President Bush, in a speech yesterday at the White House, urged Americans to conserve gas by not making any unecessary trips, especially by government workers. See story here
Shortly after making these comments, Bush left on one of his 7, count ’em 7, trips to the Hurricane-battered Gulf Coast on Air Force one, which consumes $6,029 worth of fuel per hour.
So while essential government workers should stay home or take the bus to work, Spurious George is jetsetting around the country in the air version of a Hummer, taking fireman and rescue workers off their jobs to pose for photo ops with him.
I say keep Bush at the White House, and have him turn on CNN. Bush is like one of those ubiquitous bosses, who whenever they try to become more hands-on with a project end up just getting in the way and fouling things up. Let him play with his toy soldiers in the WH game room and leave the cleanup to the experts…at least those experts who have more experience in disaster relief than running dog and pony shows…
was almost enough to make me take the Explorer (which I drive “only when Necessary” in any case) out for a fucking joyride…of course I didn’t, we can’t afford it.
Can you imagine how hard it must be for him to say the words “conserve” and “mass transit?”
Of course this doesn’t apply to Republican fat cats…they can keep driving their Hummers and Escalades, etc. He means the hoi-poloi like me…garage the car and take the bus.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, Republicans will NEVER be for true energy conservation measures…solar, wind, hybrid vehicles…no, instead let’s dig up National Refuges…
Yepper, it’s all smoke and mirrors, he’ll be down in the Gulf today taking a look at the refineries — God forbid we should actually take a good hard look at our insane energy policy and think about changing it — nope, it’s business as usual and those of you who can’t afford to get to work or heat your homes? Well, you just need to conserve.
What a crock of shit. I love your nom de blog, btw!
Perhaps eight or ten years ago, I had occasion to look into the costs of operating Air Force One. As best I recall, the numbers were somewhere in the neighborhood of $35,000–an hour.
Fuel, maintenance, crew, crew housing, et cetera and so forth. Factor in a bit of the inflation that Alan Greenspan says we don’t have, and I’d guess the number now is somewhere around $40-45,000.
In theory, if AF1 is used for other than “official” business–that is, political purposes–the party must reimburse the government according to a formula that severely understates the real costs. Since Bush has never used it except for political purposes, because that’s all he does/is, reimbursement to the taxpayers by the GOP is going to cost a tidy sum.
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According to vice-president Dick Cheney, “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, ut it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”
Guess Cheney and Bush aren’t coordinating strategies nowadays. Sort of difficult when Cheney is in an “undisclosed location” hooked up to whatever machines allow him to prolong his misbegotten existence.