Go Ahead -- Cast Your Empty Ballot

Recent estimates for global poverty are that 8.6% of the world, or 736 million people, live in extreme poverty on $1.90 or less a day, according to the World Bank. Meanwhile here in the USA, Joe Biden's campaign raised $750 million in just August and September, to pay for those predictable political ads on TV, radio and online that most of us ignore. 

The cost of just one TV ad would feed these kids for at least a year.

Hmm, let's see -- what else could one do with $750 million? Here in Portland, Maine, city officials have estimated that a new homeless shelter would cost about $4.5 million to operate, compared to the nearly $3.8 million operational costs of the existing shelter. Officials in Costa Mesa, California are planning to spend $3.65 million to turn an existing warehouse into a homeless shelter. Do the math and you see we could have many new shelters for the homeless if Biden had a heart. (Or a brain, but let's not be greedy.)

Of course it's not just Biden. Donald Trump is blanketing the airwaves with his propaganda, as are Senator Susan Collins and her opponent, The Wicked Witch of Downeast, here in Maine. You simply cannot go anywhere or do anything without being accosted by political signs and other forms of advertising, none of which change anyone's mind. 

 Politics and politicians raid our innate humanity and exacerbate the global poverty we desperately avoid confronting. Instead we get all fired up over "our candidate." You know, the one wasting so much money to tell us how great he or she is.  So go ahead and vote, but sadly, it won't make a bit of difference to the big picture. There will still be the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to be free.