The Campaign Gravy Train

I have yet to see one media speculation behind the real reason so many are backing Mr. Trump and Senator Sanders.  According to the Campaign Finance Institute spending in 2012 for House, Senate and Presidential campaigns exceeded 2.9 Billion Dollars.  This doesn’t include the “dark money” (money of unknown origin) that is spent thanks to the Citizen’s United Decision.  The public that is supporting both these candidates is fed up with the campaign gravy train that the media is the beneficiary of.  The billions of dollars that go through the politicians and their best friend’s hands coming from both your contributions and those of the special interest lobbies, eventually end up with the media on ad buys after paying for high salaried lobbyists and party bigwigs.  Instead of pointing out the ideas of government funded campaigns, term limits, laws that limit contributions to voters, or other campaign spending ideas, the media is only engaged in spreading campaign dirt, lies, and alarmist warnings about the horrible things the other side is doing.  Return on investment is the media’s concern--not presenting the news in ways that problems can be solved.

 Realistic campaign finance reform threatens the leaders of both parties, all the special interest groups, and the politicians that rely more on special interest groups than their constituents.   In fact, all those with power wish to maintain the status quo of their power.  They can only do this by diverting our attention away from reforming campaign finance and pointing it to “bogus” issues.  They don’t report the issues as news because they can be paid for reporting the candidates’ views of the issues.  By reporting on the mud throwing, they can increase readership/viewers because we seem to like hearing about other’s mishaps and trouble.  We’re mad that the politicians are representing the special interest groups instead of us. There are more important things than money.  It should be up to the media to help us change this.