A Non-Partisan Look at Campaign Reform

 As a student of the American political system over the last forty-five years, and as a behind-the-scenes elections official, I have seen the dissolution of the integrity of the people who choose to run for office. It seems to me that if we want better choices, and a more true democracy, an eyes-wide look at the way we elect our officials must be done first.

Everyone who pays even the slightest attention knows there’s too much money involved in the elections of our officials. It costs thousands of dollars just to run for sheriff in a small county. I know personally of a judge whose campaign cost him $157,000 in a county of about 35,000 voters. 

The yard signs, the push cards, the television ad (especially the television ads), the radio ads, the block-walkers and call centers – all of these things cost a lot of money. And studies have shown that the more name familiarity a candidate has the more likely they will win their election. Therefore it is imperative that a candidate raises enough money to pay for the necessary name recognition. Here is where the donor comes into the picture.  If it’s a big donor, and that donor has an agenda that will gain him favor -- say , a road contractor who wants first bid to re-construct the old bridge leading into town -- it’s possible that big donation he makes to a county commissioner’s campaign might give him an advantage.

Now, take that local example, and enlarge it,  in the case of candidates running for federal offices, by a hundred times, and you begin to understand the stakes that are at play when a big donor contributes to the campaign of a candidate for U.S. Senator. Herein lies the primary reason why the little guy – that’s you and me – doesn’t believe that those people we elect are working for us. Because, frankly, they aren’t. They go into office beholden from the outset to their big donors.

The honest politician (yes, I know, the word has become an oxymoron) probably arrives in Washington, D.C. with grand ideas about how he is going to help his constituents, or how he’s going to shake-up the system. But it might have cost him millions to get elected, and those billionaire-donors are going to expect to have some kind of return on their funding dollars. So naturally they start to call in their favors: Easing of regulations, tax credits for their business interest, loosening of trade laws, and on and on. And to make matters worse, a junior senator or representative is expected to continue to raise money after they’re in office, with up to 30 hours a week of time logged calling on rich donors for contributions to the new office holder’s party.  They actually have log-sheets they must keep.

This is the system that is killing our Democracy. It’s the reason there’s gridlock in Congress. It’s the reason your government isn’t working for you. Unless, of course, you happen to be a billionaire, or own a huge money making corporation. If you think I’m making this up, just think about it the next time you want to find a new Internet provider and realize that your list of possible choices has shrunk, or when you write that ever-increasing check to your health insurance provider, or pay all those unexplainable add-ons to your phone bill.

Politicians are not going to change this system. It’s what got them elected. Overturning the inequitable Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court won’t solve it. Revamping the Dodd-Frank Campaign Finance Reform bill won’t solve the problem either. It’s really not about so-called “dark money” or “corporate rights.” What’s the matter is the way we elect our officials, and this needs a complete overhaul.

Here are six of my ideas for ways to truly reform our election process:

1.                    – Make it illegal to lobby lawmakers. Yes, illegal. Do away completely with the lobby groups and a lot of the problem will end right there. I once read that the pharmacy lobby, Pharmco, hires 26 lobbyists for each member of Congress. No wonder we pay more for prescription drugs than any other country in the world.

2.                    – Make it law that campaigns for any political office can last no more than 90 days. The endless campaigns that we now have cost billions of dollars. If a candidate cannot get their message out in 90 days, two more years isn’t going to help them. All this extensive campaigning does is make the voter tune out. Ninety days is long enough for all of us. Most of us had made our choice in the current political election within three months. So let’s put a cap on it at 90 days.

3.                    – Require the TV networks and cable news channels to conduct, free of charge, three Town Hall style meetings of candidates, loosely moderated, with questions coming uncensored from the audience. This would eliminate the expensive television ads that are mostly negative and also make the voter weary of the whole process. As a side note: a 20 second ad on a national network during Prime Time can cost as much as 3-million dollars. No wonder election costs are climbing into the billions during every election season.

4.                    – Require all taxpayers to contribute one dollar of their tax bill to a central fund distributed equally among the candidates to pay for their signage, their headquarters, phone banks, et cetera. Make it illegal for any outside money to be used for campaign costs.

5.                    – Make election laws universal throughout the United States, so that every state, and every county within a state, votes and conducts their elections according to a uniform Federal Election Standard.

6.                    – Make voter registration mandatory at age 18, the same way that registering for the Draft used to be mandatory for young men on their 18^th birthday.

