Tuesday, June 12, 2018

The High Cost of Tantrums

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

When Donald Trump doesn't like somebody, he usually bangs out a few insulting tweets and then, if the unlucky individual works for the federal government, often fires him or her - sometimes through a tweet.  His emotions fluctuate like a jack-in-the-box on speed, and his tantrums have become so commonplace that much of America has come to accept them as more of Trump's standard bodily functions - like belching or farting.  Behaving like a spoiled three-year-old is just what he does.

But Donald Trump's outbursts of rage come with a cost.  Sometimes they make him and our country look foolish, such as with his bizarre attacks on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week, while, at other times, they are more of a direct drain on the U.S. Treasury.

Solomon Lartey is a records management specialist with the federal government, a position for which he is paid $65,969 per annum.  During the first five months of the Trump administration Mr. Lartey's actual duties focused primarily on one thing.  The man sat, day-in and day-out, bent over a desk at a desk in a small room of the Executive Office Building next door to the White House where he taped together torn up pieces of paper - official presidential documents that had been ripped to pieces by Donald John Trump.

Federal law requires that any piece of paper that is touched by the hand of the President be preserved by the National Archives.   Donald Trump, perhaps as a result of a lifetime of shady business practices. had a habit of ripping up papers once he was done with them and then depositing the pieces in the nearest trash can.  The White House staff tried explaining the law to their boss, but Trump, being Trump, continued to do things his way - and the weary staff finally gave up.

Now, some news reports are indicating that several individuals (perhaps as many as five - each making north of $60,000 a year) are involved in sifting through the trash cans in the Oval Office and at the private residence in the White House in order to retrieve the pieces of the documents that Trump has ripped up - and then spend hours taping them back together.

Those are our tax dollars at work.

(I'm beginning to get a sense as to why Stormy Daniels felt the need to spank Donald Trump.  He is a very bad boy.)

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