I’m sure y’all are reading the NPI Advocate. When Andrew goes into live blogging mode or when he’s making fun of Tim Eyman it’s always solid. So as soon as I saw the title of this piece about Eyman speaking at the transit listening committee was of course going to be great.
“The people attending these meetings, including myself, are not a representative sample of the taxpayers of Washington,” Eyman said, instantly drawing another round of boos and jeers. “Normal people are at home recovering from a long day at work, but their voices deserve to be heard too,” he added.
“We’re normal people!” shouted several indignant audience members in a near simultaneous (but uncoordinated) reply. “I came here straight from work,” one young woman sitting near me said loudly.
People in the room were offended, and certainly they had every right to be.
Were I not an activist who has been watchdogging Tim Eyman and fighting his destructive initiatives for over a decade, I would have been offended too. I’d have resented Eyman’s sneering implication that I was not a “normal” person because I had chosen to give up part of my evening to share my opposition to Metro service cuts with the people charged with deciding what our laws and budget should be.
[…]
Eyman may not be normal – after all, he’s a well paid professional politician – but plenty of people who showed up at tonight’s hearing are regular Washingtonians who claim to represent nobody but themselves. They spoke as citizens and activists, not lobbyists or political operatives. Unlike Eyman, they don’t get paid big bucks to promote cynical initiatives designed to wreck government.
Just because Tim Eyman isn’t normal, he shouldn’t smear the rest of the people who show up on a Monday night to participate in the process. Usually in Olympia at hearings and committee meetings these sorts of things are overwhelmingly dominated by lobbyists and other people more like Tim Eyman who make their living taking one side or another. When they actually come to Seattle and other parts of the state, they can hear from a broader selection of people.
Tim Eyman has never really “worked” for a living. He’s been a huckster his whole life. When he got started on his little series of cheap crusades, he was selling counterfeit Swiss and German watches through some bullshit mail order catalog.
He’s always been a phony. He’s one individual I would not mind seeing spending the bulk of his elderlyhood living in a cardboard box with an empty stomach.
Everyone is useful for something. I’m thinking if I found myself in another war, he’d make a good sandbag in front of my foxhole, if I could get him to shut up and lie still.
Tim Eyman, serving in the military? Now there’s something you would never see. He’d be out there doing his duty as a “chickenhawk”.
@3 No, he doesn’t have to join the military to perform the duty I have in mind for him. It’s enough to just be himself, because all I need is his body mass.
Carl: Thank you for doggedly dogging Tim Buyman.
I think Tim was refering to little Andi when he talked about “not normal” people coming to those events. Little Andi wouldn’t know what work is and certainly should get a job in the first place. But Carl, you are correct: his “live-blogging” is interesting or at least…”something”. Like the live-blogging he did right during Easter Mass “rejoice, Halleluja, the Lord has risen”. Too bad the priest didn’t rip the phone out of his hands.
http://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2011/04
look at 4/24…live during mass …what a guy. And probably sitting in the first row to boot.
Well, Eyman showing up at a meeting discussing ways out of a mess he helped cause, very interesting.
Transit critics are interesting, they keep saying buses and trains are empty, so Sound Transit goes to one car trains at night, and instead of two half empty cars, you get standing room only crowds at 11pm.
Timmeh, just another right-wing thug trying to delegitimize participatory government…”Don’t believe these people who took time to show up, the REAL people are the silent ones at home, who I just happen to represent, therefore listen to ME”
He’s a sociopath, a cheap little whore (apologies to sex workers everywhere) for his rich masters, he’s a grasping, scheming, whining little pustule on the ass of our society.