Gregg Easterbrook tells it like it is...

On ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback - a great column that focuses on football but meanders into politics, economics, philosophy, and life that is written weekly by a Brookings Scholar who happens to be a staunch NFL fan and a brilliant writer - Gregg Easterbrook writes about the gall that former Presidents Carter, Bush, and Clinton have in their taxpayer funded extravagances. Among the slights to taxpayers: $50,000 for travel for both Bush and Clinton; $70,000 for "equipment" for Bush and $80,000 for "phone service" for Clinton; a nearly $200,000 annual salary for all three (despite the fact that both Carter and Clinton are still working). The article's brilliant and I'd definitely suggest everyone read the entire thing.

Why the NBA simply doesn't rate:
Wealthy ex-Presidents reach into your pocket
ESPN

Recently, the Congressional Research Service announced the federal subsidies requested for the coming fiscal year by ex-presidents Jimmy Carter, George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton. Globe-trotting Carter asked for only $2,000 for travel; Bush and Clinton, both millionaires, wanted $50,000 from taxpayers for travel. Bush said he needed $69,000 for "equipment" and $13,000 for postage. Is Bush planning to mail 32,000 thank-you notes next year?

What's really offensive is that all three filed for the maximum presidential retirement payment of $191,000 annually. All these guys are wealthy, the elder George Bush having significant inherited wealth, yet all want taxpayers to hand them pensions seven times higher than the typical Social Security sum. This is extra galling because Carter and Clinton aren't even retired! Carter continues to write books that sell well; Clinton is active on the corporate speaking circuit, having earned an estimated $10 million speechifying in 2006. Clinton prattles on and on about the horrors of inequality, yet demands $191,000 in bonuses from taxpayers whose median household income is about 1/20th of his estimated $10 million. Why didn't the three ex-presidents request no pension at all? That would have been the dignified thing to do.

To top it off, Clinton requested $79,000 for television service. It is impossible, physically impossible, to spend $79,000 on telephones! If Clinton had a 10-cents-a-minute long-distance plan, he could talk long-distance 24 hours a day, 365 days per year - and you can imagine Clinton doing this - yet fail to burn through $79,000. The most expansive package offered by Verizon Wireless is an international super-phone with unlimited texting and four hours of talk time daily; this sells for about $3,000 a year. Clinton could purchase two dozen of the most expensive cell accounts available in the United States for the tax-subsidized telephone budget he requested. Is Clinton's $79,000 phone request fraud, or is Clinton planning to use the money to buy phones for staffers working on his private speaking business? An ex-president who had financial problems might legitimately turn to the taxpayer. For all three living ex-presidents to be quite wealthy yet demanding public subsidies is shameful - to say nothing of a failure of leadership.