Political ad insanity
Feb. 27th, 2002 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katsterI have to laugh...
For those of you who do not know, it's election season in Shasta County. Shasta County is predominately rural (our biggest city is Redding, and it's big mainly because of sprawl) and highly conservative.
There's a battle going on for the local State Senate seat, between Dickerson and Aanestad. Dickerson is from Redding, Aanestad, IIRC, is from Grass Valley. (As I said, it's really rural here, there's only about five million of California's 33 million (if that!) up here). Dickerson and Aanestad are being timed out of their assembly seats (ah, term limits...), and well...Dickerson is one of about three Republicans who crossed the line and voted for last year's budget bill in the state of California. Dickerson did this because the budget was a good thing for his constituents.
Aanestad has been contending that Dickerson voted to hike the state sales tax, which is blatently untrue, it's the way the state sales tax law *works* that hiked it, and it's not like it really matters, after a year of it being at 7%, it went back to 7.25%. Not a big huge deal. But...that's not the laughing part. That's the sort of thing that makes me angry, the lies and halftruths. Basically, what this race is coming down to is simply, "Which is more important, your consituency or your party?" Dickerson says constituency; Aanestad says party. The problem comes that there's a lot of folks up here who blindly vote Republican, and I'm afraid the better man will lose because of this. Because it's so conservative up here, whoever wins the Republican primary will get the Senate seat. And I'm not registered with that party, so I have no say. Yay, for being registered Democrat in a highly Republican area. OTOH, I don't get quite as much political spam in my mailbox...
But anyway, that's the serious rationale here. The funny thing was this. As I came home today, I was listening to the radio, and one of Aanestad's political commercials came on. Here's what it said:
"And Aanestad knows the value of those rural hospitals if the north state is ever hit by a bioterrorist attack..."
...and I'm like, wtf! The odds of the North State getting hit by a bioterrorist attack are just slightly higher than, say, the tundra in Alaska getting hit by a bioterrorist attack.
Politicians. *sigh*
And yay for when I get back to solidly democrat terroritory, like, say, Berkeley.
For those of you who do not know, it's election season in Shasta County. Shasta County is predominately rural (our biggest city is Redding, and it's big mainly because of sprawl) and highly conservative.
There's a battle going on for the local State Senate seat, between Dickerson and Aanestad. Dickerson is from Redding, Aanestad, IIRC, is from Grass Valley. (As I said, it's really rural here, there's only about five million of California's 33 million (if that!) up here). Dickerson and Aanestad are being timed out of their assembly seats (ah, term limits...), and well...Dickerson is one of about three Republicans who crossed the line and voted for last year's budget bill in the state of California. Dickerson did this because the budget was a good thing for his constituents.
Aanestad has been contending that Dickerson voted to hike the state sales tax, which is blatently untrue, it's the way the state sales tax law *works* that hiked it, and it's not like it really matters, after a year of it being at 7%, it went back to 7.25%. Not a big huge deal. But...that's not the laughing part. That's the sort of thing that makes me angry, the lies and halftruths. Basically, what this race is coming down to is simply, "Which is more important, your consituency or your party?" Dickerson says constituency; Aanestad says party. The problem comes that there's a lot of folks up here who blindly vote Republican, and I'm afraid the better man will lose because of this. Because it's so conservative up here, whoever wins the Republican primary will get the Senate seat. And I'm not registered with that party, so I have no say. Yay, for being registered Democrat in a highly Republican area. OTOH, I don't get quite as much political spam in my mailbox...
But anyway, that's the serious rationale here. The funny thing was this. As I came home today, I was listening to the radio, and one of Aanestad's political commercials came on. Here's what it said:
"And Aanestad knows the value of those rural hospitals if the north state is ever hit by a bioterrorist attack..."
...and I'm like, wtf! The odds of the North State getting hit by a bioterrorist attack are just slightly higher than, say, the tundra in Alaska getting hit by a bioterrorist attack.
Politicians. *sigh*
And yay for when I get back to solidly democrat terroritory, like, say, Berkeley.
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