Spot-on! Scott Powers on 10 FL statewide candidates given $5.8 million in taxpayer funds "who arguably didn’t need the money but took it anyway"

Sometimes, all your faithful blogger needs to do to bring something important or worthwhile to your attention is to get out of the way ASAP so you can read it yourself, since there's hardly anything I can add to the original story that could make it any clearer.
As is so often true in those cases, it involves Florida or South Florida politics and government, and what a complete fiasco something was, is or is becoming.

This is such a time as Scott Powers of the Orlando Sentinel shows how Florida's public campaign-finance laws, intended to create a more level playing-field, doesn't, if ever, work as planned.
So why keep it?

Do you keep a compass that refuses to actually point in the right direction?
I don't.

I was always against public-financing of statewide political candidates in principle, even before I read this eye-opening piece on Tuesday night.
After reading it and thinking about the financial implications of continuing the system into the future, I'm even more convinced that it's a well-intentioned bad idea.

Especially now that we all have some idea how much taxpayer money went down the drain.

Or, should I say, provided employment for political consultants and advertising revenue for TV station owners.
I see why THEY would like it and want to keep the system intact, I'm not nearly as sure why we as taxpayers should continue something so manifestly broken and unworkable.

Orlando Sentinel
Central Florida Political Pulse blog

Campaign finance leftovers: taxpayers contributed $5.8 million
Posted by scottpowers on January, 18 2011 9:22 AM

How much did taxpayers contribute to all those nasty campaign ads heading into last fall’s election?

Try $5.8 million, and counting. The latest available reports from the Division of Elections show Florida taxpayers spent more than $5.8 million to bolster the campaigns of 10 candidates for statewide office last year, giving public dollars to individuals who arguably didn’t need the money but took it anyway.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2011/01/campaign-finance-leftovers-taxpayers-contributed-5-8-million.html

The parent Orlando Sentinel article was:
Candidates collected $5.8 million in public money
By Scott Powers, Orlando Sentinel
10:54 p.m. EST, January 17, 2011
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/os-state-public-finance-20110116,0,6550241.story

Reader comments at:
http://discussions.orlandosentinel.com/20/orlnews/os-state-public-finance-20110116/10