HorsesAss.Org

When it became apparent two weeks ago that Kemper Freeman Jr. was no longer paying for signatures on Initiative 883, I assumed it was because he had gathered all he needed. Thus it came as a pleasant surprise to learn that Junior had actually pulled the initiative: “Freeway initiative campaign takes exit.” (And kudos to the Seattle Times for not calling it a “car-pool initiative.”)

I-883 had been one of the season’s best financed initiative campaigns… most of it Junior’s money. With virtually unlimited personal funds, and a dishonest yet misleading quarter-truth of a sales pitch (“this initiative opens HOV lanes to everybody,”) I-883 seemed certain to reach the ballot.

But I should have been paying closer attention to the PDC filings. The I-883 campaign turns out to be so grossly inefficient that it makes Tim Eyman look like he’s giving the EIC a good deal for their money. (He’s not.)

Of the over $320,000 spent through the end of may, only $42,000 is listed as going to “voter signature gathering,” while a whopping $190,000 was pissed away on “management & consulting services.” The only conclusion is that either the campaign has hidden signature gathering efforts under the wrong expense category, or that Junior was royally reamed by his consultants.

If he had hired me as a consultant I could have saved him about $189,000 by advising him to fire me and SPEND ALL HIS DAMN MONEY ON SIGNATURES!

This calls into question the campaign’s claim that they had gathered half the 197,000 required signatures. With a street price of a buck each, the firms had to be charging at least $2.00… and with Junior’s penchant for paying retail, probably much, much more. So it is unlikely they collected more than a tenth the required number.

This also calls into question Junior’s business acumen, and begs the larger question of why we should trust this man to re-prioritize our state’s multi-billion dollar transportation budget when he can’t even prioritize a few hundred thousand dollars in campaign expenditures.

If our transportation spending were to follow Junior’s blueprint, for every $1 billion in new roads we’d spend $4.5 billion on management and consulting fees.

Tim Eyman likes to say that government never reforms itself when it is “fat and happy.” Looking at the campaign finances of Tim, Junior and their fellow initiative sponsors, it looks like there is plenty of cheerful corpulence to go around.

Proponents of our state’s for-profit initiative industry defend paid signature gathering as protected by our First Amendment right to free speech. Well, their speech may be free, but it certainly ain’t cheap.

An unscientific survey of paid signature gatherers yesterday showed that the street price of signatures has more than doubled in the final few weeks of the petition season, fetching between $1.75 and $2.50 a piece. We can only estimate the markup, but one can safely guess that the firms are charging between $3.00 and $5.00 a signature, possibly more. That adds up when you need 200,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Many voters have the impression that direct democracy is somehow more democratic than representative democracy, because the people get the final vote. But we only get to vote on those initiatives that have hundreds of thousands of dollars of special interest money to buy their way onto the ballot.

In that sense, money has become a freer sort of speech than speech itself… which only serves to cheapen our democracy even as it makes it more expensive.

For those keeping score, Tim Eyman sent two emails to supporters yesterday, and neither mentioned Jennifer McCausland um, borrowing Tim’s list to make a personal appeal not to support I-892 (Slots for Tots.) Not surprising… what was he going to say, problem gambling is good?

However he did mention David Horsey’s editorial cartoon
“The crackpot hits the jackpot,” along with several others, but rather than asking supporters to bombard the authors with hate mail, he goes out of his way to thank them:

“share a laugh with me… ”
“greatest compliment…”
“all these cartoons are a riot…”
“I love them all…”
“my absolute favorite…”
“I’m extremely grateful..”
“keep ’em comin’…”

Methinks the liar doest protest too much.

Speaking of emailing Eyman’s list… problem gambling advocate Jennifer McCausland did exactly that yesterday, making a personal appeal to Eyman supporters not to support I-892 (Slots for Tots.)

In a message sent to “all 3600 active names” on Tim’s email list, Ms. McCausland calls slot machines the “crack cocaine of gambling,” and warned that 18,255 slot machines will create a public health crisis.

Ms. McCausland’s organization, Second Chance Washington, is working to pass legislation to secure permanent funding for problem gambling treatment and prevention programs. I’ve had the opportunity to discuss these issues with Ms. McCausland, and trust me when I tell you she speaks with authority and experience on the causes of problem gambling, and its devastating toll in human misery.

It will be curious to see if Tim responds to Ms. McCausland’s emotional and well-reasoned appeal. He has little to gain by furthering the debate over the impact of problem gambling. And he is justifiably embarrassed that it was his own inexcusable negligence that put his most valuable asset — his email list — in the hands of so many of his opponents.

Perhaps he’ll just take all his frustration out on David Horsey?

Second guessing Tim Eyman is a dangerous pastime… because it only uses half my brain, and I’m afraid the other half might atrophy.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if Eyman is going to email his list, exhorting them to send nasty missives to David Horsey in response to his amusing editorial cartoon in today’s Seattle P-I: “The crackpot hits the jackpot.”

Two weeks ago I would have said “no,” as Tim seemed content to avoid mentioning I-892 to his core supporters, knowing that many of them opposed gambling expansion. But lately his emails have embraced I-892 in an apparent attempt to more strongly brand it an Eyman initiative, so that he can claim a partial victory July 2 when I-864 (myopic tax cut) fails to qualify for the ballot.

Tim seems to get particularly offended by editorial cartoons (perhaps its because he gets most of his news by looking at the pictures?) and has reacted strongly in the past. But either way, I don’t think Horsey needs to worry about hate mail flooding his inbox. Tim’s “grassroots” support has long since thinned to an empty threat, and besides, Horsey’s cartoon will ring true to Eyman supporters who have watched him all but abandon I-864 in favor of the more remunerative gambling initiative.

