While the Richmond
Times Dispatch chose to focus on one visit by President Obama in July to
Walkerton Tavern and Gardens in Henrico County (showing their own political
bias), BOTH Mitt Romney and President Obama have cost Virginia’s taxpayers “at
least $219,000”[1]
for their campaign visits to the commonwealth.
For almost the entire presidential campaign, both candidates
have used Virginia as a swing-state hot spot that has bled “precious” financial
and personnel resources from law enforcement agencies at the state and local
level. Regardless of how “razor-thin”[2]
each county’s respective budget might be, it is inexcusable for political
campaigns to expect local taxpayers to foot the bill for their campaign stops.
Up to the present, police departments in Chesterfield,
Henrico, Hanover and the Virginia State Police have come up with a conservative
estimate of at least $219,000 worth of costs (although I’m sure each of these
departments will more than make up for the financial loss with erroneous
fines!). The Richmond police still haven’t made their costs available to the
public.
How much money each campaign has raised at any given
campaign event is also beside the point. The fact is that the events cost
money, money that is being supplied by local taxpayers who are not being given
a say as to whether or not they even want to allow such an event to take place.
Would you like it if a neighbor threw a party that you had to pay for? Probably
not.
The irony is that while both candidates talk about the
deficit, the debt, and how much money our country is losing everyday for this
reason or that, both candidates aren’t making the situation any better.
With their huge political campaign war chests and the
unfathomable amount of money that has been spent on attempting to sway a very
small number of truly undecided voters, each campaign should reimburse the
respective counties where each held an event. They don’t expect to walk into a
restaurant, eat, and then leave without paying, do they?
Particularly in the case of Mitt Romney, failure to pay
would be something like accepting a hand out by Virginia’s taxpayers. But isn’t
that socialism (at least in the way that right-wing conservatives define it)!?
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