Dino Rossi declared that he doesn’t spend a dime unless he expects a good return on it. He’s a businessman and that’s just smart business.
We’re seeing enormous amounts of money being spent right now. Where is it coming from? It isn’t coming from folks like you and us. It seems that little is coming from the candidates themselves. It begs the question of what the expected return to the spenders will be? Are our legislators going to be the best someone else’s money will buy? Who will they represent?
Two states, Maine and Arizona, have adopted campaign spending limits on candidates by offering them public financing. The idea is to level the playing field so the public gets to chose what and whom they want, instead of being bullied by big money interests. Washington Clean Campaigns is an organization trying to get that sort of thing here too. Foot-in-the-door progress came when legislation was passed last year to allow counties and local agencies to implement these rules locally. Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen supported it and Gov. Gregoire signed it. Of course, big money now is trying to make it seem like there was a sinister plot on their part for doing it.
Republicans complain of Democrats’ tax-and-spend policies, but replace it with less obvious borrow-and-spend policies that deceptively spend far more but make subsequent generations pay the bill. They decry big government restrictions which are mostly consumer protection, ecology protection, and truth in lending and advertising laws. They complain about welfare fraud, but replace it with wealthy fraud. They cry for “privatization” which turns what the public paid for and developed over to private concerns who can profit by soaking the public and then sell out to foreign interests who then will own and control us. Indiana sold its interstate toll road to a foreign concern. Puget Sound Energy is trying to do that right now. It’s been said that their CEO will get some $3 million if it goes through. What’s next?
On the national level they promote an illegitimate war so they can usurp emergency powers like suspending habeas corpus and civil rights. It’s been their method for decimating our national treasury so Social Security and Medicare will die for lack of funding, since they otherwise were unsuccessful in legislating them away. If they had their way, all retirements would go the way of Enron, Worldcom and all the other endless stock market scandals. Our nation would drop to being a “third world” country and senior citizens would have to hope for a “peaceful demise” in a world of 1973 predicted “Soylent Green.”
No one likes taxes, but the alternative is to be sold out and controlled by profiteers who would spit us out and trample us into the ground at the first opportunity. There just isn’t any free lunch, but there are better alternatives if we are willing to do what it takes to get them. Others have done it. Others are doing it in this election.
Outsmart big money schemers. Vote for the PUD.
Al and Barbara Williams
Oak Harbor
