Public Financing Is a Good Investment

Letter to the Editor

By Tushar Gheewala, Los Altos

Political contributions to election campaigns are by far the best investments available today. Special interests including oil, electricity, pharmaceuticals, prison, trial lawyers and other industries have known about this for a long time, and they invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year in these ``legal bribes.''

It is time that we the citizens take advantage of the same investment opportunity by investing in our candidates and keeping them from giving away our tax dollars to special interests. Avoiding even one give away such as the electricity deregulation would have saved Californians over $3 billion. Interest on that alone could pay for proposed reforms, such as public financing of political campaigns.

Once public financing takes hold and special interests lose the huge returns on their investments, the corrupting money will vanish. Hopefully our politicians will then return to doing their job for the good of the people.

Tushar Gheewala
Los Altos

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