CSNbbs

President and First Lady Travel 4,000 Miles -- on Separate Planes -- to Lobby for Olympics
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer


First Lady Michelle Obama arrives in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009 to lobby for Chicago as host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/Claus Bjoern Larsen, Polfoto)

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are both traveling to Copenhagen this week to promote Chicago's bid to host to the 2016 Olympic Games--and they will be making the 3,979-mile trip on separate airplanes.

The first lady left on Tuesday night, while the president will leave for Denmark on Thursday night.

Taxpayers will pick up the tab for both jets ferrying the president and first lady separately to Europe.

“Everything they do, whether it’s signing pieces of legislation or flying around the world, everything is costing the taxpayer,” David Williams, vice president of policy for Citizens Against Government Waste, told CNSNews.com. “The taxpayer is picking up the tab for everything.”

The White House announced on Monday that the president would be joining his wife on this European trip, despite indicating earlier this month that the first lady would head up the U.S. Olympic Committee delegation to Copenhagen while Obama remained in the United States to continue pushing for his health care reform plan.

Back on Sept. 11, the White House announced that the first lady would travel to Denmark but not the president.

“President Obama informed IOC [International Olympic Committee] President Count Jacques Rogge today that the fight to pass health insurance reform keeps him from committing at this time to travel to Copenhagen on October 2, but he will continue to work to support Chicago’s bid along with the First Lady and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to the President, who will accompany the First Lady to Copenhagen,” the Sept. 11 announcement said.

Repeated calls and e-mails to the first lady’s press office to confirm whether she is traveling on her appointed aircraft or will use the second presidential Boeing 747 were not answered as this story went to press.

As reported earlier by CNSNews.com, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report cited two cost estimates for an hour of air travel by the president, vice president and first lady. One estimate comes from the White House Military Office, the other from the U.S. Air Force.

Using the CRS cost estimates and the inflation adjuster from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost for the one-way 7.5-hour trip from Washington, D.C. to Copenhagen on the first lady's plane would range from $29,532 (White House Military Office) to $107,717 (U.S. Air Force).

The cost for the president to fly Air Force One on the one-way 7.5-hour trip from Washington, D.C. to Copenhagen ranges from $343,448 (White House Military Office) to $567,089 (U.S. Air Force).

When asked by CNSNews.com why the president decided to travel to Copenhagen, a White House spokesman said Obama did not think the short trip abroad would harm his efforts to promote health care reform.

“The president decided to make the brief trip to Copenhagen when it became clear that he could do so without negatively affecting his efforts on health care and the other important challenges facing this country,” spokesman Joshua Earnest told CNSNews.com.

According to the White House, the President will return to the United States on Friday afternoon. But it was unclear from the White House advisory when the First Lady would return.

When asked by CNSNews.com why the president and first lady are traveling on separate planes, Earnest said: “Mrs. Obama is leading the delegation to Copenhagen, and leaves with [White House senior advisor] Valerie Jarrett on Tuesday evening. Mrs. Obama will speak during the presentation on Friday, and will make a deeply personal appeal to the voting members before introducing the president.”

“She will spend Wednesday and Thursday lobbying individual IOC members in Copenhagen,” Earnest said. “The president will be in Copenhagen on Friday morning and will add his voice to the formal presentation to the IOC.”

Also joining the president and first lady on the two planes are Chicagoans Oprah Winfrey, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Chicago joins Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as the four cities being considered by the IOC.

Obama is the first U.S. president to make an in-person appeal to the IOC, but other world leaders have appeared before the committee to pitch their country as an Olympic venue. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair traveled to Singapore in 2004 when the 2012 games were awarded to London. In 2007, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went to Guatemala City to win the 2014 games for the Russian city of Sochi.

Obama previously sent a letter to the IOC in support of Chicago, saying that the city would promise a “spectacular Olympic experience for one and all.”

Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is already in Copenhagen, said he was thrilled that the president and first lady would be joining him.

“President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama symbolize the hope, opportunity, and inspiration that make Chicago great,” Daley said in a statement, “and we are honored to have two of the city’s most accomplished residents leading our delegation in Copenhagen.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54762

RNC’s Steele Questions Obama’s Olympics Lobbying – White House Fires Back
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer


Republican National Chairman Michael Steele. (AP File Photo/Darron Cummings)

(CNSNews.com) – The White House and the Republican National Committee (RNC) squared off Tuesday over whether President Barack Obama should travel to Copenhagen to promote his hometown of Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Olympics.

