Seattle Jew

A personal blog by a Jewish guy living in Seattle, working at the University of Washington as a scientist, working on blood vessels while taking pictures, and commenting on science, religion, politics and other taboos.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

How to elect mediocre politicians

Ya gets whatcha pays for!

In an era where football coaches and University Presidents make the megabuck and chairs of local charity drives make 300k and up, what is the chance that anyone qualified will put themselves through the trauma of our5 eff'd up electoral process for a job that means mega amounts of work, modest salaries, huge public scrutiny and all the job security of an assembly line worker in Detroit?

The same folks who hurrah at paying football players $100,000 per game wonder why no one of much caliber wants to be
mayor?

Then, of course, we select our officials by their ability to raise campaign funds ... as if being court jester for Charles Simonyi or a trombonist with Paul Allen is a qualification for office.

Look at the candidates for Counbty Executive. The leader is a dufus, Would anyone hire this lady to run a business the size of King County?

The there are the superstars we elect to run the Port and the schools.

I am certainly not in favor of mega salaries for these folks but we really need to find some other form of recompense and campaigning that does not mean we are limited to electing the part time mayor of Wasila or some campaign groupie as our next Big Boss.


SM Schwartz at 6:57 PM

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SM Schwartz
Seattle, Washington, United States
Professor of Molecular Pathology, work on vascular diseases and genomics. Reach me at steves(at}U.wa.edu.
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