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The price tag for being an RNC delegate
Workers sets up the Montana kiosk on the floor of the Tampa Bay Times Forum before the start of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.
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Delegates to the Republican Nation Convention are making the trek to Tampa, Fla. this weekend. Starting Monday, they'll spend their days cavorting, cheering and officially nominating a candidate for the presidential election. We already know who they are going to pick. What is a little more of a mystery: How much each of them spends making the journey. Wisconsin delegate Barbara Finger stepped away from her last-minute shopping to help us understand her personal electoral math.
Finger broke down the major costs:
- Delegate fee: $650 (covers many of the events costs)
- Airfare: $503
- Hotel room (shared): $800
The costs add up, but Finger things the price tag is well worth it.
"I'm a political junkie and this is just going to be, like, I'll be right in the midst of it. It's going to kinda be like a mosh pit in an open seating concert," Finger said.
Finger, who is unemployed, raised money for her trip through donations. So far, she says she's raised $3,600.
What a waste of an interview. Who cares what Ms. Finger had to spend or raise to visit the Republican three day political infomercial.
She's concerned about the pentagon budget? Is this woman aware that America's $700 billion defense spending equals the combined spending of the next 14 biggest spending nations combined? Does she have a stake in the defense industry? Relatives in the military? Even the pentagon has struggled to cut unwanted programs that congress keeps forcing them to continue in order to protect local jobs.
And, having worked for a fast food restaurant by her own words is she aware that the ObamaCare, the near clone of Massachusetts' RomneyCare, has provisions to help her former hamburger flipper colleagues with free or subsidized medical insurance? Does she have medical insurance?
Too, bad Marketplace Money chose to focus on the irrelevant while leaving unexplored real insight into this woman's thinking.
Agreed with Mark Sullivan below. What struck me as I listened to this interview is that Ms. Finger lost her job because her restaurant didn't have enough customers -- a lack of demand -- but she believes that tax breaks and deregulation will fix the economy. Those wouldn't have kept her restaurant alive, but federal stimulus jobs in her community might have kept people coming to the restaurant.
I just do not understand the thinking process of people like Ms. Finger. As an unemployed fast food worker she is among the last people in America that would be helped by a Republican victory at the polls this coming November. In fact, she will likely be significantly hurt by a Republican victory because the support systems and legal protections she depends on will be eliminated or sharply reduced. And any hope of being helped by “trickle down” is just plain delusional. Four decades of Republican trickle down has given us an ever richer economic elite and a Middle Class that is hanging on for dear life.