These kinds of changes don’t come from Washington. If you live long enough, you realize not much ever comes from the top down. Change happens when there’s a groundswell from people who have finally had enough. We need to be informed and vocal, but most of all, we need to understand what’s at the core of the problems with our government.

Onward….

The Longest Four Months

I can’t think of a time in my life when four months have taken longer, except maybe for when I was pregnant, or when I was waiting for my first novel to appear in the bookstores. But aside from those times, the four months between when I tendered my resignation to the County Judge and now have been endless. First there was the search for my replacement. Then there was the pleading for me to stay on long enough to train her. Well, I knew there was no way I could train her in four or five weeks, and sure enough, I have two more weeks to go, and she’s not trained, and really won’t be trained until she has a few elections under her belt. Even then there will be more and more for her to learn. (Are you reading this, Blanca?) It is a challenging job, and I gave it a lot of sweat and tears and worry and thought, and now I’m almost out the door, and the days are creeping by.

When I agreed to stay on, I made a deal to work no more than 27 hours a week, and they are paying me pretty well to do this, but it has only given me a taste of what the days will be like when they belong to me again. I have to work my hours in and not exceed the magic number, 27, so I often go in late in the morning. This allows me some serene time in my yard, drinking coffee, keeping an eye on Sam as he wanders and plays in the gardens, and to read. Oh wonder of wonders, to actually read again. To have time for that and a mind that is free enough to enjoy and comprehend the construction and development involved in writing a good book. I have been devouring books during this time of training, one after the other. Books I’ve saved up for when I had time again, and that is soon to be NOW.

And I’m longing to write. I want to dive in and finish the “Unfinished  Novel,” and start on new projects, too. I want to write articles, I have ideas, so many stories to explore before my mind gets too feeble to do all of this. Gee, I hope that doesn’t happen soon, if it has to happen at all.

I’m reading a wonderful, poignant novel right now by Cathleen Schine, called THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO. It’s about family dynamics, the aging of one generation, the caretaker guilt of another, the coming of age of a third. Very well done. I can hardly put it down, but then, that’s my kind of story, the interaction of people who love one another, why we do the things we do to and for each other.

However, once this job ends, I am well aware that I will have a transition time, and I’m preparing myself for that, to be able to let go. I know my personality, and I’m a control-freak, too detail-oriented, magnetized by any challenge. My replacement will learn to do the job her way, and I will be OK with that, I am OK with it already. It has been good for me in so many ways, this job, and if I had found it at a younger age, before I took the writing leap, I would probably have made it a career. I know I will miss the bi-weekly paycheck. There is something to be said for bi-weekly money, even though I always felt I was sorely underpaid. But I will find a way forward. I almost always have. And I’m confident, and really ready for this long four months to finally end.

Onward….

US AGAINST THEM

When did we get to where we can’t talk anymore, or have reasonable discussions about anything? The only time people will converse anymore is when they agree in every detail with the person they’re having a conversation with, and anyone who doesn’t agree has horns and a forked tail. Everybody has OPINIONS and their OPINION is the only one that’s valid. If you don’t agree, or maybe have a different opinion, then you’re slimy scum and don’t deserve to be treated with respect or decency.  Do we not have time anymore to be polite? Is it just too much trouble to be kind, to temper your words or comments? Has our society become so self-centered that we don’t care when we hurt someone’s feelings? And if that’s so, how will we ever be able to come together in peace and with love again? Am I the only one who finds this distressing? Does anybody have a solution? Does a solution even exist?

It’s kind of like trying to keep a marriage together when only one person is making all the effort. Society is just too big and unruly, and we have gone wrong somewhere along the line. Please don’t say the answer is religion, because I know people who quote scripture and appear in church every week, who are just as snarky, just as mean-spirited, and just as judgmental as anybody else. In fact, it sometimes seems that the church-people have a superior attitude about things simply because they DO attend church and believe they have all the answers.

One of the problems is that we are so blasted with opinion from the talking heads on television, or anyway, it seems to have started with that, the 24-hour cable news channel. There just isn’t enough news to warrant 24-hours of it so they fill the time with pundits, panel discussions, and over-coverage of events that should only take a few minutes. The 24-hour cable news channels in essence TELL us what to care about by the way they cover events and incidents, and chose what news we get to see and what gets ignored. People who watch these endless news channels end up angry and in-your-face on every issue.

