It is my sincerest hope that anyone reading this understands the importance of their vote.I, for one, want EVERY legal American Citizen to vote as long as you know both what you're voting for... and when it comes to candidates, WHO you're voting for.If you're an American, non-felon citizen, you have the privilege of voting. And, while I get that the left is doing their best to eradicate that privilege through allowing non-citizens and illegal aliens to vote, I'm hoping that such is an aberration and that the courts... and/or the Fed... will eventually crack down on rogue municipalities enabling the pollution of the voter pool. Meanwhile, when you're staring at your ballot, and you're about to fill it out, why are you doing that? Politics as a variety of problems today as it's had since the art began. Sadly, my 30 years or so in politics has shown that most of the political stereotypes are 100% on target. Lies, manipulation, exaggeration, back stabbing, assassination... that's how the game is played. Double standards about where one is condemned for doing something while another is lionized for doing the exact, same, thing.An embarrassingly biased and corrupt media has long since ceased being the purveyors of news as opposed to the makers of news.  Reporters no longer even try to hide the fact that they've sold out.  In the last presidential campaign, reporters actually coordinated their news coverage with the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Biases abound in the media world, but they rarely, if ever, acknowledge those biases so they want you to believe their opinion... on anything... is more valuable than yours.It isn't.Reporters here locally are screened for bias.  A former reporter for the democratian told me years ago that the only bias they could show was leftist and that they had to remember who they worked for at all times.Well, yeah, that figures. But when your news is filtered by a political bias... how can the news you're getting be depended on to form YOUR opinions? Leftist politicians will be supported by a leftist media.  Right side politicians will be vilified, attacked, beaten to a pulp, you name it. Lesson?  Don't form any position based entirely on what a newspaper or TV news or internet source tells you.And it happens on both sides:  Leftist propaganda mills like the Daily Kos have counter-balanced sites like World News Daily.  Both are part of the swamp and both need to be drained generally and ignored particularly.I refuse to kill off brain cells reading either. Another source of information are the tree-killing wastes of money known as mailers. Candidates use mailers basically for 3 purposes:  increase name familiarity, comparisons between candidates and attack ads. The problem?  The main purpose of all mailers, on the off chance they're actually read (most aren't) is to get the reader to think or believe what the sender wants. The main problem for the voter is that these mailers look great and contain a great many words.... that typically say absolutely nothing... or absolutely nothing of importance.The possible exception may be the comparison piece... presuming the comparisons are factual.  And how is the reader supposed to know that?Lesson?  Mailers at best are merely a start of the discussion.  Don't take them at face value. As many as a third of voters who actually vote limit their research to what happens to be in the voter's pamphlet. Well, who do you think wrote that stuff?  How do you think it got put in there?Major candidates have professionals write their voter pamphlet descriptions.  They know the value of these snippets because they know the numbers of voters who depend on these fictions is huge.These short stories, limited by rule to certain sizes depending on the office... 100 words, 200... 300... have the same purpose as every other political communication: to convince you to fork over your vote. They rarely include the candidate taking responsibilities for their failures, their betrayals, their sell outs.They really do promise the moon plus $2 to get you vote... and then, all too frequently... those we believed in simply ignore their promises and pledges and do whatever their special interest masters tell them to do.And in the case of Clark County, Washington State?Those betrayals have cost... and are costing.... the people of this community hundreds of millions of dollars. We were told one thing... promised in writing, in fact... and delivered... without asking.... another.The voters pamphlet is full of promises... full of marketing and all too often, full of lies. I get that for many, this kind of news is discouraging.  You may not have even considered these perspectives.  You may be asking yourself, if I don't make a decision based on this... what do I use?Well, that depends. What's important to you? If truth is important to you, then vote against a candidate who has lied.  Many have.  And many will continue to lie for the simple fact that all too often, those who lie to us... to get elected, to stay elected, or to get some bill passed... are rarely held accountable for their lies.If truth is important to you, then vote against initiatives or referenda where the proponents lie.That's difficult, given few know all of the information.  That's where common sense comes in. Politics is little different from all other forms of sales when it comes right down to it.  Those who want something from you, in this case, your vote; are more than willing to lie, exaggerate, cheat or steal to get it. Screen capture from the pro pot initiative The pot initiative of a few years back, for example, promised the people of this state $582 million per year in revenue... which sounds like an impressive number. It was also supposed to empty out our prisons and end drug prosecutions. Yes, that sounded impressive.  TOO impressive. It was a rather simple matter of dividing the number of people in this state into the fictional number proponents used to lie this initiative into being.  At about 7 million men, women and children, that number worked out to require that each of those people purchase enough pot to generate around $83 each in taxes. That number was absurd on it's face. If true, the amount of money generated by this initiative... according to it's proponents... should, by now, be roughly equal to almost $3 BILLION dollars.According to the Washington State Pot Board, the 5 years revenue has been collected equals somewhat less... around $2.3 billion less.Jails are just as full.  Drug enforcement is just as expensive.  Our taxes were just jacked up to pay for the teachers scam of McCleary and that means, simply, that none of the promises of the pot initiative have been true. This is not to rant against the pot initiative. It is merely an illustration of how far those who support an issue, a project, a law or a candidate will go to get them passed or elected. If taxes are important to you, and a candidate either refuses to tell you if they'll raise taxes or fees, refuses to tell you if they'll require a referendum for tax or fee increases; or if, like Ann "Gas Tax" Rivers, they've told you one thing in the past (they'll oppose gas tax and tab fee increases) only to vote for those increases once they were elected, then either vote against them... or know going in that you're voting for a liar.

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