Air Pelosi: My solution

I guess you all know:

Speaker Pelosi has requested an Air Force C-32 - a plane from a fleet that that typically carries the vice president, the first lady, and Cabinet officials. Operating Costs are approximately $15,000 an hour.

Speaker Pelosi is not responsible for paying for the use of her "personal" Department of Defense jet - which will be used to transport not just herself, but staff, family, other members and friends.

That bill is paid for by taxpayer dollars allotted to the Department of Defense.

Well, of course, the bill would be paid by taxpayers. Who else?

Pelosi’s a powerful liberal Democrat. So she naturally expects ordinary taxpayers to pay for “her” plane?

If you don’t understand that, you probably don’t appreciate everything Sen. Ted Kennedy’s done for you.

You may even be one of those who are so heartless as to oppose Kennedy’s plan to give everyone “free health care.”

You know, like they get in Cuba and North Korea.

(You’re drifting, John. What about Air Pelosi ? )

You’re right. Sorry about that.

My solution to Pelosi’s problem?

Simple.

All the people who think Pelosi needs her own Air Force C-32 should do what Americans did at the depths of the Depression when they learned President Franklin Roosevelt, who’d been stricken with polio in 1921, could benefit from a swimming pool in The White House.

At whitehouse.gov we read:

As the men and women of New York opened copies of the New York Daily News on March 14, 1933, they learned of a campaign to raise money for building the president a swimming pool at the White House.

The effort was a way to honor President Franklin Roosevelt, a New York native who suffered from the crippling disease, poliomyelitis. The President often swam at therapy pools at his Hyde Park home in New York or at a center in Warm Springs, Georgia.

The campaign was a success, and the workmen gathered around the pool on June 2, 1933 to listen to President Roosevelt, who spoke from his wheelchair and thanked them for their work. […]

Imagine that. Individual Americans – tens of thousands of them – chipped in to pay for the swimming pool.

Why can’t something like that happen now?

Surely, just among top Democratic Party leaders, Pelosi could raise enough to buy, staff and maintain her own Air Pelosi One.

Think about it.

Sen. John Kerry has five large homes. Ted Kennedy has four large ones, as does his nephew, the “environmental activist,” Robert Kennedy Jr.

Then there’s Democratic presidential candidate John “Don’t buy at Wal-Mart” Edwards’ with his 30,000 sq. ft. house.

I’ll bet you could fit that C-32 Pelosi wants in Edwards’ living room and still have enough space left to build in a liqueur cabinet for Ted Kennedy and a secure storage file for all those Navy records Kerry still won't release.

Did I mention Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)?

Don’t you agree just those Democratic Party leaders can swing a C- 32 for Pelosi without even dipping into their next month’s “entertainment” budgets?

So there’s my solution. Let the super-rich Democrats pay for Air Pelosi.

And give ordinary taxpayers a break.