The other problem is social media, where snarky one-liners rule the day. Everybody is trying to one-up the other guy, be just a little more clever with their turn of phrase than the last person who posted. Wittiness devolves into meanness and insult, and on and on until you shut down your computer with your blood boiling hot. 

The Golden Rule doesn't seem to exist anymore. But I cannot believe--I will not believe--that there is anybody out there who actually enjoys being insulted and bitch-slapped with words every time they try to have a meaningful discussion about anything important. So why don't we try to be nicer to each other? Why don't we try to find out why the other person feels the way they do about a thing, instead of just throwing out insults? Or why don't we try to have a thoughtful discussion without it turning into a hollering match? I find myself silenced most of the time by dread of confrontation. And the end result of that is either disengagement or meaningless small talk. 

People have become so tribal and all those tribes have declared all-out war on each other: the tribe of freethinkers, the tribe of religion, the pro-choice tribe, the pro-life tribe, the gay-rights tribe, the Christian-rights tribe, the gun-rights tribe, the gun-control tribe, and on and on, until it's just heartbreaking. The feeling is the only tribe that has a right to exist is the one you belong to. It makes for an uneasy, us-against-them, world. 

Maybe the only solution is to tune out the noise. To get quiet with yourself. To go fishing. I don't know. I just wish people could be a little kinder to each other and treat each other with a little more respect. 

Onward….

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF A GARDEN…OH, AND ALSO THE JOY

When we lived in the mountains, I kept trying to grow tomatoes. I grew them in two rolling planters that had cages mounted inside them. I tried that old standby Early Girl, for fast tomatoes, and a slower cherry tomato variety. I had limited luck. For one thing, the growing season begins there around May 20^th and ends about August 31^st – way too short of a season for most tomato varieties. The other problem was the cool (make that cold) nights spanning all the way through the summer. And finally, the air was thin, which made it hard for the plants (and me) to breathe. All of these conditions were not conducive to gardening, and how I missed it.

I have a gardening gene. Maybe it comes from my farmer ancestors. Daddy gardened until the day he died. And I believe that his mother did as well. The crepe myrtles and althea that grew around the house where I lived during my childhood were planted by Daddy’s mother. She had grown them from cuttings she started in coffee cans. She cut out the bottoms of the cans, and planted them, can and all, between the windows in our house. The coffee cans eventually rusted away, giving the plants a good foundation of iron, something most flowering bushes need to flouish. I wonder if she knew this when she planted them that way or if it was a happy accident resulting from her economical, old-fashioned ways. At any rate, those crepe myrtles and the althea were huge by the time we moved away.

When I was a child, I planted a handful of radish seeds in the flower bed next to Granny’s bushes. Daddy had tomatoes, Swiss chard, and banana peppers growing there, too. Every day I went out to check the radish seeds. To my child’s mind, it seemed like forever before they finally sprouted. I took great joy in pulling up the mature radishes. I don’t remember eating them, just growing them, watering them, and scolding my dog when he tried to dig near where they were planted.

Now, that we are back in Texas, with the long, warm growing seasons, I plant my seeds inside in December. I take great pleasure in thumbing through all the seed catalogs that fill up the mailbox every Fall. The first year we were back, I bought way too many seeds, and nearly every one sprouted and grew into a plants. I mostly wanted tomatoes and they came up generously in the egg carton halves I use to hold my seedling mix. I was so delighted with this success, I could barely bring myself to thin the baby plants. I nursed them inside until they were big enough to re-pot and plant in the greenhouse outside. Finally in March, I moved them into the raised garden beds Wayne built for me in the sunshine.

They thrived through the nice wet spring, bloomed and dropped blooms, until I started spraying them with blossom set, tending to each fragile yellow bloom that appeared. It worked. I had a bumper crop of tomatoes that first year. And then the birds discovered that ripening tomatoes tasted like candy. The mockingbirds were the worst of the bunch, and the sneakiest. We put up bird netting, which worked until the plants began to grow through the tiny holes, then mattied underneath it. Pretty soon my tomato patch was a hopelessly tangled mess. But by then, I had okra to tend, and those plants soon became trees, towering over the garden. I needed a ladder to harvest all the okra hidden in the branches.

