The $524 million and counting that Mitt Romney has raised for the Presidential campaign could be used to do the things conservatives claim they want for America.

The amount of money now spent on presidential campaigns in the United States is obscene. It’s staggering. For the 2012 election between President Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney, there’s over a billion dollars in play. Compare that to the 1996 election between Clinton and Dole, when just over $400 million was spent all together. Both sides are increasingly dependent on ‘super PACs’: political action committees funded by donors whose identities often remain hidden from the public. Because after all, according to the Supreme Court, corporations are now people, giving the country’s most profitable industries an even tighter grip on the political process.

But what if, instead of funding attack ads and smear campaigns, that money went toward the things that each candidate’s backers actually claim to support – for example, in Romney’s case, bringing jobs back to America, raising future entrepreneurs and reducing the incidence of abortion? Let’s take a look at how the $524 million raised thus far by Mitt Romney’s supporters could have been better spent.

Do as Jesus teaches: help the poor.

It’s safe to say that the GOP aligns itself with Biblical values. That doesn’t mean there aren’t Christian Democrats – much to the contrary – but Republicans are more vocal about it, and far more eager to blur the lines between church and state. But isn’t it kind of funny that for all of the Christianity that Republicans try to bring into politics, they almost never mention the actual teachings of Jesus? Maybe that’s because Jesus was really kind of a bleeding heart liberal, dedicating his life to helping the less fortunate.

If Mitt Romney and Co. really want to let the Bible guide their legislative decision-making, maybe they should consider what Jesus would do and give to the poor. A good portion of the $524 million wasted on TV campaigns full of lies and misdirection could provide any of the following:

1. Feed 10,480,000 children for a year. According to World Food Program USA, it can cost as little as 25 cents to provide a child with a healthy lunch.

2. Start 1,048 mobile health clinics and fund each of them for an entire year. Mobile health clinics can respond to natural disasters, and serve thousands of people living in poverty in the United States, including migrant farm workers and their families.

3. Feed 1,200 homeless New Yorkers a hot, nutritious meal and provide counseling and referral services every day for 238 years. It costs about $2.2 million a year to run New York’s Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen.

But that’s ridiculous, right?

Bring jobs back to America.

The Romney campaign has really been laying into President Obama on outsourcing American jobs, despite the fact that multi-millionaire Romney has profited handsomely from investments in companies that pioneered shipping American jobs overseas. Just over a month ago, the GOP blocked the number 1 item on President Obama’s to-do list: giving tax breaks to companies that “insource” jobs to the U.S., while eliminating deductions for companies that move jobs to other countries.

There’s an easy solution for this, but Romney’s major campaign contributors aren’t going to like it, because it would cut into their own profits. Imagine if the corporations that have donated to Romney used that money to start bringing back some of their own outsourced jobs. Some of the corporations whose owners or political action committees have donated handsomely to Romney who also ship jobs overseas include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and the notorious Bain.

Cut drug use with programs that actually work.

We’ve spent more than a trillion dollars on the war on drugs. Romney’s $524 million in campaign funds is obviously a drop in the bucket compared to that figure, but consider this: we could be spending far less on more effective long-term solutions. It costs nearly $25,000 to imprison one person for a year. Drug courts, in contrast, have an annual cost of just $900 to $3500 per person.

Drug courts are mandatory programs that keep drug-addicted individuals who have been charged with crimes out of jail. Participants in drug court programs are provided with intensive supervised treatment for a minimum period of one year, held accountable by a drug court judge for meeting their obligations to stay sober once they are released, and randomly tested for drug use. Drug court programs also require participants to appear in court before the judge on a regular basis for reviews of their progress.

Despite the fact that drug courts are highly effective, with 75% of adult graduates staying out of the criminal justice system after completing the program, drug courts serve just a small fraction of the estimated 1.2 million drug-addicted people currently in prison or on probation.

Prevent unwanted pregnancies, and by extension, many abortions.

Women should have the right to choose – period. No nitpicking over the circumstances of the pregnancy. No attempts to redefine or excuse rape. No questioning the extent to which a woman’s life must be in danger to justify an abortion. No questioning at all. But if Republicans want so badly to limit the number of abortions that are performed across the country each year, they should stop standing in the way of contraception and sex education. Planned Parenthood and other care providers offer crucial access to these services, potentially cutting the number of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies among their clients.

