HorsesAss.Org

Steve Zemke of Taxpayers for Washington’s Future called me this evening and walked me through a comparison of public disclosure filings for Tim Eyman’s Initiative 864 (25% cut in local services) and last year’s failed Initiative 807 (confusing pile of crap.) Tim’s fundraising this year is right on pace to meet that of last year’s losing effort… about $250,000, more or less. (Probably, less.)

Tim made a lot of excuses last year about why I-807 didn’t qualify, mostly that it was a complicated measure that was difficult for voters to get excited about… and the truth is, it was a confusing pile of crap. But despite the fact that he came back this year with a bread-and-butter property tax cut initiative, his fundraising has been remarkably consistent: consistently short of the mark.

I-807 failed because he didn’t raise the money to buy enough signatures, and I-864 will fail for the same reasons. Since day one he’s been ending his fundraising emails with the following inspirational appeal:

Don’t ever forget this quote from a critic: “We all know that if he raises $400,000, then it’s on the ballot.”

Well Tim, you’re about $150,000 short, but I know exactly where you can find the cash you need to put this dog over the top: your own pockets.

If Tim really believes in his own initiative then he should do everything in his power to get it on the ballot. That would include contributing the $50,000 he’s being paid by the gambling industry to divert his attention away from I-864, and the $100,000 he and the Fagans paid themselves from their personal compensation PAC.

So come on Tim, I dare you: put your money where your big lying mouth is. One of us is going to be eating crow on July 2; it’s up to you to choose which one.

What is it with The Seattle Times editorial board and open primaries? [Restore the right to open elections]

In fact, what is it with Washington state in general, and our childish belief that if we pretend there aren’t any political parties they’ll just go away? Non-partisan elections? Who thought of that joke? Like we all don’t know the Seattle city council and mayor are all Democrats?

And don’t get me started about voting for judges! As if 99.9% of voters already aren’t totally unqualified to elect a judge, the candidates aren’t even allowed to campaign on the issues. Non-partisan election my ass… non sequitur is more like it!

The old blanket primary was a silly exercise in being different for the sake of being different, and an invitation to abuse. I know, because I personally showed my disdain for the system by crossing over and voting for John Carlson and Ellen Craswell in the last two gubernatorial primaries. Why? I wanted the eventual Democratic nominee to face the weakest opponent possible. And I’m sure many thousands of my fellow Democrats did the same.

The Louisiana style “top two” primary the Times would like to see as a replacement, while not as susceptible to the same kind of abuse (it could backfire,) is just as pointless. The purpose of a primary is for the political parties to choose their candidates, and if a voter can’t bear to identify with one party or another, then they have no right to participate.

What’s the point of having a primary at all, if members of one party can choose the nominees of the other? Indeed, the GOP has already apparently gone back to smoke filled rooms to choose their nominees for statewide office. Their leadership anoints a single candidate (Dino Rossi, for example) and then drums out anybody who considers a challenge.

So why not just save taxpayers the money and eliminate the primary altogether. That’s exactly what Initiative 318 does with it’s proposed Instant Runoff Voting (IRV.)

An IRV has voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If on the first count no candidate gets over 50% of the votes, the last place candidate is eliminated, transferring each ballot cast for him or her to the remaining contenders based on the voter’s ranking. This continues until one candidate gets a clear majority.

An IRV is a general election and a primary rolled into one. It allows every voter, regardless of party, to participate fully. And unlike the farce of a primary the Times would prefer, it assures a place in the process for minor party candidates and independents, by allowing voters to express their true preference without concern for whether the candidate can win.

I-318 shows the kind of imagination and creativity both The Times and the Grange apparently lack. Best of all, it meets our state’s apparent need to be different when it comes to electoral policy, without being different for difference sake alone.

I was never a Ronald Reagan supporter, and the benefit of hindsight has not mellowed my opinion of his Presidency. I remain confident that the judgment of history will more closely resemble mine than that of the fawning revisionists who, like the man they endlessly eulogize, seem prone to confusing his movie roles with the role he played in public life.

Thus I never thought Reagan’s death would touch my life so personally, until both PBS stations chose to preempt their morning children’s programming to show coverage of his memorial service.

Some things should stay inviolate: The Bill of Rights… my grandmother’s pinwheel cookie recipe… a seven-year-old’s morning routine.

