FLOTUS Listening Tour Continues
EmailABC News’ Yunji de Nies and Teri Finneman report:
First Lady Michelle Obama made the second stop on her newly launched Washington D.C. "listening tour" with a visit to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
When Mrs. Obama took the stage, someone in the crowd shouted, "We love you!" To which she responded, "I love you too, that’s why I wanted to be here."
Mrs. Obama addressed an auditorium packed with HUD employees, thanking them for their work and rallying them for the work ahead.
"Great leaders are only as great as the people who hold them up," she told the crowd of 800 people. "We need each and every one of you to recommit to the task at hand."
Hundreds more watched from a nearby overflow room. The event was also broadcast on an internal television channel to 9000 employees throughout the department.
"Barack and I believe that investing in the community that you live in is critical. And for the people here in this agency, we are now your neighbors," Mrs. Obama said.
Dressed in a gray skirt suit and pearls, she spoke for about seven minutes before working the ropeline, shaking hands and smiling for pictures.
HUD employees learned of the visit mid-morning and some started lining up as much as two hours before the speech. Joy Melnick could not recall a first lady visiting HUD in the more than 40 years she’s worked for the agency.
"I think both of them [the Obamas] want the people to know they’re for them," Melnick said. "They just know how to draw people to them."
Mrs. Obama is on an indefinite federal agency tour throughout the city, to meet the thousands of men and women who now work for her husband. Her mission: to thank them and rally them for more work ahead. It’s also a chance for her to hear the concerns of federal government employees, and relay them back to the president.
Mrs. Obama’s first stop was at the Department of Education on Monday. No word on where she’ll go next, though she’s not expected to make her next stop until sometime next week.
– Yunji de Nies and Teri Finneman report
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“Dressed in a gray skirt suit and pearls, she spoke for about seven minutes before working the ropeline, shaking hands and smiling for pictures.”
Sooooo how is this a “listening tour”? Doesnt that imply that people are going to be telling her things?
Posted by: BertieW | February 4, 2009, 3:00 pm 3:00 pm
Details details. Why do you have to bring up details. Just put act excited like everyone else.
Posted by: KR | February 4, 2009, 3:26 pm 3:26 pm
oh, our wonderful gov’t workers — able to line up two hours in advance to see the first lady. fantastic. I often wonder how much money we could save if they simply cut the bloat from the federal workforce. not to mention the 10 guys on every road project standing around watching two guys in a hole.
Posted by: kvnmnnng | February 4, 2009, 3:30 pm 3:30 pm
What is this fixation about meeting large groups of bureaucrats in their lobby or conference hall? Hillary likes this approach too, has nothing to do with policy or promoting programs.
Laura Bush and HUD director announce program on historic preservation
President, First Lady and HUD director at Habitat event
And yes she was of course even more active in Education events – federal, state, private or public
Posted by: robert b | February 4, 2009, 3:56 pm 3:56 pm
“not to mention the 10 guys on every road project standing around watching two guys in a hole.”
Come on now. I’m counting on that kind of efficiency for my future health care.
Posted by: KR | February 4, 2009, 3:56 pm 3:56 pm
“Hundreds more watched from a nearby overflow room. The event was also broadcast on an internal television channel to 9000 employees throughout the department.
….
HUD employees learned of the visit mid-morning and some started lining up as much as two hours before the speech.”
Lets start with the somewhat dubious proposition that government employees add more value than they cost.
If you have 10,000 people take off work for two hours at an average burden rate of $45/hr (it costs more than the base salary to employ someone, you Democrats) this little unscheduled listening tour cost $900,000.
Thats almost a million dollars worth of lost productivity. And this ‘listening tour’ is going to continue ‘indefinitely’? No wonder the Chief Performance Artist quit early.
Posted by: BertieW | February 4, 2009, 5:48 pm 5:48 pm
If you have 10,000 people take off work for two hours at an average burden rate of $45/hr (it costs more than the base salary to employ someone, you Democrats)
****************************************************
Wow, I want to go work for HUD and earn close to 90K a year like the 9000 other employees!
Posted by: kathy | February 4, 2009, 6:09 pm 6:09 pm
*it costs more than the base salary to employ someone, you Democrats*
Posted by: BertieW | February 4, 2009, 6:49 pm 6:49 pm
Everyday is just a photo op for the Obama’s!!! How is she different then Hillary, putting her nose in Gov’t business. Wasn’t she going to help Military families?
