Obama spent $1.4 billion taxpayer dollars in 2011 alone on family perks. As was the case with his mentor Valerie Jarrett's tenure in Chicago, the poor suffer most of all with him in charge

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"Jarrett was known for her corruption and incompetence. Daley finally had to fire her after a scandal erupted over her role in misuse of public funds in the city's substandard public housing. She went on to become CEO of Habitat Executive Services, pulling down $300,000 in salary and $550,000 in deferred compensation. Again, she managed a housing complex that was seized by government inspectors for slum conditions."

9/26/12, "Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on Obama family last year, perks questioned in new book," Daily Caller, Alex Pappas

"Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on everything from staffing, housing, flying and entertaining President Obama and his family last year, according to the author of a new book on taxpayer-funded presidential perks.

In comparison, British taxpayers spent just $57.8 million on the royal family.

Author Robert Keith Gray writes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that Obama isn’t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in.

Gray told The Daily Caller that the $1.4 billion spent on the Obama family last year is the “total cost of the presidency,” factoring the cost of the “biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever,” a 50 percent increase in the numbers of appointed czars and an Air Force One “running with the frequency of a scheduled air line.”

“The most concerning thing, I think, is the use of taxpayer funds to actually abet his re-election,” Gray, who worked in the Eisenhower administration and for other Republican presidents, said in an interview with TheDC on Wednesday.

“The press has been so slow in picking up on this extraordinary increase in the president’s expenses,” Gray told TheDC.

Specifically, Gray said taxpayer dollars are subsidizing Obama’s re-election effort when he uses Air Force One to jet across the country campaigning....

“When the United States’ billion-dollar air armada is being used politically, is it fair to taxpayers that we only be reimbursed by the president’s campaign committee for the value of one first-class commercial ticket for each passenger who is deemed aboard ‘for political purposes?’” Gray asks in the book.

“And is that bargain-price advantage fair to those opposing an incumbent president?”

In the book, Gray admits Americans want their president to be safe and comfortable but argues the system should be reformed to stop the amount of unquestioned perks given to the president.

“There is no mechanism for anyone’s objection if a president were to pay his chief of staff $5,000,000 a year,” he told TheDC. “And nothing but a president’s conscience can dissuade him from buying his own reelection with use of some public money.”

Aside from a salary, the president gets a $50,000 a year expense account, a $100,000 travel account, $19,000 entertainment budget and an additional million for “unanticipated needs,” he notes."...via Free Republic

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8/14/12, "Obama's Strange Dependence on Valerie Jarrett," American Thinker, Karin McQuillen

 

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9/19/12, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER SPECIAL REPORT:
THE OBAMA YOU DON’T KNOW,"

"From the introduction:"

“Beyond the spin and polls, a starkly different picture emerges. It is a portrait of a man quite unlike his image, not a visionary reformer, but a classic Chicago machine pol.”

Chapter headings:

"Chapter 1: A childhood of privilege, not hardship
Michelle Obama says “Barack and I were both raised by families who didn’t have much in the way of money or possessions.” In fact, for much of his life, Barack Obama has enjoyed privileges and opportunities denied to most Americans.

Chapter 2: Myth of the ‘rock star’ professor
Though initially popular as a University of Chicago Law School adjunct lecturer, he was not ranking among the top professors, according to student evaluations.

Chapter 3: The 1997 speech that launched Obama
His 2004 Democratic National Convention speech got the big headlines, but a previously unreported 1997 Obama speech did far more to launch him with big backers with big bucks.

Chapter 4: For the slumlord’s defense, Barack Obama, Esq.
It was a frigid January and the slumlord who put his tenants on the street without going through the required eviction process got off with a $50 fine. His lawyer went on to be elected president of the United States.

Chapter 5: Obama’s toughest critics on the Left
Long before he ran for president, radical critics accused Obama of selling out Chicago’s poor to the Daley political machine.

Chapter 6: The poor people Obama left behind
Altgeld Gardens housing advocate Hazel Johnson welcomed the young Obama into her kitchen. Then she never heard from him again after he won his first election.

Chapter 7: The myth of Obama as state senate reformer
When the real reformers asked for his help, State Sen. Barack Obama was nowhere to be found.

Chapter 8: Obama’s state pension fund scheme
It worked for Rev. Jesse Jackson against the Fortune 500, so State Sen. Barack Obama used it to get millions for his friends from Illinois’ biggest public employee pension funds.

 

Chapter 9: Obama’s Arab-American network
Syrian emigrant Tony Rezko had lots of Arab-American friends in the Chicago business community who shared his enthusiasm for Barack Obama.

Chapter 10: Obama brings Chicago politics to Washington
Surprised by Solyndra? Don’t be, it’s just one of many examples that demonstrate Barack Obama is doing things in Washington the same way he did them in Chicago."

"Too bad the legitimate press Democratic Party operatives with bylines didn’t report this stuff four years ago." (Instapundit)

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