Speaking up against our would be soviet overlords.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5169990/County-to-pay-250-000.html

This is a bit of old news (from 2006), but basically shows how government handles money.

They were spending 250,000$ to advertise their "lack of funds". Of course what they were really angling for is a tax increase proposition which they hoped the "lack of funds" advertising will convince people to accept.

They are not allowed to directly advertise the tax hike proposition (since some of the people oppose it), but they hope that "lack of funds" ads will get the same result while still towing the word of law.


Comments
on Dec 23, 2010

reserved

on Dec 23, 2010

lol, yes that sounds absurd indeed.

I think I found the ad that the post is referring to ... or at least something closely related. sadly your source doesn't specify any details at all, not even which lane county was meant.

 

on Jun 11, 2011

This is all I found... http://www.vijaybangaru.com/2007/09/27/your-tax-dollars-at-work/

The Lane County annual budget is slightly more than $500 million. This makes the advertising allocation just 0.05% of the budget. To put that in perspective, a small business should generally spend 5% of the previous year’s gross on marketing.

Despite this, it’s still pretty wasteful. At a basic level, if the county can’t convince people it needs more money without marketing, it probably doesn’t need it.

Keep in mind, marketing is the art of making someone want something they don’t need. So if your government is advertising… well you can figure the rest out.