Even on 9-11 and the days that followed, with the nation transfixed by the tragedy of those terrible attacks, our PBS affiliates wisely shielded our children from the horror, sticking to their familiar schedule of Sagwa and Dragon Tales and other god-awful-boring but thankfully commercial-free fare. While the rest of us watched and re-watched the clips of planes flying into buildings and towers collapsing like some recurring, national nightmare, my daughter could obliviously munch her Cheerios as she watched for the umpteenth time as Arthur triumphed over his personal nightmare that he forgot his pants.

But not this morning. No, instead of watching Clifford once again help Emily Elizabeth make amends with that bitch Jenna, we found ourselves viewing a flag-draped coffin while somber announcers struggled to pretend that the death of the body of a 93-year-old man was somehow more tragic than the Alzheimer’s disease that years ago robbed him of his mind.

I watched for a few moments, imagining an enormous red dog rampaging through the National Cathedral, crushing dignitaries as he tossed the withered body of a dead president high into the air, like some rawhide chew toy.

But my cartoon fantasy was quickly interrupted by reality. Not the reality of a national media who buys and sells the spin that Ronald Reagan was a great leader simply because he happened to preside over the culmination of the Soviet Union’s decades-long collapse. No, it was the reality of a disgruntled seven-year-old, clearly suspicious that I had somehow conspired with PBS executives to rob her of her precious kid shows.

I slipped a tape into the VCR, and the image of a procession of mourners was quickly replaced by that of dancing cartoon cutlery, which struck me as no less illusory, no less scripted than the caricature of national grief that danced in unison across six local broadcast channels.

Of course I have sympathy for Reagan’s family and friends who watched a terrible disease slowly squeeze the humanity from his once vital body; and I hope these ceremonies can bring them closure.

But their grief is not my grief. And it certainly shouldn’t have been imposed on a seven-year-old girl who asked little from the world that morning, but a bowl of Cheerios and a brief diversion of talking dogs and dragons, before trudging off to a hard day of first grade.

As parents, we often try to protect our children from the realities of our adult world… a world where towers crumble and planes fall from the sky and the most powerful nation in history can crush another in retribution, on the whims of a single, ordinary man.

Yes, even presidents are ordinary men (some, more ordinary than others.) For all the eulogizing of our week-long national shiva, I think my daughter summed up Reagan’s legacy best, when staring briefly at his flag-draped coffin she eloquently pointed out: “There’s a dead person in there.”

Ronald Reagan is dead. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So much to blog… so little time. But first…

The Lie of the Week.

In an email to supporters and the media this evening, titled “Fundraising is up for two property tax reduction initiatives,” Tim Eyman continues his math-challenged ways by claiming I-892 has “reached $300,000, with an additional $90,000 brought in during the the month of May.”

That struck me as a little odd, considering I-892 ended April with over $235,000 in contributions, and $235,000 + $90,000 equals… uh… wait, there’s something wrong with my calculator.

Or maybe… Tim is lying?

Considering that just yesterday he refused to concede to Dori Monson that $400 million times 1% equals $4 million (not the $12 million he’s been claiming,) I thought I’d check out his C4 form and get to the heart of this. Sure enough, line 4 shows contributions of $89,775.

What Tim doesn’t tell you is that $25,000 of that was due to a double entry corrected two lines later on line 6. Subtract an additional $7,300 of “in kind” contributions, and what you get is roughly $57,000 in contributions, down signficantly from April’s $75,000 haul.

There can be only two explanations for Tim’s numbers games. Either he is incredibly dishonest (I believe I may have posited this thesis once or twice before.) Or he really doesn’t understand his own initiatives, he really doesn’t understand his own finances, and he really doesn’t understand basic math. In which case, he is just incredibly, well… stupid.

Anyway, the Lie of the Week notwithstanding, the big news about I-892 is that an initiative campaign that should have drawn easy money from an industry that stands to earn billions from its passage, is turning out to be a nail biter.

With his $3100 a week salary, his usual poor money management, and his seemingly inexplicable decision to add an extra layer of profiteering to his signature gathering costs by contracting through Roy Ruffino (I have my theories about this charade,) Eyman’s campaign has quite a bit of overhead.

The street price for I-892 is currently $0.75 per signature, which after being marked up twice, can’t possibly be costing him much less than $2 each, possibly more. He needs 200,000 valid signatures, which means he’d be nuts to turn in fewer than 220,000. I just can’t see how he brings this one home for less than $500,000, and even that would be cutting it close.

