Bag balm is the medicated salve that dairy farmers apply to soothe the overworked teats of dairy cows. But Bag Balm isn’t just for cows any more and after yesterday’s Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax vote in Cobb County the stuff will soon be flying off the shelves as taxpayers seek to soothe the pain of being milked for another 500 million dollars.

The special election decided whether Cobb voters would approve an extension of the local 1% sales tax. The referendum could have been held in November thus saving taxpayers $340,000 in special election expenses but tax advocates knew that higher voter participation would hurt their chances of passage so the special election was held yesterday. In addition to that example of political gamesmanship the Cobb County business community funneled $150,000 to tax advocates through the local Community Improvement Districts.

Yet despite all the machinations of Cobb County’s business and political community the issue was a dead heat right down to the wire. The tax extension won by  a whopping 79 votes out of the roughly 43,000 votes cast.

That works out to 50.09% in favor and 49.91% against so proportionally about 241 Million Dollars will be taken from taxpayers to pay for projects that they either didn’t want or didn’t want to pay for. That’s gonna hurt.

But every challenge presents an opportunity and the sore teats of Cobb County’s cash cow taxpayers present a huge opportunity for the local distributors of Bag Balm. And since political observers viewed the Cobb SPLOST referendum as an indicator of how Georgia’s proposed transportation tax increase will fare next year we can all get in on the action.

Forget plastics… buy Bag Balm!