I’m filling out my ballot for the upcoming elections. Sitting there reading through the pamphlet describing the various propositions, I come upon a proposal to up property tax a whole six cents for upgrading the police’s fingerprint matching system.
The statement in favor? It tries to grab me by opening with a story about a twelve year old girl whose assailant was caught thanks to the miracle of modern fingerprint matching, then goes on to talk about how this thing is part of a massive national database of fingerprints. Which is… you know, that’s kinda troubling, because it puts a lot of power in the hands of the Man. Plus starting with an appeal to emotions puts me on my guard.
The statement in opposition? Starts by bitching that this system was voted for LAST election and wants more money. Then it goes into this rant about how “the Council uses homeowners as its ATM!” and that “Seattle residents now will have been taxed higher for an emergency response system, concert hall, playgrounds, youth offenders, veterans, public housing, sports stadiums, zoological gardens, education, and LIBRARIES where patrons can view FREE ONLINE PORNOGRAPHY during EXTENDED HOURS”. (emphasis mine)
It goes on in that vein for a while, ranting about another measure entirely, and finishing with something about how this will drain Seattle’s homeowners dry, and that we should “[e]xpect little, if any, federal assistance because elected politicians who once favorited “earmarks” now respond with deafening… silence!”.
There are no paragraph breaks; it’s just this long stream-of-conscousness AAH TAXES ARE BAD rant with some bonus insertions of words that the right wing has focused on making BAD THINGS.
What the fuck. I mean, look, you could certainly construct a thoughtful, nuanced statement of opposition to this that simply talks about how much more information this makes easily available to authorities, pull up an anecdote about someone arrested on spurious reasons due to their political activism or something. But instead there’s just this crazy rant that tells me, “well, the crazy arm of the Repubs wants this to not happen”. Sigh.
Also there is a page in the information pamphlet telling me that “Fictional characters are great, but they do NOT belong on ballots. Don’t write in frivolous names when you vote. Be an informed voter.” Well okay then. *writes in Pogo for president*
Man this country is fucked up.