Of course, the gambling industry could easily pony up $200,000 in the final weeks of the campaign, but he still has over $100,000 in the bank, which tells me he hasn’t bought a lot of signatures to date, so I’m wondering if he might run out time before he runs out of money.

I-864 Death Watch

If I-864 is still alive, it’s barely twitching. Tim raised less than $40,000 in May, bringing him to a grand total of $218,000. That might seem like a lot of money, if he didn’t spend it like a drunken sailor (you know, booze, hookers, tattoos, pointless direct mail campaigns… stuff like that.)

On the most important expenditure, paid signature gathering, he’s only spent $40,000 total thus far, with a paltry $10,000 left in the bank. Signatures have got to be costing him at least $1.00 each… maybe a $1.50. So let’s say he has 40,000 signatures there.

The bulk of his funds have been spent on sending out petitions in three large direct mail pieces, which also double as his primary source of fundraising. Let’s just say, if getting signatures was as easy as renting a mailing list and sending out a bunch of petitions, I could get an initiative legalizing crack cocaine on the ballot with $150,000 and a catchy PAC name (Let’s Get Washington Cracking!) But let’s be gracious and give Eyman another 40,000 in volunteer signatures there.

That’s well short of the 200,000 he needs to qualify for the ballot, not even counting the 20% extra you want to shoot for to make up for disqualified signatures.

Tim has been taunting us for months in his emails by ending his fundraising appeals:

Don’t ever forget this quote from a critic: “We all know that if he raises $400,000, then it’s on the ballot.”

The quote was attributed to Steve Zemke, but I said it too, and it was based on the assumption that he would spend most of the money on paid signature gatherers, not junk mail.

In any case, he’s barely halfway there, and rather than pulling in $200,000 in the final month of the campaign, I’m going out on a limb here and predicting he raises about a tenth that.

If wishes were court decisions…

Before the PDC reports came in, I was going to blog on a Seattle Times editorial demanding the State Supreme Court to overturn Governor Locke’s veto of the “top two” primary, on the sound legal basis that the Seattle Times editorial board doesn’t like the veto. [Justices should rule for people’s primary]

This was reminiscent of a Times editorial last year saying the court should halt my horse’s ass initiative because they didn’t like being forced to print the word ass in a “family newspaper” … as if I was holding a fucking gun to their head.

(Note the intentionally ironic use of profanity.)

Now, I’m no lawyer (much to my mother’s chagrin,) but I’m pretty sure the Supreme Court is supposed to decide these things based on the law, not policy. A thesis I would delve into in more detail… if the P-I hadn’t already done so in an editorial. Which would have been a very timely commentary if not for the fact that it was printed after the court handed down a decision upholding the veto.

And finally… Collin Levey has stopped returning my emails

Wall Street Journal Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey took a break from her usual grueling research to wax poetic on her fond memories of Ronald Reagan:

As somebody who was 5 when Reagan took office, I belong to a generation that already has to make an effort to recall the despair and pessimism that preceded him.

Hmmm. Considering she was only 5 when Reagan took office, I can only assume that the despair and pessimism she recalls has something to do with potty training.

Unless, of course, these recollections aren’t really hers, but rather those of, say… Wall Street Journal columnist Allan Murray!

Speaking of which… last week she attacked Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” as a “dishonest infomercial,” without actually having seen the film, a characterization she based on a pair of columns by Mr. Murray that supposedly refuted Mr. Moore’s claim that Saudi’s had been allowed to fly out of the country, through restricted airspace, in the days following the attack.

Well, today’s St. Petersburg Times reports that is exactly what happened. [TIA now verifies flight of Saudis]

I’m sure she’ll issue a correction in her next column.

AM radio doesn’t get much airtime around my house. In fact, I’ve probably spent more time talking on AM radio this past year than I’ve spent listening to it. So if not for an email telling me to tune into the Dori Monson Show on 710-KIRO, I would have missed AG candidate Mark Sidran taking Tim Eyman to the mat over I-892.

It was great. Mark was armed with the facts… how Tim’s promise of a $400 million tax cut equals $23 billion in gross wagering… how his claim of $11.5 million to treat problem gambling is a three-fold exaggeration based on a faulty understanding of his own initiative… how I-892 is most definitely not revenue neutral.

(Hey… you’d almost think he was reading my blog.)

