Saw this first at CBS/Boston. A local Durham New Hampshire resident has offered to donate the up to $20,000.00 dollars necessary to cover the cost of Police, Fire, and EMT coverage for President Obama’s Campaign visit.
Durham officials say they didn’t mean to raise a ruckus, but they didn’t have the money budgeted for police, fire and EMS services needed for President Obama’s visit, and the Obama for America campaign said they wouldn’t pay.
Emphasis mine. If the Obama Campaign will not pay these costs you and I do.
There has been much speculation about the President mixing business with campaigning. His fundraising and campaign stop schedule is as intense as any in memory. It seems impossible to suggest that he is not using taxpayer funded resources to advance his personal political ambitions. So I am just going to assume that this is standard OFA practice; refusing to cover local costs, paid for with the property taxes of “Average Working American Middle Class Families™,” when his majesty stops by to tell us how wonderful he is, and how hard he is “working” to help “Average Working American Middle Class Families™.” By my thinking that makes these costs a non-voluntary taxpayer funded in-kind campaign contribution from every location he campaigns at. How is Obama not campaigning at taxpayer expense either way when we know the campaign refuses to pay for those costs?
And if this really can be called the equivalent of an in-kind donation to the Obama campaign (which is still speculation on my part) the “anonymous donor” in Durham New Hampshire, who has offered to pay for the added local campaign costs of His Majesty’s court, would be required to publicly declare it as a donation or face a confrontation with the FEC
