Monday, December 13, 2010

The Billion Dollar Man

Will President Obama be the nation’s first Billion dollar man? Chris Cillizza, a staff writer for the Washington Post predicts that the Obama reelection campaign could very likely raise over one Billion dollars for the 2012 presidential race. Mr. Cillizza points to the following facts;
First, he collected $750 million while running as a senator. He'll now be running as a president, which should allow him to clean up financially to an even greater extent, thanks to the power of incumbency.

Second, the continued development and maturation of Internet fundraising over the past four years means that the $500 million - yes, you read that right - that Obama raised online in 2008 could well be topped in 2012, noted Ben Ginsberg, a top Republican lawyer who served as an adviser to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential bid.
Considering that the opposition candidate will have to raise a like amount to even hope to unseat an incumbent president this will be a squandering of cash at unprecedented levels. The picture shows 10 million $100 bills stacked on 12 pallets. No wonder these candidates are out of touch with reality.

It may just be time for some election finance reform.

9 comments:

  1. Reform? Ha!

    Since the SCOTUS has given corporations the power to further spend money that isn't likely.

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  2. Politics it's not a poor mans game. Not a wonder that the rich keep getting richer they buy their politicians.

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  3. If just the corp. and rich are involved why do they have a socialist in there in the first place. This is deeper than you know. Don't look past or discount what the intent of the corrector is.

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  4. The young people of the US will be the ones to stand up and call BS on the spin that is used by the abusers of politics.

    The younger generation has lived their lives in the internet age, and that is the one thing the political powers tend to forget.

    The old guard, and both major politacal parties are guilty, continues to use spin. They do not realize that next generation have been trained since their youth, to judge how much BS is marketed at them.

    The younger generation understands that they could make a website as impressive as many of the fancy corporate websites we see every day, in their basement. They have lifelong experience in judging the credibility of the information put in front of them.

    This generation knows to dig behind the information, not the spin that will be spent by the old guys in Washington, who forget their bloviating will be checked.

    The old guys,who actually depend on their reputation alone, (and the money they can raise through that reputation) does not realize that Google is going to take them out, and their credibility will be forever compromised.

    Hopefully someday the US will see political campaigns financed on a much smaller scale through the government. Until that day, the massive finance, and monumental ad campaigns will be viewed with a much more skeptical eye. Most people understand that the shameful amount of money that is raised from various organization comes with an IOU.

    The wars that continue on both sides, FoX and MSNBC, are getting to the point they are cartoonish. They are not sustainable, and eventually, responsible people will organize/vote/campaign for end of the sound bite,spin cycle,apologetic sound bite,respin.

    It may just fizzle out as obsolete.

    There is simply too much information readily availble for this snow job to continue.

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  5. keeping in mind that 61% of college graduates can no longer read at grade level...
    one might not get high hopes about the "younger generation" handling many problems handed down from us...
    maybe we could put it in a video game.

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  6. I certainly would not give any better credit to the previous generation.

    Be careful with statistics doc...they have a tendency to bite you in the ass.

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  7. decon:

    i agree stats can be iffy...
    the aforementioned is from the dept of commerce seeking to discover why foreign grads of u s colleges were scoring more jobs than american kids.
    it is not uncommon for a class of hs grads nationwide to have 20-25% functional illiteracy according to the gov's own studies.
    one of my kids' friends (accepted at yale) plans to become an english teacher and never read hemingway, faulkner or fitzgerald.
    and we ain't talking math and science yet.

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  8. It's just shameful. I think we are going to have to set spending limits. If you can't get your point across on a limited budget, you probably won't help us much in office. If both sides are limited to the same budget you should be able to see the qualities of a candidate better.

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  9. @Johnson-

    I would have to go with the idea that things are profoundly different now because of the influx of information.

    Although there is reasons to think these shortfalls to be alarming, one should also consider the overall changes, and the overstatements of credibility of these alleged institutions- I believe Yale's most famous alumni was the governor of Texas and then went on to do something else-I forget offhand what it was.

    Anyhoo a couple of points. The world is rapidly changing, and the institutions of higher education will need to adapt or they will simply become obsolete. Quite simply the product they sell will not be competitive.

    Maybe obsolete is a good thing.

    Google will only be a part of this, as all media will just plain change ideals and perceptions. Change and competition is good.

    I remember a short story by Shirley Jackson about a small towns society's fear of change.

    In my humble opinion, the classics have a place in a library where someone who is interested may search them, but many of them are "classics" because someone, many times hopelessly unqualified, somewhere declared them so.

    The everyman hero, such as Steinbeck's Tom Joad, is being replaced by newer heros in vivid hi def technocolor. Captain Phil Harris comes to mind, not only as salt of the earth, but even at a deeper level because one can experience his nonspoken demeanor.

    http://www.deadliestcatchfanwiki.com/page/Phil+Harris


    And the classic profound thinkers, whom I am sure you have your own list, are being quickly replaced by the new generation of intellectual giants such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Jerod Diamond.

    I am not degrading the value of these institutions, rather only stating that enormous changes are happening, and that may not be a bad thing.

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