Rich man's game

I have recently become quite disillusioned with the entire political game even though I have spent most of my adult life following and playing in one form or another. It has been said throughout the ages that politics is a rich man's game but it has never been more true at present. In Arkansas, one of the poorest states in the union, it appears that gaining control of the governors office will run you about 4 maybe 5 million dollars. This is the same office that pays roughly $75,000 per year. You might ask yourself why a man would spend $5 million for a job that pays about the same amount that a good bartender makes. I have asked myself the same question and the answer might lie in between the lines somewhere. Our current governor, Mike Huckabee, came into office a man of relatively modest means after Jim Guy Tucker was sent to prison. In the ten years since his assention to the governor's mansion, Huckabee has somehow been able to accumulate what most in Arkansas would consider a fortune. How does this happen on a salary of $75,000 a year? I will tell you how it happens: Even rich folks stick to the adage that you should never use your own money to start a business or run for office. Since it takes $5,000,000 to get into the governor's mansion these days that means you owe a lot of people a lot of favors. Favors beget favors and money begets money. It's a viscous cycle that even the most honest are likely to fall into. Where you and I get screwed in all of this (statewide as well as nationally) is the sweetheart deals and no bid contracts that are used as payoffs for campaign help. Most of these "deals" are going to multinational corporations so we get the shaft on the front end by having to foot the inflated bill and on the back end because none of the money stays here and nobody pays taxes on the earnings. I know I will be branded a socialist, but the only way to solve this problem, I believe, is public funding of elections or at least some type of matching system. Not only would this allow real working people to run for office but the payoff system goes away or at least shrinks. Our state and our nation are going bankrupt right now because we have people who don't know how to solve problems running the show and sending all of our money to their campaign contributors.