Here’s an interesting tidbit from today’s Seattle P-I:
Organizers of an anti-smoking initiative said yesterday that about 1,000 signatures were stolen from the campaign’s Green Lake office over the weekend.
Someone apparently climbed onto an adjacent roof and smashed out a second-story window to get into the YES! On Initiative 901 offices, said campaign director Megan Sather.
Nothing else in the office, which had computers and a small amount of cash, was disturbed.
“I’m surprised that any break-in of our office would focus on signatures, and just plain disappointed that anything like this would happen to stop us from getting on the ballot,” Sather said.
While I share Megan’s disappointment, I don’t share her surprise. I-901’s main opponent is the Recreational Gaming Association, the same lying bastards whose members bankrolled last year’s I-892, Tim Eyman’s stupidly cynical slot machine initiative. In an effort to confuse voters, they filed their own “anti-smoking” initiative, I-911. The initiative’s sponsor is Gary Murrey, an RGA board member, and a Vice President at Great American Casinos, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Canadian corporation that was I-892’s largest financial backer. So once again we have the incredibly crooked and corrupt Great Canadian Gaming Corporation meddling in Washington’s initiative process.
Now I’m not saying that it was Great Canadian or any other RGA member who broke into I-901 HQ to steal signatures… but it wouldn’t surprise me. When you have an industry whose profits are based on loansharking, prostitution and addiction, a little Watergate-style break-in seems almost innocent. I’m just saying.
In any case, it’s all moot because I-901 has already collected more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, and the campaign wasn’t stupid enough to leave the petitions lying around where Great Canadian could send one if its pals in the Chinese mob to come steal it. Not that this was the work of Great Canadian, the RGA or the Chinese mob.
I’m just saying….