Posted by: Sa1950 | February 4, 2009, 6:49 pm 6:49 pm
BertieW is right. HUD HQ gotta be GS-10 25$ – GS-12 30 average at least. With 50% benefit override – that’s $45 an hour. You’d think libs would know these govt things.
Posted by: robert b | February 4, 2009, 7:36 pm 7:36 pm
Hey Bertie,
How much did Bush’s mission accomplished stunt cost the taxpayer?
I am just curious when this concern for the taxpayer started.
Was it the moment Obama took office or when he won the election?
Posted by: Ryan C | February 4, 2009, 7:41 pm 7:41 pm
“BertieW is right.”
I am like Obama: they can present their bi-partisan calculation of how much productivity was lost on this listening tour stop.
Posted by: BertieW | February 4, 2009, 7:41 pm 7:41 pm
“How much did Bush’s mission accomplished stunt cost the taxpayer? ”
Yawn. You know the ‘progressives’ are flummoxed when they have to break out their talking points from years ago.
The FLOTUS has no official job. And she wasnt listening. This visit was pointless.
The USS Abraham Lincoln (!) had just ended is long and successful mission in toppling the other Hussein and deserved recognition and thanks for their effort. But I guess if its not an overseas abortion, you libs dont want it funded.
Posted by: BertieW | February 4, 2009, 7:47 pm 7:47 pm
“If you have 10,000 people take off work for two hours at an average burden rate of $45/hr (it costs more than the base salary to employ someone, you Democrats)”
Fun with numbers by right wingers in which they
A) Take a crowd actually at the speech and multiply it by 10.
They do this under the absurd assumption that because HUD has 9000 employees and an internal TV station showed the speech, that 9000 employees stopped working during the speech.
B) Take the reference that some of the 800 in the crowd who waited for 2 hours and apply it to all 9000 employees.
C) Give the government worker an average salary of $45 an hour. That would be $93,000 a year.
Then multiply all the fake numbers and act outraged at the cost.
Posted by: Ryan C | February 4, 2009, 7:52 pm 7:52 pm
How much did Mission Accomplish cost Bertie?
“The USS Abraham Lincoln (!) had just ended is long and successful mission in toppling the other Hussein and deserved recognition and thanks for their effort.”
What did they USS Abraham Lincoln do that meant they deserved recognition while other carrier groups that fought in both theaters did not?
“You know the ‘progressives’ are flummoxed when they have to break out their talking points from years ago.”
And you know right wingers are having trouble when they have to make up out of thin air costs based on made up numbers to get outraged over.
So when did your concern for the taxpayer start Bertie?
Posted by: Ryan C | February 4, 2009, 8:00 pm 8:00 pm
“A) Take a crowd actually at the speech and multiply it by 10. ”
800 in person, “hundreds more next door”, “9000 employees throughout the department” = 10,000.
“They do this under the absurd assumption…that 9000 employees stopped working during the speech.
Yes, they all went to the breakroom and hung around.
You can poll the blog readers to see if they think thats what happened.
“Give the government worker an average salary of $45 an hour. That would be $93,000 a year. ”
Why do we even listen to you about anything? The total cost of an employee is not their base salary. Its what is called a burden rate and is higher than their hourly take home.
*If* there is a reason for these people to be employed then their value must he higher than their burden rate.
Why dont you give us your cost calculation for this visit?
Posted by: BertieW | February 4, 2009, 8:06 pm 8:06 pm
“800 in person, “hundreds more next door”,”
So roughly 1000 in attendance.
“9000 employees throughout the department”
That had the speech available to them via internal TV.
You just added them in as people who watched. You were being dishonest.
You then extrapolated 2 hours which some of the 800 crowd waited for and applied it to all employees. Again you were being dishonest.
“Why do we even listen to you about anything?”
The right wing? Not sure why you listen to me as I continually humiliate you exposing obvious lies. Everyone else can make up their own mind as to whether they want to listen to me.
“The total cost of an employee is not their base salary. Its what is called a burden rate and is higher than their hourly take home.”
I didn’t say base salary, I said $93,000 a year.
So is it your contention that the average HUD employee has a burden rate of $93K a year?
Posted by: Ryan C | February 4, 2009, 9:04 pm 9:04 pm
“Why dont you give us your cost calculation for this visit?”
Who cares?
The only purpose to calculate it is to invent something to be angry about…ya know like you did.
