People are hurting today like never before in my lifetime.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate at the end of May was 8.2%. The underemployment rate is 18%.
This past April the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed that “45 million people—one out of every seven U.S. residents—got food stamps in 2011, a whopping 70% increase from 2007.”
According to the latest available data, “46.2 million people in the United States were in poverty and the nation’s official poverty rate was 15.1%. This was the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.” (The picture at the top is a visual picture of what the national debt looks like. The “stack” is a stack of money in the amount of $15 trillion dollars in $100 bills.)
When I checked the US National Debt Clock, our debt was $15,785,574,388,073.04 and rising. Since September of 2007, the national debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.91 billion per day!
In the midst of all this trouble, the democrats and republicans plan on spending in access of $2 billion dollars on this year’s presidential election; and that does not include all the money that Political Action Committees (PACs) will spend.
I am convinced that right now, at this moment, the greatest injustice going on in the United States is the amount of money wasted on elections during a time when so many people are hurting!
How can anyone rationalize spending billions of dollars on a campaign during these difficult economic times?
They can’t, and that is why I believe both the republicans and democrats are totally corrupt and totally out of touch with the people.
Floods of Justice 
“…totally out of touch with the people.” – Because they are operating according to the system that we have? A candidate that doesn’t invest significant dollars to let constituents know where they stand on issues would be quite irrelevant to helping create change in our country.
Do you have an idea for a better process of letting everyone know where candidates stand and motivating people to vote? Is there a model somewhere in the world that is working that would be less “corrupt”?
I’m pretty motivated by solutions. Toss out your ideas.
Steve,
For starters, get rid of the PACs. That is where most of the negativity comes and they are so biased (both sides) they can’t be trusted.
Then, limit how much money each candidate and party can spend.
Third, have each major network donate equal air time to each candidate.
That would be a place to start. The problem we have right now is that for several election cycles, the person who spends the most money wins. Thus, political offices are bought.
This is a bigger injustice than the legions of men in our culture who father children and can’t be bothered to raise and support them??? See Malachi 4:5-6
Your view about spending on campaigns is short-sighted and creates more problems than it solves. They don’t pile up all those campaign contributions and set them on fire. They employ scores of people in producing and airing those TV ads. How many people would lose jobs if you limited spending on political campaigns? As to forcing each “major” network to “donate” equal time, you’d be asking the shareholders (many of them ordinary folk like us) to forgo part of the return on their investment – how is that fair to them? And how would it be fair if CNN has to donate airtime, but not ESPN or the Disney Channel? Campaign finance has been limited and regulated for over a hundred years – smart people have always found a way to end run the limits and regulations to get their message across.