California's Proposition 23

I always feel sorry for the people who live in swing states in presidential elections, as they are bombarded with messages around the clock for periods of several months leading up to November.  Of course, we all take the brunt of the chicanery and lies that goes into each one of the ads for state and local representatives and ballot iniatives, and, just like Christmas shopping season, it seems to start earlier ever year.

Campaign ads generally skirt the true issues and push voters’ buttons on emotionally sensitive areas that often have nothing to do with the subject at hand.  As an example, Prop 23 in California would destroy the progress that the state has made in the direction of clean energy, setting us back decades in our attempts to curtail emissions.  Yet the clever Yes on 23 people have taken the enormous funding that they’ve received from a couple of oil companies and have created a near dead-heat in the polls, convincing obliging voters that Prop 23 will result in jobs.  An attractive and apparently reasonable lady tells us (incessantly), “The economy should come first.  It’s just common sense.” 

No, it’s just heinous — that big money can manipulate millions of people into voting for a bill that so cleary benefits only one constituency: the oil companies who sponsored it.