Only you had to be dishonest and inflate the numbers to get a properly vilified figure.
Posted by: Ryan C | February 4, 2009, 9:06 pm 9:06 pm
“That had the speech available to them via internal TV.
You just added them in as people who watched. You were being dishonest. ”
Its not available to them at their desk. They’d have to stop work and go to a break room or common area to watch. I am assuming that no work can be done, which is almost certainly correct.
I am also assuming that when the employees got the announcement it as something along the lines of “The FLOTUS will be here this morning to address us. Anyone who wants to can assemble in in the Hall of Champions or gather in the breakrooms”. And all the employees went “hell yeah!” If government employees are permitted to go on an extended break do they do so. Hmmmmm.
“The right wing? Not sure why you listen to me as I continually humiliate you exposing obvious lies.”
Yes, I was humiliated yesterday when you posted the ISBN number for “My Pet Goat” that you insisted Bush was reading.
Or the time when you claimed that three 9/11 family members who only Fox News could find people were angry about Obama’s Gitmo pander. In actually there were 7 people quoted in various news stories that day. And more in subsequent days.
Or when I said that GITMO was pandering to Obama’s Code Pink base trading of the 9/11 families feelings and you said that those arent even Code Pink’s issues. However closing GITMO and Military Commissions are issues #2 and #3 on Code Pink’s web site.
Or today when you think that people in a survey who want “major changes” to a bill mean that they actually secretly support it.
“I didn’t say base salary, I said $93,000 a year.
So is it your contention that the average HUD employee has a burden rate of $93K a year”
Ahem. What you said was “Give the government worker an average salary of $45 an hour. That would be $93,000 a year. ” Clearly you implied that this was all salary and therefor and obvious tilt!
But $93K might be close, although I’d imagine most of the employees are on-exempt so I think your hours per year are off. If there is no mandatory overtime I’d guess productive weeks per year are something like 47 or 1880 hours.
The company I work, for a mid-range tech would have a blended internal burden rate of $42-$53/hr depending on banding. So $45 seems plausible.
So that shows I got to about a million ($900K) for this little field trip. Yeah I assume that most gubmit workers are going to go on an extended break when offered. You could quibble that maybe everyone didnt blow the “hours” that in-person people did, but that is speculation.
Posted by: BertieW | February 4, 2009, 9:39 pm 9:39 pm
“If government employees are permitted to go on an extended break do they do so.”
Gee that makes them different from private sector workers how?
All you have are assumptions and then lies.
You assume every one of the 10,000 watched and then you applied the 2 hour wait time some of the crowd of 800 to the whole 10,000.
You could have used the 7 minutes she was speaking. But hey you had to make the number big so it would be galling.
Posted by: Ryan C | February 4, 2009, 10:07 pm 10:07 pm
“Yes, I was humiliated yesterday when you posted the ISBN number for “My Pet Goat” that you insisted Bush was reading.”
I think you were humiliated since you needed to quibble over my use of My Pet Goat vs the story name of The Pet Goat. All that to distract from the fact that Bush sat there like a moron which I’m sure must still be humiliating to right wingers.
“Or the time when you claimed that three 9/11 family members who only Fox News could find people were angry about Obama’s Gitmo pander. In actually there were 7 people quoted in various news stories that day. And more in subsequent days.”
You linked to a FoxNews headline implying all families were angry about Gitmo (dishonesty…what a shock from you). I demonstrated that they spoke to all of 3 people, one of which seemingly was frightened of things that had already happened.
“Or when I said that GITMO was pandering to Obama’s Code Pink base trading of the 9/11 families feelings and you said that those arent even Code Pink’s issues.”
Except I never said that.
I laughed at your logic that an issue that Obama campaigned on and then fulfilled was somehow a pander to Code Pink.
Posted by: Ryan C | February 4, 2009, 10:12 pm 10:12 pm
Yeah, the take away here is that it wasnt “My Pet Goat”, he wasnt reading it, and running screaming from the room (which seems to be the response you advocate) was not appropriate. So everything you knew came from Michael Moore and was wrong.
I guess you count that as being “right”.
This is the exchange on Code Pink:
“”"- Pandering to Code Pink by closing Gitmo without any clear plan about what to do with the terrorists there.”
