Don't worry. You have my support. Though my state's primaries are long gone, you got my vote. And until it was stolen, I even had a sign for you in the front yard. I took it as a compliment. Someone wanted to put the sign in their yard and couldn't afford to purchase one of their own is how I comforted myself. It's like that sometimes in my neighborhood. Even though gentrification has swept through some of the streets where I live, the neighborhood is still pretty poor, black, and therefore, according to media pundits, in your column for votes.
Still, there's something that's been bothering me lately. Just like my neighborhood, it has to do with money. When I read in the local and national headlines that you've raised 40 million dollars in a month and Clinton another 25 million, I'm torn from feeling happy that more people seem to want to put their money in support of you than Clinton (or even John McCain for that matter), but also angry that so much money is going to something as crazy as who will "lead" our country for the next four years.
40 million dollars can go a long way when you really think about it. And you've raised that much in one month. For what? Advertising? Paying your overworked staffers? Campaign costs? Nice suits and shoes? I mean, you spent more in Pennsylvania than any other candidate past or present and you still lost, though I know you don't frame it that way. Still, you didn't win and you spent oodles of money trying to convince all those white, working-class voters to believe in you.
It didn't work, I'm sorry to say, but I think I have something that just might. Instead of spending all that money on TV commercials and jets to fly you from Pennsylvania to Indiana and then to North Carolina, why not spend that money in a more meaningful way. Here are some suggestions:
1) Build "green" homes with Brad and Angelina in New Orleans.
2) Buy groceries for a family struggling to make ends meet. As you probably know, children make up 25% of our population, but they make up 35% of the poor in our country.
3) Pay for job training (or retraining) for all those unemployed workers you refer to in your speeches.
4) Fix up the Veteran's Hospitals around the country.
5) Fund a school district of your choice. Or ten.
6) Support organic farmers.
7) Buy part of the ocean and create a marine sanctuary to protect our rapidly dying seas.
8) Pay for solar panels on as many houses in as many cities as you can.
9) Clean up the polluted rivers and bays around the country.
10) Pay to clean up Hanford's toxic waste site.
I can think of a billion more things you can do with your millions (or maybe it's billions if you add it all up) than to spend it on advertising and spiteful debating. Besides, imagine the press coverage you'd get if you polled your supporters on your website for their ideas and then spent your money on their suggestions? "Barack Obama pays off the mortgage debt for 500 homeowners." Don't you think that headline would garner you more votes among those white, working class women than anything else you might spend your money on?
I think so.
Good luck and thanks for listening,
No Apologies
2 comments:
Wonderful. Wonderful. I had nearly thought of it myself. WHY DON'T THEY (he, for instance) DO THESE THINGS? Send your blog to his main office. I know. First you have to find his main office. Send it anyway.
I am writing poems. Have sent a 10 pager to Prairie Schooner. Titled "Widow". Sent five nondescript ones (sent them too soon, too soon) to Seattle Review. Oh well. Wrote one yesterday morning. Wrote one this morning. An odd thing, that the death of one's loved one brings on such poems, but there you go. Poems happen. Music happens. As if for the very first time.
Great ideas. It's stunning to think of the effect he could have on peoples' lives if he did something like that, although it smacks of Oprah a little, don't you think? Not that that's a bad thing, either.
Pain and poems-- reminds me of Sharon Olds' losing her father and the music she made. It sounds good to me, red door-- keep at it hard. And share them with me, please.
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