Obama’s army of PR staffers costs taxpayers $500 million per year

[Uncle Siggy]

I think that was the term, planting threads in political and religious forums so as to garner information about the citizens responses to the topics.

That's been going on for years...

 

[Uncle Siggy]

Did that appear here? It was a big deal for awhile I guess and especially in social media.

I'm not sure about that I see so much stuff I lose track of what I've seen and where I've seen it...

 

[VanillaSunflowers]

I'm not sure about that I see so much stuff I lose track of what I've seen and where I've seen it...

I called my friend and they also deleted the links they'd saved to email all of us.
I'll see if I can find it by keywording. If so I'll update this reply.


OK, that wasn't hard.
I Ducked and found quite a bit of info sites to choose from. I'll post the Duck results so people can have their choice if they want to read this stuff. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=government+sends+trolls+to+seed+stories+into+internet+forums&t=ffsb&ia=web

 

[VanillaSunflowers]

That's been going on for years...

Well that's disheartening.

 

[Gene2memE]

Took a quick look at the report. Not only is spending roughly proportional to the previous presidency, but the main spender is *drumroll please*:

The Department of Defence

Yep, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines spend between 450 and 870 million per year on advertising - like sponsoring NASCAR teams and blowing $85 million on consultants for a new slogan. The DoD also had the highest average salary for PR employees of any federal agency.

Oh, and that 2008-2010 peak in spending - its the Department of Commerce's fault. Why? Because of the US Census - the DoC spent ~360 million on advertising in these years, 95% of which went to the Census bureau.

Take out the Census bureau spending and guess what? Average spending in the 2009-2015 period is about 12% lower than the 2006-2008 period, despite the climb in employment.

 

[redleghunter]

Well gosh, the first thing I'd do if I were really concerned about facts and figures is put in the work to satisfy my own curiosity. http://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO PR Agency Spending.pdf

Nice sleuthing. So the average is $1 billion annually over the past decade. That's real money for conducting information operations on the US citizenry.

 

[redleghunter]

Not that long ago a friend emailed me an article about government trolls, I think that was the term, planting threads in political and religious forums so as to garner information about the citizens responses to the topics.

I deleted the email after I read the article. Did that appear here? It was a big deal for awhile I guess and especially in social media.

The first time I saw such activity (both parties do it) was in the 2000 election. Fewer sites back then so easier to pick out. They show up after the conventions post a lot and disappear shortly after the election. You can tell most are ideologues all too happy to contribute. The more they post the more they get paid. Not confined to the US. China and Russia do the same for PR and propaganda messaging. A free form of psychological operations. That is why I don't want tax dollars going to the Fed.gov to tell us what's working and how good the government is doing. I can tell by just going to the local VA clinic to report back on that. $1 billion might help a bit with getting Veterans access to care sooner.

 

[redleghunter]

That's been going on for years...

The subtle screen names with the election year. Don't know how many ____2004 I saw back then. Then they disappear. Then come back with the 2004 tag in 2008 rinse repeat and gone again. I think the only time I saw a presidential year screen name pop up for a midterm was in 2010 . Those were some panicked posts. Lol.

 

[Gene2memE]

That's real money for conducting information operations on the US citizenry.

It's also real money to recruit US citizens for the armed services (and go fight in foreign wars). DoD advertising never made up less than 50% of US federal advertising spending in the last decade, and in some years passed 70%.

US DoD spending on advertising, from the GAO report
2006: 631 million
2007: 710 million
2008: 868 million
2009: 795 million
2010: 580 million
2011: 521 million
2012: 574 million
2013: 452 million
2014: 542 million
2015: 591 million

That comes to ~$6.3 billion in the last 10 years - or more money than has been spent on the National Endowment for the Arts in its entire 50 year history.

Put it another way - in 2015 the US DoD spent slightly more money on advertising than either Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Bolivia or Paraguay spent on their entire military budgets.

 

[redleghunter]

It's also real money to recruit US citizens for the armed services (and go fight in foreign wars). DoD advertising never made up less than 50% of US federal advertising spending in the last decade, and in some years passed 70%.

US DoD spending on advertising, from the GAO report
2006: 631 million
2007: 710 million
2008: 868 million
2009: 795 million
2010: 580 million
2011: 521 million
2012: 574 million
2013: 452 million
2014: 542 million
2015: 591 million

That comes to ~$6.3 billion in the last 10 years - or more money than has been spent on the National Endowment for the Arts in its entire 50 year history.

Put it another way - in 2015 the US DoD spent slightly more money on advertising than either Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Bolivia or Paraguay spent on their entire military budgets.

We speak as if the DoD has no boss.


Second point is I don't think most of that money goes to recruiting. There is huge waste in promoting pet DoD projects as well. Trust me I know.

 

[Gene2memE]

The Washington Times and CATO narrative on this - that the Obama administration hired hundreds of PR bureaudrones and wasted 1.5 billion dollars p/a on government PR activities to make the administration look good - doesn't bear examination when compared with the substance of the GAO report.

