About a week ago some numbers caught my attention.  According to recent surveys / data political parties, candidates and interest groups spent about $1 billion on television advertising for the midterm congressional elections, racing to use up reserves of now-banned campaign contributions.

Here are some of the numbers:

• Spending on congressional races year was close to $320 million, almost twice as much as in 1998, the last midterm elections.
• The $1 billion in advertising included just over $420 million spent on governors' races and $64 million spent on other races. The rest was spent in other areas such as issue ads.

Given that politicians are spending over $1 billion to capture our attention and win our support are Americans getting better service/results from their politicians?

1. Have they resolved the Social Security Issue, which has been around for 10 years?  NO
2. Have they EVER balanced a budget without tapping the surplus in Social Security?  NO, that was actually how they claimed they "balanced the budget" a few years ago.  The funds for general purpose were insufficient to cover their operating expenses so they raided the cookie jar so to speak.  The key element is to understand that the national debt DID NOT GO DOWN.
3. Have politicians found a way to improve security with the billions they are spending?  I personally don't think so.  Just this week they started pulling away the barriers at the airports, which exposes such facilities to nut cases that want to let off a van full of explosives to park right in front of the terminal.  Most of the money is going to the military and FBI.  I don't feel any safer, that is for sure.
4. Have politicians found a way to improve Medicare / Medicaid?  NO! As the U.S. population ages we are going to be left with a HUGE INCREASE IN COSTS, fewer workers to pay for it and a HUGE NATIONAL DEBT BURDEN on the next generation of Americans.

I find the above amount spent nothing short of PATHETIC and A SAD STATE OF AFFAIR FOR AMERICANS.  At the end of the day I feel it is a responsibility of every American to boot out the bums if they don't get their acts together and look out for the American people.  They are driving the country down a one-way street where the bridge is currently under repair.

At the end of the day politicians have one goal and that is TO GET RE-ELECTED.  They will promise the world and leave the details to be sorted out later.  It is time to elect some people that recognize you can't run deficits forever, you can't promise the world to people and, if the government continues to take a larger and larger percentage of the total economy we are eventually going to end up as a SOCIALIST / COMMUNIST NATION where a hard day's work will only go towards paying Uncle Sam to run a bureaucratic department that generates MINIMAL value to residents and citizens of the U.S.

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