Yesterday, @SmallTownMommy tweeted "If Linda McMahon doesn't stop calling me, I am going to start campaigning against her." People responded that McMahon could have solved the budget deficit with all the money she is spending on calls and direct mail or at least solved Connecticut's unemployment problem.

Yet what is more concerning is the comment that one person said, "At this point I am less concerned with who 'wins', as long as they ALL STOP CALLING!" I suspect political strategists are well aware of this sort of response. Crowd the airwaves with meaningless noise about the election to the extent that people get turned off and only the hardcore politicos vote. It is damaging our democracy.

You can also see this in the majority of the posts tagged #ctsen on Twitter this morning coming from a McMahon operative who dominates the 'discussion' by focusing on 'lying' and 'death tax'. The McMahon noise is annoying just about everywhere.

This relates to two recent threads on DeliberateCT. I quoted President Obama when he spoke about the effect of the Citizens United Ruling at the Blumenthal fundraiser in Greenwich.

right now, all across the country, special interests are planning and running millions of dollars of attack ads against Democratic candidates. Because last year, there was a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. They’re allowed to spend as much as they want without ever revealing who’s paying for the ads. That’s exactly what they’re doing. Millions of dollars. And the groups are benign-sounding: Americans for Prosperity. Who’s against that? (Laughter.) Or Committee for Truth in Politics. Or Americans for Apple Pie. Moms for Motherhood. I made those last two up. (Laughter.)

Here in Connecticut, we have our own benign sounding organizations. We have the Partnership for Connecticut's Future. They describe themselves as:

a grassroots organization of citizens, businesses & community leaders, working to foster greater awareness of economic issues among Connecticut voters.

I'm all for grassroots organizations fostering greater awareness of economic issues, so I thought I would try to find out who these people are. Clicking on the Who We Are page, I found the same verbiage as they had on Facebook. I did not find any references to staff, board, funders, or individual participants on the website. It took a lot of searching before I could find out who really is behind the Partnership. John Rathgeber, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association wrote in the Fairfield County Business Journal

This an exceptionally advantageous time for business leaders and organizations to become politically active. To encourage you to become involved, CBIA and some of the state’s largest chambers of commerce have formed the Partnership for Connecticut’s Future

Yes, this sure looks like a classic astroturfing operation where fostering greater awareness of economic issues isn't as "bipartisan" as it might seem. There is a specific awareness CBIA wants to foster, and this bipartisan approach may illustrate why we need a third party and true nonpartisan approaches.

The attack ads and endless robocalls, by candidates from both major parties are damaging our democracy. Besides obscuring important issues, it drives up apathy. Matt Zagaja wrote about this in his response to Former Governor Lowell Weicker's op-ed in the Hartford Courant about minor parties. Zagaja wrote Apathy, Not Laws, Barrier to Independent Candidates.

At the same time, Gallup is reporting Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe a third major political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic Parties do a poor job of representing the American people.

So, what sort of debates will we have? One of the big debates is sponsored by the Hartford Courant. Yet there are bigger debates about the Harford Courant. Its creditors are debating what how it should be restructured out of bankruptcy, and the FCC is considering whether or not it should remain exempt from limits about cross ownership that allows the Courant and the Fox affiliate to be owned by the same entity.

Fox itself has its shares of issues as it critics ask how it can be fair and balanced as it contributes to the GOP and is currently in at least two lawsuits against Democrats. Here in Connecticut, there is concern about whether the debate audiences will be stacked and whether all the candidates on the ballots will have a chance to debate.

In Maryland, there was a tragic accident which ended not only the hope to participate in a U.S. Senate debate, but also the life of Green Party candidate Natasha Pettigrew. Ms. Pettigrew was hit and killed on her bicycle by a woman driving a Cadillac Escalade SUV. According to an article in the Huffington Post, the driver did not even stop because she "thought she hit a deer or a dog and didn't want to stop in the early morning hours."

A friend on Facebook described this as "a personal tragedy symbolic of our ongoing national environmental tragedy". Yet it is more than just symbolic of our ongoing national environmental tragedy. It symbolizes the callous uncaring attitude of those who think driving a Cadillac entitles them to harm the environment, people, or even animals.

We need to become a nation that cares again, a nation that stops in the middle of the night if we hit a person, or even if we hit an animal. We need to become a nation again that values democracy and cares about who gets elected more than we care about those annoying noise machines.