It makes kind of a mockery of the whole thing

Check out this news clipping about the Lew Edwards Group. This is the consultant that is being paid by the City of Manteca to sell us on the new Measure M tax increase. What's more amazing than the damning indictment of their methods is that this is highlighted on their own promotional website. Normally, your own website should be promoting the good things you do, not documenting your questionable techniques of mass manipulation. It's as if they are proud of it.

Check out the list of techniques. Does any of this sound familiar?

• How to talk to reporters and a "do's and don'ts" list for officials. Nothing is left to chance.
• Creating a citizens review committee .... Calling it "an extra layer of insurance,"...
• Packing public meetings with supporters. It actually says that!
• Message discipline, ... Talk to enough officials and you're bound to hear the same story again and again. Evidently to them, repetition is an argument!
• The Lew Edwards Group also directed officials to conduct hundreds of meetings with various community groups. Sound familiar?
• "...Repeatedly express the need for projects and avoid ... discussions about costs."
• ... Officials intentionally remained vague about where [the] hospital would be built because they didn't want to galvanize NIMBYs (residents) who didn't want a hospital with a helicopter pad near their homes. (Keep any bad parts of the plan a secret!)
• One Councilman had the audacity to be thinking of the needs of the people, saying the bond was too much of a burden on the taxpayer and cast the lone vote against placing it on the ballot. He was chastised -- by Lew Edwards' assertion that unanimous support would be important to the bond's success.
• In total, Lew Edwards was paid nearly $450,000. In their defense, they said "Some ... Was spent on office supplies..." etc.

Read that last paragraph, the comments from a professor of political science:

"It's become very professionalized, and there are these groups that roam the land offering their services," said Sparrow, the SDSU professor. "They've got the money, the tools and the off-the-shelf plan for doing these things. It makes kind of a mockery of the whole thing, but that's the way you've got to get things passed. . . . You've got to play no-error ball."

I particularly like that characterization as a group that roams the land. Does that sound familiar?