More things that make me wonder

 Saturday, September 13, 2014

       Why does every pickup truck commercial feature a voiceover actor who sounds like the love child of Randy (Macho Man) Savage and Sam Eliot?  Does a truck run better  because a deep gravelly voiced manly man does the shilling? Is it also essential to play some totally irrelevant music like the current Chevy Trucks'  "born  free" behind the ad?  Certainly with the price of a good pickup, "born free" is a huge misnomer!  Of course, it's all part of the rugged individualistic All American image. "Like a Rock",  "Built Fort Tough",  "Ram Tough"...Puhleeeze, give me a break. Tell me why it's good and price it fairly. If I really need a truck, I'll  come to you, and it really doesn't matter if Jesus does your commercials as long as it hauls stuff and runs well.

        And while I'm on the subject there are two commercials currently running that make me wonder what the ad agency was thinking. The first features Mia Hamm,   world class Olympic soccer star, and shows clips of her on the field with a generic voice over behind her extolling her virtues as an athlete. If you stopped  the clip at this point while Mia is still on screen and tried to guess whose commercial it is, you'd never do it. As it happens, it's a Mazda commercial, and the lead- in featuring Ms.  Hamm is so disconnected as to be irrelevant.

         The second is a shot of a thirty something pretty girl near the Golden Gate Bridge, and features her saying something like "I always wanted to come here...."  There is no "but" or reason offered as to why she hadn't done so before the present, and then it cuts to the anti-asthmatic medication commercial. At no point is there any connection even implied between her alleged condition and why it precluded her coming there, or for that matter that it limited her mobility in any respect.  Apparently it's illegal to visit San Francisco if you suffer a respiratory condition.

       Finally: In the current Florida gubernatorial race, current governor Rick(Skeletor) Scott is running a campaign ad blaming former governor Charlie Crist for "losing  over 800,000 jobs" between taking office in between 2007 and leaving  office in 2011. Per Scott, this is apparently all due to something (Scott never names or describes it) that Crist did to torpedo the state's economy. Of course, any sentient human knows that Crist took office just as the nation's economy nosedived and the unemployment result in Florida was mirrored nationwide.  

      Every governor in every state in the union was witness to the same things that happened in Florida, happening in their own state. Of course, one of the first casualties of a nationwide recession is a sharp decline in tourism, which (surprise!) is a double whammy for Florida, a tourist Mecca. If this ad truly reflects Scott's reasoning power, he's too stupid to breathe without instructions.   

        As an adjunct to "blame Charlie", Scott has consistently crowed that he has, in recent years, cut taxes, saying "it's your money" in campaign ads featuring Scott in some sort of warehouse with a crowd of apparent working class persons holding signs lauding him. . The truth (remember that?) is that the vast bulk of  The tax reductions under Scott were either already in place from prior administrations (sales tax holidays, done since 1998) or were tax breaks for businesses which actually put no money back in the working man's pocket, as Scott specifically alleges. Add to this the sharp increases in State university tuitions and 50% reduction in one of Florida's brightest and  best ideas - the Bright Futures Scholarship program, and in actuality, working class families have been hit hard indeed by Governor Scott.  One of the few actual legislative acts Scott has signed is the rollback of planned increases in vehicle registration.  To get a sense of how this largess will actually benefit Floridians, know this: it won't even go into effect until 2015, so no one has seen a dime of it yet. Secondarily, for comparison, the cuts to Bright Futures will cost some Florida families thousands and will, in some cases, place college out of reach for students who would formerly have been able to go tuition free.

        Finally, Scott crows about "creating" almost 700,000 jobs."  closer analysis shows that 96% of those jobs are rehires in industries directly or indirectly related to tourism. They are the result of the nationwide recovery from recession and have nothing to do with  Scott's gubernatorial skills. Of the 4% of actual new jobs, one must ask "At what cost?"  The answer is a complex group of tax cuts or more correctly, tax exclusions to businesses  which may or may not have moved to Florida anyway. They certainly put zero dollars into the pockets of the taxpaying base as a whole. 

        Rick Scott apparently believes that we Floridians are apparently a bit slow, and he's right to an extent. If you like Rick Scott because you believe a single word of his "I cut taxes and put money in your pocket" scam, you should keep your seat on the short bus.  In a state where sales tax , tourist taxes and property taxes constitute the vast bulk of state revenue , just ask yourself these questions: "Has sales tax decreased?" "Has my property tax decreased?" "Have any of my licensing or user fees decreased?" I didn't think so.