Businessmen Who Served America

While the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, they envisioned men like themselves, who were businessmen to temporarily serve America.

From George Washington to Lyndon Johnson , presidents didn’t put their businesses in a blind trust ot sell them to serve as President if elected.

George Washington operated 2 desks in the Oval Office, one for the duties as President & the second one as his business desk. John Adams operated his plantation & other businesses from the same desk that Washington had operated his private sector businesses.

Thomas Jefferson was a plantation owner & operated his land holdings from a 2nd desk in the Oval Office. So from 1789 to 1953 persons who were elected President were not required to give up ownership of their businesses since they were already established.

After 1953 the Democratic Party evolved into an elected political class that never actually work but just fed themselves at the tax payers expense. In 1815 congress voted to change to an annual salary of 1500.00 per year in addition to the per diem. Currently this is the cost to operate congress at tax payers expense. I have broken it down as best as I could based on the limited data

432 house members174,000 x 432 
75,168,000 payHouse speaker 223,500Senate and house leaders193,400 x 5 = 967,000.00Benefits exceeed per congressional person125,00066,875,000 x 435 members
House operating expenses for all 435 membersTotal 410,931,885.00Per member is 944,671.00 for office and employe pay of a staff of 18

Per senate member is 3.5 million for office and personnel expenses 35 million dollars total cost to operate the senate. This doesn’t include the uses of private gyms in the house and senate buildings or the private dining areas.

They are not subject to any no smoking laws, they can make multiple flight reservations, but only have to pay for one, free parking at any airport.
In addition to their yearly salary they also get vacation pay, not listed for each month they are not in DC, the vacation pay is not listed.

Members of congress can receive up to 28,400 in outside pay each year, non taxable of courseFor all 535 members it totals 15,194,000 per year.
To operate congress it takes 589,165,385.00 per year.

This does not include office space in their respective states at tax payer expense. 

Getting back to the men who have been elected President up until Lyndon B Johnson have been businessmen not required to divest or place their businesses in blind trusts. Our founding fathers want people who own and operate businesses to serve America for a few years, then go back to the private sector.

Trump is not violating any laws or regulations or even the emolument clause, since all his businesses were operating before he was elected or sworn in. The emolument clause was in regards to accepting actual gifts that could be implied as graft.

Have any of those elected to congress sold or placed their businesses into blind trusts while they serve. Using nancy pelosi as one example, not on her life, her husband still operates his businesses with input from nancy herself.

Other than the operating Expenses of the White House & the White House staff, plus the secret service agents, Trump has not accepted a pay check for his position as President. Operating White House expenses is roughly 1,375,000 per year.

This does not include the secret service detail 24/7 this is for 2020. Nor does it include the salaries of the White House staff currently at 35.8 million per year compared to Obama’s staff close to 61 million per year.

Trump didn’t sell his businesses, but put up a legal wall between his organization that his adult children operate while he is president. This is not illegal, but something our founding fathers envisioned.

Weapon Free Zone

Prior to the 1990 gun free zone act of 1990, signed into law by George H Bush the United States has always had a history of guns in schools but the guns being fired in the schools or on school grounds have a common thread the persons doing the shootings have been persons being told the word No or bad grades and then demanding the grades be changed. For along time its been people who have never heard the word no being told to them, for they have always had their way from being raised by parents who refused to teach them properly and that included the word no being told to them.

With the advent of students being bussed to schools away from where they lived to make sure that schools were racially balanced in the 1970’s led to students not being surpervised by their parents or their parents being able to attend parent-teacher meetings. As schools aged, they were not maintained as they should have been which led to bigger schools being built to handle larger student bodies. The parkland school that is in the news currently has 3,158 students versus 125 teachers and staff employees. As schools have grown larger and the staff to student ratio has increased so has the likelihood of minor violence to extreme violence grows.

During the 1970’s the average graduating class size ranged from 85 to 150 students, in 2017 the average high school class graduating is nearly 1000 to 1500 students. Going from roughly 14 students per staff member to close to 40 students per staff member. We need to go back to neighborhood schools where the parents have a greater input on a students life instead of sending them off to the high school factories where their parents have less impact in their lives.

It would be better spent on local neighborhood schools than a school busing system budget that is nearly the same size as the entire school district budget.