The substance of the findings is this:

US federal spending on advertising and related activities surged in 2008 to 2010 and then fell back to an annual level slightly below the non-peak average between 2012 and 2015.
The advertising spend peak was primarily due to two factors - the surge in Department of Commerce spending, 95% of which was related to the 2010 Census, and the increase in military advertising spend. Veterans Affairs and programmes related to drug abuse, medicare and medicade have all seen an increase in recent years, while military spending has fallen.
US federal advertising employment did increase - growing from ~4400 to a peak of ~5250 in 2011, before falling to ~5050 in 2015.
This is a net increase of just under 600 workers and better than 50% of this advertising employment growth comes from the US DoD.
In nominal dollars, combined advertising/PR salaries increased by 36% from 2006. However, adjusting for inflation, the increase was 18%.
This trend aligns with the growth of number of employees (+17%) thus you end up with total inflation adjusted advertising/PR salary growth of 2%.
As a percentage of total federal salaries PR/advertising wages were almost entirely static at 0.33% of the total federal wage budget. In fact the only years that was different was 2015, when this number fell to 0.32%.

Did you read the report?

 

[God's Child]

This thread has undergone a clean up. If you notice a post of yours missing it was removed in the clean up. Please stay on topic of the original post, do not flame, and refrain from using profanity even in quotes. Thank you and have a great day.

Admin Hat Off

 

[iluvatar5150]

That's why so many depend on Snopes and all of the other dopey fact checkers, they don't care...

Wait... So you post a bogus analysis of a non-story and then want to rag on others for being lazy by relying on fact checking sites?

Seriously?

You couldn't even be bothered do that much.

 

[ChristsSoldier115]

President Obama has swelled the ranks of government PR, adding hundreds of new public relations specialists to the federal payroll during his time in office, costing taxpayers a half-billion dollars a year, the government’s chief watchdog said Wednesday.

That doesn’t include the more than $100 million the administration spends annually for help from private sector spinmeisters, nor does it account for the $800 million spent on contracts for advertising in 2015, according to the Government Accountability Office.

“Spending $1.5 billion on government PR activities is a huge waste of money. That sort of spending should be drastically scaled back,” said Chris Edwards, a federal budget scholar at the Cato Institute.

The administration added some 667 PR staffers between 2008, the last full year under his predecessor, and 2011, when public relations staffing across federal agencies peaked at 5,238 people. That’s a jump of 15 percent during those years.

Rest of the article is at the link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/5/obama-administration-hires-hundreds-pr-staffers/

Whats depressing is that the government spends so much that this is like a drop in the bucket to them.

 

[Uncle Siggy]

Wait... So you post a bogus analysis of a non-story and then want to rag on others for being lazy by relying on fact checking sites?

Seriously?

You couldn't even be bothered do that much.

It's about being open minded and considering all the stories before deciding which one (or parts of ones) is true instead of just accepting the one that fits your political ideology...

SO what do you consider to be bogus about the article? How much money was spent or how many PR people are actually out there???

So am I supposed to accept what the GAO say over what the article says? And if so then how can you verify that what the GAO says is actually the truth? Is it because the Government published it and so I should just suck it in and say "Ok I believe it" or is it because you do and you want me to also??? (Just remember the GAO didn't say that it didn't/isn't happening).

 

[Uncle Siggy]

Whats depressing is that the government spends so much that this is like a drop in the bucket to them.

Very true they spend so much money on utter nonsense no wonder we are 20 trillion in debt...

 

[iluvatar5150]

It's about being open minded and considering all the stories before deciding which one (or parts of ones) is true instead of just accepting the one that fits your political ideology...

SO what do you consider to be bogus about the article? How much money was spent or how many PR people are actually out there???

So am I supposed to accept what the GAO say over what the article says? And if so then how can you verify that what the GAO says is actually the truth? Is it because the Government published it and so I should just suck it in and say "Ok I believe it" or is it because you do and you want me to also??? (Just remember the GAO didn't say that it didn't/isn't happening).

Wait... You're asking if you're supposed to take the word of the GAO report over the word of the author of your article?

Your article's primary source was the GAO report. If the author's description of the report doesn't jive with what the report actually says, then you throw out the article. Even if, hypothetically, the report were wrong, the article would be extra wrong for inaccurately reporting the report's errors.

And do you really want to talk about just blindly accepting a story that fits your political ideology? Because that's exactly what you did. You accepted and posted a story with an obvious slant precisely because it made Obama look bad. But now that people have pointed out that Obama has essentially maintained the status quo, you want to talk about having an open mind about competing sources?

Please.

 

[imind]

So am I supposed to accept what the GAO say over what the article says? And if so then how can you verify that what the GAO says is actually the truth? Is it because the Government published it and so I should just suck it in and say "Ok I believe it" or is it because you do and you want me to also??? (Just remember the GAO didn't say that it didn't/isn't happening).

*sigh* its a massive conspiracy, like global warming and evilution.