The campaign spending season is in full swing with well-funded politicians claiming that an enemy victory will result in a plague of locusts o’er the land. (It won’t happen at my home. I have a rather aggressive lizard patrolling my office window.) Anyway, I see all sorts of articles, posts, emails claiming that hopeful politicos might be raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Indeed, in 2010 Meg Whitman spent the colossal sum of $150 million to run for governor of my state of California. This outrages me to no end.
This will happen if you vote for the wrong candidate.
How come I didn’t get any of it?
Look at it this way. Meg–may I call you Meg?–spent about $4 per every human being in this state. Did she get elected? No, she lost. She got nothing. Did we get anything? No, just an endless sea of ads that sapped our wills to live. What should she have done?
Bought our votes. Directly.
We could have gone to her website and pledged all our eligible votes to her. That would have been two in my case. In return, Meg would have given us $4 in vouchers, per family member, good to any fast-food restaurant of our choice, $16 for me and my brood! Yum! Yum! Would any votes ever have been sold so tastily
Could her gubernatorial opponent Jerry Brown with his paltry $4 million could have competed? No.
Think about it next time, candidates. My idea is good for you, it’s good for American voters and it’s good for Taco Bell.
– Paul R. De Lancey, Concerned Citizen
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
