A Politically Charged Rant

Let me just say, first, that I am not into politics.  I have my opinions, and I exercise my right to vote, but overall, I am not overly impressed with the world of politics and the people who wallow around in it.

That said, something about the elections this year is really bothering me.  Maybe it’s always been this way and I’ve never noticed.  I do manage to keep myself pretty sheltered.  I very rarely watch the news, or any other real-time TV for that matter, which means I also schwink right through all those political mud-slinging commercials.  I don’t have a land line (home phone) so I don’t get any of those annoying recorded messages, although I have seen plenty of people complaining about them on Facebook this year.  But, two things that I cannot escape are the election signs that over-populate every street corner, and the smear-campaign postcards that I find in my mailbox, stuck on my front door, and under my windshield when I park in a public parking lot. There seems to be a lot more of both this year.

First the signs.  How many signs for the same candidate really need to be posted on one corner?  How many corners really need to be littered with all these signs?    Some candidates seem to be more guilty of  this littering than others.  For example, Tim Griffin.  I don’t even know what the guy is running for.  But, I’m not voting for him, because I’m disgusted with the over use of his signs. It’s kind of like when they play a song on the radio over and over and over and suddenly your impression of the singer/band has changed entirely based on that one over-played song.

Perhaps my reaction to election signs is abnormal. Maybe this tactic works, but how much money is all of this costing? Say a candidate got a “special friend” price of $1.00 per sign to have them printed.  Any given major intersection is looking to be valued at $30-$100 today.  As I was running errands this morning, it was pouring down rain.  Several street corners had, in addition to the 30+ signs in the ground, real live people standing holding ANOTHER sign.  Imagine how much better spent this money could be.  What if we gave each of those sign holders the money from their corner and told them to go use it to do good.

And what happens to all these signs once the election is over?  Especially to the signs for the candidates that loose?  Again, a disgusting waste of resources, IMHO.

And then with the postcards.  If I only got one post card from each candidate, that would be one thing.  If the post card outlined the candidate’s platform without trying to smear the opponent, that would be one thing.  If the post cards came from both political parties, that would be one thing.  If everyone in the US recycled these post cards, that would be one thing.  But the thing is, these postcards are disgusting, and expensive, and wasteful, because I seriously doubt even 50% of the recipients read them before tossing them in the trash.

Yesterday I received 3 postcards in the mail.  I can’t even tell you how many we had before that.  Someone just stuck one in my front door as I am writing this.  I’m not kidding. All but one of them were offensive, attacking campaigns, that twisted words to paint the opponent yellow. (Thank you, Dawn Creekmore, for keeping it focused on you, and not your opposition.)  Maybe this should not surprise me, given where I live, but I think it is worth noting that all of them were from various members of the Republican party.  One that I received yesterday had the heads of Democrats (Obama, Pelosi, and Reid) superimposed on the bodies of cartoon scarecrows and corn stalks with the caption “Scared Yet?”  Dear Faith and Freedom Coalition: I’m not scared by badly photoshopped images, and I’m also sort of laughably disappointed that your Halloween-themed mailer managed to arrive AFTER Halloween. Regardless of my political inclination, I can’t take your message seriously when delivered in such a ridiculous way.

Again, my major beef is with the amount of money being spent on this nonsense.  I’m starting to be less concerned with the “Nancy Pelosi Spending Spree” that one postcard told me about, and more concerned with the excessive amount of funds that candidates are spending on self promotion.  I think there should be a campaign cap of about $5,000 for anything on the state level or below.  Imagine if we elected our officials based on their actions rather than on how eye-catching (or big) their campaign signs are.

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