{"id":27730,"date":"2018-01-28T21:31:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T21:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27730"},"modified":"2018-01-28T21:31:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T21:31:55","slug":"remember-600-hammers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27730","title":{"rendered":"Remember those $600 hammers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One man’s bargain is another man’s boondoggle, yes?<\/p>\n

Sure! Well, get a load of this little item: Air Force One, the jumbo jet that carries the president of the United States and his ample staff is getting two new fridges. Their cost? A cool $23.6 million!<\/p>\n

Oh, for the days when we fretted over $600 hammers procured by the Pentagon. I trust you remember how outraged we got over that exorbitant expense.<\/p>\n

This one, though, well … I am a bit stunned.<\/p>\n

Not long after he became president of the United States, Donald Trump canceled an order for a new Boeing 747 to serve as Air Force One. “Too expensive,” he declared. Trump didn’t need a shiny new airplane on which to fly to this or that location. “Cancel order!” Trump wrote in a tweet.<\/p>\n

Now he and his staff are getting two new “chillers” for the big bird. The cost is astonishing — at least in my view.<\/p>\n

An Obama administration official said Barack H. Obama “would have been impeached” if he had approved such an expense. Maybe. Maybe not.<\/p>\n

However, the price tag for the airborne refrigerators does have at least one defender. Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group consulting firm, defended the cost. As Global News <\/a>reports: <\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s not a contractor issue, it is a requirements issue,\u201d Aboulafia told Defense One<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not getting people\u00a0rich.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

While the price tag might seem outlandish at first and second glance, the \u201cchillers\u201d need to be custom built for the presidential plane. They will also undergo strict testing by Boeing and the FAA.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK. I get that this isn’t your household Frigidaire or Whirlpool fridge. But holy crap, man! Twenty-three million bucks?<\/em><\/p>\n

Aren’t Republicans supposed to belong to the political party of fiscal responsibility? Of conservative spending principle?<\/p>\n

This is more than just a little bit spendy, folks.<\/p>\n\n

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One man’s bargain is another man’s boondoggle, yes? Sure! Well, get a load of this little item: Air Force One, the jumbo jet that carries the president of the United States and his ample staff is getting two new fridges. Their cost? A cool $23.6 million! Oh, for the days when we fretted over $600 … Continue reading Remember those $600 hammers?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[195,1424,7540,3544],"class_list":["post-27730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-air-force-one","tag-donald-trump","tag-government-spending","tag-pentagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27732,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27730\/revisions\/27732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}