Posted by
Eaglewings on Saturday, April 12, 2008 8:46:38 PM
Image from WikipediaWhat can you buy with a billion dollars? How about
the presidency of the United States? Would you consider running for president if you had a spare billion dollars lying around? It would appear from a report on
NPR
that today’s presidential race is slated to topple the billion dollar
mark for the first time in U.S. history. They reported that with more
states striving for early primaries candidates are forced to be in more
places in much of the same time frame. What once took a whole year to
accomplish has now been pushed back to a few months. Having to purchase
expensive
television advertising
in more places requires the candidates to raise larger sums of money
than ever before. This year, as previously stated, the amount of money
raised in the entire presidential campaign may top $1 billion dollars.
Now I do not know about you but I think I can find much better ways to spend a billion dollars than to spend it on political ads.
For the most part these ads are attempts to sell us on a person who is
more than likely going to not do anything he or she has stated in these
said ads. Face time is what they are after in these advertisements.
Trying to get their persona in front of as many people as possible in
the shortest amount of time to impact the largest percentage of people.
This makes it impossible to keep big money out of politics.
It just stands to reason then the person with the most money is more
than likely to win their appointed elections. Therefore a billion
dollars can buy you the presidency of the United States of America.
When the only criteria used to determine fitness for office is one’s
ability to raise huge sums of money, the potential for graft and political corruption
increases with the ever increasing budgets. The more money being tossed
about the more opportunities there are to buy political favors. Mr Joe
Rockerfeller and Big Bucks Daddy’o Grady can purchase any special
project or any politico they wish to control. These, bought by large
donor purchases, political leaders then cater to special interest and
not what is in the the public’s best interest.
I do not know about you but I much prefer electing someone to office
who can not be bought. How then can we expect this to happen when the
budgets to run political campaigns is running into the billions of dollars? What must we do to get back to the common man being able to run for elected office?
This is just a view from the eagle’s nest.