Extra Tart

So, the other day Mark Ellmore came to my house. (I wish I could find a link that wouldn’t change, but for whatever reason, Archive.org can’t archive his page.) He was kind of shifty-eyed and sniffly, and of course my first thought was “drug addict,” but no, it turns out “congressional hopeful” was the right answer.

Anyway, he handed me this big blue flyer and asked if I had any issues I wanted brought up on a national level. I said no, and went inside to study his paper. Sneaky #1 - it’s a big blue flyer, so of course I read it instead of sticking it straight in the trash.  It was really confusing, though - I kept saying, “but I don’t agree with that! That’s a terrible idea! What kind of policy is that?” and it took me FOUR reads before I found the wee little 8-point
“Republican Candidate” in the corner. (Sneaky #2!)

Now, the very worst idea seemed to be taxing me on my work from home day, because it’s a “benefit”. I couldn’t think of why anyone would think that would make folks vote for them (except maybe “I’ll show those snooty work-from-home elites! They should pay extra taxes so I can have more roads to drive to my job on!”) but that was the only possible interpretation I could get out of the flyer. Now, going to his website, it says “Give tax credits to federal employees commuting into the district for mass transportation,” which is an entirely different statement. But even now that I know what he means - big friggin’ whoop. Nobody’s a federal employee anymore, everyone’s a contractor. And the feds have WAAAAAY more offices in the metro area than they do in actual DC. So he wants to give a miniscule tax break to a tiny percentage of his constituents - I could probably fit everyone who’d benefit from that in my living room. (Without even moving the furniture!) And everyone who lives and works in Virginia, including small entrepreneurs and whoever else Republicans usually think are deserving of benefits? Tough luck, enjoy that $4 gas!

So, alas, all of his efforts to hide behind a big blue field and pretend to care about anything that isn’t big oil were for naught, at least in this case. (Do you think I can get on a do-not-knock list somewhere? I’m getting kind of tired of these losers on my doorstep.)