The Obscenity, Perversity, And Pervasiveness Of Election Campaign Spending

As the mid-term election campaign season mercifully draws to a close, I thought it would be a good time to do some accounting and show how much money as perverted and pervaded our election processes and provide some steps on how to end this obscenity of spending. Consider the following results:

• A short article in the St. Petersburg Times last week estimated that about $2 billion will be spent on election efforts of those running for national office. This comes out, on average, of spending about $4 million for each Congressional seat that is up for grabs this election season. Thus, for every open Congressional seat that earns about $174,000 in salary a year, $4 million is spent to attain that position, a ratio of $23 spent for every dollar of salary.
• This $2 billion estimate is only for Federal Congressional races, the article provided no estimates for the billions of dollars likely being spent on open local, county, and state political offices and for ballot initiatives. An estimate of that number comes form the Center For Responsive Politics. They estimate that both parties and their aligned advocacy groups will spend over $3.7 billion this year, nearly a billion dollars more than was spent in 2006.
• A short article in the October 29, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, reported that the U.S. spends $1 billion a year on heart disease research, a disease that affects millions and millions of Americans, and $500 million a year for Alzheimer's disease research, of which one out of every three Americans over the age of 80 is likely to come down with. Thus, the money spent on these elections, according to the Center For Responsive Politics,  is more than what is spent in seven years for Alzheimer's disease research and almost four years for heart disease research, even though these two medical conditions are more likely to affect far more Americans than mudslinging political advertisements. Talk about screwed up priorities.
• In Florida, a bitter campaign for Governor has been underway between Alex Sink and Rick Scott. According to an article in the October 28, 2010 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, the two candidates had already spent almost $55 million in their quest to be Governor. This is almost double what was spent in the last Governor race in 2006. The $55 million is $6 million more than what is spent on textbooks in the state's third largest school district since 2008. Since Florida has 67 counties, this amount is more than what was spent on school textbooks in each of 65 counties since 2008. Again, talk about screwed up priorities.
• According to an article in the November 5, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, the biggest single contributor in this year's election campaign season has been the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) labor union. This is contrary to what many DDemocrats would want you to think, they wanted to give the impression that "corporate" and "foreign" money was overwhelming the election process, which it may well be doing but no more and probably less than what AFSCME is doing. That labor union had contributed a whopping $87.5 million to Democratic candidates in order to keep their labor friendly politicians in office.  
• According to the same article, Meg Whitman, who is running for Governor of California, has spent more than $140 million of her own money to run for this office. I do not know what the salary is for the California Governor but I would bet it is substantially less than $140 million.
• And finally, a short article from the November 5, 2010 issue of The Week magazine pulls this all together. According to the article, three Republican candidates, Meg Whitman in California, Rick Scott in Florida, and Linda McMahon in Connecticut, have collectively spent $243 million (almost a quarter of a billion dollars) of their own money for their campaigns. This is more than what the AFSCME union, the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, and Karl Rove's American Crossroads group combined have contributed to various campaigns.

Obscene, perverted, and pervasive. You might be able to justify, to some degree, the obscene amounts of money being spent on these election campaigns if their advertising and strategies were to inform and educate, and contained some degree of civility. However, at least the campaigns ads I have seen, have not been anywhere close to these three characteristics. They have been mean spirited, degrading, and almost totally non-issue based. They usually are not about how much good a candidate can do but how bad things will be if the candidate's opponent gets elected. Misinformation is the coin of the political realm and lies are the currency.

It is obvious that we have allowed way too much power and freedom to migrate to our political class. Why else would someone spend $140 million of their own money to get elected or special interest groups contribute so much money that the pay back for a successful candidate is $1 for every $23 dollars spent for the vacant seat. (The payback for the loser who also spent millions of campaign dollars is even worse, they do not even get the $1).  The only other reason for the obscene amounts of money to be donated and spent is the desire of our politicians to control that power. Remember how numerous banks contributed millions of dollars in 2008 to the national conventions of the Demcorats' and Republicans' national conventions that summer, only to receive billions of taxpayer bailout money several months back in return later when those same politicians attending those conventions voted to approve those bailouts? The corporations and unions are investing in their futures when they invest these large amounts of money in political campaigns. It is what is right for these organizations, not what is right for the average voter and what is right for the country. Remember the old saying from Ralph Louis Mencken, "Every election is an advance auction of stolen goods." Unfortunately, those stolen goods are our tax dollars and the political class are the auctioneers.

How do we end this perversion, pervasiveness, and obscenity of campaign dollars? Consider a few steps from "Love My Country. Loathe My Government:

• Step 6 - allow only individual citizens to contribute to election campaigns. The Bill of Rights and Founding Fathers provided the right for freedom of speech for individual Americans, not corporations, unions, PACs, etc. If only individual citizens could contribute to candidates' election campaigns, maybe those candidates would start listening to and performing for individual Americans, not the big money campaign donors.
• Step 7 - do not allow campaign dollars to cross Congressional lines for House of Representative seats or state lines for Senate seats. For example, a person running for Congress in a Congressional district in Ohio would only be able to accept campaign donations from citizens living within that Congressional district. No funneling of national party money into local campaign races. Only the people living in that district should be able to affect the results, either by donating money or voting.
• Step 8 - strengthen the Federal Elections Commission by staffing it with experienced law enforcement professionals and not career bureaucrats. I am sure that with billions of dollars flying around, there are certainly campaign finance laws being broken but since the Commission is staffed with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, no one is ever prosecuted for infractions.
• Step 39 - institute term limits for all politicians, a step that would at least eliminate the edge that incumbents have in raising campaign cash and allow politicians to vote for what is good for the country and not their individual campaign donors since re-election would be banned.
• Other - although not explicitly mentioned in the book but related to Step 7 above, another step that is needed is to restrict how leftover campaign funding is spent. Last week, news reports indicated that President Obama released $4 million from his leftover Presidential campaign fund to be used for support of Democrats running for Congress. We need a law that says once a campaign is over and the bills have been paid, those funds need to be liquidated, either by returning a pro-rated amount to the original contributors or giving the money to charities, e.g. Alzheimer's disease research! Those contributors expected the money to be used for his election, not to be funneled around the country to affect local elections. Dissolve these leftover pots of campaign money so that they do not poison future elections.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Nowhere in that great document where these words appear does it say of the PACs, by the unions, for the corporations. Time to bring campaign spending back under control and make the politcal class more responsive to the needs of Americans.




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