The Exciting World of Campaign Finance Reform

Today I was again dismayed by the sorry state of political campaign financing in the United States. So much money is poured into these contests from special interest groups that the candidate is nearly unable to avoid owing favors to these groups after they are elected.
You can’t blame the candidate too much. In the U.S. you can’t begin to carry on a serious winning campaign without masses of donations. And you can’t blame the interest groups for wanting to have their interests considered by our elected officials. These groups include, not only huge multination conglomerates, but also teachers, farmers, retirees and even clean-environment and anti-war groups. So, their concerns are valid.
So, as long as the candidate needs the money and these groups want to give money, we’ve got a problem.
My idea, then, is to eliminate the connection between the two.
Imagine a holding company, either federally controlled or ran, that receives all donations to all of the candidates. Each donation is then passed along, incrementally, to the candidate, with no indication of who is from. For accounting purposes the donor is given a receipt for the amount with, again, no indication as to whom it went.
In this way a group or person could donate as much as they would like but the candidate would not be beholden to them.
If the donors don’t give as much because they wouldn’t have influence that they would like, the candidates wouldn’t like it. On the other hand, the candidate wouldn’t be obligated to anyone except the voters and so they would be free to do business as they liked. Furthermore, any reduction of donations would be more or less equal across the board to all candidates.
To me, a reduction of money spent on campaign advertising would be just fine. Spending for Presidential and other high level campaigns is into the millions. Do we really need to see the same spot 10 times in a night to help us make a decision? Some European campaigns are limited by law to short time periods and amounts of money spent relative to ours and their elections work just fine. Laws limiting time or money spent on campaigns doesn’t seem like the American way to me, but our present system is obviously a breeding ground for corruption desperately in need of new ideas.
Please let me know if any flaws you see in this idea.

Chronicles of Lardbutt, Pt. 3

One beautiful summer morning we were driving through a small beach city on our way to our favorite surf spot. We pulled up to the only red light in town. To our right was an attractive young woman looking rather sullen, seated at a bus bench. Lardbutt was in the front right passenger seat. He looked at the girl and said something like, “Hey what’s your name?”. The girl gave him a grumpy look and said nothing. Lardbutt, in an effort to look cool, lost his smile and said loudly, “Hey, eat shit!”. The girl looked back at him and without missing a beat, said, “OK, jump on a plate!” Lardbutt’s mouth dropped open, the light changed, and we drove away. The rest of us howled about it throughout the day and continued to talk about it the rest of the week. To this day it is one of the best come-backs I’ve ever heard.

Chronicles of Lardbutt, Pt. 2

When my friends and I were about 18 and 19 years old, we worked at various times at a local ice cream and candy plant. They made gourmet candies and ice cream and also ran a locally famous ice cream parlor. We started as dish washers and then could work our way up to soda jerk.
We all became friends with the manager, a very nice guy named Bill. They served everything you would expect; hot fudge sundaes, banana splits and so on. They also had a dish called a tutti-frutti. It consisted of nineteen scoops of various ice cream flavors plus all of the toppings they had; chocolate, pineapple, strawberry, marshmallow, the works.. Obviously it was meant to serve a whole party of people.
We went in one day when we were off work. While we were trying to decide what to order, Lardbutt saw a group of people sitting next to us order a tutti-frutti. He got up and walked over to Bill and asked him that if he could eat a whole tutti-frutti by himself, could he have it for free? Bill shook he head in disbelief and then agreed.
He got through the first half in half an hour but it took him over an hour more to finish off the rest of it, which he did. We were amazed. As we stepped outside into a light rain, Lardbutt stopped and held his arms out for us to wait. Then he threw the whole works up onto the sidewalk. It was a rainbow of colors in a large puddle that began to mix with the rain. You could still make out the chocolate and vanilla and strawberry not to mention the nuts,
My only regret is that I didn’t have a camera handy to record it forever.

Chronicles of Lardbutt

I once had a friend named Lardbutt. That was our name for him anyway. He wasn’t really that chubby but the name stuck. Lardbutt was OK but he was one of those people that thought he had to do things to impress people. He was always doing something that always backfired.
We were all at an afternoon party at someone’s apartment. It was a sunny, summer afternoon and the windows were open and the front door was open with just a screen door. Everyone was drinking and talking and having a good time.
After a while, Lardbutt apparently decided to impress everyone with his macho ability. He went to the kitchen and found a 2 quart Tupperware pitcher. He went from person to person asking them to pour a little of their drink into his pitcher. It didn’t matter what they were drinking. Some were drinking beer, some wine and a few were drinking hard liquor.
Finally, when his container was about half full of noxious looking brown fluid, he announced to everyone in general in an overly loud voice that he was going to chug the whole thing. Everyone turned to watch. Lardbutt chugged and chugged the whole thing down. When he was finished he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked at everone and smiled with self satisfaction. After about two seconds he got a strange look on his face, turned his head and puked a perfect stream at least six feet through the air and through the screen door, splashing on the porch beyond. Unidentified chunks stuck to the screen which acted like a perfect filter.
After a universal groan from the assembled guests, the entire party sat their unfinished drinks down and left without saying a word to each other. The party was over.

Our Father

We humans have a serious father figure problem. It permeates all aspects of our lives. It is especially evident in our religious practices. Since the decline in the worship of goddesses such as Astheroth (the origin of the word Easter) and others, all of our Gods have been male. And not just male, but father. The Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our Father who art in heaven. . .”. Worshippers are rather unabashed about their substitution of their earthly father with a “heavenly Father”.
I don’t know about you but my father was not such a hot item. In fact, he was a world class bastard. Fortunately for all of us he was gone almost from the beginning. Good riddance.
Despite that, I can still imagine the advantage and even the joy of a relationship with a loving father. However, when I see fully grown men and women on their knees pleading with their father to give them what they want or begging him not to punish them for being bad, I get just a little bit creeped out. I mean, if a person is over about 25 or 30 years old, don’t you think it’s time to begin to take control of your own life? By then, shouldn’t a person become an actual adult who succeeds or fails on his or her own terms. Furthermore, doesn’t this signify that as a species, we still haven’t grown up to the point where we quit relying on the shifting moods and capricious whims of some Daddy in the Sky who, as it turns out, answers our prayers with exactly the same reliability as if we didn’t pray at all? Who needs him? Good riddance.