffer to just get digs at the more successful.
Once again, I learn something new from the commenters on the neo-neocon threads. Thanks to rickl for pointing out that Leonard Reed deserves credit for “I, pencil”.
I always thought the pencil story was from my long-time ideological hero, Milton Friedman. Here’s how he explained it on Free To Choose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8
I once saw an ad for fractional aircraft ownership that said the company’s target market was the “working wealthy”. I think that’s about right: not heirs to old money, but CEOs, medium-sized business owners, and top-end professionals. These are people who have high incomes, and probably some wealth (the two are different), but who are still dependent upon a regular paycheck. They are also some of the best wealth creators we have. Just because someone flies around in a private jet does not make that person a parasite or a wasteful spender. And sometimes a corporate jet can be the most efficient and cost-effective way to travel for business.
Beverly Says:
July 1st, 2011 at 1:45 am
Sorry, Neo, I can’t be temperate about the guy…
Beverly, you need not excuse your feelings. Shout them from the rooftops!
This man is a traitor to our Republic. It’s our duty to expose him for all to see.
Keep it up!
As an old cabinetmaker i always see these things from the guys on the flight line, or in the boatyard; no sales to the middle class. The funniest times is when I’d get a job with a rich liberal wanting to put their collection of lefty tomes in some real furniture, their Ikea bookcases having seen their better days. One does have to keep closed mouthed in such an environment however.
How about “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver, an actual pilot. Or maybe “Jet!” by Wings.