Abuse of the Franking Privilege

The image on the right is a scan of an oversized 12"x9" piece of mail I received from my representative in the House, Erik Paulsen. The tiny notation up at the upper left reads "This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense." His signature appears in the upper right corner of the original, but doesn't show in the image because the mailing is bigger than our scanner bed.

This guy used my tax dollars to print a blatant campaign ad and then used the franking privilege congressmen enjoy to have the US Postal Service deliver it to my house for free.

Isn't the Post Office in enough trouble without guys like this adding to its burden?

The irony is that he's talking about a "tidal wave of spending." He should know, he's contributing to it.

He then goes on to talk about getting America's financial house in order, which is also ironic considering how the Republican Party in Minnesota is millions in debt and had to work out a special deal with its landlord because they couldn't pay the rent on the party headquarters.

The back side of the flyer has more yapping about "wasteful Washington spending," high gas prices and bullet points taken from the Republican Party platform.

This guy has had no credible opposition for the three years he's been in office, and has amassed a huge campaign warchest of millions of dollars. Why does he have to spend my money to send his campaign literature to me?

I've got one Republican congressmen and two Democratic senators. I get crap like this from this guy all the time, but I've never gotten anything like it from the Democrats: the only time I get franked mail from them is when they respond to my letters.

I was going to speculate on how much this cost the taxpayers, but instead of just guessing I'll contact him and find out exactly how much of my taxpayer money he spent on this. We'll see how well his "constituent service" works.