The Yes on D campaign in support of the proposed half-cent sales tax increase in the City of San Diego has finally ginned up its efforts, less than eight weeks before election day. I suppose it took that long for the public labor union checks funding the campaign to clear.
Its first news release announced the campaign’s team members. It wasn’t the names that caught my eye. It was the logo. I nearly shot my coffee through my nose when I saw it. Fair warning to you before you take a look: http://www.twitpic.com/2nfisf
This falls in the propaganda category of “If we say it enough, they’ll believe it.” Please. The Yes on D crowd is desperate to hide the fact this is a GENERAL FUND tax. It cannot be earmarked for anything. Prop D only requires a simple majority vote. A special tax requires a two-thirds vote and there isn’t a chance such a measure would pass.
Even though both lawsuits against Prop D failed, Judge David B. Oberholzter stated on the record in no uncertain terms that:
- “Proposition D seeks the approval of a half-cent sales tax increase, and nothing else.”
- “The proceeds will go into the General Fund and are not earmarked for any purpose.”
- “The tax before us is unquestionably a general tax for general purposes.”
- “The tax is meant to go into the General Fund – and after that it is untraceable.”
The good news is that voters get it. They are getting madder by the day with a City Council that has to date refused to implement managed competition despite the passage of Prop C four years ago, refused to make meaningful pension reforms, and just this week refused to complete labor negotiations over retiree health benefits until April 2011. Read the comments after any news media coverage of Prop D online. Scathing hardly describes them.
But some voters may be fooled by this amateurish attempt to scare people into thinking they will “drown, burn, or be shot” as T.J. Zane of San Diegans Against Government Waste says if they don’t pass Prop D. Please be sure to talk with your friends, family, neighbors and colleagues who vote in the City of San Diego and make sure they understand: Prop D is a blank check with no guarantees that any of the money collected will go toward anything other than its pension and benefit obligations.
Get ready for the barrage of televisions full of good looking men and women in uniform, trying to convince you that your family will be in mortal peril without Prop D.