In other news, there are races other than for President!
Here in the Bay Area, we are bombarded with commercials for soda tax initiatives in Oakland and SF (who have combined forces for advertising). Pro tax is funded by Michael Bloomberg; anti-tax by the soda industry.
And the key point in the ads is whether or not it’s a “soda tax” or a “grocery tax”. The anti-tax people started running commercials saying “vote No on the grocery tax”. Tax people countered with “vote Yes on the soda tax”.
And then it became tit-for-tat, with commercials responding to commercials. It’s a grocery tax…the cost can be passed on to the consumer. No it’s not. Yes it is. Nuh-uh. Uh-huh.
The absolutely crazy part: both sides run a commercial in which they cite a court case that supports their side. AND IT’S THE SAME COURT CASE.
In Washington State, there’s a carbon tax initiative on the ballot, that would lower sales tax (seen as regressive) but raise a carbon tax that would mostly hit industries (progressive, and leading the way in climate change!) You’d think that lefties would be behind it, but there’s a coalition opposing it of righties (don’t do anything about climate change) and lefties (the way the taxes would change, the sales tax decrease would hurt state coffers before the carbon tax put them back).
And just some poor academics (economists mainly) who came up with it, in the center trying to defend it…
California Proposition 61 would (if I understand this correctly, and hardly anyone does) peg the price that the state pays for prescription drugs to the price the Veterans Administration pays.
The official state fiscal impact prediction is: nobody knows.
So we get advertising from both sides, that show veterans wearing VFW or other military baseball caps, saying “don’t raise drug costs for veterans! Vote Yes/Vote No on 61!”
I was more interested in a conversation about annoying advertising, unusual candidates, et al; not specifically the policy implications of ballot propositions.
We have a great ad running here against Rubio’s re-election to the Senate.
It lays out his crappy attendance record. Then it lists a bunch of stuff he backed in the Senate: gutting Social Security, gutting funding for education, stomping kittens, etc.
Then over a pic of an empty Senate chamber the announcer intones “Marco Rubio: It’s bad when he skips work. It’s even worse when he shows up.”
I love it. Paid for by some PAC whose fine print blips on-screen too quickly to read it.