Not One Penny More!

It’s over, the election, that is.

And who among us is not glad for that?

But what to think now, even as we all consider what to think, now that we’re no longer watching negative political ads and are back to fielding drug pitches. No longer trying to read the fine print at the end of any ad; wondering whether Citizens for Tomorrow was Mitt’s super PAC or Barack’s, or given the laxity of the law, that of some rogue, some under-radar candidate in Newt’s clothing.

But consider this: both major political parties spent almost $6 billion in total on this election, no less than $2.6 billion on the presidential election alone. Their prime time coinciding with bad times along the Atlantic shore, where any fraction of that take would arguably have found a better use.

$6 billion.

$2.6 billion just on the presidency.

Not counting the super PAC money, we’re already way beyond folding cash and teetering on talking sin.

No, wait, we are talking sin.

And, closer to home, all those phone calls every day, every night, day after day, night after night, for months, and for what?

All that, just to give the guy who started to clean up a mess, the one his predecessor arguably left behind, the chance now to just keep on shoveling.

And, me, I’m thinking all that money for just this.

Not to undo what Sandy just did.

Not to fix what’s broken, the climate change that only ensures future Sandys.

Not to make the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, what it should be, AmeriCare, the same plan that covers Barack no less than Mitt, than Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, Tom Cruise, you, me, my next-door neighbor, my daughter, my sons, equally, to the exclusion of nobody, to the betterment of all of us.

And let’s not go where we shouldn’t go: imagining that even a fraction of that money might have gone to education; to fixing the, what, tens of thousands of bridges nationwide that need fixing; to addressing inequities that no one today dares call racism, but still is; to making us build here the things that we buy that are built elsewhere; to, in the end, ensuring that the least of us is, when it comes to those core values, those modern-day inalienable rights of educational parity, access to health care, security in old age, the equal of the most blessed among us; yes, even if that means that those of us blessed pay more than those less so, again to the betterment of all of us, to the betterment of the ideal that we all call America.

Here is what I propose: that all of us, even the most zealous of partisan supporters, withhold support from any and all future political campaigns.

Not one dollar. Not one cent. Not to any political candidate.

The problem with politics today is not the need for more money, but the need for less money.

 

So, give nothing. Give not one penny more.

Force the candidates to rely on publicly-supplied funds, the ones you and I have the choice to contribute to on our tax returns. Take the super PACs out of the equation by denying those vampires the money that is their only lifeblood. Do for your country what you—Democrat, Republican or otherwise attracted—know to be right: to let candidates speak for themselves, not for those who bought air time; to make the election process one of ideas, not of any ideology beholden to some super PAC; to, in the end, make us again what Lincoln once said we were: a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”