Published as a letter to the editor, from me, on 15 JUN 12 in the DeKalb Daily Chronicle, DeKalb, Illinois

Let's get this out of the way right now: You may label me a communist, fascist, socialist, Nazi, pastafarian, philatelist, botanist, lepidopterist, and so on. It doesn't change the truth.

It is obvious that unlimited cash in our political process is pure poison, and it is time to change to public financing of elections. Now, before the smoke pouring from your ears sets off the alarms and sprinklers, absorb this: our elections are already publicly financed. We just don't have any control over the distribution of that money. Before you start screaming about the evil "redistribution of wealth," note that it's already being taken and redistributed, and we don't have any control over that process; it is undemocratic; we are attempting to run a democracy (OK, democratic republic for the nit-pickers) through a clearly anti-democratic process that allows a tiny population of wealthy sociopaths and their institutions to choose and install their minions at the levers of power in our government. If you need a local example, In the 16th Congressional District primary held in March, Republican Adam Kinzinger was the beneficiary of $224,529 in campaign support against Republican Don Manzullo from Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Super PAC based in Texas. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor also pitched in $25,000 to support Kinzinger against a fellow Republican. Negative campaign advertising and tactics pushed by a flood of unregulated cash proved successful - Manzullo could not afford to combat the tidal wave of distortions and lies and he lost the election.

Elected officials are our employees, but they spend as much as half their time trying to raise money for election. They are not working for us when they're dialing for dollars. Our employees are not spending their time working for us; they're begging for money, rewarding their patrons, and ignoring the needs of the overwhelming majority of the American people. True public financing is a medicine we need to treat this disease - the distorted, undemocratic system that is drowning us with money and lies.

And my sister is a thespian.

Re. Romney & touch-screen

About Mitt Romney marveling about the touch-screen for ordering at a restaurant; someone should have told him that there are machines that dispense money, and if we set up more of those we could put money in consumers' pockets and stimulate the economy. Mitt probably would have fallen for it.

On a related note; employees at restaurants have used those touch-screens for probably at least 20 years; the difference now is customers are using the touch-screens; i.e. customers are performing labor that used to be done by employees. You'd think that restaurants would charge less since they save on labor.

Just imagine the headlines if President Obama told the "Rose Garden Rogue" that he could leave his question in writing at the door as he was leaving - immediately.