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Two Buck Barack

So the New York Times is breathless that “Obama Hauls in Record $750 Million for Campaign.” A lot of people are astounded at the scale of the money, and I am too. In a long, hard campaign, he raised roughly $2.50 per American, and spent slightly less than that.

Unusually, he ended his campaign not in debt, but with a small surplus. Everyone and their brother is now grubbing after that, according to the Times article. If we had a campaign finance system with transparency and accountability for donations, we would likely see spending levels like this more often, and we might well see a broader range of interesting candidate emerge and get voters engaged again.

The reality is while $750 million is a lot of money, it’s also a surprisingly small amount of money. For comparison, the 2008 Federal budget was 2.9 trillion dollars, or roughly 3900 times larger than the budget Obama just oversaw. It’s also only 1/20th of the amount we’re spending to keep Rick Wagoner in a job.

Previously: “Obama vs McDonalds,” “Already Donated the limit,” and way back in 2004, “Shut down these shadowy groups?

3 comments on "Two Buck Barack"

  • David Maynor says:

    As long as we are comparing why not point out that 750 million is more than the GDP of many small countries? Thanbk god for public fi….oh wait.
    And thank god its only Rick Wagoner that is keeping a job and all those UAW workers are getting the boot.

  • GarySM says:

    ??? ???????????.. ??? ???? ?? ??????, ????????? ????????!

  • Amrit says:

    I totally agree with Gary

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