OT - political ( campaign funding ) question

I received a 4 sided, folded, ad-man slick, mailing from Rep
Radanovich, "my" representative in Washington.

It consists of 3-3/4 pages of professional ad-man smooth and slick,
leading, ( imho, MISleading ), fear mongering and blatant campaign
ad. It, for instance, declares that GR is "committed to working on
REAL SOLUTION ( big bold print ) to address our nations' financial
crisis. As a source of voter imformation it list ONLY www.gop,gov.
It stops short of declaring GR a defender of truth, justice, apple
pie, mom, and the American Way, but not much short. There is
ABSOLUTELY nothing in the way of concrete information about bills he
has introduced, supported or opposed ... just sound bites.

The last 1/4 (3 inches) of one of the four 8 1/2 X 11 inch pages
consists of a "constituent survey" The questions are painfully
loaded and obviously designed to get the answers he wants to hear.
So much so that my first reaction was to be ****ed at being treated
like such an idiot.

I can't see how anybody could see this as an honest effort to collect
opinion. When I called his office to say so, whoever answered the
phone so much as admitted it was campaign hype NOT an attempt at valid
survey

In small print it points out:
"This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense."


MY question. Is this type of thing the norm? Spending my money to
try and lie to me? Is it legal to spend taxpayer money on campaign
ads?


That lady who answered the phone listened to my answers ( with the
needed clarifications that the questions were clearly flawed ) for
about a minute, then simply hung up on me. To the best of my
knowledge I was in no way being offensive ( bad language, name
calling, etc ), however I am nearly deaf and well may have been
talking very loudly.

The mailing tries to compare California financial problems to federal
ones but in a very leading, "I know what I want to hear", way.
The point I was trying to express when hung-upon was that both
governments ARE suffering from the same real problems and that the
biggest of those problems is elected 'representatives" ( both sides
and I said so ) that simply refuse to try and do what they are paid to
do. In Cal the republicans announced that any member that voted
other than strict party line would be removed from party support,....
clearly that trend is reaching DC. ( both parties)

Efforts to understand the other side and find compromise that would
seem reasoned and reasonable to nearly all the constituents in the
center of a bell curve on any given issue, is the job. The
wingnuts and very vested interests on BOTH extremes of that bell
curve must be discounted.

Mr Radanovich, working on "real solutions" is not lining up for photo
ops while chanting "no, no, no" Both sides need to make more REAL
effort to find solutions that qualify for the word "reasoned" and
"compromised" I don't expect to find all his efforts "perfect" but I
DO expect EFFORT to be clear .... beyond effort to get re-elected. I
DO expect to be able to see reason not just ideology in his work.


Aside Seems to me that Russia, China, and North Korea all provide
very clear proof that the Communist Ideology fails in the real
world. Likewise, our financial meltdown and the pathetic state of
health care in this country provide clear proof that "loosely
regulated, for profit, private sector, free market economy" ideology
often fails a real world test, also ( ask Greenspan ).

"Solutions" that offer little more than reciting a failed ideology as
justification for lack of effort ... aren't what we need. /End
Aside