I read
an article at Yahoo! News today. In it President Obama was painted as being concerned that his campaign for re-election might be outspent by Mitt Romney's. The president noted, "And if things continue as they have so far, I'll be the first sitting president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign." That would certainly be embarrassing.
The article also notes, "[President Obama's] campaign, the Democratic Nat
ional Committee and their joint accounts reported more than
$173 million cash on hand at the end of May, $61 million more than rival Mitt Romney and Republicans." At the end of May. A full month ago. At that time, according to the article, Obama's campaign claimed $173 million and Romney's apparently $112 million.
That's $285 million that people and organizations have donated to have their favorite candidate elected or re-elected. That doesn't include third-party candidates' coffers.
Just for grins, I had a look at the website of Huntsville's
Downtown Rescue Mission and saw this quote: "
To feed everyone at the Downtown Rescue Mission for one year: approximately $385,000. 'He who is gracious to a poor man lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his good deed.' -
Proverbs 19:17."
Since I am an absolute math wizard, I popped up my calculator and quickly determined that
presidential campaign funds raised so far could pay for about 740 years' worth of meals at our local Rescue Mission.
But who cares? We certainly have more pressing concerns than this.
For more laughs, I went to
The Water Project's website to see how their donations were coming along. In Africa or India, each shallow well costs the group about $6,500 to dig and maintain. For a deep, well-maintained one it's more like $30,000.
That's a lot of money whenever a missionary comes to meet with your church and asks for donations, isn't it?! And they usually talk way too long.
According to Water Is Life, one child dies every 15 seconds due to a lack of water
. But mercifully, that doesn't impact us in America and has little bearing on the election process, if any.
By the way, my calculator told me that about
9,500 wells -- the expensive ones -- could be dug with the money that both major parties had raised for their candidates by the end of May.
You can rationalize all you like, and you can offer explanations as to why our priorities are the way they are. Tell me that in order to make good things happen we have to have the right man in office. Tell me that the government isn't supposed to cure all social ills. Agreed.
Isn't the Church supposed to be the example in that arena? Something here is very, very screwed up.
"One nation under God." Remember how the religious people got horribly and vocally bent out of shape when a key politician said that America wasn't a Christian nation? You can honestly look at the numbers above and tell me that we are?
Out of the things I talked about above,
to which would Jesus contribute?
By Dean Lusk
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Comments (14)
Very good post! Jesus would only concern himself with the poor. period.
Thanks for writing this!
Good points. I needed to hear that, thanks for posting
Jesus wouldn't contribute anything because he wouldn't have anything to contribute. He would be one of the poor, not someone in a position of power and wealth. Remember he was a carpenter. He would be living the life of a carpenter. He is a heavently king, not an earthly king.
A national law should be made to limit the amount spent by each candidate. All contributions should be completely public. If such laws exist, then enforced them. As for Jesus, he would probably say "render unto Caesar" and let 'em get on with it.
@Shadowrunner81@xanga - He may not have been as poor as most people think of him. He did own a house after all (see Mark 2:1) and Judas was the disciple in charge of the money bag. So evidently there was something for Judas to take care of (see John 13:29).
Just because a politician gets a lot of money brought into his coffers, does not mean that people are not donating money to charity. The fact that the charities mentioned in the original post are still in existence is proof that people are donating and giving money to the cause. It is possible for me to donate both to the church to carry on the gospel, and to a politician like Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, or Jim De Mint in order to see them in office.
@Lovegrove@xanga - The Democrat Party unionized government workers and then forced them to pay dues.
Guess where those union dues ended up?Yes, they ended up in Democrat Party coffers. That type of corrupt money laundering is what is destroying free elections.
Also, the bigger the size and scope of government, the more worthwhile it is for politicians to win control of it.
So big government is the reason politicians and interest groups spend so much money on political campaigns.
Politicians, once in office, devote themselves to making money by selling influence and favors. They very rarely read any legislation that gets passed. They just do what the party leadership tells them to.
Politicians have been passing campaign finance reform for years and years. Yet it always seems to favor incumbents and the amount of money in politics always grows.
So any sensible solution to this problem must include term limits on politicians and a systemic century's long campaign to shrink the size and scope of government.
Most glaring to me is that the Gospels say little about what Jesus and the apostles spent their money on, but volumes about the way they physically served and spoke.
One thing ignored here is that the 'money being spent' is not just lost somewhere. It goes to companies that employ people who spend money which eventually filters down to the rest of us. So, the donations can actually be getting to 'the poor' via the recipients of the campaigns or their PACs which spend money. The rich who spend money, and lots of it, help us all.
BTW, Mark 2.1 does NOT say Jesus 'owned a house.' (Of course, as God, He actually owned everything, but that's another post.)
tl;dr
Who cares, Jesus was made up anyway.Just would take two fish and five loaves and multiply them until there were enough to sell them for $2 billion and then he would . . .
GIVE IT TO RON PAUL!!!!!
He would have donated to whomever lived for God and spread His word, of course!
But in other news, I love this post. I am constantly astounded by the waste of money in the world and this is a perfect example. Here are these politicians who are both supposedly running for president because they're the better candidate, and yet neither notice that all of the money they're wasting in their ironic race could be going to the actual citizens of the country who need it! To think that there are thousands of homeless people throughout this country alone, but our so called "leaders" are more concerned with getting elected as opposed to helping what are supposed to be THEIR people.
DO I HAVE TO SEE HIM HERE TO .
@TheGuyYouD0ntKnow@xanga - Just reading this. I greatly appreciate knowing there's like-mindedness out there.
@HLPU@xanga - Very good point. I'm about to post a follow-up to this by a reader who offered a very thoughtful, excellent rebuttal of my post, right along the lines of what you've said. I don't know if it was really a rebuttal, but he addressed some issues that I overlooked here.
I did address some of his points in a follow-up post, but I won't take anything away from what he wrote, nor what you've said. You're absolutely right.
The post will be at my "regular" blog, hopefully here shortly after that.