https://www.advocate.com/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-dollar-buttigieg
The noted homophobe Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is critical of Pete Buttigieg's use of government aircraft, saying he's flying to receive awards "for the way people have sex."
Transportation officials also said the total cost of Buttigieg’s flights on FAA planes up to that time was about $42,000. Chao took 15 FAA flights early in the Trump administration, and the cost of just one of them, which was international, was nearly $69,000, the Post reports.
It's good both are being investigated, but definitely seems like Pete's isn't that big of a deal compared to what Republicans do
I’m not convinced it is a good thing that both are being investigated if the investigation into Buttigieg is just political smearing. HRC’s emails show the cost of abusive investigations. Investigations aren’t cost free, either monetarily or in terms of public trust in institutions. It implies he did something worth investigating, and devalues the seriousness of real investigations, like those against Trump.
When the review was announced, Buttigieg had flown on FAA planes 18 times out of 138 flights for official trips since becoming secretary early in 2021, according to The Washington Post. He takes commercial flights most of the time, and when he uses FAA aircraft, it’s usually because it’s cheaper than commercial flights, a Department of Transportation spokeswoman said.
This does not seem to be something worth investigating.
devalues the seriousness of real investigations
The only thing people like Green or Jordan doing Congress is distract, distract, distract.
Huh?
If they investigate him, and everything is cool, then it's cool... Which is what the article sounds like.
If he's abusing it, just to a much smaller degree, then that's still an issue.
Like, that's the whole point of not just holding people from your "own team" accountable. If someone might be doing something wrong, you investigate them no matter who they are.
Do you think an investigation means a huge thing where he testifies in front of Congress? That's not an investigation.
The problem with investigating false allegations, aside from the waste of tax payer money, is that the damage is done in the beginning of the investigation. The fascist talking points are now about excessive spending from the Democrats. They won't even bother retracting statements when they are found to be false.
What do you think an investigation is?
It's just looking at his flights, and seeing if he was flying free when he should have been paying.
From the article, that's already been done.
How much do you think that possibly costs?
The republicans don’t care what the outcome of the investigation is. They just want to use it as a political gotcha.
Government investigations over frivolous things are a waste of taxpayer money and time.
Government investigations over frivolous things are a waste of taxpayer money and time.
It's getting concerning no one answers this and acts like it's a giant thing...
What do you think an investigation is?
Like, an audit would take a low GS employee an afternoon...
What do you think an investigation entails that it's prohibitively expensive?
Whats wrong is this is retaliation by Republicans. Did you read the article? They're framing it as taxpayers paying for Peter to receive gay sex awards. Does that sound like a pressing issue? Or a real thing to you? Does that sound worthy of investigation? The Avengers should have never stopped Thanos.
It’s not just this case. This is a much wider pattern from the republicans to waste taxpayer money investigating things that they have no need to be involved in.
The same idea applies to the hunter Biden probe. It’s politically motivated investigations that don’t need to be done, but are done because the republicans can use taxpayer money to hash out their problems.
Nobody is saying this specific audit cost millions of dollars, but it certainly cost a whole lot more than just the salary of a single person for a few hours.
Dude, stop for a second a look at the context.
The GOP goal here is not to let a GS employee spend an afternoon on this. That wouldn't accomplish anything; the accusations would continue unhindered by such lack of evidence. Except now, they can cite the fact that an accusation failed to find anything as PROOF of malfeasance.
The goal is to create a huge spectacle to use for campaigning. To waste time, distract from their own inept governance, and smear political enemies. To promote conspiracy theory.
I am not against holding “my own team” accountable if there is some valid reason to think there is something worth investigating. If there isn’t, it is a witch hunt, and witch hunts are harmful. They can be used to harass, waste time, and slander by vague insinuation. More to the point, the public has finite attention. News of pointless investigations can be used strategically to drown out real ones, which is a threat to democracy. That is, I believe, what Republicans are presently doing.
Yeah, but when you have obvious and public cases of MASSIVE corruption in “your own team” and you fail to adress that… instead gojng after any “petty” corruption in the other team…
Yeah. That’s a problem.
If someone steals 100 million from a charity, it doesn't mean we dont care if someone else stole 10k...
And it certainly doesn't mean we don't even look if someone stole 10k
You missed the point.
Or your ignoring it because you know that your team doesn’t care aboutnl corruption, just scoring political points.
Either way you slice it, republicans are patently and blatantly corrupt and only going after democrats because they’re democrats.
Either way you slice it, republicans are patently and blatantly corrupt and only going after democrats because they’re democrats.
So?
Literally who cares what they're doing. Dems should be investigating everyone regardless of party.
Otherwise no Dem will ever be held accountable, because Republicans are completely incompetent. It won't take long of that for grifters to take over both parties.
Holding everyone accountable shouldn't be a controversy statement.
Otherwise no Dem will ever be held accountable
held accountable for...what, exactly? having a big cock? or having a job? or, Biden doing business after leaving the whitehouse? Or Pete Travelling? Literally none of these house investigations- which are being done by REPUBLICANS- are being conducted in good faith. it's partisan politics, and it's a massive waste of time. Because Democrats do hold their own accountable where republicans absolutely do not.
There is zero evidence of corruption here- or else it would be moved to criminal courts- See, for example, Senator Menendez.
The problem is, Republicans don't tell the truth. When you actually press the investigative committee into Hunter Biden about the evidence they have, they'll quietly murmur there isn't any. But otherwise, they'll very loudly suggest they have evidence and outright lie.
As usual, republicans try to make democrats doing something normal seem like a huge scandalous deal while they and their sleazy-ass media hyenas entirely ignore what “their side” did or does.
The House Republicans truly have zero intention of doing their job or serving the needs of the country.
Still can't figure out why their voters either don't see it or don't care.
Like at least prior to trump you could kinda see it but now you just have to be in outright denial of reality.
I wonder if MTG has actually ever done anything for her district. She's spending all her time with all these petty, childish antics. What a loser.
How is that not a bill of attainder, accompanied by in-depth media confessions that it is in fact a bill of attainder?
FYI, a bill of attainder is legislation that imposes punishment on a specific person or group of people without a judicial trial
I cannot wait until she falls into obscurity. Old and wrinkled sitting at a lonely table at a flea market gun show to sign photographs and nobody is paying her any attention.
What do you mean? They are. If we stopped paying Pete we'd have the current US debt payed off in about 149,052,132 years. Maybe add a few hundred thousand years for interest but I don't believe that's significant.
But all the Republicans have is performative garbage.
And this is definitely performative. The salary change would need to go through the Senate and there's no way this passes. The House Republicans know this. They just want to "own the libz" by saying they'll reduce some salaries to $1.
It's easier than actually doing work.
I think she's upset because "Secretary of Transportation" has the word "Trans" in it and she got confused.
Watch it be something really fucking boring and sad like being arrested for drunk driving or some shit. Still though -- that mug shot is going to be priceless.
They should do that with the gop ans republicans, after all they get their money thanks to bribes and companies paying them to legislate in their favor
I mean, fuck Buttigieg, but this is a pretty dangerous precedent.
Edit: c'mon people. He didn't do anything after the East Palestine disaster, he makes excuses for why we can't have high speed rail or even just a better Amtrak, and he hasn't done anything to reduce car centric design. He's the god damn secretary of transportation.
he hasn’t done anything to reduce car centric design
In all fairness, this doesn't really fall under the purview of the Secretary of Transportation.
I think most urban design and planning happens at the local level, and the federal DoT is mostly responsible for allocating funds to state and local city governments.
And I think it's not hard to argue that he did quite a bit towards reducing car-centric design as a mayor. Mayors have WAY more control over that stuff, in general. The DOTs are the DOTs. They're going to be conservative and they're going to waste money. They also don't really follow federal marching orders.
Biden/Buttigieg have pushed for more Amtrak investment than has happened in a long time, though, along with proposals for further expansion for local rail and BRT service. Just a typical case study in a progressive failing the leftist purity test.
That's fair. I'm willing to concede that he doesn't have a major part to play in reducing car-centric design, though I think he could create general guidance for cities to follow
He's a McKinsey man...
The vast amount of issues with capitalism in our country can be traced back to young idiots in their 20s working for McKinsey telling CEOs the best thing they can do in any situation is layoffs is raising CEO pay.
They've also worked for pretty much every evil organization, including the Saudi government
John Oliver just did an episode on it a few weeks ago.
It sucks that legitimate critism of democrats makes you sound like unhinged MAGA lunatic. Not that it's ever really gonna be a choice between fascism or their bebal incompetent feet dragging corruption, just a sad reality of our crappy two party system.
just a sad reality of our crappy two party system.
As an outsider, it looks like the US only has a one party system now. One party and a group of spiteful, contrarian fascists trying to overthrow its democracy.
I don't understand what you mean. He's in THE position to make changes to how this country handles transportation, and he hasn't done much of anything. He even made excuses for why trains can't have safer brakes or more stringent chemical safety requirements. I don't place the brunt of these issues on him, but he's doing fuck-all about them.
Public employees are exempt from the NLRA and it is not abnormal for an independently wealthy public sector employee to accept an appointment with a $1/yr wage. Also not covered are air/railway workers (who are covered under the RLA), agricultural workers who have some very weird and problematic coverage, and certain domestic workers/contractors for... some fucking reason and with some effect.
Never underestimate how much of a shithole the US is for labor.
I wonder what MTG has actually done for her district. She's busy with all these petty and childish actions all the time. What a loser.