Political Fund Raisers vs Panhandlers

While looking up news stories for money today I noticed quite a contrast in stories that came up today. On the one hand you have news reports talking about the insane amount of money being generated by the political fund raising machines of Obama and McCain. The McCain group for the month of August reported his best month of fund raising yet with $47 million. The Obama group have yet to report their August numbers they are not due to release them until Sept 20th, but some reports are estimating their numbers to be around a record breaking month of $55 million. We are talking about 1 month of fund raising bringing in over $100 million dollars and we still have the biggest months ahead of September and October.

Now here’s a little bit about the other story I was reading. In Atlanta, GA back in 2005 the city made it illegal for people (the homeless) to ask for money or food in the downtown Atlanta district. Now here they are in 2008 and they have a new plan of action to fight their growing pan handling problem. Their new program is call “Give Change That Makes Sense”. The idea of the program is to get people who would be inclined to give to panhandlers give their change to local charities that will help the homeless. They are giving hotels and and other local businesses flyer’s and posters to promote the movement. Of course a the plan has it’s detractors, about the usefulness of the plan and whether this will help or exacerbate the problem.

So I read both of these articles and it just strikes me as to how cockeyed our society is when it comes to the priorities of our public officials and how the system is set up. For example do we really need a political process that takes about 15 months for us to elect a new president? Could we perhaps oh i don’t know cut it down to half of that? Just imagine all the “fund raising money” that could go to other more important causes in this country like for example POVERTY? Can we just vote already! Please share your opinions and thanks for reading.

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