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Howdy!
Some things are better with time. Moldy cheese improves with age (although I'm told moldy meat does not). And it's not only pungent dairy products. Communications technology continues to improve. Just last night I watched 4 different reality shows about "little people". Just think: Ulysses Grant lived and died without ever seeing the daily trials and tribulations of a 3 foot tall couple making chocolate pretzels. Maybe his sadness, longing and regret are what made him die so young.


One thing that is not getting better is our political discourse. The recent campaigns on the federal level were disheartening enough. Although I did enjoy the TV ads enough to get a special application for my iPhone where the faces of my family members continuously morph into Nancy Pelosi. But I'm going to focus on the state-legislative races, which I watched much more closely.


Up until recently, our state legislative campaigns were banal, soulless, witless affairs. They basically only focused on one issue: TAXES. Every candidate was against them, everyone's opponent was not only for them, but had personally raised them, as if Harry Potter had taken his wand and said "Taxonimous Raiserosa".



There were three basic lines of attack in the tax wars.
1. Number of times:


"While on the Bird-In-Hand School Board, my opponent raised taxes 2,455 times, and then...he raised them again!
2. How high:
"My opponent introduced a bill which would have raised taxes by Infinity. That's right, INFINITY!
3. On what:
"My opponent is a bastard! He even raised taxes on Lipton's Cup-O-Soup. See! A


Bastard!!"


Of course, many of these claims were not true. I mean what kind of a bastard would raise taxes on Lipton's Cup-O-Soup?? But even to the extent they were true, no context was ever provided. Maybe taxes needed to go up. Maybe there was a deficit, or there was a need for funds to provide vital human services. These were nothing but brain-dead, empty, pandering campaigns. But again, those were the good old days.


Now, demagoging over TAXES has been replaced with with even more disheartening demagoging over PERKS. Virtually every single ad or mailing in every single state legislative race can be synopsized as follows:
"If you elect me, I will not accept any perks. I will not take a car (even if it is cheaper for the taxpayers than getting mileage) and I will not take per diems (even if they are cheaper for the taxpayers than receipt-based reimbursements). I will never vote for or accept a pay raise. In fact, I won't take any salary. I'll starve, and make damn sure my kids do too. Plus, if I get sick, I won't accept health care. In fact, I will pay the doctor NOT to treat me out of my own pocket."


"But I won't stop there. I won't take a pension. My sole plan for retirement is to wake up each morning and say "Oh Crap, I don't have any money" and then eat a bowl of moist poison. Further, if it gets cold during my term, I will not turn on the heat. Legislators do not deserve heat. And I will never accept a meal of any kind. I will eat nothing but old Skippy Super-Crunchy peanut butter. And I give you my word that I don't like crunchy stuff."


"My opponent on the other hand accepted a tax-payer funded masseuse (assuming his secretary is a masseuse). And he did it in the middle of the night! (It's always the middle of the night somewhere). He also voted to give himself a salary, claiming that his family wanted to...and I'm not making this up...EAT! That's right, he is using your hard-earned tax dollars to stuff his kid's face with formula. Has he no shame?"


Now, you are entitled to your views as to whether legislators actually get exorbitant perks (of course, if your view is "Yes" then you are entitled to hold incorrect views). But regardless, is this really the most, in fact, the only important issue we should be talking about??


Let me illustrate what I mean. Did you know that in Pennsylvania, 25% of our fellow citizens live in poverty. Tens of thousands of children go to bed hungry each night, and studies show that some kids are failing in school because they suffer from malnutrition. Mal-Freaking Nutrition!! Did you hear any candidate tell you what he or she (or he/she) would do about that?


How about Transportation? We have 14 billion dollars in unmet transportation needs, including bridges rated far more dangerous than the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota a couple of years ago. Did you get any mail about that? Some people can light their tap water on fire. Did we discuss that at all? Celine Dion does concerts right here in PA! Who the hell is putting a stop to that??


In one campaign this year a candidate got reimbursed for a meal, and on the receipt was a charge for a Mojito. A Mojito is a Cuban Alcoholic Beverage which was apparently invented by Fidel Castro himself in his early bar-tending days.


This candidate's opponent spent about a half a million dollars talking about the Mojito. It was really the only issue in the campaign. For a half million dollars, not only could you talk about poverty in that district, you could SOLVE poverty in that district!



When I ran for the Senate 2 years ago, a similar amount of money was spent talking about how I got a "luxury" car. I'm not sure what the definition of "luxury" is, but I'm pretty sure it involves not stalling out whenever one stops at a traffic light. But given that everything is called "luxury" now, including any apartment with an indoor toilet and any hotel where the rats are unarmed, I guess the car thing was fair. In fact, I'm typing this BLOG entry on my new luxury keyboard.



The point is that we all should be troubled by how low, baseless, and just plain stupid our politics are becoming. From my perspective, if you have some ideas on how to make sure our kids get a good education, or walk to school in safety, or get breakfast occasionally, I don't care if you spend your entire staff budget on back-waxing. Put another way, I want to talk about real issues, not these faux issues which cover up how utterly vapid some of our candidates are.



A couple of days ago was the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. Once he gave a speech about how much we share even with people we disagree with. He said:
"For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.

Why give a speech like this when you can talk about your opponent's Mojito?

Daylin