Samuel Martin - State Department Spent $52,701 on Curtains for Residence of Ambassadors

State Department Spent $52,701 on Curtains for Residence of U.N. Envoy

Summary
During President Obama's time in office, a set of curtains for the U.N. Ambassador Nikki R. Haley's residence were purchased that cost over $50,000 taxpayer dollars. At this point it is unclear who's idea this purchase was and who authorized it, but we do know that it wasn't Ambassador Haley's purchase. This purchase of curtains came when the State Department was cutting budgets, laying off its employees, and stopped hiring of new staff, making this an extremely questionable action. The residence itself is used to house Mrs. Haley and to entertain guests to the U.S, so it was reasoned that the curtains being easily and fast to close was a good purchase on top of the vast penthouse already costing the government over $58,000 per month. In the end, the only 'official' purpose for these curtains is for entertainment and security.

Analysis
The article was written Friday, September 14, 2018, meaning that it has the most current information available, but is also lacking any further details that may come out in later dates. I already knew that there had been and influx in government spending of taxpayer dollars on personal events, but I didn't know that the curtain showdown occurred at the same time of the proposed budget cuts of over 31%. This outrageous spending of taxpayer dollars reminded me of the time in 2008 when audits were completed showing that over half of all purchases on government credit cards were personal or fraudulent purchases that should not have been completed on these government cards. Another example of this was when it was leaked by government officials that they were paying over $60,000 per hour just to have pictures taken of Air Force One in front of various national monuments, not to mention the cost of the plane, fuel, and crew needed facilitate the government's side of the situation. This article was written to inform everybody in the United States of what our elected officials are doing with our money. This article was written by Gardiner Harris, who covers international diplomacy for the New York Times, and was serving as a White House Reporter at the time of this purchase. The article was written to try to get citizens to see how officials are abusing the power that we give them when we don't keep them in check. This is very important to our current society because we need to be able to trust these people, and when they abuse this trust that we give to them, why should we keep them serving in office for the future of our country? I think that anybody who encourages these personal purchases should be reprimanded because they already make enough money just being government officials, but then don't even have to spend that money because they can use taxpayer dollars on government credit cards for their own family vacations, pizza nights, and tableware sets.

Source
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/politics/state-department-curtains.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus