There are a lot of reasons why I don’t particularly feel like covering this fall’s election season, not the least of which being the need to post on Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1033, a task I approach with a lack of enthusiasm that borders on dread.
For all my reputation as a foul-mouthed muckraker and agitator, I’m not sure that any political observer in Washington state has written more substantively on a broader number of issues than I have over the past few years, and on no issue have I focused more acutely than those concerning government revenue and spending. Yet if you think my lengthy and wonkishly obsessive essays on, say, Washington state’s regressive and inadequate tax structure, can be boring to read, just imagine how painful they can be to research and write. That is the type of relentless effort necessary to adequately explain and refute I-1033, but the problem is, it simply doesn’t deserve it.
You see, I-1033 is a joke, totally undeserving of serious scrutiny, not because it stands no chance of passing (it does), or because its impact on our state and its citizens wouldn’t be devastating (it would), but because as an act of policy it is a capricious, vindictive, ridiculous, cynical piece of legislative bamboozlement based totally on lies, falsehoods, fabrications, distortions and lies, and thus any effort to discuss its provisions on substance—even on a lowly blog named HorsesAss.org—would be an insult to the public debate.
Bluntly, Eyman is a whore and Michael Dunmire—the man who pays for his signatures—is his john, and that makes I-1033 their cum-filled, santorum-stained condom. There is nothing credible about this ballot-measure-buggery or the mercenary manner in which it qualified for the ballot, and yet when our state’s political reporters and editorialists discuss this issue in their typically objective and solemn manner, they will undoubtedly do so with a measure of undeserved respect that quite frankly makes me sick.
As for me, I guess I too will reluctantly play my role in deconstructing one last Eyman initiative because it’s kinda-sorta my job, but if there’s anything more demeaning than making it one’s business to pen and peddle his sort of political pornography, it’s making it one’s business to review and critique it. And after a half decade of having my business inextricably attached to his, I can’t tell you how dirty it makes me feel.
UPDATE:
Dan Savage corrects me:
Santorum can’t stain a condom, Goldy. A condom can be santorum-streaked, but not stained. Please make a note of it. But it’s hard to argue with your larger point…
Seeing as Dan coined the word, I defer to him and his superior knowledge of santorum.