Tim, on the other hand, was armed with his same tired old rhetoric. When confronted with a number he didn’t like, he’d simply question Mark’s motives, and move back on message.

But Dori would have none of this. Math is math, and Tim’s numbers simply did not add up.

Between Mark’s relentless rhetorical bitch-slapping, and Dori repeatedly beating Tim over the head with his 9th grade algebra text, Tim came off sounding a bit dazed and confused.

The most comical moment came when Tim absolutely refused to concede that $400 million times 1% equals $4 million, choosing instead to counter by attacking his opponents as hypocrites. (You’d think with all the creative bookkeeping Tim has done over the years he’d have a better head for numbers.)

In fact, I’d say Tim sounded a little a desperate. And I’m guessing tomorrow’s public disclosure filing is going to tell us why.

It’s hard to be a “populist” when you don’t have any people, and that’s why Tim Eyman’s campaign to qualify I-864 for the ballot is all but dead.

That’s right… I-864, his “25% property tax cut” initiative will not qualify for the November ballot.

Some might call this prediction premature, but all signs are that Eyman has dramatically pulled back — or eliminated entirely — the paid signature gathering efforts for I-864. I fully expect that his public disclosure filing (due Thursday) will confirm that he is far short of the money needed to buy his way onto the ballot.

Rumor has it that I-892, his “Slots for Tots” initiative, is proving harder to qualify than expected, and that his gambling industry backers threatened to pull their funding if he didn’t focus on I-892 exclusively. After all, they are paying him $3,100 a week, and they expect to get an initiative in return. And so I-864 has been abandoned.

I suppose that’s what his loyal supporters get for prepaying his salary.

Eyman likes to say that government never reforms itself when it is “fat and happy.” Well, let’s just say that Eyman’s own initiative business is suffering from a severe case of jovial obesity.

A few years back he had the opportunity to build a real grassroots movement. Instead he got hooked on easy money, and the easy signatures it buys. He’s got no organization to speak of, and dwindling credibility and public support.

Of course, he’ll claim victory if I-892 gets enough signatures… some corny piece of rhetoric like “I’m batting .500!” But as a piece of legislation, I-892 is doomed too. Voters simply do not want to expand gambling in their neighborhoods, and they certainly don’t want to put slot machines into local bars, restaurants and bowling alleys. Besides… (and you heard it here first) the initiative is clearly unconstitutional. (What is it about Article II, Section 19 of our State Constitution that is so difficult for him to understand?)

So put a fork in Tim, he’s done. And once it’s in there, give it a little twist.

I often disagree with Seattle Times editorial page editor James Vesely, and the opening paragraphs to Sunday’s column are no exception. He once again dismisses those who say we need a state income tax as “tax collectors instead of taxpayers.” [Are we taxed to death or taxed to congestion?]

We may not want an income tax. We may be distrustful of those who propose an income tax. But we need an income tax, and some day we are going to get one. The only question is whether it arises out of a reasoned debate, or some kind of catastrophic political and economic meltdown.

That said, the rest of his column is right on the money in praising and summarizing the adjoining commentary by UW law professor Hugh Spitzer. [Washington state’s upside-down tax system]

Professor Spitzer’s thesis is that public policy should drive how we devise our tax system, whereas in Washington State our tax structure has been driving and distorting public policy.

I know it’s a bit a wonkish, and not the easiest or most entertaining read, but I strongly encourage you to labor through it. It’s about as clear an explanation of these very complicated issues as you are likely to find.

Whenever I delve into the complexities of our tax structure I am reminded how incredibly simplistic Tim Eyman’s understanding of these issues really is. It is simply amazing that we have let somebody like Tim drive our tax policy, while we ignore the advice of our best and brightest.

(But not for long… nudge, nudge, wink, wink…)

It’s a lazy Sunday, so I was just going to pile on Collin Levey [The less you know, the Moore you blame,] this time for her extraneous reference to “the flailing Democratic talk-radio station Air America.” (I suppose if the WSJ published a dictionary, she might look up the word “flailing” and see that beating Rush Limbaugh’s ratings head-to-head in the NY market, doesn’t quite fit the definition.)

But then, we all know she’s just following orders from her leaders at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc. They’re scared liberal talk-radio might have a market, so the echo chamber has been doing its darndest to convince potential advertisers, listeners and imitators otherwise.

My guess is that Ms. Levey has spent more than a few hours trembling with uncertainty, listening to the very entertaining O’Franken Factor streaming over the internet. And if she hasn’t, it’s probably because she’s too busy writing a review of the show to actually bother listening to it.

