Here’s a fun New York Times article showing an imperial minister’s wife getting out of what seems to be a taxpayer-funded Gulfstream G550 (7 oval windows minus 2 = basic model number for the new series). The article doesn’t explain why someone would want to take a free Gulfstream trip to Kentucky on August 21, 2017, but I am going to guess this was eclipse-related.
As a measure of how times have changed, below is a photo of President Eisenhower’s short-hop Air Force One, an Aero Commander 500.
The twin-piston Aero Commander had a value of about $53,000 in 1962 (classified ad in December 1962 Flying). That’s about $432,000 today, about 1/100th the value of a Gulfstream G550 or 1/10,000th the cost of the latest B747-based Air Force One program.
Related:
- Aero Commanders for sale on Controller
- Shopping list: four helicopters, but don’t spend more than $1.24 billion
- My Christmas Present to Barack Obama (I offer to save taxpayers $1 billion/year by providing Presidential helicopter transportation at my personal expense)
What checks were holding Eisenhower from taking an airliner for joy rides during his rain? Absence of expensive airliners? Congress? People? Common decency? Traditional believes?
Dean: I think what has changed is that Americans now worship the president as a kind of god on Earth, similar to the way that Ancient Egyptians saw the Pharaoh. If you no longer think of the president as an ordinary human then the potential of presidential death becomes unthinkable and you will invest unlimited resources to prevent it. You can’t trust your irreplaceable god-on-Earth in a piston-powered Aero Commander so, even for a 20-minute flight, Air Force One needs to be a B747.
Trump is sort of visibly human, e.g., he gets peeved when people attack him and then responds on Twitter in the same way as a lot of other Twitter users. But even Americans who didn’t vote for him treat him as superhuman. They look for him to condemn purported Nazis, for example, because his voice is more important than anyone else’s.
Presidents have flown in some of more expensive aircraft available for a long time.
The first dedicated aircraft proposed for presidential use was a C-87A VIP transport aircraft. This aircraft, number 41-24159, was modified in 1943 for use as a presidential VIP transport, the Guess Where II, intended to carry President Franklin D. Roosevelt on international trips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One#Late_1940s_and_1950s
Also, it’s not a new or American phenomenon to expect the head of government to be more virtuous than the general population. George Washington was revered in his years.
Assuming the wife of the treasure secretary ( Louise Linton) is a 10, further speculating that her good looks got her access to the buying power of Mnuchin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Mnuchin ), and the prestige of his position, could one estimate a monetary value of good looks, and thus tax that asset?
Could that solve the financial problems of USA?
I would be happy to develop a model for a very small percentage of the resulting tax revenue.
The completely impartial media seem to have switched to chipping away at Mnuchin now.
And, by the way, what happened to that Russia collusion thing? Even the Very Special Prosecutor seems to have moved on to fishing for whatever.
philg 2:
Americans long ago lionized presidents and treated tem as super-humans: George Washington was offered kingship I believe, and in Mark Twain stories his references to Abraham Lincoln imply clear superiority and unquestioned authority. But government was held on a diet, comparatively to imperial houses of Europe and Asia.
Viking 4: a great idea! I wish I thought of it first.
Tom: “what happened to that Russia collusion thing?”
The investigation is grinding away. FBI conducted predawn raid of former Trump campaign chairman Manafort’s home. Mueller is said to seek interviews with West Wing in Russia case. Trump clashed with multiple GOP senators over Russia.