Letter: Offensive Super PACs are wasting money

Discussion

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November 3, 2012

Letter: Offensive Super PACs are wasting money

Anonymous Gloucester Daily Times The Gloucester Daily Times Sat Nov 03, 2012, 12:00 AM EDT

To the editor:

I am a nearly 74-year-old woman who lives in senior housing.

For the last several months my neighbors and I have been receiving an abundance of campaign mailings, often between four and six a day. Most of the approximately 100 tenants here have been placing these promptly into our recycling bin.

This excessive amount of printed material and the repetitious advertising on various forms of media are an incredible waste of money. When I hear and read of the millions of dollars — indeed billions by some estimates — being spent by so-called Super PACs in attempts to sway the outcomes of both congressional and presidential elections solely to further their own agenda, I get very angry.

In my view, it would be better for the money to be donated instead to organizations providing food pantries, homeless shelters, low-cost day care, open access health clinics, and job training for the unemployed, thereby benefitting people hard hit by the recession. Perhaps some of the wealthy donors to Super PACs could contribute toward paying down the national debt instead.

Apparently the super PACs think that senior citizens are a gullible, naïve, and uneducated population group who can be easily persuaded through the use of intimidation or fear tactics and frequent advertising to support their chosen candidates.

I think they are dead wrong. Rather, their approach seems evidence of how greed, selfishness, and money motivation can distort one’s judgment.

Many seniors are well-educated, having worked their way through college or technical/trade training. They possess considerable wisdom gained through life, work, and military experiences. They have lived history and learned from it, having been witness to and at times suffering adverse consequences and outcomes of bad decisions made by governmental officials.

In addition, seniors have time — to read, listen, study, research, and evaluate issues of the 2012 elections — and thus be better informed than many voters about candidates’ lives, characters, job qualifications, voting records, ideas, and policy proposals.

So I would say, Super PACs beware. Your money is obvious even though we may not know your individual names.

Your self-interest also is obvious. I do not believe you have the greater good of our country and her citizens in mind. My vote is not for sale!

On Election Day, Nov. 6, I shall vote as my knowledge, experience, and conscience guide me.

Ms. B.E.B. COLLINS

Dale Avenue, Gloucester