Of course, if writing a blog were as simple as lampooning Collin Levey’s columns, everybody would be doing it. (In fact, a quick Google search turns up no less than 9 blogs devoted exactly to that, plus one celebrity fanzine with a photo gallery of Collin hanging on the arms of various Hollywood hunks.)

But my readers demand a little more effort than Ms. Levey’s, and so I’d like to direct all several of you to an editorial in today’s Olympian: “Library system would be hit hard by I-864.”

Reading this editorial was like watching Smarty Jones run the Belmont Stakes. From the headline, it looked unbeatable. It established position out of the gate, set a strong pace, and came out of the final turn looking like a champion. Unfortunately, it was edged out by misinformation in the final furlong… uh, paragraphs.

Eyman and other initiative supporters will say the lost revenue due to the 25 percent property tax reduction will be made up for with taxes on expanded gambling opportunities.

Perhaps, but as library supporters correctly point out, there is nothing in Initiative 864 that requires that library, fire or cemetery districts, cities and counties be made whole for the tax dollars they lose with a 25 percent property tax reduction. How those additional gambling tax dollars are spent will be up to state lawmakers. Library district funding isn’t even on the radar screen for most legislators, given the demands of paying for schools, colleges and social services.

I believe I may have previously mentioned that Tim Eyman is a lying, thieving, blowhard. But even Tim has never attempted to suggest that local revenue losses from I-864 might be offset by revenues from the 19,000 slot machines legalized by I-892.

And even if he had, The Olympian’s editors would have quickly discerned that I-864 and I-892 have absolutely nothing to do with each other… if only they had read the initiatives.

I-864 cuts regular local levies by 25%, and The Olympian performs a great service for its readers by so clearly explaining its devastating impact on libraries.

I-892 legalizes slot machines in neighborhood bars, restaurants, and bowling alleys, dramatically expanding gambling in our communities. It further mandates that all tax revenues generated by the estimated $23 billion in new wagering, be used to reduce the state property tax, dollar for dollar.

The initiatives leave the Legislature absolutely no discretion to offset the impact of one, with revenues from the other, and to suggest otherwise is to give the something-for-nothing crowd a glimmer of hope they do not deserve. If I-864 passes, local governments will not do “more with less.” They will do “less with less,” and it is a shame The Olympian dilutes this message with such a clearly erroneous aside at the end of an otherwise excellent editorial.

I know it sometimes sounds like I’m nitpicking, and I’ll be the first to admit that the media is doing a much better job educating the public about Eyman’s initiatives than they have in years past.

But it’s little misstatements like this that get picked up and repeated by others, that can be twisted to shape the public debate. Sometimes it happens through innocent water cooler conversation. And sometimes it happens through a columnist with an agenda.

Like most Americans, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to see Michael Moore’s new film, “Fahrenheit 9/11”, so I’m certainly not qualified to critique it.

But that doesn’t stop Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey from attacking the film as a “dishonest infomercial” in her ideologically sanctioned screed, The Moore you know, the less you blame Disney.

Ms. Levey recently came to The Times, with some fanfare, from the Op/Ed pages of The Wall Street Journal: a prestigious publication with a well-earned reputation for thorough reporting and rabidly partisan, right-wing editorials.

Curious as to her journalistic rigor, I emailed Ms. Levey, asking her why she felt so comfortable characterizing as dishonest, a film she hadn’t seen. She curtly replied “You might find these useful:” and appended two columns by Alan Murray of — you guessed it — The Wall Street Journal. Barring clairvoyance, I can only infer that it was Mr. Murray’s description of the film from which she based her own impressions.

Of course, he didn’t see it either, but at least he bothered to tell his readers.

Ms. Levey, on the other hand, couldn’t spare a column inch to share her own methodology… which apparently consisted of a thorough reading of her former publication.

I’m guessing The Times didn’t know the bargain they were getting when they hired Ms. Levey. Not only do they gain the prestige of featuring a former WSJ editorialist, but they also get to harness the collected efforts of the colleagues she left behind.

If you’ve ever wondered what liberal critics mean when they refer to the “right-wing media echo chamber,” this is it. Whatever prompted Mr. Murray’s own ideological attacks, the party-line has now been repeated — indeed, amplified — in a local paper by a “local” columnist. The result (perhaps, the goal) is to transform a political charge into common wisdom… through sheer repetition.