Plus, there’s the financial aspect. Conservatives like the big-money Koch Brothers (who have contributed millions to Romney’s campaign and many others) argue that cutting federal funds to Planned Parenthood makes fiscal sense, and Republicans tried to revoke all $317 million in Title X funding for family planning and preventative health services.

But in the long run, it actually costs more. As Slate’s Amanda Marcotte argued last year, patients who can no longer rely on Planned Parenthood will likely end up at other clinics that cost the government more money for the same services. If the GOP wants to save millions upon millions of dollars, they should spend that $317 million and more.

Improve public schools, educating future entrepreneurs.

Why is America falling behind in the global race for business leaders and other highly talented individuals? At its very core, American conservatism and indeed, capitalism itself is rooted in the idea that any individual can be wildly successful, if he or she works hard enough. But getting into an exclusive and increasingly pricey college is a lot easier if your family is wealthy, especially if you’re sent to private schools where you don’t have to worry about underpaid teachers, outdated textbooks and equipment and dilapidated facilities.

We could produce a lot more of the entrepreneurs that the GOP loves to trumpet – not to mention scientists, engineers, doctors and other highly skilled workers – with higher-quality public schools. The financial needs of our public school system definitely go far beyond $524 million. According to Teach for America, the nation’s major city public schools are in need of at least $15.3 billion in new construction, $46.7 billion in repair, renovation and modernization needs, and $14.4 billion in deferred maintenance needs, and that figure would multiply many times over when considering the entire nation. But it would be a start.

Pay for some of the “We Built It” state GOP projects that were actually funded by the federal government.

Seizing on a (misinterpreted) remark that President Obama made during a speech, Republicans turned “We Built It” into this summer’s GOP slogan. It’s like 2008’s “Drill Here, Drill Now,” except even more nonsensical. They took the phrase out of context to make it sound as if the President was telling business owners that they weren’t responsible for their own success. The Romney campaign immediately responded with an ad saying as much, and a number of speakers at the Republican National Convention repeated it.

The funny thing is, many of the things those speakers are so proud to have “built” were paid for by the federal government. For example, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas praised this Congress’ record of “implementing free enterprise policies that create jobs, cutting spending and repealing Obamacare” while failing to mention that he secretly requested $81 million in stimulus money.  Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan called President Obama’s stimulus plan “wasteful,” but turned around and sought money from it for his own state. Instead of putting millions toward false and hypocritical attacks, perhaps conservative donors should help their party do what they claim to do and pay for their pet projects themselves.

Photo: DonkeyHotey

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Column Facts are facts.

In honor of the recently-concluded Republican Iowa Caucuses, we’re running an extra-special Sex by Numbers this week honoring both the region and the people that made the last few months so jam-packed with sex scandals, mistresses, and trips to the Pizza Ranch.

Number of Iowan sex shops being shuttered for selling “product lines that will offend [landlord’s] clients”: 1

Age of consent in Iowa: 16

Number of “dislikes” candidate Rick Perry’s anti-gay ad has received on YouTube: 734,891 as of today, January 5

Number of collective marriages between the six primary Republican candidates: 8

Number of +1s received by spreadingsantorum.com, a website aimed at linking Rick Santorum’s name with a byproduct of anal sex: 6,483

Political sex scandals that resulted in a firing, resignation, or the end of a campaign in 2011: 5

Number of same-sex weddings performed in Iowa last year: 1,594

Number of board-certified sexologists currently practicing in Iowa: 7

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Gay rights, gay marriage, and Rick Perry’s war.

Rick Perry’s recent campaign ad, which makes an inexplicable connection between gay rights and religion, has tapped into the soul of the internet with over 660,000 “dislikes” on his YouTube video and a scant 21,000 “likes.” With Perry blaming Obama for a “war on religion” and promising to “fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage,” campaign followers can’t help but take note. Are there really so many sex-crazed gay men enabled by liberal pagans anxious to destroy life as we know it? Just who, exactly, is Rick Perry trying to unite? Certainly not every American.

We caught up with author and photographer Scott Pasfield, whose photographic survey of gay men in America, Gay in America, documents the lives of 140 gay men from all walks of life. According to the Gay in America site, the book is “joyful and somber, reflective and celebratory, each narrative and image is an enlightening look into the variety of gay life in the United States.”

