Election years are meat for political wonks: countless reports on position jockeying, candidates spewing tragically butchered sound bites, the occasional Republican defending rape, poverty blinders, and the endless stream of campaign mailers flowing straight into our recycling bin.  And here we are, eight whole months before we hit the polls and make a marginal impact on the direction our country takes, and mailers are already hitting our mailbox.

What fun! This mailer has such promise. Cost of living! Escalating rents!! Evictions!!!! It even depicts City Hall as drenched in the blood of a thousand puppies horrifically mowed down by Google buses.

For the San Francisco political junkie, the heart-pounding excitement felt by opening this mailer can only be matched by a young boy’s discovering of his first crusty porn stash.  Such suspense!  What is City Hall’s plan?…

The fuck is this?  Sure, I like a good cheap soda as much as the next miserable asshole struggling with control issues, but the mental gymnastics you have to go through to make this a cost of living issue is exhausting.  The horrible details, from this past November:

On Monday, three weeks after Supervisor Scott Wiener unveiled a proposal for a 2-cents-per-ounce sugary beverage tax, Supervisor Eric Mar stepped up to a podium to announce his own tax — and standing next to him was Wiener.

Mar, along with supervisors Malia Cohen and John Avalos, has been working on a soda tax proposal with public health advocates for the past year and said Monday they wanted to put the legislation they have been crafting forward. The two proposals, however, are remarkably similar: Both target sugary-drink distributors, both impose a 2-cents per ounce tax, and both would use the estimated $30 million a year for health and nutrition programs to fight diabetes and other health issues associated with sodas, energy drinks and other sugary drinks.

The mailer is put out by “The American Beverage Association, Member of Stop Unfair Beverage Taxes - Coalition For an Affordable City,” which is just an elegant way of saying “Coke” and “Pepsi,” who are rightfully worried about our concern for children’s obesity affecting stock prices San Francisco’s affordability.  And maybe they have a point: if we stop all those 2 cent taxes, anyone who drinks 195,000 ounces of soda a month will suddenly be able to afford a nice two-bedroom.