President Obama and Vice President Biden are out on the campaign trail stumping for their stooge.
My question is, “Who is paying for this?”.
If The President travels to a speaking engagement he flies with the squadron of three VH-3D Sea King helicopters, Marine One from the White House to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. He then will transition to a Boeing 747, Air Force One. “The Beast” his armored SUV is also flown via military transport to where he will be speaking. Along with him are US Marine security as well as his Secret Service detail. On the little jaunt will also be his staffers. I suspect there are at least 100 people, all government employees, involved in getting The President to a Hillybob stump party.
I’m going to make what we called in my industry a WAG or “wild ass guess” now. Let’s guess $200,000 per hour for flight time. NPR reports suggest that it’s much higher than $200,000. Let’s look at a ONE hour jaunt by our President. For that one hour excursion we have three helos at 2 hours (back and forth 4 times to Quantico), a 747 at 2 hours (out and back), and a cargo transport at 2 hours (out and back), that’s 10 flight hours. That makes it $2,000,000 in tax payer money for each trip. If we look at the salaries of 100 people with a fully loaded rate of $150 per hour that’s another $120,000 buckaroos for one wasted day.
To be fair, there is a reimbursement that the DNC pays for the flight time. But they only pay what the cost would have been to charter a commercial flight. Oddly the charted fare can be calculated using a much much smaller plane. It’s not clear if they pay for Marine One and transportation of “The Beast”. For WAG purposes let’s say they reimburse half of the cost. That leaves the cost of that one hour flight at $1,000,000 plus $120,000 in salaries.
I suspect my estimates are low knowing the waste in government spending. But for expediency let’s round down and call it $1 million for The President to fly to a destination 1 hour away to deliver a Hillybob rah-rah.
The answer to the question is, “You pay for it, sucka!”
Every time you see President Obama blabbing how great Hillybob is, remember the reality is, you just paid $1,000,000 whether you will vote for her or not.
Numbers above are just my WAG, Your mileage may vary…