Elections in America are an industry in their own right, just like the bankrupt automobile industry, the chemicals industry, the film industry, and so on. For this reason, they are not as they appear, being only held every four or two years. Rather, it is a continuous labor that goes on every day of the year. For instance, the United States is now in the midst of campaigns for the upcoming mid-term elections on November 2, 2010, following the local elections held in the U.S last May. In the presidential elections held last November, the election industry was the only prosperous industry in the US, at a time when American banks and the General Motors Company filed for bankruptcy. In addition, campaign finances had set the record with costs of up to 5.3 billion dollars, according to the estimates by a nonpartisan statistics center - although my personal estimate places the figure well above $6 billion. The costs of the presidential race alone reached $2.4 billion, of which around $600 to $800 million were raised by Barack Obama, while the candidates for both the House of Representatives and the Senate had raised $1.5 billion. The readers are also perhaps aware that the state governors are elected by the people, and that the elections also include candidates for the positions of police chief, judges, and even court ushers, and the members of local education councils. Moreover, and due to the widespread anger at the Bush administration, the Democrats managed to raise a sum that exceeded that of the previous elections by 58%, while the funds raised by the Republicans increased by only two percent. On the other hand, Obama alone spent in the last few days of the campaign twice as much as John McCain did on advertising broadcasted over the different media outlets. Very briefly, the presidential elections are held once every four years, while the legislative elections for both of the houses of Congress are held once every two years, when all of the representatives are elected, as their mandate is two years only. At the same time, one-third of the senators are elected, with their mandate being 6 years. Next year, 36 senators will be elected, along with the all of the representatives. This time, however, the third is equal to 34 out of 100 seats, along with two other seats, one of which was vacated in Delaware after Joe Biden was reelected Senator and Vice President, and had to thus resign from Congress. The other seat became vacant in the state of New York when Hillary Clinton was confirmed as Secretary of State in January, also prompting her to resign from the Senate. The then Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner appointed the Democrat Ted Kaufman as Biden's successor until 2010. Kauffman said that he would not run for elections again and will not complete Biden's original term, i.e. four years (which ends in 2014). Meanwhile, the Governor of New York David Paterson appointed the Democratic Representative Kirsten Gillibrand to the senate until November 2010. She declared that she would indeed run for the elections next year and would – if successful - complete Clinton's second term that ends in 2012. The Democrats will inevitably retain a majority in the House, even when all of the seats in the House are under contention, i.e. 435 seats. They will also most certainly maintain the majority in the Senate which is currently divided between 58 Democrats, 2 independents who caucus with the Democrats, and 40 Republicans. Meanwhile, and as I said above, the candidates for the Senate competing in the mid-term elections are 36, equally divided between the two parties. Furthermore, I read that Carolyn Maloney, a Democratic Representative for nine terms, will run against the appointed Senator Gillibrand for the seat that was vacated when Hillary Clinton's was appointed Secretary of State. While I admit that I am not interested in the result, I did find in the two candidates anything beneficial or harmful to the Arabs, which is the angle through which I judge the members of both houses of the US Congress. I had deemed this congress before and I deem it even today to be worse or more radical than Israel's Knesset itself, as we have seen in every vote in both of the houses. Thus, I will not need to go further but I just want to remind the readers that both houses voted almost unanimously in support of Israel and its criminal war on the Gaza Strip a couple of months ago. But how come these things happen? I think we can find the answer in the nine-term Republican Representative Peter T. King's statement, when he said that he will not enter the Senate race in the state of New York because of the huge sum of money that needs to be raised. This in particular takes us back to my introduction about the election industry, and the role of the Political Action Committees, specifically the Israeli lobby, in providing funds to Israel's representatives in both houses of Congress. I continue tomorrow. http://www.j-khazen.blogspot.com/
