What “Freedom of Speech” costs in real dollars.
Your vote is worth $9.95 or $43.95 with the “dark money” added in!
Today I ran some numbers on a napkin, aided by by iPhone. If you were in my San Francisco neighborhood, and I took three of you to, say, SuperDuper for a mini-burger, fries and fountain soda, and we talked about the upcoming election, my cost would be $ 9.25 each, or about what I sent to ActBlue last week.
And that is about what ordinary people with names from both parties have given to sway every likely voter next Tuesday: $9.95 per vote.
My assumption is that 70% of the 126,849,726 people who voted in 2012 will cast ballots, 88,794,807, and that the $883,093,821 given to both political parties by individuals won’t significantly increase in a week.
The Koch brothers, and others who have generously funded the dark money advertising both Republican and Democrat, to the tune of $4,000,000,000 and counting, could have bought every voter a 3 course dinner at Ruth’s Steak House for $43.95, and left $2.90 as a tip--rich guys might or might not tip well. I know I’m on shaky ground, but let’s say they’re all cheapskates, and who’s going to call me out anyway?
That’s not just three of you, but every one of the almost 89 million people who are estimated to cast ballots. If you do vote, you are among the 40% or less of all who are eligible to vote, so you might get more, or have been duped into thinking that you’ll get more. If you vote in Kansas, or Kentucky, or Wisconsin or Colorado, your vote might be worth more, say a few desserts too, but I ran out of space on my napkin to include those calculations.
If you’re really looking forward to that hamburger because you’re poor and hungry, you have more obstacles to voting than the guys at Ruth’s Steak House, but you’re not going to see that meal anyway.
Justice Scalia is also waiting for his cut. But ethics prevent him for getting paid for greasing the skids, and he apparently isn’t that smart anyway: his net worth, gold bug that he is, has dropped nearly 4 million during the recent bust. Poor fellow.