Green | November 08, 2010 | 9 comments

10 Charitable Ways Meg Whitman Could Have Spent her Campaign Money

source: http://www.greenwala.com/community/blogs/all/11460-10-Charitable-Ways-Meg-Whitman-Could-Have...

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HGreenwood
For those of you that did not know, over $4 Billion was spent by politicians campaigning for last week's mid-term election. That is a staggering figure whether it is a good or bad economy and I was wondering how many people we could actually help across the world with just half of that money?? Probably millions and millions.

Did you know that former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman spent $150 Million running for Governor of California and actually lost?

So I thought well lets just take Whitman's money and see what we could do with it instead of spending it on running for Governor. Of course she felt in the role of Governor that she would make a difference so I am not trying to suggest that her intentions were wrong but she did eventually lose. So lets see how we could have spent that money.

The list is amazing and includes things such as providing 500M school lunches to the children of Rwanda, plant 1.5B trees, provide 750K laptops to children of the world and many more.

What do you think? Should politicians reduce their campaign spending?

Full list here:

http://www.greenwala.com/community/blogs/all/11460-10-Charitable-Ways-Meg-Whitma...
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    Politics,   Green,   Humanism
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    News,  News and Politics,  Politics,  Charity,  3 more
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9 comments // 10 Charitable Ways Meg Whitman Could Have Spent her Campaign Money

  • CreditFigaro
    • 0
      CreditFigaro  

    • $150 Mil is a drop in the bucket and so is $4 Bil. I wouldn't have any problem with this spending if it was spent on sincere discussion and we could write it off as an education expense.

      Unfortunately it's spent on ridiculous advertising and spreading lies. Adds come out and slander people, which are later fact checked. Unfortunately no one checks Fact Check that often (how many times have you been to the website in the last 3 months?)

      The problem is that once the lie is out, no one cares to change their mind when they are told it was a lie.

      I think that this kind of spending can actually be a good thing... The fix for this is to severely penalize campaigns for lies, slander and libel. Fines, increased red tape in where and how you can advertise, etc. would be effective deterrents, I think.

      Sure this crap would cause campaigns to file tons of lawsuits all over the place. That's fine, too. We can establish a court specifically for these issues.

      I think that politicians, networks and pundits would be far less likely to air false ads if they knew there would be damage to their bottom lines.

      Lets have a discussion and hold people accountable for lies.

      Even if the system doesn't work well or isn't enforced, it still sets a precedent for truth and will cause people to think twice before airing a false add.

    • 1 year ago
  • HGreenwood
    • 0
      HGreenwood  
    • CreditFigaro:

      I hear what you are saying but whether the ads are true or fals or someone is lying or not is some what irrelevant. I think a sincere discussion could happen with only $2B and if it just a drop in the bucket then maybe we should make some of these changes. :)

    • 1 year ago
  • Mark701
    • 0
      Mark701  

    • Politicians will spend as much money as corporations will give them. The cost of the 2012 Presidential campaign will be staggering. We can thank the five conservative members of the SCOTUS for eliminating the cap on corporate spending on campaigns. The Soviet Union couldn't have devised a better way to destroy our democracy.

    • 1 year ago
  • CalgarC
  • coolplanet
  • MrMxyzptlk
  • HGreenwood
  • juicie
  • derk
    • +2
      derk  

    • WOW! While laptops are probably the most practical for the short term, 1.5B trees would have been a nice way to go ...

    • 1 year ago
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