Quote, unquote
Like a laundry detergent that's advertised as "new and improved!" the failed Taxpayer Bill of Rights has been repackaged and given another name in the state Legislature.
But when you open the Taxpayer Protection Act and take a close look at it, you'll see that it has the same basic flaws as its earlier version.
New? Yeah. Improved? Some. But at its core, the proposed amendment to the state constitution remains an example of wrong-thinking government.
-- Appleton Post-Crescent editorial.
posted by xoff @ 8:01 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Joseph Myers from Pugnacity, Nebraska, USA was an enterprising man. One day in the late 1880s, he was helping some native American Indians to harvest their medicine plant. They told him that they made a tonic from the plant to treat bee stings, rattlesnake bites and mad-dog bites, infected wounds and fevers. . . in fact just about any malady.
Myers started making his own tonic from the plant and added liberal measures of white man's whisky. Then he hit the trails, travelling the American West selling it as a miracle cure-for-all. He became known as the 'snake oil salesman'. Since then, the term 'snake oil' has become a catchword for a bogus treatment.
These days Myers is long since dead and the recipe for his snake oil has been lost. No one seems to have patented the title for use in a promotional campaign for a health product (surprise, surprise).
But his spirit lives on – even Wisconsin in the 21st Century has its fair share of snake oil salesmen. They surface as authors of wacky legislation, are quoted in wingnut magazines or newspaper ads, late-night television shows and, increasingly, the internet, selling bogus cures to vulnerable people.
In the case of legislative quackery, the actual product isn't as important as the message. What these promoters are selling is hope, and often an illusion or feeling of wellbeing.
The promoters tend to be charismatic and positive, projecting an aura of confidence and intelligence. These promoters survive and thrive because of people's ignorance of, or disillusionment with, you guessed it…them!
They're also aided by the fact that many conditions are self-limiting and improve with time anyway. So a person can take their treatment, get better and believe it's because of that treatment and then spread a positive message about it. They also benefit from the so-called placebo effect – when we take a remedy that we expect is going to work it sometimes does. This can be because of the positive expectations we have for the remedy.
New and improved indeed.
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