What's the cost of a vote?

From time to time, we'll have special guest contributors on this blog. Here's Patrick Baldwin.




Despite your feelings on the size, politics and make-up of the Federal Stimulus Plan, there was a WTF element of Friday’s vote you may have missed. The short version is the White House hastily arranged for a private flight from Ohio to D.C. so Democrat Sherrod Brown could cast the key 60th vote in favor of the bill. The entire vote was held up so Brown could race back from his mother’s funeral. In this day of super-security BlackBerries, Pentagon satellite links, and a mobile Oval Office in Air Force One, do elected officials really NEED to be in Washington, D.C. to vote? I mean, if I can access everything from my bank account to my frequent flier miles over the telephone, can’t these guys hit 1 for yes 2 for no?