So I’m not sure if this goes in the weird category or just the downright ludicrous!

Politics used to be all about the candidates, what they represented and what they thought they would be able to do for you the punter when they were elected.  Now it is just about money and unbelievable amounts of money at that.

Now I’m not political and this is not a political rant and I have no opinions on any of the candidates so no comments of a political nature please.  This is about the money, the staggering amounts of money spent to get elected.

When I logged in this morning my home page just happens to be MSN and they usually have links to the top stories, one of which is for the Los Angeles Times and yesterday there was an election here in California.

There were probably elections everywhere but as we haven’t had time to register here in California yet and I have no TV or get no newspaper I really am not that in touch with anything including reality sometimes ;o)

Here’s the full story if you want to read it:

The crux of the whole thing and the point I am trying to make is the amount of money the two main candidates spent, they may have won anyway due to their political stands, who knows, but here’s some quotes from the article:

“Poizner had spent $24 million of his own money on the race, but the former EBay chief buried his donation with at least $71 million of her own, a California record”

“In the Senate race, Fiorina dropped more than $5 million of her own money into ads”

“Former Facebook attorney Chris Kelly dropped $12 million into the Democratic race”

That’s $112 MILLION!!! and that’s just their PERSONAL money, when you start adding in all the donations and all the other money spent by other candidates it staggers the imagination.  And the race is only just starting; this election was just the primaries to see who would be on the ballot in November.

I guess my biggest concern is that whoever runs our country at whatever level, local, state or country is there because of the amount of money they have or managed to acquire not anything else.  After all the more money you have the more you can afford to hire spin doctors and make yourself seem the best of the best even if you’re not.

This isn’t just a US phenomenon either; I know this is happening in most countries that have free elections. It does make you wonder where it will end and it makes you wonder how many wonderful people there are out there that could do a fantastic political job but never will have the opportunity because of lack of money.

Why don’t they make it so the one who donates the most to charity gets in? 

The end results would probably be the same and the same person would get elected but at least that money would actually be doing some good instead of lining the pockets of TV stations and spin doctors!

OK I’m off my soap box, for now………………….. ;o)