White House provides plane to senator for key stimulus vote

“I understand how appearances are, but in reality, if you are dealing with a business with 9-digit daily revenues, it is just crazy to stick top officers in the commercial air travel grinder to chew up their productive hours (even without delays/cancellations). It is just crazy. These people make decisions with tremendous economic impact on the company. You cannot risk what amounts to a few days a year minimum spent dealing with commercial air travel crap, and that is assuming no overnights in hub cities, missing important meetings, etc. The potential financial risk to the company exceeds the cost of the chartered/whatever flight hugely, at least for top officers. How many people deserve/need such access is another matter for debate.”

You are correct - I agree CEO’s of important companies have every practical reason to have and use private jets.

I think you missed my point though, Bank of America, Citigroup, and others are no longer relevant companies who’s CEO’s make important decisions of national economic importance. They are on the brink of nationalization. They should be resolving to do no harm - both to the country and their debt and equity holders. This means staying put, in my opinion. Their schedules are irrelevant - in fact the LESS their CEO’s do the better the country is. If only it were possible for the CEO of BofA and Citi to have been stuck in an airport for the past few years, just think how much better off the country would be!

Nationalized companies, or defacto nationalized companies should not be flying around in private jets and more than our congressmen should. They simply are not relevant enough to warrant spending taxpayer money to do so.

“To address the class-warfare rhetoric directly, as I noted on the example, would the house banking committee have been sympathetic if one of their 8 punching bags had been a no-show because of weather in ORD causing a canceled connecting flight?”

Sure, they’d bloviate, but who cares? most of those 8 are more unimportant and less relevant than they think. The ones that depend on government bailout money for their very existence are the ones to which I refer. Their companies would not be any worse off if they were flying commercial or simply not traveling at all. The taxpayers may well be better off, in fact.

The plane is being provided by the White House, Brown's office said, because the vote is considered "official business," and there are no commercial flights available that would allow him to cast the vote and return to Ohio

While I feel for Sherrod Brown and his loss, this is NOT the OFFICIAL BUSINESS of the EXECUTIVE BRANCH or the US GOVERNMENT.

Separation of powers.....

More to the point.....

.....Would Obama have given the plane to someone who would have voted NO?

I thought not. He would have shamelessly taken the opportunity to reduce the NO vote. This is an abuse of Executive power. IMHO, the "Grandma" part of the story was conveniently put in to make the story palatable. In truth it is irrelevent. I don't get free government travel when my grandma dies and it is inconvenient.....

“I think you missed my point though, Bank of America, Citigroup, and others are no longer relevant companies who’s CEO’s make important decisions of national economic importance. They are on the brink of nationalization. They should be resolving to do no harm - both to the country and their debt and equity holders. This means staying put, in my opinion. Their schedules are irrelevant - in fact the LESS their CEO’s do the better the country is. If only it were possible for the CEO of BofA and Citi to have been stuck in an airport for the past few years, just think how much better off the country would be!”

I understand and respect your viewpoint on this. I personally still think the ceo and other major officers of C BAC (and of course others, but those two are the most nationalized at this point) still are too important as cogs in the machine to risk being stuck in the roach motel overnight in Atlanta (I have had exactly this happen to me with delta, had to count down the hall from rooms that had numbers on them to find mine).

“Sure, they’d bloviate, but who cares? most of those 8 are more unimportant and less relevant than they think. The ones that depend on government bailout money for their very existence are the ones to which I refer. Their companies would not be any worse off if they were flying commercial or simply not traveling at all. The taxpayers may well be better off, in fact.”

My understanding is that goldman, morgan, and wells fargo either didn’t want the money in the first place (it has been repeatedly discussed and it seems treasury wanted them all to take it to keep from singling out the weakest institutions, and they had little practical choice) *and/or* would be interested in paying it back, if allowed. I have no idea about Bank of New York or State Street. JPM i have heard has a ton of derivative losses off books and citi/bac are known quantites as crippled institutions.

“My understanding is that goldman, morgan, and wells fargo either didn’t want the money in the first place (it has been repeatedly discussed and it seems treasury wanted them all to take it to keep from singling out the weakest institutions, and they had little practical choice)”

Yeah. I know WF is pretty strong. Fly your corporate jet, make money, help the country grow out of this mess!

BAC, C CEO’s...stay put.....disconnect the phone, don’t talk to anyone....PLEASE

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