Other People’s Money

This is most hilarious. It has to be Friday, right?
E.J. Dionne, concerned about Citizen’s United and all that money, on the right, is asking that millionaires and billionaires on the left agree to price match for candidates getting slaughtered from money on the other side. I’m not kidding.

A small group of billionaires, aided perhaps by a few super-millionaires, should form an alliance to offset the spending of the other billionaires and super-millionaires. They might call themselves Billionaires Against Billionaire Politics. These public-spirited citizens would announce that they will match every penny raised by the various super PACs on the other side.

In principle, they could commit themselves to balancing off whichever side — conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat — is dominating the airwaves and the fundraising. The idea would be to destroy the incentives for the very rich to buy the election. If shrewd wealthy people realized that every $10 million they put up would be met immediately by $10 million from the other side, they might lose interest in the exercise.

And why would they do this? Apparently because EJ doesn’t realize that people work hard, make good decisions, accomplish things and get paid in order to use their money for what they think is good. EJ would just like to go ahead and spend it for them, because, well, it’s only fair. And wouldn’t it be “shrewd” in the end?

ROFL

In other election news, at the Bethesda Elementary School in very Liberal, Montgomery County Maryland, where politicians go to get out of DC, the student body election is being held. And what are the kids running on? Who knows….they can’t say lest the election get too exciting.

“Candidates at the affluent, 500-student school, where many parents have political connections of one sort or another, can’t give out buttons. They can’t wear T-shirts bearing their names. They can’t talk about their competition. And they can’t make promises. Not even about school lunches.”
A 9-year-old candidate for vice president told the Post, “We can’t say certain things because the kids would get too excited.” Of course politics should be purged of excitement. But lest you get the wrong idea — that liberalism would, if it could, so firmly restrict political speech that elective offices might as well be allocated by lotteries — the school authorities do permit candidates to post signs. Just six per candidate, however, and only as long as the signs say nothing about promises or rivals — or perhaps anything else.
The Post says the “constraints” were first imposed “in the 2008 election cycle to keep campaign expenditures from spiraling out of control.”

With this just being Thursday, I’m excited for the news tomorrow! How much more fun can it get?