While the predominant conversation this week seemed to gravitate around Mitt Romney demanding an apology for the tactics used by President Barack Obama highlighting, in large part, Romney’s involvement with Bain Capital, I took issues elsewhere.
In the spirit of full disclosure however, the issues involving Capital and Romney are fair game in my mind.
Romney is a self-proclaimed businessman with a business record. If you’re going to throw stones at the President for his record, get ready to have a few thrown your way too Romney.
While having money in today’s society (to some at least) translates to having earned it deservingly – having earned it in ways that you present yourself to be above is worthy of critical examination, sir – so game on.
Regardless, what has had my attention as of late, which has been growing just as exponentially as the fundraising for both Democrats and Republicans, recently, is just that – the vast sums of money raised, donated and spent on a politician’s candidacy.
With the Supreme Court having ruled that corporations can have a limitless (even anonymous) financial relationship with politicians, the influence and impacts of these “purchases” will not only be felt by all, their presence in our lifetime seems to be an even more forgone conclusion.
At the end of the day, to what – and where is this money going? Fuel for the bus? New suits? Fast-food and small diner tabs? Advertisements?
Every party has a front-runner, if not already a nominee – even the Libertarians. Every party has a platform where they drone on-and-on with how they’ll fix the economy, how they’ll create jobs and pay down the deficit/bring balance and order to the nation’s budget while also restoring America to glory.
At the end of the day however, how can any corporation look at the amount of money they donate and feel that was money well spent? How can the politicians even argue that their fundraiser dollars are spent logically, justifiably even?
If you aren’t already sitting down, I suggest that you do, for I have a plan.
Clearly these corporations have money to spend, seeing as how they hedge their bets by donating to both Conservative and Liberal groups to spend how they see fit. With each group promising “job growth,” why not just use that money to create jobs?
Skip the middle-man (or woman) in political theater, and simply open inbound call centers. Do away with automated answering services and create jobs where people – who need jobs – can have one answering phone calls on behalf of all you (the corporation) in the way of customer service.
When I call my bank, it would be amazing if an actual human answered. When I have questions about my appliances, I could ask an actual person, not another machine. When I pay a bill over the phone, a human processes the transaction.
Having worked in various call centers, I can attest to the fact that start-up cost and regular expenses aren’t much. I’m not advocating telemarketing; I’m talking about customer service. With today’s technology even, most of these jobs could be done remotely, from the employee’s own home.
Instead of donating and spending money by effectively “hiring” someone to simply “say” that they will create jobs, go ahead and create a job. Trickle it down, so to speak. Another way of looking at it might be; if you give us more jobs that you pay us for, we have more money to spend on more “stuff.”
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Reach the reporter at jbfortne@asu.edu
