Must-read Obama speech: 10 minutes of talk with each golden word costing you $502
June 21, 2010
latimesblogs.latimes.com
Obviously, as part of his administration's plan to reduce spending to address the ginormous deficit, President Obama flew on Air Force One the other day from Washington all the way out to Columbus, Ohio, and back. About a four-hour round-trip flight.
He was on the ground in the Buckeye State for a total of 70 minutes. By another count, he was on Ohio soil barely 58 minutes, touting more what he sees as an economic recovery. (Obama had tickets to an evening White Sox baseball game back in Washington.)
In the interests of humor, the president of the United States also managed to slip in a reference to Vice President Joe "Big Effing Deal" Biden's notorious March expletive that they're selling T-shirts of.
Of those, say, 70 minutes in Ohio, a grand total of 10 were spent speaking in the middle of a closed street, a presidential photo opportunity designed to highlight construction jobs allegedly created by the $787- billion stimulus spending bill he signed in early 2009. Workers on the next-door construction site were unhappy because they were told to stay away from work for the president's visit -- and get an involuntary unpaid day off because of the president's 600-second appearance.
Ohio's unemployment rate stands at 10.7%.
With the cost of Air Force One put at around $100,000 per hour, plus the other planes carrying Secret Service, vehicles, Marine One etc., CBS' amazing Mark Knoller estimates that the trip cost American taxpayers between $500,000 and $1 million.
That's as much as $100,000 per minute of speaking time.
In his brief appearance, the president uttered 1,990 words at the microphone (he had tickets for a Washington Nationals baseball game to make that night).
That works out to $502 per word and $32,258 per paragraph.
That's a lot of money even for a liberal Democrat who's the Real Good Talker. At the lower trip estimate the...
...government laid out $251.25 per word for the Democrat's appearance in the crucial battleground state.
We have the entire text below, as provided by the White House, minus the notations for (Applause) and (Laughter). There weren't that many.
Let us know below how much you think the speech was worth. No charge for that.
-- Andrew Malcolm |
