Campaigns & Reform

I have just been wondering when the recession will be over for the actual people of this country. We hear all of the reports about how the banks are posting profits. How Wall St. is recovering. What about Main St? Where is the help for them? Where is the help for us, the people? When will we be able to start posting profits again? When will they hear us? The people of Main Street are about to have the only say to which they are entitled. Well here it comes! Election time! Maybe as we enter the Midterm Election Season we should all be wondering just how democratic is our election process?
November 3, Election Day, is coming up. After that it will be the campaign season. All the people who are up for the Midterm Election will be out there campaigning. They will be telling us how much they have helped us and how much their opponent wants to screw us. However, I think this season I am going to be looking more closely at their funding. I will be wondering who paid for all these ads and everything else that goes into a campaign. Every campaign season I wonder why there are more ads attacking opponents and not so many extolling the virtues of any particular candidate. Is it because the opponent is so bad or because they themselves have not done the greatest job? Or, is it a question of cash? Why so many ads in the first place and how are it democratic when only people with lots of money can run? Where do they get all that money? Also, is it not somewhat obscene that so much money is spent on campaigns, when so many people are suffering economic losses, jobs lost, homes lost and lives lost?
We have all heard about campaign finance reform, but does it ever happen? No. Why? Well it is freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is a good thing, I love it. Except that in the case of Campaign finance, whose speech is being protected and who is denied any speech at all? Are the candidates, who are all out there telling us that they feel our pain and kissing our babies going to work for us, if we elect them, or are they going to be working for the people picking up the tab so that they can tell us they feel our pain and kiss our babies? Somehow I believe it is the later.
Do they take our money, sure they do, but is it our money that means the most to any campaign or is it the corporate interests? Well of course it is the corporate interests they give far more money then we do. Far more often then we do. Just as it is the corporate interests that have more input in how, when and why laws are written or revised. When a politician finally loses a seat, where do they go? They obtain employment from the very corporate interests who they worked for while in office. We need to take a long hard look at how our government is run and by whom it is run. It is certainly not by us. Perhaps campaign finance reform should be voted on by the people it affects most, the voters and not the people who benefit from it.