With presidential elections a year away, the tabloids and news outlets are spinning anything and everything they can to get the candidate they back a leg up. More money is being spent than ever before. It always mystifies me, that someone would spend so many millions of dollars to get elected to a thankless job that pays around $400,000 per year. Most CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies make in the millions of dollars per year along with stock options that can turn their income from their “job” into a billion dollars. Why is being President so sought after and so much money spent to be elected when to be the top dog, you don’t actually bring home that much bling in the scheme of things? The lowest salary for most professional players in the NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL is over $800,000 per year. And that’s to be on the team. You hear about Alex Rodriguez who just signed a 10 year baseball contract for 275.5 million dollars, and he didn’t have to campaign or spend a dime to get that. Just paid his agent a percentage. Hell, the presidential hopefuls would be better off financially to be professional sports players agents based on that salary tidbit.

In the end, in 2004, over 3.5 Billion dollars was spent on the presidential election. It is determined that the 2012 election will cost the victor 1 Billion dollars. This being even partially true, and I got my information from a reliable source, the money spent to make $400,000 per year and be bludgeoned by the press and a zillion people and organizations that don’t agree with your policies doesn’t seem worth it.

Here is an excerpt from the above linked word, Source:

How Much Will Be Spent?

It is difficult to predict the amount that campaigns will spend in the 2008 election, but it is quite safe to make one prediction: More money will be spent in this election than ever before. In 2004 President Bush raised $270 million for the primaries and received $75 million in public funds for the general election. Senator Kerry, his eventual opponent, was close behind, raising $235 million for the primaries and receiving the same $75 million for the general election. In 2008 the number of candidates has increased, but so has the contribution limit ($2,300, up from $2,000 in 2004). There also is an increase in the number of Americans contributing to campaigns; doing so is facilitated by the ease of contributing electronically through campaign Web sites on the Internet. In addition to candidate spending, the political parties, PACs, and other interest groups will spend money. In 2004 the Center for Responsive Politics estimated that $3.9 billion was spent by all federal candidates, political parties, and others for that year’s election campaigns. This constituted a 30 percent increase over the 2000 campaign. The odds are that 2008 will see another increase.

Keep all this money in mind as I proceed with the actual message that I am trying to get across with this article today. A good friend of mine has been a Republican, a right-winged Christian Republican for most of his adult life. Don’t ask me why he’s my friend, but he is, and I forgive him his past sins. That joke being said, I proceed. But nowadays, he is on the fastrack to becoming a Democrat, or at least a vote against the usual Republicans in the next elections. It doesn’t seem to matter how much they spend. He is sick of Bu$hCo and the loss of our civil liberties and our Constitutional rights and the war and and and…….He says he’s not a Republican, but then he tells me about this Ron Paul guy. I guess it’s Doctor Ron Paul as he is an OB/GYN. That said, you know his stand is anti abortion rights and I don’t agree with it. I also don’t agree with many of his other platforms on the issues. You can read about his stands and other candidates stands on the issues on their websites and I hope you do. I promised myself I will read them once per month and ask the hard questions and see what the responses are and I’ll base my vote on this information. What I do agree with is his stand against the losses of our rights under the Constitution and his anti war stance. Although I am not a one issue voter, the end of the war in Iraq is a rung or two higher on the ladder than taxes and immigration. I’m not sure if there is anyone that can deliver the whole package besides Dennis Kucinich. Both Kucinich and Paul are being pushed out of the media and pushed out of the process because they don’t have enough money to be heard. The media ignores them and even their own parties have denied them access to some of the presidential debates. Money talks, loudly. And it was money that got Bu$hCo into office and it will end up being money that perpetuates the war and makes many other policies that affect our lives as Americans.

But there is hope. Hope in the form of a Democratic Mayor from Salt Lake City, Utah. His name is Ross C. (Rocky) Anderson. He is a Democrat in a Red State. Salt Lake City is Blue, but the State goes Red every time. This Rocky Anderson is not afraid to speak his mind. In an address in August of 2007, Anderson spoke his mind. I’ll print the text of his speech and add a link so you can read another similar speech he made in August of 2006. He has been outspoken about this administration publicly for quite some time. He speaks for me I can tell you. And if any of the Presidential hopefuls want my vote, they’ll speak like Rocky Anderson and call out bush, cheney and the rest of the thieves that are stealing our country, our system of freedom and our rights.

I present to you, Mayor Ross C. (Rocky) Anderson:

Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it anymore.”

While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.” “You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.

You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.

We are here to tell you: We won’t take it anymore! You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before. It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling - and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?

Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, “We won’t take it anymore!” As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation’s values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.

In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings. In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing ! to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress’s sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrant-less wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl- Lieberman amendment.

We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country - and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people–40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are not wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.

As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: “You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions.”

But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say ‘We won’t take it anymore.’ If we want principled, courageous elected officials, we need to be principled, courageous, and tenacious ourselves. History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders the leadership has to come from us. If we don’t insist, if we don’t persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration and to candidates running for office and to the world that we support the status quo.

Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what’s right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part. Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction. It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.

How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses. Why is this country so sound-asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness? We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising hell on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don’t cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.

Let’s awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: “We won’t take it anymore!” I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say “No more” and mean it?

I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.

If we expect our nation’s elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided, principled leadership.

The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won’t let it go on one more day that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation’s reputation in the world.

Let us be unified in drawing the line in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much that we bring our troops home from Iraq , that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.

In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans and as moral human beings we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world.

End of Speech

This man speaks for me. I wish more of our elected officials went on record to say the truth and let the American people hear it. In the meantime, here is a link of Rocky’s August 2006 speech

Peace to All.

{editor’s note: spadoman is currently out of town and some of the source links did not work properly.  i attempted to find the correct source, but may have made some errors.  an updated set of correct links will be posted when spadoman returns.  thank you.  betmo} 

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