WHAT ABOUT THE CARBON FOOTPRINT? Obama admin political appointee takes heat for trips home on taxpayers’ dime. “Obama political appointee Ron Sims is under scrutiny for trips he made to Seattle during the first several months after his appointment. Sims made 13 trips to Seattle, his home city, as Obama’s Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) between early May 2009 and late August 2010.” Worries about carbon emissions are for the little people. And worries about misuse of tax money are for . . . nobody much, it seems.