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, RNC Chairman Michael Steele said the president should focus on other priorities. He said it is “noble for the president to pitch his home city, Chi-town” before the International Olympic Committee on Friday. However, Steele said it could be a distraction from more important issues facing the nation.

“Where is the focus?” Steele said, according to the Associated Press. “At a time of war, at a time of recession ... I think this trip is nice but not necessary for the president. The goal should be creating job opportunities not seven years from now, but job opportunities today.”

That same day during the daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs questioned why Steele would not want the president to focus on getting the Olympics in the United States.

“Who’s he rooting for?” Gibbs asked, referring to Steele. “Is he hoping to hop a plane in Brazil and catch the Olympics in Rio? Maybe it’s Madrid.”

Further commenting on the trip later this week, Gibbs said, “I think the president sees this as an opportunity to push strongly on the international stage America’s bid for the Olympics. He will obviously have a part in the Chicago presentation. He believes it will be important for him to talk with voting members of the IOC to make a strong case for the American side.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54758

I don't have a big problem with Obama taking a quick trip to do this. RNC should focus on something else. I think they'll drop it quickly if they haven't already - Obama gives them a lot to criticize.

Now Michelle taking a separate flight is ridiculous and typical of Dem arrogance and hypocrisy. How many White House gardens does it take to offset the waste and cost of her flight?

All the President’s Olympic Cronies
Wednesday, September 30, 2009



When government officials play the Olympic lottery, taxpayers lose. That has been the disastrous experience of host cities around the world. (Forbes magazine even dubbed the post-Olympic financial burden the “Host City Curse.”) So, why are President Obama and his White House entourage headed to Copenhagen, Denmark, this week to push a fiscally doomed Chicago 2016 bid? Political payback.

Bringing the games to the Windy City is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “vision.” The entrenched Democratic powerbroker—in office since 1989 -- would like to cap off his graft-haunted tenure with a glorious $4 billion bread-and-circuses production. The influential Daley machine backed Barack Obama for the presidential primary. Obama lavished praise on Daley’s stewardship of the city. Longtime Daley cronies helped pave Obama’s path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, they’re returning the favor for their hometown boss.

Senior White House adviser and Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett is a Daley loyalist who worked as his deputy chief of staff, deputy corporation counsel and planning commissioner. She hired the future first lady of the United States, then-Michelle Robinson, as a mayoral assistant. Jarrett went on to serve as president and CEO of The Habitat Company, a real estate firm with a massive stake in federally funded Chicago public housing projects.

One of those public-private partnerships, the Grove Parc Plaza Apartments, was run into the ground under Jarrett’s watch. Federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex a bottom-of-the-barrel 11 on a 100-point scale.

“They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement,” Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that seeks to help tenants stay in the same neighborhoods, told the Boston Globe last year. “’The same exact people who ran these places into the ground,’ the private companies paid to build and manage the city’s affordable housing, ‘now are profiting by redeveloping them.’”

Coincidentally enough, Grove Parc—now targeted for demolition as a result of years of neglect by Obama’s developer friends—sits in the shadows of the proposed site of the city’s 2016 Olympic Stadium. Jarrett served as vice chair of Chicago’s 2016 Summer Olympics bid committee before moving to the White House, where she has helmed a new “White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport” with an undisclosed budget and staff.

It’s not just taxpayers in cash-strapped Chicago who should be worried about this field of schemes. Crain’s Chicago Business reports that Jarrett and Chicago 2016 committee member Lori Healey met this month with federal officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “to discuss financing options” for the estimated $1 billion Olympic Village.

The door is open, and the administration is “willing to meet and listen” to any federal subsidy proposals, Jarrett said. Hey, what happened to Obama’s tough rules on interest-conflicted lobbying by his administration officials?

A majority of Chicagoans who live in pay-for-play-plagued Cook County oppose public funding for the Olympic party. The city has more than a half-billion-dollar deficit—and just received word that its Olympic insurance policy will cover only about $1.1 billion of the $3.8 billion operating budget drawn up by Daley. Cost overruns, fraud and union-inflated contracts are inevitable. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs defended Obama’s all-out campaign for Chicago’s 2016 Olympics bid by claiming America will see a “tangible economic benefit.”

But as is always the case with sports corporate welfare disguised as “economic development,” an elite few will benefit far more than others.

