ONE BILLION DOLLARS

September 19, 2008

If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention – bumper sticker

According to OpenSecrets.org “For the first time ever in U.S. history, the candidates for President have raised more than $1 billion.” ONE BILLION DOLLARS! $1,000,000,000.00. $1000 Million Dollars. That sure sounds like a lot of money…how much is it you might ask? Well, I went to About.com to get some help with putting that number into some perspective:

• A million dollars ago was five (5) seconds ago at the U.S. Treasury.
  A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.

• If we wanted to pay down a billion dollars of the US debt, (which as of this writing is $9,666,440,318,030.02 - that’s 9 trillion, 6 hundred 66 billion, 4hundred 40 million, 3 hundred 18 thousand 30 dollars and two cents) paying one dollar a second, it would take 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds. To pay off a trillion dollars of debt, at a dollar a second, would take about 32,000 years.
• A tightly-packed stack of new $1,000 bills totaling $1 billion would be 63 miles high. In comparison, jet planes fly at 30,000 - 40,000 feet (5.7 - 7.7 miles high).
• About a billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was in full swing. (One billion minutes is about 1,900 years.)
• About a billion hours ago, we were living in the Stone Age. (One billion hours is about 114,000 years.)
• About a billion months ago, dinosaurs walked the earth. (One billion months is about 82 million years.)
• A billion inches is 15,783 miles, more than halfway around the earth (circumference). The earth is about 8,000 miles wide (diameter), and the sun is about 800,000 miles wide, not quite a million.

Now that that’s clear-er…the candidates for President have raised $1 Billion dollars which they "NEED" to use to finance their Presidential campaigns. $1 Billion dollars to get elected for President. $1 Billion dollars spent on campaign teams, field offices and data collectors, survey results, polls and focus groups, TV, radio and newspaper ads, Billboards, posters and mailings. $1 Billion dollars spent on NOTHING really important at a time when people are losing their homes and their jobs due to the economic crisis, communities are being destroyed because of weather catastrophes, individuals cannot afford gas for their cars or food on their tables and parents cannot get loans to send their children to college. That is just in the United States. What about the troubles in the rest of the world, where children are starving, unclothed and uneducated…WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!

Obama says, “We are a better country than this.” Well I damn well think we should be and I damn well think our Presidential candidates should be our role models for being better than this. $1 Billion dollars to put a person into the White House. Ridiculous! There has got to be a better and far less expensive way to elect someone for President.

Whew! I just had to get that off my chest. Thanks for reading. Moving on...

Kathy B.

THROW ASIDE THE CURTAIN

September 18, 2008

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
~from the Wizard of Oz movie

So much is being thrown at us every day – every minute of every day – on the internet, radio, television, emails, magazine articles, newspaper stories and opinion pages. As I observe America rapidly sinking into the gutter - the Stock Market plunging, the National Debt mounting, Gas Prices bouncing, food prices growing, global warming causing one catastrophic storm after another – I watch and wait for the next big news story, and I study our Presidential candidates. I am hoping they will put it all into some kind of perspective for me. I am looking to them for guidance, for vision, for a plan that will lead us away from some unknown disaster. Instead, they seem busy trying to define each other in some way – usually negative – for me. As if I am not intelligent enough to see and understand for myself, who or what they stand for and capable of making my own decision.

As I see it, at this moment every single one of the candidates is wearing some kind of mask. Either they have donned it themselves or the other party has thrown it on them. Our job, the job of the American electorate, is to lift those masks and try to find the real person who is under there. The person who is going to actual be setting the vision, making the decisions and running this country as President of the United States for the next four years. Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we must ignore the warnings and fling back the curtain to reveal the human being controlling all the smoke and mirrors – the person under that mask.

I am finding that discovering the truth is the best way to educate myself regarding the candidates. The following websites have been extremely informative. I encourage you to educate yourself by visiting them:

• The Fact Checker: maintained by the Washington Post as a “truth squad” for the 2008 election.
• Factcheck.org: An excellent site to find out whether or not that ad you just saw was accurate or not.
• Politifact.com: An amazing site with wonderful graphics illustrating whether the claims and counterclaims from both sides are true or false and just how much so.
• OpenSecrets.org: Everything you ever wanted to know about campaign finances but were afraid to ask. Did you know that the candidates in this election have raised over $1 Billion dollars!?
• OntheIssues.org: Just exactly how did those candidates vote on all of those issues? Find out here.
• RealClearPolitics.com: A collection of the weeks best commentary and more.

If all of this doesn’t make you an enlightened voter, I’m not sure what will. Please, let me know if there are other websites, blogs or information out there that I should include on this site. Thanks for reading.

Kathy B.