Muzings From The Edge: Public Office For Sale
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There are a lot of folks out there asking people to vote for them so they can get into office and reduce the amount of governmental spending and reduce the national and other governmental debts. In the process of asking for these votes the pundits seem to measure their potential for success by how much money they have raised for their campaign or how much of their own money they are spending. It got me to wondering, if people have all this money to throw around maybe they just need to raise the money to reduce the governmental debt and forget the damn elections. After all nothing is really going to change anyway regardless of which candidate gets into office. Take California for example, someone needs to. Meg Whitman is spending 150 million dollars to run for governor a job which, I am sure, pays a hell of a lot less than that. Consider that her opponent Jerry Brown is spending a good size chunk of money himself to get into the same office. There must be some mighty big perks that go along with that job, ya’ think?
Just a glance at the amount of money being spent on all of these races really makes me think that the cause of the recession is that political campaigns are sucking all of the money out of the economy. According to Open Secrets.Org candidates for federal positions have already spent approximately 3.2 billion dollars running for office and we are still a month and a half away from the midterm elections. How about we just let the candidates take turns in the offices and put all of that money toward paying down the national debt they are so concerned about.
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Doesn’t the money put into an election go into the economy also? Just not where we’d want it to. It doesn’t go into the hands of the common man so he can buy more lottery tickets, but it goes to TV stations, publishing, phone banks, rents, basically to institutions that do not employ a lot of people, while the whole thing is run on the backs of volunteers.
She sounds like a colossal douche. I hope her gamble fails.
She is doing this for the corporatists here in California, so they can get to privatizing more things and cut programs for the needy in the state. Already has said she will be cutting about 40k jobs right away in the public sector. She could have given every single man woman and child a million of those dollars, that lives here and still spent a considerable amount. Would have taken our economy way way up, had she done that.
I have several republican friends, that are voting for governor Moonbeam this time around because of this woman.
Jess, I tend to agree with you here. I am not much of an economist but it seems that if she had just injected 150 million into the CA economy it would have helped a lot. I remember reading somewhere that California was something like the 5th largest economy in the world. If that is true, that could jump start this country all on its on.
Publicly funded elections is what we need. Level playing field for everyone. Never happen, lobbyists in too deep.
Open Secrets is a great tool. I used to think the Reps were the dirty ones. They’re both dirty. They’re ALL dirty.
It is a great site Oso. I just checking out one of my senators, Richard Shelby. He has a war chest of over $7 million and there is no one in this state who could even seriously challenge him in an election.
I too agree that there should be publicly funded elections partnered with limited radio and television exposure. As you say though, it will never happen.
Why would someone spend $150 million to get a job that pays about $250,000? I can see the sense in spending $250,000 to get a job that pays $150 million. I guess the answer is power, they want the power.
Well Holte, they say that power is a tremendous aphrodisiac. If Meg Whitman wins in California she is going to have a hell of an orgy for that price.
Greenlight makes a good point. People are “indeed” strange.
The latest SCOTUS ruling will make buying elections even less difficult and I am afraid we will see that going viral this November. That spells B A D for the Democrats. Great post Bill.
You got it right Mike. I think I am going to run for some office and sell my soul to some corporation. At least I can build up a sizable estate for my kids before I die. Doing the right thing sure hasn’t gotten me anywhere. 🙂
“if people have all this money to throw around maybe they just need to raise the money to reduce the governmental debt and forget the damn elections.” Sound words. I think similar thoughts every time I happen through a casino. People throw their money at these machines for what is almost guaranteed to be less payback, and then they complain about the government taking money to support little things like “infrastructure” and “social services.” People are strange.
If these idiots would just take a step back from their demagoguery and look at the reality of most their social policies this country would be in a lot better shape. We continue to imprison people for relatively minor drug offenses at the expenses of not having sufficient funds for education and rehabilitation programs. Instead of focusing on a health care program that covers everyone and targets bring down the costs idiots would rather keep people going to Emergency Rooms for medical care. In their quest to protect the so called free enterprise system they are, in effect, reducing this country to a a second tiered nation.