Your tax money at work

President Donald Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, is facing intense criticism due to the revelation that he used private jets on at least five occasions for official business, adding tens of thousands of dollars in expenses for American taxpayers in the process.

Price took five flights between Sept. 13 and Sept. 15 to Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania for various health care-related events, according to Politico. His predecessors under President Barack Obama, Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Kathleen Sebelius, used commercial jets when flying within the continental United States.

On one occasion, Price took a charter flight from the Washington-area Dulles International Airport to Philadelphia International Airport, costing taxpayers roughly $25,000. A flight on United Airlines was leaving at roughly the same time and would have cost only $447 to $725 per person, Politico noted. There were also four Amtrak trains that Price could have taken, which would have gotten him to Philadelphia on time; the cheapest train could cost $72 in advance. And, of course, he could have driven the 125-mile trip, taking about 2 1/2 hours, according to Politico.

Additional details at Salon.

If you want a real rant on this topic, read How the one percent put the fix in at 30,000 feet.

"Time is money, and the wealthy and their political lackeys have been able to use the one to buy the other with their Gulfstreams and Falcons and Bombardiers. They don’t wait in line. Nobody tells them to turn off their cell phones and other electronic devices. A big black car drops them off at the steps to a gleaming jet and moments later, they’re aloft, above the fray, flying over the heads of the rest of us plebes down here dragging our crummy carry-ons and sweating out whether we remembered to take that damn bottle of mouthwash and transfer three ounces of it into a little travel bottle and stick that goddamned thing in a fucking plastic bag, or somebody in dark trousers and a blue shirt is going to tell us to open our bag and go jamming their hands in our underwear and socks until they come up with the offending bottle of dangerous mouthwash so we can be given the choice of going back to the counter and checking it, or throwing the damn stuff in the nearby trash bin supplied for just that purpose."

Way more at the link.