$6B in 2012 campaign spending: What else could it buy?
One dubious distinction of the 2012 elections is that it’s the most expensive election season ever in history. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, total spending on all local, state and national elections could top $6 billion, $700 million more than in 2008.
Here are 12 other ways to have spent $6 billion:
• Provide lunch every day for a year for more than 11 million public school students. Each meal costs about $2.92.
• Reduce the annual federal deficit—now at $1.1 trillion—by just 0.5 percent.
• 250,000 new Priuses (or “Prii”) at the starting price of $24,000.
• 858 million six-packs of Budweiser beer at $6.99 each.
• 4 billion AA batteries to get through the next hurricane.
• 1.7 billion gallons of gas (currently at $3.46/gallon nationally), which could fill up 146 million Prii (and also help you get through the next hurricane).
• Four years of college tuition at Harvard for nearly 39,000 students.
• Minimum wage for a year for 397,877 people (or the entire population of Cleveland, Ohio).
• 27,051 new homes at the median home price of $221,800.
• Resurfacing of 120,000 miles of U.S. roads and highways. According to a report from U.S. Public Interest Research Groups, 150,000 miles of interstate highways needed repair in 2010.
• 60 Boeing 737 airplanes.
• 75 percent of what Americans spent on candy and costumes for Halloween this year ($8 billion).
George Will on ABC’s This Week, August 26, 2012: With most politicians, the problem is their inauthenticity. [Romney’s] problem is that he’s authentically what he is. He spent his formative years in the Middle West in the middle of the last century. He’s a child of the 1950’s. I speak as one myself, from both places in time and geography. He has the reticence of someone raised by the people who were raised by The Depression and The War. He has a low emotional metabolism. That’s who he is. He can’t turn to the country and say ‘I feel your pain’ because the pain isn’t his. It’s other people’s. What he can say is ‘I can fix your pain’ and that should be enough unless we’re electing a talk show host.
Very astute commentary.
Lapdance of Danger, Or Big Trouble In Steamy Tampa | Ricochet.com
Hilarious — and likely spot-on — advice for anyone attending either of the upcoming conventions.
This outing with the boys in the steamy tropical night of a late August in Tampa sounded so good on the front end. But this is where it gets sporty.
See, the minute you got out of the car, some folks in a van parked across the street got you on video.
Who cares who they work for? The media? BuzzFeed, prepping for a piece called, “18 GOP Well-Fed GOP Delegates Walking Into Seedy Strip Clubs?” The DNC? Talking Points Memo? MMFA? Some Democratic SuperPAC? OFA? It doesn’t matter. Hell, for all you know George Soros is sitting in the back wearing a mumu, muttering commands to them and smelling of Ben Gay and borscht.
But count on it. They will be there. We live in the era of the tracker, and the ultimate gotcha is guys, getting in trouble because millions of years of evolution coupled with our bad judgment about inappropriate women led you to this.
So yeah, they’re watching for guys in rental cars wearing RNC lanyards. They’re playing Spot-The-Delegate and every single face on that video is going to be peered at long and hard. And in the age of Facebook, Google Image Search and good old detective work, they’ll know who you are soon enough.
And inside? Whether it’s from the club making a deal with the same people (a known fact of Tampa strip club history) and providing their video feed, or just an enterprising Democratic intern on the Best Job Ever filming you with his tiny GoPro or phone camera, you and your friends will get captured in mid-lapdance. You will remember the fun differently the next morning.
Why? Because the next morning, as you reach for your vibrating phone on the nightstand, the hangover grinding through your head and your guts, it takes a moment to focus. You swing your feet to the floor, staring at the text message from your wife.
“Call me. You’re on YouTube.”
RE: Here are my own recommendations for Election Day…
Delayed post.
Regarding:
Here are my own recommendations for Election Day. First of all, vote! Second, vote Democratic, wherever you are. Maybe there are some thoughtful Republicans running in your area, but this is not the year to give them a boost. In New York, that means:
- Tom DiNapoli, Comptroller. DiNapoli is a political hack who was installed as Comptroller in a backroom deal by the legislature after the corrupt Alan Hevesi was forced to resign. His Republican opponent, Harry Wilson, is considered a basically competent, effective fiscal manager of the sort who rarely runs for office, and many people think we’d be lucky to get someone with his talents to straighten out the fiscal mess in Albany. Still, this is no year to vote Republican. Support the hack Democrat, Tom DiNapoli.
You the least bit sheepish about this one?
The national races, sure. The Dems were playing defense against the GOP wave and voting down the party line was survival strategy (Well, not in New York and California, for the most part, but everywhere else).
The results of this local race, however, given the clusterfuck that is dealing with the state budget, will likely have a greater effect on most New Yorkers in the coming years than any decision the likes of a Schumer or a Weiner (aka, the most appropriately named Rep in Congress!*) will make in this current term.
* - with apologies to my roommate.
What’s the difference between California and the Titanic?
The passengers on the Titanic didn’t vote to hit the iceberg.
In spite of his supporters’ excitement, his election did not signify a permanent national shift to the left. His attempt to govern from the left accordingly brought a predictable result: The public took away his ability to legislate on domestic affairs. Instead, they moved the country to a position where no one can legislate anything beyond the most carefully negotiated and neutral legislation.
STRATFOR’s George Friedman on how The World Looks at Obama After the U.S. Midterm Election.
His is always rather sobering commentary, and often impossible to disagree with.
More:
Obama comes out of this election severely weakened domestically. If he continues his trajectory, the rest of the world will perceive him as a crippled president, something he needn’t be in foreign policy matters. Obama can no longer control Congress, but he still controls foreign policy. He could emerge from this defeat as a powerful foreign policy president, acting decisively in Afghanistan and beyond. It’s not a question of what he should do, but whether he will choose to act in a significant way at all.
Read the full piece here.
And check out last week’s piece for a flesh-out on what he thinks might be Obama’s strategy for the next two years.
About STRATFOR:
STRATFOR’s global team of intelligence professionals provides an audience of decision-makers and sophisticated news consumers in the U.S. and around the world with unique insights into political, economic, and military developments. The company uses human intelligence and other sources combined with powerful analysis based on geopolitics to produce penetrating explanations of world events. This independent, non-ideological content enables users not only to better understand international events, but also to reduce risks and identify opportunities in every region of the globe.
STRATFOR’s chief executive officer, Dr. George Friedman, is a widely recognized international affairs expert and author of numerous books, including The Next 100 Years (Doubleday, 2009), America’s Secret War (Doubleday, 2005), and The Future of War (Crown, 1996).
STRATFOR members include individuals, FORTUNE 100 corporations, government agencies and other organizations around the world.
History suggests Obama can choose Truman’s ‘48 path: dig in & blame Congress, or Clinton’s ‘96 path of cooperation. Both won.
Tweet via @WestWingReport
Related:
Obama to Al Sharpton: Yeah, this midterm’s a referendum on my agenda
From last week:
He says in this interview that a massive Republican win would mean that he would have to fight the GOP “day and night” for the next two years. That’s another admission against interests, it seems. If the GOP wins and nothing gets done, Republicans can point to this pledge to block the mandate of the midterms and assign blame accordingly. This isn’t exactly the move of a master strategist.
Listen to the interview here. (via Hot Air)
Gamble.
We’ll see…
I’m not suggesting every future President should take a shellacking like I did last night. There are easier ways to learn those lessons.
Barack Obama, November 3, 2010
Edit: Undo Change
