Campaign spending 2012
Estimates put campaign spending for the 2012 Presidential election at around two billion dollars. That seems like a lot of money to an old Iowa farm boy like me.
Donations to a candidate’s campaign are limited to a maximum of $2,500, but donations to the Super PACS are sometimes as large as ten million dollars. These Super PACS are unregulated, and the candidates they support supposedly have no control over how these funds are spent. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
Do you think these large donors might get any special consideration by the officials they help to elect? I’m probably just being paranoid.
It gets worse. Lets look at all the campaigns including the U.S. House and Senate, state, city, county, and local political races. We certainly don’t want to ignore special elections like the Wisconsin Governor Walker recall election. We now have a total of around six billion dollars.
Seems like a lot of money to me. I admit it produced business for some ad agencies, TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, and printing companies, but do you think there is any better way we could have spent that money?
I have a still greater problem with all this money spent on campaign ads that are inaccurate, misleading, or outright lies. Many people just get sick of the media blitz if they live in a battle ground state. And, worst of all some people actually believe the lies.
The destruction from Sandy is in the news. FEMA is one of the federal government agencies helping these people. Six billion is half of FEMA’s entire budget.
As with many things involving our federal government, campaign spending has gotten out of control. The primary concern of many politicians is getting elected and they ignore the people they should be representing.
The very rich, large corporations, and special interest groups like unions and welfare seem to be well represented. Unfortunately, neither party seems to be concerned with the average working American.
Maybe it is time for some serious and effective campaign reform. We should also give serious consideration to repealing the 17th Amendment to Constitution so U.S. Senators act in the best interest of the state they are supposed to be representing and not the Super PACS that helped elect them.
I claim ignorance here, what's a super-PAC??
ReplyDeleteI do agree, the candidate with the most $$ behind him shouldn't always be the one who wins, and that's the trend we've seen. And the one most able to accomplish election fraud!