Money in Politics

Leave it to the media to harp about "money" in politics. Perhaps a little perspective is in order. The media is currently harping that this may be the first presidential election to cross the 1 billion dollar mark (mind you they never adjusted for inflation in any of the other presidential elections, so their statement is basically meaningless...ahhh communications majors).

By comparison, first run wide release movies released domestically last year made 9.186 billion. We spend 9 times the amount of money seeing movies in a movie theatre than we do electing a President of the United States.

Now is this to say that there is no "quid pro quo." No, absolutely not. It should be common knowledge that special interests give money to buy influence with the politicians. Yet none of this outrage over the "amount of money" being spent is going to solve the underlying problem. So long as Washington has the power to influence corporations, unions, and other organizations the way they do, those organizations are going to pay to get their voices heard. Some times they have legitimate reasons for doing so (to prevent a stupid regulations from being passed by some stupid communications major turned stupid politician). Other times they are rent-seeking, whereby they are trying to maximize their profits outside of the normal free market system. Part of this can be cured (by a return to federalism and deregulation) and part of it is the cost we have to pay to live in a free market society that has a regulation scheme in place to promote equity. Get over it.

The other "outrage" that is supposedly going on is over the latest ad payed for by "supporters of Bush." In this ad, the announcer compares John Kerry to a "cicada" (those nasty little blind bugs that are about to swarm the east coast). Kerry is like a cicada in that he is annoying and a pain but goes away after a while (God I hope so).

Apparently, this is some disgusting display of trash politics... Oh, put a bug in it will you.

In a democratic process politicians are going to attempt to convey information to the voters, who determine whether they are going to have a job or not. Because advertising is so saturated and people have remotes where they can change the channel whenever they want, ads must be able to catch the eye of the viewer. Thus, cicada's are meant to be funny in order to catch the eye of the viewer.

Why do politicians do this? Well this "gutter politics" system we have in place replaces the bloody cout de e'tats that have taken place in other countries. For instance, in my favorite country France they used to replace kings and ministers by cutting off their heads. We replace politicians by comparing them to cicada's.

Which system do you want? Besides, it is not like the media is above this type of trash either. The media has just gotten done using clipped images of Iraqi prisoner abuse when they have been sitting on the story for 4 months. When you have a picture, you get viewers. When you get viewers you get ratings. When you have high ratings, you get lots of money to buy big gas guzzling SUV's. This process repeats when you do a report on how gas guzzling SUV's are killing the environment. Then you go out and buy more gas guzzling SUV's.

Apparently, the journalists think we can make it back to Eden absent God. Perhaps they should take a theology class and keep their mouths silent until they do.