This is What Plutocracy Looks Like

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

In our last State election cycle, Washington State liquor consumers got mightily screwed. Why? Our local-gone-international chain Costco wanted to sell booze, so it (for the second time) floated an initiative, got the signatures, and funded the beejezus out of the campaign to allow it to sell booze. In a nutshell, the promise of future profit defined the election.

This year, their old funding record has been beaten, and voting day isn't here yet.

Now, the No on I-522 Committee holds the title for most money raised by any initiative campaign in Washington state history, period.

Bankrolled by out-of-state biochemical giants and food-industry heavyweights, the campaign to defeat food-labeling Initiative 522 broke the $21.4 million mark in total contributions on Saturday, the latest campaign-finance records show.

The state’s old record — set in 2011 by Costco-backed supporters of the liquor privatizing Initiative 1183 — had been $20.1 million.

The end game is a bit different for Initiative 522. Instead of allowing huge profits for sales, the No campaign hopes to continue making huge profits from the unlabeled sale of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) sold as food. So, far from being a future revenue stream, the funders are hoping to thwart a threat to their current cash, er, corn field. (The initiative excludes labeling on meat from animals fed GMO content as fodder, so I had to modify the analogy a bit.)

I don't care to wade into the whole GMO as food debate here. Quite frankly, it proves beside the point. The point is that current GMOs are cheaper to raise for the manufacturers, and therefore any labeling would quite likely force manufacturers to lose a bit of market share to more expensive to raise non-GMO crops. This is, therefore, not an argument of what's safe, but rather what's profitable.

And reinforcing this trend of defending the business practices of the day, we have a Mayoral race here in Seattle. I just learned today that our big cable provider is helping to fund Hizzoner's opponent's race. Why?:

One of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's big policy initiatives has been expanding the quality and quantity of high-speed Internet access throughout the city. A public-private partnership plans to offer higher speeds at lower prices than most broadband providers currently offer. And incumbent providers, particularly Comcast, have invested heavily in defeating McGinn in Tuesday's mayoral election. While Comcast denies there is any connection between McGinn's broadband policies and their donations, the company has given thousands of dollars to PACs that have, in turn, given heavily to anti-McGinn groups.

Here's the clincher: I just got that heads-up today not from our indefatigable local reporters, but from the other Washington, the one on the East Coast (via a local "alternative" that a few years ago didn't bother with politics at all). From the telly news, the paper of "record" (which I quoted for the 522 stuff above)? Deafening silence.

I remember when media outlets used to be liberal and activist. I really do. Those days are as dead as the dodos, no matter how the threat of liberalism is thrown about like just another virgin into the volcano. That threat, though, does more than just appease non-existent magma gods. I keeps actual liberals on a leash:

Conservatives, lest we forget, are much more energetic and better-funded complainers about media bias than are liberals. They are extremely vocal and well-organized in their pressure tactics, and they've gone an impressive job over the years in convincing many people that any view that does not comport with a conservative ideological viewpoint is by definition "liberal." In a careful 1999 study published in the academic journal Communications Research, four scholars examined the use of the "liberal media" argument and discovered a four-fold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But the evidence, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for these view. The obvious conclusion: News consumers were responding to "increasing news coverage of liberal bias media claims, which have been increasingly emanating from Republican Party candidates and officials."

The right is working the refs.

(Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, Basic Books, 2003, p. 12-13.)

"Working the refs" is a sports term. A team captain will badger a referee throughout the game, accusing him/her of favoring the other team. This often gets the ref a little rattled, which in turn causes the calls to favor the badgering team. 'Cause, you know, balance; even in situations where there is none, the myth of balance must be observed. Otherwise, it ain't fair and stuff.

So, after Costco, after people failed to read the fine print on the initiative, the State-run liquor stores in place since Prohibition was repealed were closed and booze prices spiked seriously. I mean seriously. I'm not a heavy booze hound myself; got a job to keep and all that. But I saved enough on a cross-border booze run to pay for the gas not just from no-sales-tax Oregon (I bought from a town about 300 miles away), but from southern California. And I was driving Mom's car, which only gets about 22-25 to the gallon. The promise that "market forces" would reduce our booze bills was a bunch of drunken blather. The state monopoly stores had better prices than any private outlet I've found. And I've looked.

Why? Sure, they taxed the booze, and those taxes are still in place; but the State ran a monopoly to serve the citizens, not just to enforce regulations in place since the '30s. We could get any booze available in the US. I haven't tried doing that special ordering trick in private places yet, simply because the price would be HOLY SHIT, you've got to be fucking kidding me!, and the Holy Shit price would no doubt rise with special orders. Unlike they did with the State.

Mayor McGinn's broadband, if installed, would do for the citizens what the State liquor stores did for us, serve us rather than simply exploit us. Broadband prices would drop. All broadband prices. Seriously, can anyone who explain to me why that would be a bad thing without resorting to silliness?

But as long as future and present profits can fund the outcome of elections through massive propaganda campaigns, and as long as the supposed watchdogs in media need to appease their advertiser puppet masters before they grab the notebook and cameras and snuffle for news truffles, the plutocracy will continue to expand in scope far beyond our wildest fears.

And, as usual, it will be funded with the difference between the inflated price we pay and the lower price we could be paying.

Comments

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

I have dropped by the BevMo and looked at prices in the grocery store, but don't usually pick up anything other than groceries on the way home. I usually try and combine errands with my commute route and the Fred Meyers is handy to my office. I bought something a BevMo once but decided to stick with our local store since I don't really need the extra selection.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I am curious about the Washington stores versus the Oregon after the taxes. The liquor tax, after all, adds 20% along with the sales tax, and there's the liter tax on top of all that. The list price in stores usually don't include those charges, so if you didn't add things up before you hit the register you get an unpleasant surprise.

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

The base prices are a bit higher before taking into account sales taxes, but not considerably so for the cheaper stuff. However, the BevMo tends to only carry larger sizes of things like Potters and Brokers. Overall, usually higher then the prices at the shop in my neighborhood so I buy local, but if I lived in Washington and was deciding to drive to Oregon to get booze, the gas prices might make it more expensive to transport back than just paying a bit more down the street. And there is the "sales tax vs state tax" trade off.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Buy enough and the gas pencils out. Like I said in the OP, I bought enough in Eugene to pay for the gas from LA.