Casting it as a competition between one "small restaurant owner" and the "big corporations" behind Initiative 1183, our dear small-time worker says the measure would create "a brand new 27 percent tax."

What the ad leaves out is the fact that while I-1183 would add a 27 percent tax, it would also eliminate the state's 51.9 percent mark-up on liquor. That's just a tax by another name. (The existing tax we have is on top of the bloated markup, so it's a tax on a tax.) So that 27 percent tax is actually a tax reduction for our poor little business owner. To be fair, if this passes, private retailers and wholesalers would have their own mark-ups. But they'd be competing with each other instead of operating under the state's no-competition monopoly that allows for unchallenged inflated prices. And the state's mark-up must pay for stores that sell only liquor and funds the state, so private markups would probably be far lower than the state's.

As for the idea that I-1183 isn't about "big corporations"? This ad is paid for by the nation's largest liquor distributors (i.e., corporations) which work in tandem with the world's largest liquor companies (i.e., more corporations) which carry the best known, totally corporate liquor brands in the US (Seagram's, Patron, Absolut, Jameson...). For the record, I'm undecided about the measure—I think it's a shitty deal for consumers—but the "no on I-1183" campaign isn't being very honest here.