Take senior White House adviser and Obama campaign guru David Axelrod. He’s been a Daley loyalist since 1989, when he signed up as a political consultant for the mayor’s first run. Axelrod’s public relations firm, Chicago-based AKPD Message and Media, has pitched in work for the Chicago 2016 committee. It is unknown how much AKPD has received for its services—or how much they’ll make in future income if the bid is successful. AKPD currently owes Axelrod $2 million.

The head of the Chicago 2016 bid committee is Patrick Ryan, chairman of the Aon Corporation and a co-chair of Obama’s deep-pocketed presidential inaugural committee.

Also on both of those committees: Obama confidante Penny Pritzker, who, in addition, chairs the Olympic Village subcommittee and is president of Pritzker Realty Group—a mega-developer in Illinois that could reap untold millions in project work if the Daley machine/White House campaign succeeds. Former Pritzker executive and Obama campaign treasurer Martin Nesbitt is also on the bid committee—and serves as Daley’s chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.

Another bid committee member, Michael Scott Jr., is “trying to develop a for-profit real estate project that would sit within feet of the cycling venue if Chicago wins the 2016 Summer Games,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

It takes a crony-filled White House to raise a Chicago Olympic village. Daley and Obama will get the glory. America will get stuck with the bill.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54771

Well, she was going to be there for several days and he wasn't. So how else would you want them to do it? Have him there for a couple of extra days for no reason? The money it costs for the seperate planes would be far less than the extra two days of security over there for him.

(09-30-2009 04:16 PM)subflea Wrote: [ -> ]Well, she was going to be there for several days and he wasn't. So how else would you want them to do it? Have him there for a couple of extra days for no reason? The money it costs for the seperate planes would be far less than the extra two days of security over there for him.

Uh, no. Are those really the only 2 options you can think of? Think harder. How about she adjust her schedule - she isn't the co-President. What crisis is she solving on her own?

Oh wait, I missed it until you made me take another look. She is going over early with big Obama supporter OPRAH WINFREY(!) so they can "lobby individual IOC members". I'm serious - read the article, I couldn't make this stuff up. If it's that critical that Michelle be there early (after all who wouldn't be convinced that the US should get the Olympics when encouraged by an unelected first lady with those incredible arms of hers?), I'm sure Oprah can pick up the tab. (I'm guessing Oprah is getting a freebie as is since this is "important official business" she's on.)

How many carbon credits would those two trips cost?

Damn Foxnews!! Nothing to see here people...nobody would care about this if Foxnews weren't talking about this!! C'mon the Olympics in Chicago are HUGELY important...like say more important than "tiny" Iran getting close to building nukes, the economy, 10% unemployment, North Korea, and least of all the General awaiting a response on his request for more troops in Afghanistan!

I don't really have a problem with it. If it takes a couple of flights to secure the Olympics, why not? Granted if a Republican President and his wife did the same thing Al Gore and his cronies would have had their panties in a wad. Still, I always like having the Olympics here in the US and if this trip works then two flights was worth it.

There is a ton of benefit to have the olympics in the United States...get it done.

(09-30-2009 07:55 PM)bearcatmark Wrote: [ -> ]There is a ton of benefit to have the olympics in the United States...get it done.

Please enumerate some of these benefits other than broadcasting in our time zones.

(09-30-2009 07:41 PM)oleskl Wrote: [ -> ]I don't really have a problem with it. If it takes a couple of flights to secure the Olympics, why not? Granted if a Republican President and his wife did the same thing Al Gore and his cronies would have had their panties in a wad. Still, I always like having the Olympics here in the US and if this trip works then two flights was worth it.

As I said, I'm OK with him going. But a separate flight for her? Absurd. Don't confuse being there with causation. You ignore an obvious solution when you frame the situation with only two options: secure the Olympics or take 2 separate flights.

Is it plausible that this is a worthwhile Presidential endeavor and that Obama can convince some folks to go with the US? Yes, maybe he will convince someone who was unsure or he might get a vote from another who wants to suck up - especially if they think Obama can do them a favor (how 'bout you come to the WH for dinner when you visit? I'll take a pic with your whole family.)

Will we get one more vote because she went early in a separate plane rather than them going together? Pleeeeaaaaase.

(09-30-2009 08:00 PM)Bearhawkeye Wrote: [ -> ]Will we get one more vote because she went early in a separate plane rather than them going together? Pleeeeaaaaase.

Her spending an extra two days lobbying for us to get the bid is certainly not out of the question. She can contact far more people in her 3 days there than he can in his one.

