By Zach Rudisin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
This thread has been dormant, but a recent circulating mail caught my attention, and it rather fits this this old topic. A short email, which means I’ll quote it directly, although reformatted.
Funny, this must have been missed by the media………………..
And that’s only the beginning of the comparisons.
On Friday, the Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause! (see below) .
The report also showed that President Trump is far better at saving money than Obama was. The total annual White House salaries under trump are $35.8 million vs. $40.9 under Obama, a savings of $5.1 million. Here are some other key findings:
There are 110 fewer employees on White House staff under Trump than under Obama at this point in their respective presidencies.
Nineteen fewer staffers are dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS). Currently, there are five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 24 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).
However, it’s what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking! Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! It’s so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much
Oh, and where’s the media coverage of this?
Oh that’s right, they don’t cover anything good that the President does.
Let’s first look at the irrelevancies, the distractions, if you will, before we take in the main course. I speak of the disdain of the media. … where’s the media coverage of this?
For the second quarter in a row, President Donald Trump declined to take a salary and opted instead to gift the quarterly installment to a government entity, this time to the Department of Education.
At a White House press briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders presented a check for $100,000 to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
WaPo:
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced at the White House on Wednesday that President Trump was donating $100,000, his salary for the second quarter of the year, to the Education Department to help fund a science camp.
The headline of the news release issued by the Education Department said: “Secretary DeVos Accepts President Trump’s Q2 Salary as a Donation for STEM-Focused Camp.” STEM refers to science, technology, engineering and math.
CNN:
The $78,333.32 that President Donald Trump donated from his first paycheck as President will help fund restoration projects at Antietam National Battlefield.
Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Wednesday that the portion of the salary, which Trump in April announced he was donating to the National Park Service, will support restorations at the National Park Service protected area in Sharpsburg, Maryland, which commemorates the Battle of Antietam.
I trust the point is made – this goober’s on the prowl for the unwary. But as I said, this was the distraction. And a secondary distraction is the claim that the salary will be used for military cemetery restoration and maintenance, and how this proves, somehow, that the President loves the military. Well, the claim about usage is palpably wrong, and while I shan’t argue that the President does seem to have some sort of fixation on military men (see how many former generals he’s appointed to prominent positions in his Administration), this distraction is primarily to point out that the President’s “love” is quite selective – don’t be looking for that kiss on the cheek, or even a polite salute, if you’re transgender, or if you’re Muslim. Those two disgraceful acts are, of course, to be forgotten if you are taken in this email. The rest of us, though, will not forget his contempt for those who don’t quite fit his image of a soldier – nor will we forget how he equated his attendance of a military prep school for actual service.
What’s my real point? Long time readers of this blog are aware of my observation of how the partitions of society into sectors – private sector, public sector, health, education – is not merely a matter of convenience, but is actually an implicit recognition that they not only exist, but that each has explicit goals which not only differ from each other, but affect the character of the operations devised within each sector, such that an operation that is optimal for one sector may be suboptimal, or even completely inappropriate, in another.
Bypassing all the interesting discussion of this topic (all those posts are listed here), let’s relate this to the email under the microscope. First, for newer readers who are perhaps doubtful about my above statement, I will ask my rhetorical trick question:
What is the acceptable profit margin of the government?
Of course, for the newer reader the answer is no doubt, Well, uh, I don’t know – that’s not the point of government! Exactly. Exactly. Now let’s read that email again, keeping in mind that we’re talking about government, not the private sector, even if the honest reader, who is not a bean-counter, would find the statements problematic in the private sector context.
So, you’ve finished reading. We see the application of an appalling and simplistic calculus to the operations of the White House. Since when do we use the operating budget of the White House, or the count of staff, as a proxy for evaluating the successful operation of the White House?
In my mind, never. True, there is a requirement of efficiency, but this missive wisely makes no effort to evaluate the performance of the Trump White House, because Trump’s accomplishments, despite his self-congratulatory blather, have been few and far between, while his failures have come in blinding snowstorms of incompetency. Even an honest Republican will acknowledge it. Only the Trump supporter, voluntarily blinded to the regular media in favor of Trump’s Twitter account in an intellectually dishonest maneuver of breathtaking audacity, will disagree.
In fact, by disregarding this requirement, the author is attempting to discard competency from the evaluation of the President. On this metric, an empty White House, with only Trump walking the halls hither and yon, is the best White House. Would the author accept this? To the extent he sputters and tries, we know the author to be unserious and disruptive of the society which makes the United States – because most of us understand this most important point:
The White House must excel in diplomacy. As the primary and nearly exclusive arbiter of foreign policy, in a world full of immediate dangers, the White House’s expenditures are a distant tertiary aspect of its evaluation. The real questions: How much does the world respect us? Do we have foreign relations objectives which will lead to a more prosperous and safe world? Do we have real-world operations in place to achieve those objectives? For all these things, White House staff must respond with support, from the National Security Advisor right down to the chef who makes our foreign visitors happy.
So this missive, by substituting inappropriate metrics that are naive even in their native habitat for the appropriate metrics of competency, does a massive disservice to the reader, whether it’s someone who merely scans the email quickly, or the reader who has been mistrained by Fox News to hate President Obama.
It’s always wise to think about metrics, a subject I’ve long considered blogging about, but haven’t gotten around to yet.
And I suggest forgetting this email completely, as it’s designed to instill pride in a President who is, by any realistic measure, falling down on the job.
