House For Rent - A Real Estate Bargain

Taken from our news archives and dusted off for another election year.

Presidential elections are about to kick off again this year and it looks like campaign contributions are going to be higher than ever. All analysts are predicting that we will easily top the last campaign spending by at least billion dollars. The total campaign spending for the last presidential election topped out at about 4 1/2 billion dollars. That of course does not reflect the spending by the super-PACs.
If Lincoln were running for president today he probably wouldn't even have gotten into the primaries only having a poultry 2.8 million dollars (in today's dollars) with which to finance his entire campaign. In today's political arena elections have turned into a kind of weird auction with the winner often going to the candidate who can raise the most campaign funds.

The only real thing that can upset this auction like outcome is the super-PACs. Most of the time they are split pretty evenly but they can easily upset the outcome of an election if they all lined up solidly behind one candidate. Most candidates seem to be content with letting the super-PACs sling all the mud smearing their opponents while they themselves concentrate on the issues.

It wasn't until 2008 when we elected President Obama that total campaign spending topped the one billion dollar mark. It is expected that this year's presidential election campaign spending will exceed five billion dollars. Calls for campaign reform have gone unheeded for decades. And, what little campaign reforms there have been have left large loopholes big enough to sail the Titanic through.

Independent candidates have little or no hope of getting onto state ballots for national election often having to meet requirements not generally required of the Republican or Democratic candidates. It is often wondered why that the Civil Liberties Union has not even bothered to address this disparity.

We wonder when Americans will stop having to choose between the lesser of two evils and get real choices so that they may once again have real representatives that truly hear the voice of the people. Until that happens it cannot truly be said that our president represents the people of this great country.

So it is with all our elected officials. Even as they vote to raise our taxes they vote to raise their salaries as well. Our so-called representatives spend with reckless abandonment without any regard for where that money comes from. Then we have the nerve to wonder why our government teeters on the brink of insolvency or why the Congress controlled Post Office went bankrupt.

Is the race to this country's highest political office that only pays $500,000 a year worth the billions of dollars of campaign spending that will be spent by all the candidates this year? How many roads and bridges would that repair? How many hospitals and schools would that upgrade? And yet, individual Americans and corporations alike will give to the candidate of their choice even though the money is desperately needed elsewhere.

So it's time once again to hang out for rent sign on the White House. Applications are now being taken. Let the bidding begin.