New Year's Resolution: Campaign Finance Reform

$6 BILLION?

Maybe $8 BILLION?

Those are numbers the experts say represent the money that will be spent on political campaign advertising in the coming 2012 elections.

You are about to witness the dirtiest, most vicious political season America has ever seen.

Never has so much money been spent to sway your decisions about who to vote for, and it’s obscene just how much of that money will be spent on absolute lies about candidates.

What may be even more obscene is that you may never know who spent that staggering amount of money.

That’s because an incredibly stupid decision by the United States Supreme Court has created what are called "Super-PACS."

Those are organizations that can collect as much money as they want to, and spend it saying anything they want.

Legally, the Super-PACS are not supposed to have any connection with the actual candidates’ campaigns at all.

Is there anyone here who really believes that’s going to be the case? It won’t be.

As of this writing, the Republicans, and the Tea Party types, have accumulated several hundred million dollars, and plan to spend it lavishly on behalf of the right wing candidates they support.

They are primarily led by multi-billionaires the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove, the primary dirty trickster of the George Bush White House, and the driving money force behind the creation of the “Tea Party” movement in the first place.

(Side note here:- if you really think the Tea Party movement is a pure, grass-roots, spontaneous effort, you’re dead wrong.)

Running behind, although not too far behind, are the Democrats and the nation’s labor unions, who will gather up hundreds of millions from the left to spend on returning Barack Obama to the White house, and trying to retake control of both houses of Congress.

The power there seems to come mainly from leftist multi-billionaire George Soros and Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg.

If you think there will only be lies about Obama, think again. There will be lies about just about every candidate for every office in November 2012.

A Republican lobbyist from Washington D.C., Grover Norquist, has shoehorned himself into the middle of American politics by demanding that any candidate for Congress sign an anti-tax pledge. He will use Super-PAC money to campaign against anyone who DOESN’T sign his piece of paper.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I don’t want to see a major expansion of the lies and attacks that started happening in 2010, in the immediate wake of that idiotic Supreme Court decision.

And an expansion there will be, have no doubt about it.

The candidate will try to say, “well, that ad was bought and paid for by someone else... we have no connection to that at all.”

Don’t believe that for a second. They will know very well who spent every dime on their behalf.

You will be lied to daily... hourly... as the campaign season heats up.

My former colleagues in television won’t be much help in that regard.

They’re not about to say a paid political ad doesn’t meet their standards for broadcast- not when there is so much money to be made at the inflated ad rates for paid politicals.

And you may never know who did it- because the courts have now held that the Super-PACS don’t have to reveal where they got their money- don’t have to say who was behind them!

You can believe one thing for sure- The Koch brothers, George Soros, Jeffrey Katzenberg- and all the other big money people, aren’t doing this because they believe in democracy.

They’re doing this for their own benefit- not yours.

When the dust clears from the election, wouldn’t you like to know who owns your President? Your Senator? Your Congress member? Your councilmember? Your supervisor?

Do you think you’ll ever be able to find out?

Not bloody likely.