Year Two brought more of the same, except I chose to pick the tomatoes at first blush and ripen them inside, rather than fight with the birds. However,  Mother Nature sent me something new to contend with, a Tropical Storm named Bob. He blew over most of the tomatoes and broke the pepper plants in half. This year we are dealing with insufferable heat, indices in the 105 to 115 degree range. We’ve had so many tomatoes, we’re plain sick of eating them. I have given bags and bags away, and now they’re rotting in the fridge. I have peas and blackberries and figs in the freezer. And so many green beans, we turned green ourselves just thinking about them. Last night I microwaved a bag of Brussel sprouts from the grocery store, the first time we haven’t eaten from this garden since March. I miss the mountain summers.

When it’s 100 degrees outside, the garden is too much work. Yesterday I found myself looking out the den windows with binoculars to see if the okra really needs to be picked, or if it can stand one more brutal day. Stepping out the door is like entering a sauna. Watering every day is drudgery. I think I’m done with gardening. But of course when Fall arrives, I know I'll once again thumb through catalogs and buy too many seeds for next year. I can’t help myself. It’s in my blood.

Onward….

Giving Myself Away

For the past two years, I've been giving away my time to the county where I live, working as the Elections Administrator. When I was hired, I was told it was a part time job, three days a week, more around elections. Foolishly I thought it would allow me plenty of time to write while earning bill-paying money at the same time. Oh, how naive I was! For two years I haven't written a word. Not even here on this blog.

At first, I was learning the job, or trying to. And that learning process just went on and on and on. After about 15 months, the fog finally began to clear and I felt like I knew the job fairly well. And it has been a complicated job, a test of my endurance, not to mention stress-filled. It turned out to be one of those jobs where every day was different, where you had ten balls in the air while you tried to jungle one or two of them. It was presented as a part time job to me by people who had no idea what all was involved, and for 27 months I have tried like hell to make it a part time job. But on May 19th, I gave the county judge my resignation, told him he needed to hire someone full-time, someone younger, someone who is looking for a career, because there is a lot of schooling, and certifications that a person can get if they are making it a career. But as for me, I'm done, and I can see my freedom.

When I gave my notice, I told the judge that I would stay until they found my replacement, or until the end of this budget year, which ends on September 30th. After over a month, the job listing was finally posted online, in the newspapers, etc. and a few -- damned few -- applicants have started interviewing. I have been tasked with holding the first screening interviews. So far, no bright stars have appeared. And for someone who wants a career, this is a good job, one of the better jobs around here. It has insurance benefits and a retirement program, and a good working environment. Part of me knows that I was lucky to find the job, but the other part of me resented the time it took from my life, at this time in my life, and I have already had a career or two, or three, and was not looking for another. I have one career, one calling, that has been neglected for far too long, and I'm raring the get back to it.

Writing….. have I been out of the fray too long? Maybe so. The writing industry has certainly undergone a major transformation, due primarily to internet publishing, but I personally think that's a good thing. It needed transforming. I have a lot to learn yet about all that. My four old novels continue to earn money because of the internet, and I'm grateful for that. The first thing I want to do is finally finish "The Endless Novel." I have reread it and am pleased, more or less, with how much is there. It needs some bending and blocking and propping up. I've always thought of novel writing as construction -- literally -- building a story scene by scene, bit of dialog by bit, carving away any fluff, sculpting what is leftover. Sometimes it takes getting away from it for a while to be able to see it as a whole, and I've sure been away for a long while. So it ought to be completely clear to me, right? By now?

The next thing I want to do is try my hand at article writing. I've done a little, but I want to do a whole lot more of it. And that means having to learn about that, too. I've got so many unfinished projects in my file cabinet and on my computers. If I work as hard at writing and finishing some of these projects, as I have worked at the Elections Administrator job, I should make a lot of progress. That's my goal.

Meanwhile, a few life changes have transpired in the last two years. The house in the mountains finally sold. I took a big loss on it but cut my losses at the same time. And then we bought a weekend cottage on the coast, only an hour and a half away so that we can go there a lot more often. Wayne and I are still together, still in love, after 9 years now. And we have a new addition to our family -- Sam, the orange tabby I found outside the Elections Office 22 months ago. He was a baby then. Mostly he's a laugh-riot, but at other times I want to strangle him, like when he turned over the flat-screen television at the cottage last weekend and broke it irreparably. Oh, but we love him anyway. And Lulu is still with us, older and slower. We cherish every day we have her now. She's been a loyal companion, most dear and easily the most intelligent pet I've ever known.

And so I'm back, and hope that anybody who once read this blog with any regularity will take it back up along with me. I still have lots of things to tell you. I will miss the money I was making while I was away, but not much else. Life's good.

Onward…..