Villaraigosa’s Frequent Flyer Budget
By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles
Don’t you just love Paris? Me, too.
Guess how many round trips you could make to Paris if you had the same travel budget as Mayor Villaraigosa?
Here’s a hint. You’ve seen pictures of Villaraigosa on trips to China, London, Washington, D.C., Miami, Detroit, Sacramento, New York, Chicago and Japan. Next month, he’s going to Mexico and El Salvador. Have you ever seen a picture of the guy at his desk, doing his job?
Here’s another hint: Air France charges $832 for a one-way ticket between Los Angeles and Paris.
Okay, have you figured out how many round trips to Paris you could take with the Mayor’s annual travel budget -- a budget funded with your hard-earned tax dollars?
The correct answer is: 120 round trips per year. You could fly there and back 10 times per month.
But if you did, you couldn’t get your work done, could you? And that, my friend, is one of the problems with our current Mayor. He doesn’t treat his job as, well, a job. Instead, he spends an inordinate amount of time taking trips and staging photo-ops. As a career politician, he’s always running for the next office.
If you elect me Mayor, I will take the job seriously. I will work full-time, right here, in L.A. Rather than wasting your money on unnecessary, self-aggrandizing trips, I’ll use the phone, FedEx and video-conferencing when I need to reach someone out of town. Villaraigosa’s $200,000 annual travel budget will be a thing of the past.
But for that to happen, I need your help to raise the $150,000 required for matching funds. To change our city, you have to join those of us who have put our money where our mouth is. Contribute today, would you? Please click here to donate by check or credit card. And if you use a credit card, be sure to use the one that gives you frequent flyer miles.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Walter Moore’s Blog
MooreIsBetter.com
