The Wall Street Journal is trying to match The Washington Post for anti-Trump investigative journalism.
Consider this article: President Trump Spent Nearly One-Third of First Year in Office at Trump-Owned Properties. It is a screed on Trump's time spent vacationing.
It has a subhead: "Unlike his predecessors, president traveled frequently to places he owns but where others pay to stay." That is because his predecessors did not own several billion dollars' worth of prime vacation real estate.
Would you rather stay at a Motel 6 or Mir-a-Lago if someone else was picking up the tab? To ask the question is to answer it.
I, for one, applaud the time that he spends vacationing. Any time that a politician spends doing anything other than legislating is time well spent. When they are busy "making things better" by expanding the government, citizens are losers. They lose a little more of their liberty.
Earlier this year, The Washington Examiner reported this.
The final tab for former President Obama's eight years of family travel to ski resorts, beaches and European cities has finally come in and the bill is $99,714,527.82.Judicial Watch, the taxpayer watchdog group that has shifted its attention to President Trump's travel costs, said it just received some of the last responses to Obama-era Freedom of Information Act requests for trip costs from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Secret Service.
They show:
The March 2014 trip to Key Largo during Spring Break – where the first family stayed at the exclusive Ocean Reef Club – cost the Secret Service $247,827.50; $182,120.33 for hotels and $65,707.17 in travel expenses. The total cost of that trip with previously released $885,683 in flight costs from the Air Force is $1,133,510.50.
The country would have been much better off if the tab had been twice this if the Obamas had been willing to spend twice as much time on junkets.
Think of the liberty retained if Congressmen were paid $500 a day not to assemble. I think $1,000 a day would be a bargain. That would be a mere $535,000 a day. The federal government spends $6.85 million per minute.
The media are in favor of the mixed economy, meaning Keynesian deficits, central bank monetary inflation, and government regulations to protect consumers from themselves. This is their default setting.
I much prefer government theft, waste, and boondoggles that feather the nests of bureaucrats who administer them. This is money that is not used systematically to restrict our liberty. Better to have the government toss money to the wind than spend it on more regulations.
We retain more of our liberty because we do not get all the government that we pay for in taxes.
The thought of efficient government scares me.
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