How to buy a government

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It has just come to my attention that in the last Dallas City Council election there was a North Dallas candidate that raised and spent over $1 million for a losing campaign.

That’s right one mil.  For a city elected seat that pays around $35,000 a year. A million dollars!

This should wake up Dallas voters…all voters for that matter… that we need serious campaign finance laws in this country. We need term limits. We need spending caps. We need transparent accountability for fund raising.

When a candidate for a city district (number 1 in this case) can spend a million bucks and lose, one has to wonder where the money is coming from and what special interest groups are trying to buy influence.  And if it happens in a lowly city council seat, you can bet on the state and national levels it is rampant with problems. And problems translate into corruption.

Much of the money that candidates raise on a local level goes to highly-paid consultants who steer votes and cash to the campaign.  But what do those consultants do in off-years?  In Dallas a certain gentlemen was trying to get a business opened in a tony section of Mid Town near Hotel Zaza, and was having trouble with the planning and zoning commission. He was informed that to get his project considered, he needed to hire a consulting firm to walk it through the labyrinth at city hall.  Guess who the consultants are. Same folks that walk candidates through general elections.  Cost to the guy was going to be between $35,000 and $60,000.  Where is the Dallas Observer and Jim Schutze when we need them?  It’s funny, you never read about this stuff in the Dallas Morning News. Why?  Because the Belos have been in the middle of this mess for years.

This is an outrage.  A citizen of the city cannot address the planning council without the aid of a paid (and lets be honest here ‘overpaid’) consultant.  It is political and bureaucratic blackmail. Government in America is the people, for the people and by the people. No consultants needed.

Corruption is rampant in Dallas. At city hall.  At the county courthouse. At the DISD building. Everywhere.  It is time citizens of this city rise up and say enough is enough.  And let’s not stop with Big D.  The good ole USA needs a housecleaning as well. This is the direction the Tea Party should have taken, rather than being high jacked by Palin and the Koch brothers in becoming an anti-Obama mouthpiece.

Term limits and campaign finance reform are musts that have to be put in place to check the advance of special interest groups over the common man. How can you expect to compete with the likes of the NRA, AMA, The Chamber of Commerce, the Banker’s Association, Wall Street and the American Bar Association? You can’t. Your voice gets drowned out.

And it gets drowned out in your own city by developers, and builders and special interests who want to build more “image” bridges and turn money away from our neighborhood parks, our schools and our streets. They want more high rises and less greenbelts. They don’t want to make payments into school funding with their high-density apartment and condo projects. And they all want tax abatements for their projects. Give me, give me, give me, but they don’t want to pay for a thing.

And they have bought the politicians who keep giving them these bennies all the time. Over and over and over again.

If it costs a million dollars to run for city council, then our form of government is lost. Democracy is nothing but a commercial entity bought and paid for by the highest bidder. 

Good luck living in that environment.