Closing Gitmo had little to do with Code Pink and much more to do with fulfilling the promise that America will not torture people under an Obama administration as they had under the Bush administration”"
GITMO Torture and Torture GITMO, so you are wrong there. Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. Who is interested in subverting Military Commissions?- why that would be Code Pink founder and Obama bagman/bundler Jodie Evans. Closing GITMO and avoiding Military Commissions are #2 and #3 on Code Pink’s agenda.
“Gee that makes them different from private sector workers how?”
Well Obama wasnt at a private company and we arent paying the private sector employees. But even if the private sector employees were as slothful, you do realize you have proven nothing?
“You could have used the 7 minutes she was speaking.”
Yes- excellent assumption. She arrived at the building exactly at the scheduled time, started speaking immediately and then left. No one arrived at the breakrooms early or stayed late.
More likely is that she was like Clinton and was 20-50 minutes late. People arrived early and hung around talking about the Superbowl or collectible “Moment in History” DVDs and drifted back to work whenever since all the supervisors were down in the Obama mosh pit getting pictures taken with their camera phones.
“All you have are assumptions and then lies. ”
I guess I missed the part where I said that $900K was an audited number from OMB on the cost of the FLOTUS tea party. I made it clear in my initial post that it was my estimation and I gave everybody my assumptions to check (transparency is a watchword with us Berties). So where is the “lie”. “Lie” isnt synonymous with someone telling you things you dont want to hear.
If you mean “improbable”, then I think it is far more improbable that next to no one took the invited multihour break while all the supervisors were gone and those that did go to watch the televisions only did so for 7 minutes.
There is no way around
- there is no listening on the FLOTUS “listening tour”
- FLOTUS has no actual job responsibilities, so in the unlikely event that she does get input from listening she cant make use of it
- its going to be a multi-million dollar boondoggle
- the sole purpose is as a positive story generator
Posted by: BertieW | February 5, 2009, 12:13 am 12:13 am
I’m still trying to figure out how giving a speech is “listening”. Regardless of productivity lost (hard to write that with a straight face) or financial cost to the taxpayer, this was a waste. The Obama Administration knows how to use the internet; Michelle could have “listened” to these government employees via a video, particularly since only a fraction of those watching her speech were actually in the room with her.
Posted by: marylou | February 5, 2009, 3:46 am 3:46 am
If we don’t find out anything else about these obabas; we know that they know how to spend OUR money!!!! Yeah, yeah, I know you are going to bring President Bush into this…. but we have all heard that discussion before so let’s talk about the spending this pair of >>>> want to strap us with in the next four years.
Posted by: Mildred | February 5, 2009, 12:04 pm 12:04 pm
“More likely is that she was like Clinton and was 20-50 minutes late. People arrived early and hung around talking about the Superbowl or collectible “Moment in History” DVDs and drifted back to work whenever since all the supervisors were down in the Obama mosh pit getting pictures taken with their camera phones.”
Its utterly hilarious to see you create intricate fantasies in order to owrk up outrage about Obama.
Its shows you have nothing.
Posted by: Ryan C | February 5, 2009, 1:04 pm 1:04 pm
Its utterly hilarious to see you create intricate fantasies in order to owrk up outrage about Obama.
Its shows you have nothing.
Posted by: Ryan C | Feb 5, 2009 1:04:28 PM
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sure we are utterly hilarious: at least some of us have sense enough to see through these impostors. In six months, maybe less, you won’t find anyone that will admit to voting for this piece of….
Posted by: Mildred | February 5, 2009, 2:35 pm 2:35 pm
“Sure we are utterly hilarious: at least some of us have sense enough to see through these impostors. In six months, maybe less, you won’t find anyone that will admit to voting for this piece of….”
ROFLMAO.
Its hard these days to even find someone who will identify themselves as Republican let alone that they voted for Bush.
“The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the PEW Center.”
Posted by: Ryan C | February 5, 2009, 4:01 pm 4:01 pm
Its hard these days to even find someone who will identify themselves as Republican let alone that they voted for Bush.
Posted by: Ryan C | Feb 5, 2009 4:01:46 PM
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Well, you found one!!!! When we have elections……there are usually more repubs or more dems that vote….that is how we get a winner: not this time this election was stolen and yeah, yeah, Bush stole an election. As the old saying goes, “turn about is fair play”. Maybe this time, but if this piece of …. doesn’t get his act together you will see just how many democrats can turn to republicans on election day.
Posted by: Mildred | February 5, 2009, 4:23 pm 4:23 pm