Speaking of Tim Eyman… I’ve been doing some speaking of Tim Eyman:
A leading Eyman critic, David Goldstein, said Eyman has lost his touch for finding topics anyone would care about. “It’s really just whining,” he said.
That’s from an AP article by David Ammons, revealing that Tim Eyman is about to file an initiative about initiatives. How meta.
This paranoid piece of nonsense would apparently require voter approval of all legislation restricting initiatives. Unfortunately for Tim, it would also require a constitutional amendment, since Article II, Section 22 clearly specifies a simple majority in both houses to pass a bill… not that he’s ever allowed something as trivial as the Constitution to get in his way.
Of course, I can understand Tim’s concern. After all, over the past few years the Legislature has passed a number of bills restricting the initiative process… that number being exactly zero. Indeed, Timmy admits as much:
“It’s a perpetual battle with politicians wanting to gut the initiative process,” he declared. “…It’s something the voters shouldn’t have to always worry about.”
(HINT: the secret to understanding Eyman-speak is to believe the opposite of everything he says.)
“Battle politicians, blah, blah, blah. Voters worry, blah, blah, blah.” Poor Tim. Voters, legislators and the media have all started to tune him out, his predictable rants eliciting little more than that head-cocked, glassy-eyed stare you get when talking to your dog.
First he files a performance audits measure after it’s become apparent that the Legislature is already going to pass one, and now he files an initiative to protect the initiative process from a legislative onslaught that doesn’t exist. It’s not been a good year for Tim, and I think it’s beginning to take its toll. I’ve always suspected he suffers from a mild bipolar disorder, and this is just the sort of paranoid, political miscalculation that’s typical of his depressive phase.
How else can you explain an initiative campaign so carefully crafted to appeal to the voices in Tim’s head? It is true that hundreds of initiatives have been filed over the past six years, but even if a third of them had not been filed by Tim himself, it still wouldn’t leave this initiative with much of a constituency.
It’s been over two years since an Eyman initiative has passed at the polls. Tim hasn’t just lost touch with voters… he’s lost touch with reality.
Not much of an article. Within a few days it will have disappeared from seattlepi.com and I don’t see it anywhere else.
except for maybe KGW….the Portland TV station…
What this tells you is that the mainstream media has stopped covering Tim simply because he asks for it. Dave Ammons of the AP, the man who created Tim (and to be fair… me) is about the last reporter Eyman can go to and pretty much be assured of getting some coverage.
My guess is that even though Tim didn’t get much ink, the AP story will generate a few broadcast headlines.
Timmy is on his way out the door, and won’t be able to find his way back in the building!
since Article II, Section 22 clearly specifies a simple majority in both houses to pass a bill… not that he’s ever allowed something as trivial as the Constitution to get in his way.
Yes, but I don’t think he cares. His tactic usually is to submit an initiative that violates the constitution, have it voted upon, and then later act “outraged” that the activist judges overturned the initiative (based on the constitution) and lead an orange type outrage protest broadcast live on KVI.
It’s not a tactic designed to actually pass a substantive law, only to throw red meat to the anti crowd to rile them up for a later cause.
Tim Eyman should run for an elected office, and let voters decide if they really want to be represented by him, and stop being a backseat legislator.
Golly gosh, gee whiz! It’s a good thing those rabble rousing trouble makers Adams, Franklin, Hancock, Lee, Sherman, Livingston Jefferson etc. didn’t have you folks to accuse THEM of throwing “red meat to the anti crowd to rile them up for a later cause” or we’d all be spending pounds and singing ‘Fly the Flag for Britain’!
Proud to be an Ass, you’re making an ass out of yourself.
Proud to be an Ass, you’re making an ass out of yourself. -Comment by Mount Olympus Hiker— 1/26/05 @ 6:49 pm
Why Hiker? Because you don’t like his politics? His face? The tone of his voice?
Anyone with even a modicum of knowledge of US History knows that John Adams was considered an annoying, whiny, little man, who was nearly universally despised at the time he was fighting to get a vote for independence…exactly the way you view Eyman.
While you may be too young, too immature or too unwilling to acknowledge it, the fact of the matter is folks like Adams changed government and, more importantly, changed the way people viewed their government. Whether you like him or not, agree with him or not, Eyman has done the exact same thing.
There are plenty of political cretins I despise, locally (Bagdad Jim), nationally (Jesse Jackson, Michael Newdow, Madeline O’Hare, Hillary, Michael Moore come immediately to mind) and internationally (Chirac, Kofi Annan, Saddam, Osama), but it would be ridiculous for me to ignore that in some way they have indeed changed history.
The more Tim Eyman loses, the more his fans pay him. And these hoots want us to elect their ilk to run our state? Naaaaah. Oh, and would somebody please tell ProudToBeAnAss that Eyman is no John Adams.