Thankfully, election is here

The home phone rings again!

Ugh. I am busy watching television, eating or working on the computer when the cursed home phone rings. Typically, we don’t answer the home phone because it’s usually somebody trying to sell us some crud we don’t need or want.

Over the last few days, it has been recorded phone calls of politicians asking us to vote for them. Or actual people calling to ask for me to vote for this candidate or another. Double ugh.

It’s bad enough we have to put up with the politician’s pollution campaign ads everywhere we look, but we also have to be bothered at home?

I can just imagine the conversation where the brilliant idea came about to call people at home and ask for their vote.

“Hey, I know!” said one campaign staffer to the other. “We can get a recorded message of our candidate and hammer all the people with phone calls on the answering machines!”

“You sure that is a good idea?” asked the other, more sensible campaign staffer. “Some people probably won’t like it.”

“Oh, they will be fine and feel honored to receive a phone call from a politician!”

Uh, not hardly. I came home from lunch earlier and scratched off two more candidates off the list of people I was considering voting for. I have scratched off all of them except for one local candidate who did the phone nazi thing and left a recorded message. But I did chide him and I will vote for him.

We have also had a bunch of people come by the house with campaign literature asking us to vote for somebody. I always make sure to think green and promptly put the brochure in the recycling bin.

A candidate is much more likely to get my vote by being honest with the people, not promising to do this and that when they are one person, probably a new politician with not even as much power as the person who hands out soap towels in the bathroom.

If it wasn’t so silly, maybe it would not bother me as much. Practically 99.9 percent of the candidates promise NEW and BETTER jobs, lower taxes, better education, etc. Might as well throw in a theme park promise for the greater Bokoshe metropolitan area. All those stand about the same chance of passing.

Yes, we want lower taxes. But like one candidate who I respect said, “Everybody wants less taxes, but what do you want to cut?”

How about aid to people who could work but prefer to sip off the government’s you know what. Typically, most people don’t want to give up anything. Let the great unwashed masses from up north and out west give up stuff. Don’t give me any of this JFK “Don’t ask what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Or state, or county, or city.

Finally, the election is here. I must admit that the political ads have been very nice and I don’t have a problem with most of the local candidates.
But still, I wonder why somebody would want to run (see the no power comment above) and spend thousands and thousands of dollars to gain a position that does not pay all that great. Is it ego? Are they power hungry? Or did they make a bet and lose it?

Then again, maybe I am wrong. It won’t be the first time or the last.