Here’s what Pasfield had to say about the recent happenings with the Republican politico.

Perry’s ad criticizes Obama for reversing the ban on gays in the military. Do you think this ad helps him in any way with voters or just made him look ridiculous?

He certainly thinks that it will help him with voters. The sad fact is that he’ll probably get some to come out and vote for him based on this ideology. If his people did the research, they would see that the numbers just don’t add up, that overwhelmingly, by two to one in most polls, Americans support gays serving in the military. But a lot of closeted gays preferred the system the way it was; the military and church are two places that allow for men to exist, and flourish actually, outside of a normal heterosexual relationship.

As far as I’m concerned, him looking ridiculous is a fringe benefit to this all. It actually brings to light the absurdity of comparing gay rights and school prayer.

With gay right’s groups circulating a petition asking that the ad on YouTube get the “dislike” button, do you think this sends a message to Perry that he might need a new game plan with connecting to voters?

You know, I am not sure how this will affect him. He’ll try anything to climb back to the top of the heap. And I’ve found that often, one’s beliefs about gay rights are generally viewed along party lines. The problem however, is that historically those that shout the loudest against gays usually understand sexual attraction to the same sex all too well. After watching Perry’s new ad, it doesn’t seem that far fetched that he himself could be gay, as many people have noted.  I mean, he is wearing the “Brokeback” jacket that is very similar to the one worn by a couple of the guys in the book and used music inspired by a gay composer.

In your book Gay in America, you feature gay men of all ages, financial brackets, lifestyles and (the cover), a gay man in the military. Why do you think a man like Rick Perry sees an openly gay man serving in the military as wrong?

I can only imagine his reasoning. To me, Perry seems to indicate that he believes that having gays serve in the military is an immoral issue as a country. And since he compares it to prayer in schools it becomes clear his beliefs against gays are religion-based. We all know the religion-based arguments against homosexuals, no need to repeat them here. One can turn on the TV and see the hatred being served up daily if you have enough cable channels. The reality is that gays and lesbians are part of society. We are here for a reason. In an overpopulated world gays make perfect sense. It’s like Mother Nature checking herself a little, no?

And we make the world a much more beautiful place, especially considering we don’t usually have a family to take care of. We contribute a tremendous amount and just want to live with the freedoms that everyone has, and that should include defending the country.

Religion is a hot topic between Republicans and Democrats. Do you think it has any place in a presidential campaign? Should we be praying in schools?

Religion is a hot topic for so many Americans. And so many people in the world. It is the basis for so much love and hatred at the same time. It’s sad, really. I absolutely do not think it has a place in a presidential campaign. Our country was founded and exists today because church and state are separate. It certainly should continue that way. In my opinion, we should not be praying in public schools – let people pray at home. Let them be the religion their parents want them to be and hopefully become educated enough to question that religion at some point in their lives and come to terms with their own beliefs.

What about your book. How can it help people understand gay culture better?

The book serves up American gay men from all walks of life, with amazing stories, written in the first person. They are incredibly honest and revealing of what it means to be gay in this country today, especially outside of the urban areas most people think all gays want to live. Stereotypes are certainly put to the test and laid to rest at the same time. I learned an incredible amount from all these men and in turn learned a lot about myself, which anyone can do, straight or gay.

Times have certainly changed since the Bush years, but big business has only gotten stronger and would love another like-minded president that would favor the rich. I fear that they will stop at nothing to make that happen.

I just read this comment online about Perry’s ad:

“In a political system which is so corrupted by corporate cash, that a presidential candidate needs $1,000,000,000 to stand a realistic chance of getting elected, I hardly think Rick Perry’s absurdly offensive advert really matters. LGBT rights are a polarizing issue in the US. They take the spotlight away from the grim reality that democracy is dying in the U.S. The USA – a government of the people, by the people, for the corporations.”

In my opinion, that hits the nail on the head – that the government has basically been bought by corporations. And diverting attention away from that is key for the system as it exists today. Politicians know that using current decisive social issues is an easy way to swing voters to one side of the fence or the other. Perry is no exception.

From Gay in America by Scott Pasfield, published by Welcome Books. © 2011 Scott Pasfield. www.gayinamerica.us

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