Politicians Want Money Too

There once was a politician from Sacramento,
Whose coffers were so low his pants were full of excremento,
He had a fundraiser for money,
And those who saw ticket prices had the runny.

(WARNING: Before you go further, if you are a liberal reader of this blog, you may want to stop here so you still like me. If you think our state leaders are doing a good job or are doing the best that they can, you may want to stop reading here. Warning over.)

I got an email today from a State Senator's PR hack. Yes, she is a hack. She has no concept of netiquette. (I am the only one who finds it interesting that netiquette is in my spell checker, but excremento is not?) She didn't bcc everyone, she put all of our email addresses out there for everyone to see. Nice. Then she was using a Verizon.net email address. Hey, you have your own PR firm - how about prhack@prhack.com for your email address? Break out a little 2009 email usage there, Ms. Hack.

The Senator, er, Senate President Pro Tem raised $77,000 in two events. And the cost to be in the same room as the guy who couldn't pass a budget - $2,500 to be a co-host. And if you want to be a lowly sponsor it is yours for the low, low price of $1,000 - PER PERSON! So, for the joy of being around one of three people who completely screwed up the budget (I know, they had to negotiate with the republicans because of the 2/3 vote requirement) it would cost me $2,000 since I would have to bring my wife to keep me in line.

I mean, if I want to hang around people who don't get anything done, I could go to Loaves and Fishes and talk to the homeless guy or the meth addict. And at least giving Loaves and Fishes 2 g's would be useful to them. What, exactly, is Steinberg going to use this money for? Oh, another election to a job where the Peter Principle has a new favorite son.

I mean, I don't know if Steinberg gets it or not since he has his cush job with his cush salary and doesn't put in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, but we are in a recession. Most people are just hoping to be employed tomorrow. There are not a lot of people who are running around with $1,000 burning a hole in their pocket. In fact, there are not a lot of people who even like the guy with the legislator's 30% approval rating.

Maybe a lesson in the realities of life would be good for Darrell. So, instead of $1,000 to put up with a bunch of snobs whose opinions matter to me as much as the crazy MD, PhD, JD I will put up $10 and take the big D (and he is getting bigger these days, have you noticed?) around to meet my clients who can't afford to keep their homes or pay their credit card bills or find money to fix their cars. Then, BS, er, DS, sorry you could see how I could confuse those initials, could take his $77,000 from his last two fundraisers and donate the money to a few charities that help people who are having problems in this recession. Oh, the recession that is worse in California than almost anywhere else in the country because of our poor leadership, including his.

I don't know if our politicians get it. No wait, I do know. They don't get it. They clearly don't if they are doing $1,000 per person fundraisers. They are so out of touch with reality and the problems of most people in this country. So, I propose we never give these guys another penny. They want to run for office then they should pay for it. Maybe running up debts to do what you want to do will give them some idea of what the rest of us do to run our businesses.

And DS - the offer stands. $10 to your campaign and you get to spend a day seeing what I do to help people. I will even email it to your PR person.

PS Here is my email to his PR lady:

Please remove me from your list. I don’t give money to politicians who don’t deserve it. However, as I have written about on my blog, I will give Sen. Steinberg $10 and he can come spend a day with me seeing how I help real people. Its something he may want to try.

PPS The PR hack responded. She told me that I don't understand the work our fine legislators do. Unfortunately for her, I have testified in front the senate and the assembly, helped revise bills, spoken to staff and committee staff and generally been around this mess of a political system we have. From my email response to her email wherein I was describing how most of my clients are low income and worry about whether they can pay their bills every month:

It’s a side of life neither you nor Sen. Steinberg care about because my clients can’t raise money for you. Its a side of life that Sen. Steinberg should familiarize himself with because when the propositions fail in a few weeks, he will be putting more people in that position because of his lack of leadership and lack of ability to get a budget passed that did not require smoke and mirrors.