Besides spam for our riches locked in a Nigerian prince's bank vault, a better head of hair and just plain better head,
Clockwork's virtual mailbox has been filling lately with messages from the Committee to Renew Measure M. Now, normally when PR maven Meg Waters, Congressman John Campbell (R-Newport Beach) and the Orange County Business Council have a meeting of the minds on something, we RUN FOR THE HILLS! AIIIIEEEEEE!!!! Just kidding. These moral high horsers most certainly stand against raising taxes if those funds give poor folks a hand up. But corporate welfare? Start filling the public trough, Skippy! County voters years ago approved Measure M, which raised the county sales tax a fraction to fund specific, direly needed transportation projects. Now, with “major funding” from the Auto Club of Southern California and the Business Council (which itself gets major funding from the GOP-controlled Orange County Board of Supervisors, which itself gets major funding from–uh–you!; can you say “slush fund”?), the Committee to Renew Measure M is spreading its virus online, crowing about Campbell's support and repeating the lie, over and over, that extending the measure will create another $11.86 billion in OC transportation improvements “without raising taxes.” Bullshit, we say. If you let a tax scheduled to end do just that–end–then you are not raising taxes. Having county voters vote to extend a tax that would otherwise end IS MOST DEFINITELY raising taxes. So give yourself a pat on the back, Orange Countians, thanks to your taxes paying for a Board of Supervisors that is paying for a Business Council that is paying for a “non-partisan” campaign, you may soon vote to tax yourselves by being told you're not taxing youself, even though you are. It's the Circle of Life, my friends.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.