Election Time

Well, I finally did it. I voted early. What a breeze. No long lines. No waiting in the cold. No meeting friends that you haven't seen since the last election.

Interesting to see all the campaign signs in a corral just outside election hqs.What a misinformation overload at the last minute. I guess, though, that a few voters (likely many more than a "few") actually wait until the last second to decide which box to check.

Regardless of the outcome, if the forecasters are right, there's gonna be a real "change" this time.  If that "change of faces" actually happens, let's hope that the newly elected folks, the RETURNEES, as well as the senators who are not up for re-election until 2012 and 2014 get the message: we are tired of the same old rhetoric and we won't take it any more. To paraphrase Bill Cosboy, we put you in there and we can take you out.

It still amazes me that so many of us are so easily fooled. When a congressman "comes back to the district", with a check in his hands for a couple hundred thousand dollars, to give to a local, deserving organization, he/she gets his/her grip-n-grin picture in the newspaper, and is applauded as a hero. Let's examine this with my typically cynical eye. I think of that money in much the same way I think of the money that "paid professional solicitors" give to deserving organizations. Organizations, in those cases, contract with the solicitors who contact, usually by phone, folks like you and me (while we're eating dinner), wanting us to buy a ticket to some podunk event or another to "help out" the organization. Yes, it's for a good cause. But, as I've stated in another posting, the deserving organization gets as little as 7-percent of the funds collected. The rest of the money covers "expenses" of the solicitors.

How does this apply to the homespun congressmen? Glad you asked. Consider the congressman as that "paid, professional solicitor". You send a lot of your hard earned money to Washgonton in the form of taxes. The "paid, professional solicitors" take out their expenses and return, perhaps, 7-percent of your money to the district. You can consider the other 93% as expenses, or even "shipping and handling" charges. After all, the congressmen must fly to their districts in order to present the checks, right? Never mind that a first class stamp would do the trick.

Anyway, one more day. Then, another year or so until the "signs of the times" finally fade blow away. Since duly elected city councilmen and county commissioners don't seem eager to adopt regulatory ordinances forcing policiticians (including themselves) to remove their signs in a timely manner, maybe they'd consider requring those signs be made of a biodegradable substance that will become "one with nature" 45 days after it's erected. Now, there's an idea worth exploring.