Alex🌲🌞

Utah has a multi-million-dollar multimedia campaign going on to defeat proposed Constitutional Amendment B. The TV ads are running in expensive primetime slots, in social media and on radio. Someone is spending millions to stop the amendment. Doesn't it make you wonder who is paying, and why they would spend all that money just to lie? Amendment B is very simple. Most citizen initiatives will continue to be passed by the traditional 50% plus one, same as always. However, any initiative that seeks to raise taxes has to pass by a super-majority of 60%, rather than the normal 50. But Dark Money, Inc. leaves out the part about tax hikes. Oops. Personally, I will be voting yes on Amendment B. Why? Because I want new or higher taxes to be weighed carefully by Utah's elected legislators. I want tax hikes vetted in committee, with testimony for and against. More than that, I want elected legislators to be accountable to their voters and justify why they raised taxes. The past few years have proven that, because of simple math, an initiative that passes in Utah's most liberal county, Salt Lake, is almost sure to pass statewide. I do not want Salt Lake County calling the shots, especially not on my future taxes. So, I had to speak up. I want all Utah voters to be aware of two very important facts about the elaborate deception campaign to stop Amendment B. First, the secretive groups that are funding the campaign to defeat Amendment B are not from Utah. No one knows who they really are. This is pure "dark money" campaign funding, which the left constantly screams about until they are the ones doing it. Second, their entire campaign is built on lies. They are lying to you and they know they are lying to you. They're spending millions of dollars on television ads to do it. They know the ads will leave you believing that all future initiatives will have to be passed by 60% of the voters. That is a lie and they know it. State leaders are not trying to take power away from you and me, they are taking power away from Salt Lake County to raise taxes on 28 other counties. So, if you have not voted yet, ask yourself whether you want Utah's future to be determined by liberal outside billionaires shoveling dark money into secretive organizations who lie to the people of Utah in order to fool us into voting their way. Ask yourself whether you really want Salt Lake County in charge of your taxes. These are basically the same dark money groups that convinced Utah voters to pass Medicaid expansion, promising that it would save the state money and that a small tax increase included in the initiative would fully cover the costs. That was also a knowing lie. A few years later, we are facing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid shortfalls over the next few years. We now face choices as to what we should cut to cover that shortfall. Do the Salt Lake voters who approved Medicaid expansion want us to cut roads? Do they want us to cut law enforcement? Education? Either we cut or, you guessed it, we raise taxes. Dark money groups also passed the so-called "Better Boundaries" initiative, later exploited by liberal activist judges - as planned from the start – to give Utah the most ridiculously gerrymandered Democrat congressional district anywhere in the country. It's late in the game and the other side has owned the airwaves. The referendum fight had the Republican party stretched thin, but at least a few elected leaders have stepped up. I'm grateful to the ones who have. But way too many conservative officials have sat this one out while millions in dark money flooded the TV. When someone's lying to Utah voters, our leaders should be the first ones speaking out, not the last Hopefully a few folks will read this before they vote. Then you can at least decide knowing the facts. If you're OK with outside billionaires determining your future by lying to the people using multimillion dollar TV campaigns, go ahead and vote against Amendment B