It’s Thursday, or as we like to call it here at HorsesAss.org: “Collin Levey Day.” Her column is fresh off the press at The Seattle Times, stinking of ink and right-wing propaganda.

Years ago, I would watch the McLaughlin Group, looking forward to Pat Buchanan’s myopic predictions as an indicator of his conservative allies’ hopes and dreams — and Collin is proving to be just as accurate a political barometer. If there is one thing we can learn from today’s column, “Odd man out: Al Gore’s journey into irrelevance,” it’s that her bosses at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc. are obviously terrified of Al Gore.

The very fact that she chose to expend her precious column inches proclaiming Al Gore’s irrelevance is a testament to the opposite. The truth is, Mr. Gore’s spate of impassioned speeches is lighting a fire under the Democratic faithful, rubbing fresh salt into the still open wounds of a stolen election. And even a tiny blip in Democratic turnout could be enough to overwhelm the unprecedented election fraud being perpetrated by the GOP in battleground states like Florida.

Mr. Gore’s latest speech, a strongly worded critique of President Bush’s foreign policy, has elicited such illuminating comments from right-wing pundits as “crazy,” “insane,” and “totally nuts.” My guess is that Collin didn’t bother reading the transcript before adding her own voice to the chorus (though I suppose Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal might have.) If she had, she might have tried refuting a few of the statements instead of just dismissing their author as irrelevant.

It’s not that Collin is a bad writer; indeed, she occasionally shows a keen gift for poison penmanship (a craft I truly appreciate.) But until she starts coming up with a few of her own theses instead of just serving as the Seattle stop on the WSJ’s rhetorical wagon train, Collin Levey Day is going to continue being my favorite day of the week.

What is this, compliment the media week?

It might not make for an entertaining blog entry, but I just have to point you towards Neil Modie’s excellent article in The Seattle P-I: “Gambling industry bankrolls Eyman.

(And by “excellent” I don’t just mean that I like the article, but that it truly is excellent. Even the headline.)

In addition to providing an update on the Canadian and Nevadan gambling conglomerates who are the biggest backers of I-892 (“Slots for Tots,”) the article also raises the question of whether Eyman might be subsidizing the gambling initiative with funds from I-864 (stupid tax cut initiative,) pointing out that I-864 has spent more than $147,000 on printing and postage, while I-892 has spent only $8,400.

For intrepid reporters looking to add their own angle to this story, I suggest you delve into Tim’s business relationship with Roy Ruffino, who claims to have the “exclusive contract” on both Eyman initiatives. Since Roy has been subcontracting signatures to other firms, (surely keeping a healthy cut for himself,) and certainly doesn’t have the track record of the more established firms, I have long wondered what was in this apparently lopsided business deal for Tim?

Is this a convenient means of mixing funds between the two campaigns, outside the purview of the Public Disclosure Commission? Is he merely trying to hide the fact that his Canadian dollars are primarily being spent on Californian signature gatherers? Or, perhaps… is Tim getting some kind of kickback in return for his business?

Tim will surely deny an impropriety, and attribute any such claims to the dirty tricks of partisan critics, but as I pointed out in a column last year [The boy who cried Legal Defense Fund,] Tim Eyman is an admitted liar with a documented history of breaking the public disclosure laws, so if he draws extra scrutiny it is because he has earned it.

One of the reasons Tim is struggling to qualify his initiatives for the ballot is that a growing number of voters no longer take his claims at face value. And neither should the media.

I’ve been known to say a few unkind words about The Seattle Times, particularly their Op/Ed pages. I’m not apologizing; after all, they are the largest and most influential paper in the state, so they are more than a fair target.

And let’s be honest, who could resist poking a little fun at Collin Levey and her slavish devotion to her masters at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc.? (In fact, if Collin wrote every day, I could happily devote this blog just to her.)

But fair is fair. Today they printed an excellent editorial on the need to provide funding to treat our state’s growing epidemic of problem gambling: “Tribes should ante up for addicted gamblers.”

Of course, by “excellent,” I mean that I generally agree with it, not that it necessarily excelled in any particular way. Truth is, I have some issues with its main premise, a few of the details, and some phrasing. Oh, and the headline sucks.

Great conclusion though.

Most of all, I just plain appreciate that they are so willing to use their paper as a forum for promoting this very important issue. Not to mention their continued opposition to I-892, Eyman’s “Slots for Tots” initiative.

Which brings me to a little nitpicking:

A truly shameful statewide initiative seeks to expand state-licensed gambling, allowing slot machines in bars, restaurants, taverns, cardrooms and bowling alleys.

As accurate a characterization of I-892 as I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, they don’t actually mention I-892 by name (or number,) which will leave more than a few of its signers nodding their heads in agreement, not realizing they’ve already penned their support.

Listen to the sales pitch of a typical paid signature gatherer and you’d think I-892 was entirely about property taxes (with the side benefit of finally giving the oppressed white man equal rights with Native Americans.) Many signers have absolutely no idea what they’ve signed.

Petitioning should be a wonderfully democratic opportunity for supporters to meet their fellow citizens face-to-face and educate them on the issues, but the only education today’s for-profit initiative process offers voters is the harsh lesson that believing the promises of these paid professionals is an invitation to be screwed.

I expect The Times to be more subtle than me in criticizing I-892 (after all, they are a “family newspaper,”) but failing to mention it by name is a bit too subtle. I appreciate that The Times has been out in front, opposing this initiative from day one. I just wish they would oppose it a little louder.

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…)