Food Tax Debate

Luckily, this will be all over next Tuesday. In the meantime, it's interesting to watch the fight. As I suspected, my opposition in yesterday's debate was just relying on standard talking points used by Chambers of Commerce throughout the State. She succeeded in getting their message across that this is part of a sinister Libertarian agenda to eliminate all government. It's not true of course; but she did her part in spreading that warning and scaring people about the evils of freedom.

One untruth that she said was that the side in favor of repealing the tax was better funded and spending more money on its case than the opposition. I knew that to be a lie because the only ads and literature I have seen are from the opposition. This article, with the most recent campaign disclosure figures, shows that the opposition has in fact raised twice as much in outside donations than our side has. What is not disclosed is the amount of taxpayer resources that are being used. The APPLES group opposing this measure consists mostly of government employees who are doing their lobbying and campaign work during working hours and using government resources. Those costs are not part of the official disclosure forms filed with the State.

Here is the report of yesterday's refusal by the Arkansas Supreme Court to grant the APPLES gang's request to toss this issue off of the ballot. The APPLES people have a twisted view of the electoral process in claiming that their constitutional rights have been violated by not being able to deprive the voters of the opportunity to vote on this matter. If they are as confident as they claim to be about the results going their way, why have they spent so much time and money trying to have this issue removed from the ballot? How does that make sense? I guess that is just another example of the oxymoron, Government Intelligence.

KMK
- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 11/01/2002 08:54:00 PM Send this post: