The Ads
Folks know that Commentary likes to talk about the ads that run during the Super Bowl. I was pretty much underwhelmed last night. First, let me say it was a cool move to let Jon Hamn and Bradley Cooper introduce the Chief and the Eagles. On the ads, the weird tongues from the Coffee Mate ad got my attention. The NFL’s “I am somebody” worked. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in the Hellman’s spot with Sydney Sweeney’s “I’ll have what she is having” was cool. Nike celebrating women in sports was well done. Pfizer’s “Hey, cancer, we are going to knock you out” was a good one.
Then I saw this tweet this morning:
Pfizer’s cancer drug commercial was beautiful, but their breast cancer drug Ibrance costs $10k per month and their prostate cancer drug Xtandi costs $22k per month. Beautiful commercials don’t change the fact that 42% of cancer patients exhaust their life savings in 2 years.
Oh, well.
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The Eagles came to play last night. The Chiefs were beaten soundly.
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Gov. Greg Abbott has never served in local government. He is clueless on why local governments should exist. He doesn’t understand how municipalities, county governments, and school districts are financed. See this from the Trib:
DALLAS — Gov. Greg Abbott, in his bid to curb Texas’ high property taxes, wants Texas voters to have the final say on any property tax hike.
Local governments that collect property taxes — including cities, counties and school districts — should have to win approval from a two-thirds majority of voters if they want to raise their tax rates, Abbott said.
“No approval, no new taxes,” he said earlier this month during his State of the State address.
Putting every proposed tax rate increase before the voters would have widespread implications for localities’ ability to keep up with demand for services as the state booms, local officials, school advocates and tax policy experts said. As Texas’ population grows, so does the need for roads, schools and public safety, they said. Requiring any tax increase to clear a two-thirds majority vote is a nearly impossible task — and would make it easy to kill any measure aimed at providing basic services.
Here is the entire Trib read: Abbott: Texas voters should weigh in on every tax increase | The Texas Tribune.
Hopefully, local governments, large and small, rural and urban, can unite and push back against Gov. Abbott’s dumb policy proposal.
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On “What’s Your Point” yesterday, host Greg Groogan introduced the segment on the dismissed charges against the three former aides of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. In the introduction, Groogan continued to sensationalize the dismissed charges. It didn’t work. It is difficult to sensationalize nothing. On the segment, one of the panelists said former Harris County DA Kim Ogg “flew to close to the sun and got burned.”
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Spring Training for the Cubbies started yesterday. Astros pitchers and catchers report this week. Alex Bregman in the featured photo is still without a team. I am not going to worry about it. He has a good agent.
