Posted on 09/19/2004 9:25:02 PM PDT by Mo1
A quick google revealed this:
Presidential Shrines
While trying to decide what to write for posting today, I received a large mailing from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Somebody has obviously kept a mailing list from long ago. Readers of No Force know that I admired Reagan, more as a man than as a President. Reagan'as core values matched mine... not the results of his Presidency, but his personal values. Here are some of his words that reflect those values:
Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way.
I had no intention of writing more about Reagan, but in looking through the mailing about the plans for the Reagan Library, I got upset at their plan to build a large building to house the Air Force One airplane that Reagan used. It takes a sizable structure to hold a Boeing 707 and with one whole wall to be glass, it seemed exceedingly wasteful to me. I started to consider writing about the silliness of such a structure, and did a little investigation. I assumed that the many Presidential Libraries were supported by tax money, but I found that to be only partially true. Most were partially funded with federal money, but their ongoing maintenance is done by private donations in addition to funds from the National Archives and Records Administration ("NARA").
You may not be surprised to find that the annual tax funding for these libraries is not easy to find. They're all about protecting and providing access to huge amounts of information... except for the cost of those efforts. I did find a record of the start-up funding costs. Here are the federally-supported Presidential Libraries, locations, websites, and the portion of the construction costs that were federally funded:
Hoover Library
West Branch, IA
http://hoover.archives.gov
Federal funding: $1,417,000
Roosevelt Library
Hyde Park, NY
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/
Federal funding: $1,640,000
Truman Library
Independence, MO
http://www.trumanlibrary.org
Federal funding: $1,872,000
Eisenhower Library
Abilene, KS
http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu
Federal funding: $2,297,000
Kennedy Library
Boston, MA
http://www.jfklibrary.org
Federal funding: $3,883,000
Johnson Library
Austin, TX
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu
Federal funding: $2,935,000
The Nixon Presidential Materials Staff
College Park, MD
http://www.nixon.archives.gov/
no building, housed in Nat'l Archives
entirely run by private funds
Ford Library
Ann Arbor, MI
http://www.ford.utexas.edu
Federal funding: $2,604,000
Carter Library
Atlanta, GA
http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/
Federal funding: $2,082,000
Reagan Library
Simi Valley, CA
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu
Federal funding: $3,355,000
Bush Library
College Station, TX
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/
Privately funded construction cost: $22 million Federal funding for archive maintenance
Clinton Presidential Materials Project
Little Rock, AR
http://www.clinton.archives.gov/
(to open in November 2004)
Like all government projects, these libraries are rather monumental and extravagant, often seen as overblown shrines to individuals. Certainly, maintaining and providing access to presidential papers and records is valuable for historical purposes, but each library does far more than that.
It has been suggested that Presidents have arranged funding for their grand libraries in exchange for favors while they were still in office. The last such suggestions involved Clinton pardoning Marc Rich before leaving office.
There are other Presidential Libraries maintained by private organizations or individual states, but many former Presidents have no such shrine at all. I think it's fair to say that many of those earlier Presidents would have considered such spectacular, expensive memorials to be completely inappropriate. Remember, government was supposed to be small, non-intrusive, and the servant of the people, rather than worshiped in perpetuity.
FDR started the trend in 1939, and it has grown to become one of those almost invisible benefits I spoke of yesterday, in Overpaid executives versus the working class.
Hummmmm, well it looks like a mismash. The Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Clinton librarys were built with private funds but receive federal funding for preserving and housing their archives. All the libraries charge an admission fee and have a gift shop to help defray operating cost. The 100 or so acres for President Reagan's library was donated by a wealthy California realtor. The George H.W. Bush library was built on the campus in College Station. And, Bubba's has a tiein with the University of Arkansas so I expect they are picking up part of the tab for his. Back in the mid 80's Congress pass a bill or an amendment that required libraries larger than a designated square footage (50 or 60,000 sq ft, I think it was) to be endowed. If I'm not mistaken, the Reagan Library is about 150,000 sq ft. The endowments are created by private foundations who raise money from the president's political supporters.
It's a brown suit
But do notice how she is the only one wearing pants
Ya think ? .... hummmm, I dunno, could be. Did y'all discuss the color on the Live Thread today ?
Yes, thanks, it does look more brown than black in that one.
That looks like a NASCAR race
Oh my ... Did anyone pick Pup off the floor yet .. *L*
Mo ! Don't insult NASCAR like that. Whatzamaddawidya ?
Could be .. right before that he was rubbing her knee
.....Westy.....
LOL .. I'm sorry but it does
FOFL... Did you show it to your inhouse NASCAR fan ?
Not yet .. he's upstair watching the Soprano's
I heard that Hillary whacked Chelsea with an umbrella (I'm assuming it was an accident).
They're DUhmmies! What'd you expect? Intelligence?
I believe that happened also
I'm still wondering what IDIOT didn't think to put a tent up on that stage to protect them from the rain
Semper Fi
The story of Fallujah isn't on that NBC videotape.
18 November 2004
Some 40 Marines have just lost their lives cleaning out one of the world's worst terror dens, in Fallujah, yet all the world wants to talk about is the NBC videotape of a Marine shooting a prostrate Iraqi inside a mosque. Have we lost all sense of moral proportion?
The al-Zarqawi TV network, also known as Al-Jazeera, has broadcast the tape to the Arab world, and U.S. media have also played it up. The point seems to be to conjure up images again of Abu Ghraib, further maligning the American purpose in Iraq. Never mind that the pictures don't come close to telling us about the context of the incident, much less what was on the mind of the soldier after days of combat.
Put yourself in that Marine's boots. He and his mates have had to endure some of the toughest infantry duty imaginable, house-to-house urban fighting against an enemy that neither wears a uniform nor obeys any normal rules of war. Here is how that enemy fights, according to an account in the Times of London: "In the south of Fallujah yesterday, U.S. Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the U.S. Navy Corps, said that she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad last month."
When not disemboweling Iraqi women, these killers hide in mosques and hospitals, booby-trap dead bodies, and open fire as they pretend to surrender. Their snipers kill U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to one account, the Marine in the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed by another insurgent pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his Manhattan sofa has standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?
Beyond the one incident, think of what the Marine and Army units just accomplished in Fallujah. In a single week, they killed as many as 1,200 of the enemy and captured 1,000 more. They did this despite forfeiting the element of surprise, so civilians could escape, and while taking precautions to protect Iraqis that no doubt made their own mission more difficult and hazardous. And they did all of this not for personal advantage, and certainly not to get rich, but only out of a sense of duty to their comrades, their mission and their country.
In a more grateful age, this would be hailed as one of the great battles in Marine history--with Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Hue City and the Chosin Reservoir. We'd know the names of these military units, and of many of the soldiers too. Instead, the name we know belongs to the NBC correspondent, Kevin Sites.
We suppose he was only doing his job, too. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to indulge in the moral abdication that would equate deliberate televised beheadings of civilians with a Marine shooting a terrorist, who may or may not have been armed, amid the ferocity of battle.
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