I have fallen out with politics in the past 6 years or so and try to not have anything to do with them or allow them to influence my life in any sort of meaningful way. But there was a time that I was in college that I actually worked for a candidate to get him elected and even though I am conservative this guy was a friend of mine who was on a Democrat ticket. When we would talk about things back 20 years ago the conversation stayed civil and we were calm and not trying to kill one another because they thought differently than us. I miss those days.
But I worked on this campaign of his for free because he was my friend and that is what you are supposed to do for friends. When he asked if I could count on the vote of my conservative friends my only reply was that I didn't know which of my friends were conservative. I knew which ones like light beer and who was decent at Madden, but that just wasn't something that really came up.
Politics consumed the lives of very few people back in those days but today it seems like everyone is a political expert thanks to the internet.
Well my buddy stayed involved in politics and still is to this day. He runs a PAC, which is a Political Action Committee, and he raises money to keep the PAC going.
I follow his PAC on Telegram but I don't interact, I also have never donated money to it and that will remain the case towards his and everyone else's PAC after he told me what actually happens with the money that is given to his organization.
He has fundraisers on a regular basis to "keep the lights on" as he says. They are always asking for more money and he posts articles that are, I think, meant to intentionally get people angry enough to open up their wallets. As far as I know he has always achieved his fundraising goals. It'll be $10,000 here, $5,000 there, it's not a huge PAC. But one day during a meetup over some beers I asked him about the PAC. He had a few drinks in him so he was very honest about what happens as far as this is concerned and I found some of it to be quite shocking and depressing.
When people donate to the PAC they believe that the money is being used for whatever the cause of that PAC happens to be, with my friend Bill's PAC, that isn't exactly what happens and he told me that all PAC's operate in this fashion.
He uses the money that is donated to create a salary for himself and when it looks like his salary "needs" cannot be met, he has another fundraiser with some shocking articles about some hot topic built in...at the moment it is immigration.
I think that a lot of people that donate to these things believe that the money is being used to support a particular candidate or party, but in the case of my friend's PAC, the money is almost exclusively used to pay himself.
He told me that he is very up front about this and the accounting is a matter of public record... as if everyone in the world just knew how to look something like that up.
When I asked him how much of the donations go to paying his salary he arrogantly stated "almost all of it."
This made me feel even worse about the state of politics in America right now. People are constantly angry and there are people like my friend from college (who will remain my friend, even though I chewed him out a little bit) who are simply taking advantage of the emotions of other people and actually intentionally adding fuel to the fire in order to line his own pockets.
He has another job but this PAC gives him a lot of extra money. He has an arcade in his man cave so yeah, he is doing pretty well in life.
I just find it really disappointing that this is how things are run and even worse that it is totally legal for him to do this. Why hasn't it been pointed out by anyone though? you might be thinking. Well this is because both sides of the political conversation do this, so if they were to call out anyone else, they themselves would get called out as well. This was something that seems obvious but the point was nailed home by my friend.
At the end of the conversation we remained friendly although I do think a bit less of him after finding this out. I don't like when people take advantage of the emotional state of others.
If you are donating money to a particular PAC or really anything related to politics there is a very good chance that you are paying someone a 2nd salary just like my friend here. I don't really want anything to do with politics anymore and I don't really see that changing anytime soon. In the meantime though, my friend is going to milk this cow until it is dry.