An obscene amount of money spent on the election

– chicagotribunenews.com/news/opinion/letters

After observing the reactions of Republican and Democratic pols and pundits to the national midterm election results…I’ve distilled my own characterization of the entire campaign down to one word: Obscene.

After all, $4 billion was spent in service to this embarrassing fiasco; $4 billion for saturation advertisements awash in cynicism and demagoguery…

Four billion dollars that could have built how many new public schools in Chicago?…

— Jane Artabasy, Glencoe

We Respond & Your Comments

We hear this all the time: “Obscene money spent on elections.” A few thoughts on this…

First, the $4 billion spent on the 2014 elections is just two thirds of the money we spend on potato chips each year.

Second, the money doesn’t just evaporate. It’s paid to printers, writers, camera operators and others who use it to get their kids’ teeth filled, send them to school and buy them Christmas presents. How “obscene” is that?

Third, does anyone (are you listening, Ms. Artabasy?) think that if we spent, say, a billion bucks less, that even one more school would be built in Chicago?

Fourth, does anyone think that we write out checks to political parties because we want to? No – we do it because of governments’ intrusion into our private lives and businesses. Some pay to reduce it; others to expand it. Want to get the money out of politics? Get the government out of our lives.

Fifth, isn’t public discourse about the direction of our country’s destiny a pretty good thing to spend money on? Maybe it’s even worth a few million bags of chips!

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