(09-30-2009 08:04 PM)subflea Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-30-2009 08:00 PM)Bearhawkeye Wrote: [ -> ]Will we get one more vote because she went early in a separate plane rather than them going together? Pleeeeaaaaase.

Her spending an extra two days lobbying for us to get the bid is certainly not out of the question. She can contact far more people in her 3 days there than he can in his one.

And tell them what that they don't already know? Or that the mighty Oprah couldn't tell them alone? Or the other election officials whose actual job it is to push for the Olympics couldn't tell them? Or even her husband (aka The Greatest Speaker of all Time) couldn't tell them in his speech? C'mon.

(09-30-2009 08:12 PM)Bearhawkeye Wrote: [ -> ]And tell them what that they don't already know? Or that the mighty Oprah couldn't tell them alone? Or the other election officials whose actual job it is to push for the Olympics couldn't tell them? Or even her husband (aka The Greatest Speaker of all Time) couldn't tell them in his speech? C'mon.

She doesn't need to tell them anything. Her job is to rub egos, and make people want to be important enough to be around her.

All in all, it is nice to see the Head of State doing some international smoozing.

Wonder what kind of kickback in campaign contributions he and Rahm negotiated for doing this and lining the pockets of his cronnies in Chi-town.

I think we have a winner!

(09-30-2009 08:22 PM)Fanatical Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-30-2009 08:12 PM)Bearhawkeye Wrote: [ -> ]And tell them what that they don't already know? Or that the mighty Oprah couldn't tell them alone? Or the other election officials whose actual job it is to push for the Olympics couldn't tell them? Or even her husband (aka The Greatest Speaker of all Time) couldn't tell them in his speech? C'mon.

She doesn't need to tell them anything. Her job is to rub egos, and make people want to be important enough to be around her.

All in all, it is nice to see the Head of State doing some international smoozing.

And if it doesn't translate into a vote it isn't worth a thing. Get real. These voters are supposed to be representing their country and determining the best place to hold the Olympics based upon a ton of criteria - none of which are how cool is the First Lady (even I'd be voting for France if it was). Most of these voters have long since made up their mind either on the merits or from something on the side (money, gift, favor). Those few that haven't will decide the same way: on the merits or due to something on the side. Maybe, maybe a very select few can be tempted to vote for the US by the world's most powerful man who is also the "greatest speaker of all time". Maybe not.

But this isn't Good Morning America or your high school prom. Unless Michelle is passing out gold bars she isn't going to win votes for the US. She is probably as likely to turn off a voter (The world LOVES American excess, right?) as to attract a voter - not that she will ultimately convince anyone either way.

Who cares about infrastructure, transportation, accommodations, finances or facilities after a few minutes with Michelle? Hey let's send a third plane over on Wednesday (so they don't miss too much school) with Sasha and Malia on it. Who could resist voting for the US after meeting those cuties? And don't forget Bo! Let's set up a doggie flight for him! Who cares if he's not a rescue dog like the Obama's promised - he's cute as a button and will surely make voters want to have the Olympics in Chicago!

I only wish we could use the persuasiveness some of you think Michelle Obama has to get some help and cooperation with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, N. Korea, etc. (even a little would be nice) rather than just on the Olympic voters. Her husband hasn't been able to and we sure could use it.

(09-30-2009 07:41 PM)oleskl Wrote: [ -> ]I don't really have a problem with it. If it takes a couple of flights to secure the Olympics, why not? Granted if a Republican President and his wife did the same thing Al Gore and his cronies would have had their panties in a wad. Still, I always like having the Olympics here in the US and if this trip works then two flights was worth it.

Agreed.

quote='Murph29' pid='4675110' dateline='1254356817']
Damn Foxnews!! Nothing to see here people...nobody would care about this if Foxnews weren't talking about this!! C'mon the Olympics in Chicago are HUGELY important...like say more important than "tiny" Iran getting close to building nukes, the economy, 10% unemployment, North Korea, and least of all the General awaiting a response on his request for more troops in Afghanistan!
[/quote]

No need Murph too worry about "Tiny Iran"....Israel will take care
of that on its own, of course 'we' will be PC and say "Bad Israel.":lmfao:

When it comes to Num-Nut over there in Iran, I just shake my head and
roll my eyes because anyone that knows anything about the history of
Israel or heaven forbid...that silly stupid book wrote by a bunch of
dumbies called the Bible, knows it ain't ever going to happen.

gregg