The fact that Ms. Levey relies on the WSJ to support her thesis, understandably impresses her new bosses more than it does me. But the fact that she relies on the WSJ as the unattributed source of her thesis, should give us all pause.

I only hope that that The Times demands more journalistic rigor of its film reviewers than it does of its columnists.

Just to prove this blog is not “all Eyman all the time” this week’s Lie of the Week focuses on another lying sack of crap, Kemper Freeman Jr., and his intentionally misleading Initiative 883.

Listen to Junior’s paid signature gatherers and you’d think the initiative simply opened HOV lanes to all traffic during non-peak hours. (As if there are non-peak hours in the Puget Sound region.)

But flip the petition over and read the fine print and you’ll see the true intent of the legislation (take note, Tim…) clearly stated in the title:

AN ACT Relating to reducing traffic congestion by making road construction to reduce traffic congestion the top priority of the state transportation system;

That HOV stuff is just a slick pick-up line, intended to distract voters while Junior slips them a mickey. Come November 3, the body politic is going to wake up bruised and disoriented, wondering if it really said “yes” to building new highways at the expense of maintaining our existing roads, bridges, rail, buses and ferries.

Of course, nobody other than a pathetic wonk like me actually bothers to read the text of the initiative. Apparently, not even many of the journalists we rely on to keep us informed of the issues.

The Tacoma News Tribune refers to I-883 as “the car-pool lane initiative,” The King County Journal calls it an “initiative campaign to open up car-pool lanes and spend gas taxes on fixing congestion,” and the venerable Seattle Times kicked off their coverage with the headline: “Initiative filed to open HOV lanes in off-hours.”

Yes… I-883 does have a provision that opens up HOV lanes in off-hours. And Eyman’s I-892 dramatically expands the authority of the Washington State Lottery Commission. But neither of these provisions are the legal or actual subject of their respective initiatives.

Voters deserve to know the primary subject of I-883: that it reduces state spending on road maintenance and mass transit by 20%, and earmarks the money towards new road construction.

You know what else it would be nice for voters to understand? That the initiative is personally financed by Kemper Freeman Jr.

Why? Well Junior is the state’s largest developer of shopping malls. New freeways will have new exits. And along these exits, what do you build? Shopping malls!

I’m not naive. I expect Junior’s paid signature gatherers to be selling I-883 with lies. I just expect a better job from the media refuting them with the truth.

I like to be an equal opportunity crap kicker.

After taking The Seattle Weekly to task, I poured through the pages of The Stranger in search of a muse. Alas, I was museless.

(It’s not that The Stranger didn’t print anything stupid to make fun of, it’s just that I prefer this blog to focus on cunning politicians, not cunni…. well, you know where I’m going there.)

So I reluctantly flipped to the latest issue of the Weekly, and what do I find? An absolutely excellent column by George Howland on the plague of paid signature gatherers. [Decline to Sign]

Of course George isn’t saying anything I haven’t already said in much fouler language. But man is it heartening to hear it said so bluntly in a “respectable” publication, coming from a “respectable” journalist.

I won’t bother to repeat the column here; I urge you to read it for yourself.

So George, I’d graciously like to offer back some of the crap I’ve kicked out of the Weekly. Just hold onto it tightly: I’ve got steel-tipped boots.

Last week I kicked the crap of The Seattle Weekly’s Knute Berger [But Knute, there’s so much crap to kick…] for whining about the public’s tendency to “kick the crap out of the news media.” [E Pluribus Stupid]

While I still stand by my original crap kicking, Knute did make the very important point that the public has a responsibility to educate itself. My experience at Folklife last weekend drives home the fact that many voters are failing to live up to this obligation, while others are finding it impossible to do so.

Why the average citizen would be willing to put his signature on a petition he hasn’t read is beyond me… but this sociological curiosity has become the basis for a very lucrative industry.

Most of the people signing initiatives had no idea what they were penning their name to. A paid signature gatherer might be carrying as many as seven different petitions, and once he cajoled a voter to sign one, it was very easy for him to flip through the others.

Unless… somebody like me was there to explain the true impact of the initiatives. Indeed, on more than one occasion, a small crowd gathered around as I conducted an informal Q&A session on one initiative or another. These were engaged citizens who asked good questions — questions that apparently have not been sufficiently answered in the news media.

My argument with Knute’s thesis (apart from the self-indulgent whining,) is its total lack of subtlety. Yes, citizens have the responsibility to educate themselves. But the news media has the responsibility to give them the tools to do so.

Following that line of reasoning I suppose I should applaud Knute for helping to educate citizens about their responsibility to educate themselves. Or deride him for failing to effectively do so.

I feel a tautology coming on. Or a paradox. (Which is, of course, a tautology.)

Whatever. I think I better just stick to crap kicking.

When it comes to the initiative process, I’ve come to expect columnists and editorialists to miss the point. But in his current column [Stir up enough people, and you get initiative(s)], Bill Virgin seems to miss his own point when he writes:

“To get a reading on the hot-button issues that have the citizenry riled up, you could monitor the letters-to-the-editor column. You could sample what callers and hosts are gabbing about on talk radio shows.

Or you can scan the list of initiatives on file at the Secretary of State’s Office.”

Huh? Bill correctly states that all that is required to file an initiative is a $5.00 fee, and makes a point of mentioning some of the truly screwy initiatives that have been filed over the past couple years. So then, how does he jump to the conclusion that scanning the list of filed initiatives somehow puts his finger on the pulse of the people?

(Come to think of it, monitoring the letters-to-the-editor or talk radio shows is not a very reliable finger in the wind either.)

The bulk of initiative sponsors are crackpots, wide-eyed idealists, monied special interests… and paid professionals like Tim Eyman. Only the rarest of initiatives truly represent the popular expression of a riled citizenry.

Rarer still is a populist initiative that claws its way onto the ballot with a grassroots volunteer campaign.

Bill’s attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff, and look to those initiatives with the best chance of qualifying as a stronger measure of popular sentiment is an even more pointless exercise. Unless of course, one measures popular sentiment in dollars… which I suppose wouldn’t be surprising coming from a business columnist.

Let’s be totally honest about this. The initiatives that qualify for the ballot will be those that raise the most money — usually in large chunks from the special interests who have the most to gain by their passage.

It is not a riled citizenry that gets initiatives on the ballot… it is cold, hard, cash.

When I was in high school I took an SAT prep course where the instructor started by saying: “The only thing the SATs test, is how well you take the SATs.”

The Secretary of State’s list of initiatives tells you a lot about the intent of the sponsors, but in itself, it says little more about the will of the people than, well… Bill Virgin’s column.

So Bill… please don’t give Kemper Freeman and Tim Eyman any more credit than they deserve. They don’t need your credit. They already have plenty of cold, hard, cash.

I was back at Folklife today, this time with my 7-year-old daughter instead of flyers. But I couldn’t help notice the dearth of petitions for I-864 and I-892. In fact the only petitioner I saw hawking I-864 was flanked by two Think Before You Ink volunteers, quietly holding placards.

The rest of the paid signature gatherers got the message that Eyman’s petitions were bad for business, and instead focused on more lucrative initiatives.

Eyman’s going to be pissed about this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes a bit of a stink in the media. But I can tell you from my own personal experience that I didn’t keep a single person from signing his initiatives. The truth did. When voters understand the truth about I-864 and I-892, they simply don’t want to sign the petitions.

As I’ve said before, there is a reason why Eyman lies: it works.

Apparently, so can the truth.

What does it say about Tim Eyman, our alleged initiative “king,” when paid signature gatherers are afraid he’s giving them a bad name?

I spent a good portion of the day at Folklife, working with a handful of volunteers to shadow paid signature gatherers and ask voters not to sign I-864 or I-892. The one signature firm that was not handling either of Eyman’s initiatives had their workers prominently displaying “Not an Eyman Initiative” buttons. They were doing a brisk business.

The other paid signature gatherers were not so fortunate. Our simple message that voters should read the initiative and understand its impact before signing, pretty much made getting signatures impossible. Some signature gatherers actually handed over their Eyman petitions if we promised to leave them alone so they could focus on other petitions. Others left, grumbling that this was the last time they’d hawk an Eyman initiative.

The good news is that the exercise turned out to be very effective. The bad news is that we’re going to need a lot more volunteers to keep these initiatives off the ballot.

The Voter Education Committee is coordinating this “Think Before You Ink” campaign, and I encourage you all to join in the effort. I’ve posted more information at TaxSanity.org. You can also call their hotline at 800-856-2465 to learn how you can make a difference.

Together, we can make Washington State safe for direct democracy.